Meeting

Dawnie clenched her jaw shut on the rush of emotions. She abruptly wished that Don had been the one to do this recon instead of her. She looked up at the man who called himself Barry Allen. She could see the resemblance to Don in his face, his hands.

"Why are you here?" She finally asked, sweeping the lab with a quick look.

"I was captured," Barry said with a sorrowful smile. "We'd just gotten the news about you two, though we didn't know it was two at the time."

Dawnie took a step back. She abruptly felt the world blur for a millisecond and was assaulted by a fierce stab of hunger. She pulled an IWA bar out of the little pack she wore on her shoulder and stripped it out of its wrapper with quick, angry movements.

"They brought me here to study, and I eventually was able to break free." Barry watched her eat the bar with a frown.

"Then why didn't you go home? What about Mom?" Dawnie finished the bar and resisted the urge to lick her fingers clean of any residue. That was just the hunger talking, and she refused to let it rule her any longer.

"I found out about you two," Barry said simply. He sat down on a nearby lab table. "I wanted to save you from that place, but then I realized that they'd tampered with you."

Dawnie took a step back. Confusion and rage swirled in her in equal measure. It was a little much to take at this point. She suddenly wished that she could talk to Lucy. Lucy would be able to provide a path that she was just too angry to see.

"Can you slow us down," Dawnie finally asked. She slowly clenched and unclenched her fingers, feeling a bit of the anger dissipate.

"I don't know what they did," Barry said honestly. "I could only come up with a stopgap, the IWA bars."

"So, you're the one who's been tracking us?" Dawnie narrowed her eyes. She hated to admit that someone else was better at recon than she was. Even Don wasn't as good as her, preferring to do a long spy as versus an in-and-out. "We're going too fast lately."

"This is something they did," Barry admitted. He stood up and went to another table, calling up the monitors there. Displays sprang to vivid life. "They somehow twisted your connection to the Speed Force to make you go faster than the usual speedster."

"But can it be undone," Dawnie asked, inching back a little more. She looked at the door to the lab and then back at her biofather. "They didn't start the real experiments until we were four. Does that help?"

"It does, actually," her biofather agreed. "I thought that they began earlier." His fingers flew over the keyboard.

Dawnie took a new look around the lab with fresh eyes. The equipment was out of date, but the healing gel in the tank was fresh. That argued he had a supplier.

"Where do you get the gel?" Dawnie abruptly asked, her body tensing in anticipation of an escape.

"There was a recipe for it in one of these computers. I just had to crack the language," Barry tossed over his shoulder. He waved at the far end of the lab, opposite the door.

Dawnie followed the wave to a nondescript machine. She knew that machine. One like it had prepared her meals for ten years. She drifted away from him, noticing the minute relaxation of his muscles. The sight bothered her. The whole situation bothered her.

Up close, the machine was older than it had seemed from a distance. She busily scanned it with her eyes, disdaining to touch it. The buttons on the front were worn from use, and the product shown on the display was for the healing gel. Her eyes widened at the line of words along the bottom that were telling her that the gel was concentrated by several degrees.

She glanced back at the tank. It would take several trips to get enough gel to fill it, not to mention the question of where he was getting the raw materials without people knowing that he wasn't vanished or kidnapped or dead. Dawnie returned to examining the machine, an answer she didn't like surfacing in her mind.

It was a nasty question and answer. It would solve the issue of her biofather sitting here in an empty alien lab doing research without being bothered by the people who actually owned the lab. Then again, he was providing the IWA bars, and she didn't think he had the ability to produce the variety of gaily colored wrappers that covered each bar. Her expression eased as she came to that conclusion.

"Does Mom know you're here?" She asked him, walking back to the lab table where he was lost in his work.

"What? Oh! No, she doesn't know precisely," Barry replied absently.

Just like Jebediah, Dawnie castigated in her brain. Her friend also got lost in his research at the drop of a hat. He just needed a new tangent to follow.

Dawnie rolled her eyes, fighting down a chill. She wasn't going to lie. Her mother scared her. That was a good thing, as Iris liked to say. It meant that she and Don would think twice before doing anything that would upset her. Dawnie wasn't sure about that, but it felt good to know that her fierce mother stood behind her, ready to exert pressure on anyone and anything that threatened her kids.

She glanced at the door. Her mother would be worried if she thought that her twins were embroiled in the fighting going on on that battlefield. Luckily, they'd arrived after the battle began, their arrival shrouded by the chaos. Dawnie didn't think that that would last long since Lucy had signalled the start of their own invasion. Both sides were sure to notice the newcomers as none of them were that subtle.

"You said you made the IWA bars. Where are you getting the wrappers from?" Dawnie asked, fingering the one she'd taken off the last bar she'd eaten. It proclaimed that it was banana mocha.

"I'm not entirely cut off from the outside world," her father replied. He straightened up. "I think I might have an avenue of research, but to implement it, you and Don wouldn't be able to run for a bit."

"That's doable, but not now," Dawnie replied. She couldn't find any signs of others being in the lab at all.

"They do come. They're due tomorrow," Barry said in amusement. She flushed for being so obvious. "It's okay. I'm not expecting you to automatically trust me."

"I'll bring Don back with me but not today. We need time to digest. Tomorrow or the day after then," Dawnie said, drifting towards the door.

She turned back for one last look before heading back to the battlefield. By her calculations, it would take her ten minutes at her fastest speed. She pulled out another IWA bar from her pack. This was going to hurt.

"Wait," her biofather said. He walked to a worn cabinet and opened it. IWA bars sat there in abundance. "These have more calories than what you're eating. Take a few with you."

Dawnie accepted the wrapped bars, examining the wrappers. The calorie count on the nutritional panel showed that it was twice what the ones she'd been eating was. That made her blink. She still wasn't sure why they always had the panel on their wrappers since they were obviously a boutique item only a few people could eat.

"It's a long story," Barry explained as he watched Dawnie examine the bar. He rolled his eyes and shrugged. "I lost that battle."

Dawnie nodded in response. That had a feel that she was accustomed to. It seemed that her mom knew her biofather wasn't dead, at least.

She ate the bar as she left the lab. She had to figure out how to explain this to Don.