49Chapter 7 - Kid Zoom
"But Mom-"
"Absolutely not! Wally, I don't care that you replicated your uncle's experiment, that you've got- you've got- oh, God-" The woman pressed both palms to her face, breathing raggedly.
"What your mother means to say, Wallace Rudolph West, is that you Are Not going to use this superspeed as an excuse to be Barry's sidekick," his father went on, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"But-!"
"No buts! You nearly got yourself killed with those chemicals, we aren't going to lose you because you decided to go running around the streets and a hundred miles per hour fighting supervillains!"
The thirteen year old scuffed his foot against the floor. "Flash goes faster than that..."
"But you won't be!"
"Oh, I think he will."
Before even Wally could blink, a yellow blur had crossed the room, and both his parents were on the floor, something warm splattered across his face. "W-what-?"
"My, what a disgrace." A man suddenly stood next to him, wearing a suit like Flash's, but yellow. "Whatever would your uncle think, boy? Two civilians right in front of you, and you're too slow to do more than stare as they die."
"What- no!" Too late, he registered the holes in their chests, and Wally stumbled forward, tripping in his haste and running into the opposite wall by mistake, too far, too fast. "NO!"
Another blink, and the man was gone and back, dropping another body onto the floor - a boy, already dead, someone Wally didn't recognize. Frozen in horror, he gaped as the man started to vibrate in place, his body throwing off miniature lightning.
One of the bolts hit the other boy's body, igniting something it had been doused with. The flames quickly spread, licking their way down to the carpet and towards his parents.
THAT threw off his shock. "Stop! STOP IT!" Wally launched himself at the man, intending to hit him, to do SOMETHING to deny what was happening-
But instead, his fists were dodged, and an arm looped its way around his waist. Then the world itself blurred away.
"Get up, now."
Flinching, West rolled off of the cot and jumped to his feet before Professor Zoom could state his order a second time. The man didn't even look at him, just made his way towards the lab equipment filling the back of the room.
"Come. Sit." Zoom pointed to the usual stool, and he gratefully rushed over to perch on it. When a hand was impatiently waved in his direction, West placed his left forearm onto the table.
Zoom took the usual scan of his vitals, then withdrew a blood sample. Once he set the day's experiment running, the man pulled a small bottle from his lab coat.
As usual, West had to wait a full two minutes after the nutrient drink was set down before reaching for it, his stomach growling all the while. Only a few seconds were required to down the bland liquid, and then he placed it back in the exact spot.
It was a surprise when Zoom pulled out a second bottle.
"You're going to run today," he explained, seeing the unasked question in West's eyes. "I'm going to be taking care of business in the city, and you're going to pick up a case from Houston. Disperse the substance samples contained within, then return here with the remaining sample. I expect no delays, no detours, and if all goes well, I'll let you out to run again soon. If not, you'll come fight Flash with me next week."
This time, he held back the flinch. Barely.
A few minutes later, West waited in his Kid Zoom suit, helmet locked in place and all tracking devices activated. The Professor uploaded maps with coordinates into his visor, along with a timetable and the usual countdown clock.
"Go." And with that, he was off.
Out the laboratory's secondary exit, across the bridge leading from Central to Keystone, passing through empty landscapes with towns and cities occasionally appearing as blurs in the distance. Soon enough he settled into a loping pace that ate up the miles with a minimum of effort, at which point the teen finally allowed his mind to start wandering.
Substance samples? What substance? Was this another Light job? Or someone independent? How many samples? Were they unstable? Could he potentially render them useless with enough extra vibration as he ran...?
He nearly slapped himself to get rid of that last thought. Causing trouble for Zoom would only mean pain, and hunger, and new experiments.
Pretending to be a hero just wasn't worth it.
It was nearly mid-morning when West arrived at his first set of coordinates - an empty parking garage on the north edge of the conglomerate city, where a single van waited on the second level. A pair of ninjas got out, one holding a backpack container that was really four smaller boxes bound together with friction resistant straps. West didn't bother checking the contents, he just grabbed it and ran.
His next stop was in New Orleans, just a jog across state lines. The condemned building he entered didn't seem to have anyone else inside, but a complicated pentagram was painted out on the floor in red. West pulled one of the boxes out of the straps, which automatically tightened to keep the others bound together. He dropped it into the center of the design. A moment later the box vanished, and he took off again.
The run up to Washington DC took a while, and with the time zone difference, it was nearly sunset when he arrived. Darting in and out of Cadmus Labs was simple enough, at least, since an assistant was waiting by the back door to receive their delivery. Then West made his shortest leg of the trip, racing to get to Metropolis, and LexCorp Manufacturing, before full dark. Normally, he'd be worried about making sure Superman didn't see him, but Zoom's underworld connections reported that the figurehead of the Justice League was currently off world, pushing a meteor away from its course through the interior of their solar system. So, West figured he'd have free run of the city, for a given value of freedom.
Apparently, others had the same idea.
Sounds from the world around him were a bit harder to register when the teen had his helmet on, but there was no missing the widespread destruction of the downtown streets. Darting past, West spotted a couple of blonde teenagers in white and red going on a rampage.
For a moment, he felt tempted to burst onto the scene and stop them. It would be just like the fights he'd dreamed of as a kid - saving the day, keeping people safe, putting away the criminals who only cared about causing mass chaos. It would be so easy...
Such a disgrace, so pathetic, as if a failure like you could have ever been a hero.
...but he couldn't.
He just couldn't.
He kept running.
