Chapter 75 - DCTV Fan-fiction 5 - Bound By Love (1/2)

Plot: A burglary happens at STAR Labs the day of the particle accelerator is supposed to open. A CSI and a Bioengineer come together to find out who is to blame, which leads to a most unexpected start to their adventure

Pairing: Barry x Caitlin

NOTE: A snowbarry centered fic, is currently ongoing (but haven't been update in a few weeks), includes (soul) bond, everything (well most things) goes their way + Killer Frost is dealt with better than the show did.

It was a bright and sunny morning when Caitlin Snow came into work. After her usual morning routine and drive through the city, she approached STAR Labs. To her surprise, the parking lot in front of the large structure was full of police cars and there were many cops on the scene. Parking her car in the reserved parking space as she had done ever since she came here from Coast City, the doctor got out and headed toward the large doors, which were the main entrance to the large building.

Approaching the scene, Caitlin saw two people with badges talking and a strange figure, which was on its knees on the ground examining something. She tried to make it out from afar, it seemed to be a man, but she could not be sure, so she went over to where the three people were discussing. She wanted to see more, but the scene was cordoned off with yellow tape and the police officers would not let her enter.

”Good morning, Dr. Snow” a voice came from within the multitude of cops, being partly hidden by the two people that had badges on their belts. She concluded in her mind that they were detectives that came to investigate.

”Good morning, Dr. Wells” she responded ”What happened here? Why are the police at the lab so early in the morning?”

”We have had a break in last night. Someone managed to make off with the nanite power cell we were developing, the prototype of which was to be unveiled this week, after the particle accelerator opening. We have yet to determine if there was something else stolen, but I have Mr. Ramon on that as we speak, he is going through the inventory bit by bit, to determine if there is something else missing from that floor” he responded. ”Mr. Ramon and I have been here since early this morning when I discovered the break in. For some reason our alarm system was disabled”

”Dr. Wells, why haven't you called me? I could have come and helped” she said with a bit of Ire in her voice.

”There was no need. We started immediately to account for anything that might have disappeared. The police was on the scene a few minutes later cutting off any outside interference so that the crime scene would be preserved for collection of evidence” He said quite calmly ”Even now, the only way you`re getting in there is by wearing protective gear so that you don't contaminate the crime scene, which seems obvious, if we actually want to find anything useful”

”But still…” she wanted to say something, but wells cut her off.

”Enough about that, I made a judgement call so we can get this moving along as fast as we can. I do not want their investigation to hinder the opening of the particle accelerator. This is still a think tank and the things we develop here are highly sophisticated and in some cases very dangerous. Let's be thankful they didn't come with a military detachment, two SWAT teams, the bomb squad, the firefighters and state troopers. If that would have happened and the CCPD would have treated this as an attack and not just a simple robbery, then we would have had no chance of starting the accelerator today” He voiced. Somehow, Caitlin detected something in his voice, as if he was happy that this hadn't turned into a large shit show. He had planned this opening for a long time and having this happen right now would have been a real problem. In her mind she noted that Wells was acting strange, even more so than usual. The two detectives approached slowly ”Gentlemen, this is Dr. Caitlin Snow. She is one of my employees here at STAR labs. Her main field of expertise is bio engineering, she has also done molecular biology, genetics and hematology”

”Detective Joe West” the taller black man spoke ”and this is my partner Eddie Thawne” motioning toward the other man.

”Glad to meet the both of you” she replied gracefully ”Do you know exactly what happened here?”

”We have an idea, last night one, maybe two suspects broke in the front doors and headed toward one of the labs ”Joe stated bluntly

”Are you sure? Those doors are reinforced Titanium allow. They are at this point made from the strongest material found on this earth” she looked at the doors being split wide open as if they had been crushed ”The sheer force it would require to break them is … impossible” she continues looking in disbelief at the pile of mangled steel and girders that were once the bunker doors at the main entrance.

”That is not something that we have an answer to at this time” Joe responded truthfully looking at his partner.

”Well, we do have something at least” The figure that was on the ground on its knees, and from what she had managed to see was searching the area for evidence, stood up and turned back toward the group, exiting the cordoned off area ”I found these tire tracks. 12-inch base with an asymmetrical tread. The only car that has that exact tire is a Shelby GT 500. The super wide tire is made specifically to transfer the power to the ground while offering the maximum amount of traction. I have yet to determine if the man that broke through those” he pointed at the doors ”is the one that had the car, or if he just did his job and his partner was waiting for him, but that will be ȧssessed in time” He continued.

Caitlin found herself trapped in the man's green gaze. It was like somehow she had been paralyzed. She could not take his eyes of him, the goofy smile and the weird frizzy hair, which looked unkempt, but in reality was nothing of the sort. She kept her eyes peeled on the way he studied the crime scene and took pictures and sketches. The attention to every minute detail he scribbled and sketched was astonishing even for her. Being a scientist, attention to detail was nothing she was a stranger to, but nothing to this degree.

On the other side of this strange exchange, Barry found himself attentively examining the delicate features of the woman in front of him. Something he hadn't done since the time he used to dream about Iris.

”I'm sorry; I guess we haven't been introduced. I'm Barry, Allen” he said extending a hand out to her and to Dr. Wells. They both shook it sternly. Caitlin made a confused face. The name triggered a memory of her helping a boy off the ground when she was younger. Someone she saw once after that when she was out shopping with her mother before moving back from Central City to Coast City after her father died. She thought about asking but decided she would look a bit weird doing that to a person that she had just met so she let it go.

”Harrison Wells” the man presented himself

”I`m a big fan of your work, Dr. Wells” Barry added with a large smile

”Caitlin Snow” the beautiful woman responded, a cold but courteous tone in her voice. Barry seemed to remember someone with that name from a very long time ago, but the image was wildly different, the girl he met back then had short hair, braces and large glasses. He decided to let it go for now. The woman in front of him looked nothing like the girl he remembered helping him off the sidewalk after some bullies had beaten him.

”He's the CSI responsible for collecting evidence in this case” Joe added ”So what do you have, Barry?”

”Beside what I have already got from the ground, the thieves used some sort of directed concussive thermite like device on the door” he pointed at the scoring on the doors. ”See here?” He asked ”the metal looks like it has been baked, it's so brittle that you can break it off with your hand” he took off a piece of the blown off door crumpling it like a piece of paper.

”Mr. Allen, you do realize that the melting point of the alloy we use here is around…” Caitlin interjected but the man she was addressing cut her off.

”3500 degrees, yes I know. That is the standard melting point of the titanium iridium compressed alloy used in these doors, but it does not seem that all of it was melted… the part that's brittle looks like the cohesiveness of the atomic bonds of the material was altered giving it the brittle aspect. That is a suspicion however because I do not know something that would produce such an effect” he finished her sentence

”How do you know what kind of alloy is this? We've never made the formula public” Caitlin looked genuinely surprised

”Oh. That's easy, I knew it was some sort of titanium composite, but when I saw the piece I picked up was way heavier than it should be and then I realized it had to be something else in the alloy. The second densest element I know is Iridium, which is also used to further increase durability and strength of other materials when put in an alloy. The striations in the material clearly indicate it was compressed and layered to obtain the maximum amount of resistance. Put all that together and you can get the melting point out quite easily” Barry cheerfully explained his findings.

Caitlin was positively stunned. A simple CSI managed to find the components and the fabrication process of their strongest alloy in the span of a couple of minutes, by simply relying on his observation skills and knowledge of chemistry ”Something tells me there's more to this guy than meets the eye. He's extremely smart to be able to come up with such a detailed analysis in such a short time, starting from a very small amount of data” She told herself, a faint smile dawning on her face.

”I do hope you will keep that to yourself, Mr. Allen” Dr. Wells interjected ”The patent is still in the works and we do not want someone else to steal our technology or our fabrication methods”

”Not a problem, I was just stating what I found for the team, your secret composite and its fabrication cycle are safe with me” Barry responded.

”So you`re saying this explosive was custom made?” Joe looked at him strangely

”Yes Joe. The components required would be very hard to find, some of them can only be found in two places in the city. However, as I have stated before, I do not know what would cause the disruption of the atomic bonds. In addition, I would postulate that the person that made the explosive already knew the composition of the doors. Without that information, the device that was used could have simply fizzled and the heat that it put off could simply not have damaged the door at all” He handed Joe a notebook page with the elements he thought might be in the bomb's make up.

Caitlin took a glance at the page and she was surprised again. Barry had successfully written down all the combinations she could think of when creating something with that punching power, which were not few. She saw the places jotted down near the elements. STAR Labs, Mercury Labs, plus a few other companies that had headquarters in other cities and at the bottom of the page there was a note that had been circled ”Inside job?” Caitlin found herself repeating those same words aloud.

”You mean … this could be an inside job?” she stated rather distraught by the green gaze of the CSI in front of her.

”Well it would make sense” Joe responded with his eyes on the paper ”According to our CSI here, most of the chemicals can either be found here or at Mercury, if we limit ourselves to materials that are local. However, we will expand our investigation to the other sites that Barry has jotted down, at least find out if they have some components missing”

”This could be a problem,” Harrison Wells interjected in the conversation ”We need to keep this under wraps and double the security here at the labs. We need to make sure that the particle accelerator goes online without trouble” He thought to himself for a while then continued ”Dr. Snow, as of now, you are our liaison with the CCPD. Give the detectives and Mr. Allen all the support you can. Until further notice, consider this a matter of extreme urgency”

”But Dr. Wells, I was to be here at the opening of the accelerator tonight” She responded with a bit of disappointment in her voice

”Caitlin, if we don't manage to find the thieves and since they breached our security once already, the accelerator might be attacked or worse. We need to make sure whoever did this is behind bars or at least identify them so they cannot be anywhere near STAR when we get the particle accelerator online. Having a security breach with an experiment so delicate in the works is not something that I find acceptable” Wells cut her off with a grave voice.

”I understand. I will try to provide as much help as I can. I hope that we can find out more when Mr. Allen sweeps the inside of the labs” Caitlin retorted realizing the danger the grand opening was in. While thinking about the probability of things going wrong, she could not manage to keep her eyes off the young CSI that seemed to be way smarter than he was letting on ”What the hell are you doing, Caitlin?” She asked herself. She was a bit annoyed at the fact that because of this event she might miss the event that she had been preparing to be a part of ever since she came to STAR and of which she was a big part in helping build. The entire situation was a bit of a letdown for our dear doctor, at the realization that she might have to miss everything. However, her own feelings didn't matter, if that same event wouldn't happen or was met with something catastrophic because of an outside intrusion. Putting her feelings aside she decided to help o the best of her abilities, even if she wasn't to be there, at least Ronnie would be, so he could see his dream come to fruition along with the other slew of people that worked on the grand opening.

While she was talking to Dr. Wells, Barry Allen scoured the crime scene for other clues, but for some reason his gaze kept going back to the beautiful ċhėstnut brown haired woman like she was magnetic. Her long locks framed her delicate features beautifully. The black pencil skirt showed off her slender legs and the dark blue coat she was wearing contrasted with her skin tone in a way he could have never thought possible. However, he looked and searched for evidence, his eyes kept going back to her. He almost missed a black chip of paint that was straying in one of the tire treads. He admonished himself ”Barry Allen, don't screw this up because you aren't looking for evidence, but instead you`re looking at her”. Her demeanor and way of talking was cold and professional, but that would be the case for a scientist, or for a person who has had a lot of disappointment in her life. He knew this well. For the time he had been fawning over Iris, some of his friends did indeed tell him that he began to get colder. Maybe that was the case for her as well; however, he rather guessed that this would probably be the only time when he would be working with her, unless STAR was hit again. Strangely enough, thinking about it, he had a shadow of a wish in his mind that the labs get pilfered a few more times, just so he could get to know the beautiful doctor better. He smiled, but it was forced. His ethics of work prevented him from actually wanting that, what he had thought right about now would be something that would have never even been an issue in his mind earlier on. The idea that more crimes should happen just so he could see her was nothing more of a joke, yet he thought about it with absolute seriousness. It was a strange occurrence to him. He had worked most of his ȧduŀt life to put people in prison and keeping stuff like this from happening and yet, here he was, wishing, quite seriously, that the Labs would get robbed again, just so he could see the beautiful woman and get a chance to work with her again. He admonished himself for even thinking something like that, although that idea stayed firm in his mind, somewhere in the deepest recesses like an itch that needed to be scratched and he could not do it. He didn't want this to be the first and last time he had contact with the woman in front of him. His outside search yielded nothing more and when he stood up he caught her looking at him intently and flashed her a gleeful smile.

”I'll be taking Mr. Allen the whole way to the lab that was broken into. Maybe there is more evidence somewhere” Caitlin told the group as she was preparing to go inside, trying to avoid as best she could the debris from the door. The two made sure to have protective gear so that they do not contaminate the scene. Barry usually would do that himself, but the building was so large that he welcomed the help.

”And we will start to track down the chemicals Barry gave us to see if we can come up with a lead” Joe added to that statement before him and Eddie started to walk back to the car.

”So Mr. Allen, did you find anything else out here?” Caitlin addressed the CSI what was black lighting the floor in search for minute traces of blood.

”Call me Barry, Mr. Allen … yeah ... that's my dad” he smirked

”All right, then you can call me Caitlin” she replied before he had a chance to continue

”I haven't really found anything else that might lead to our thieves. Can you walk me back to the lab that was broken into? I need to check along the way for material evidence. I hope that our thieves were not as careful as they seemed” the CSI asked her politely.

”My sentiments exactly. Come on” Caitlin motioned for Barry to follow her. The man did so without even thinking twice, it was as if her demeanor was almost commanding enough to tell him to do what she asked.

The large halls that lead to different sections of the laboratory seemed to have been designed with containment in mind, Barry thought at first glance. All of them had blast doors at either end, some of them even having decontamination areas, which were required before entering the next section. He noticed the bands on the floor could light up if needed. ”Must be for new people, this building is huge, wouldn't be a surprise if people can actually get lost in here” he thought to himself. The large windows that were on the side were letting the light go through, but Barry noticed that the color spectrum was a bit shifted. He attributed that to the fact that the glass could be either tinted or have filters in order to make the environment friendlier. He couldn't find at this point another reason for that to happen.

”How many days do you keep security footage before deleting it, Caitlin?” Barry asked while they were walking. He had an idea that might help him not spend the next two weeks combing every nook and cranny of the almost 150-meter corridor that lead to the lab that was broken into with every kind of light that he could think of. While they were walking, his mind was taking in the grandeur of the labs. The building looked huge form outside, but from the inside, the view was largely different, there were corridors and labs on either side, coupled with security doors to some areas and security checkpoints in others.

”We don't delete security footage here, Barry. All the video from the opening of STAR Labs was digitized and left in the master computer, which means we can access even stuff that is a few years old whenever we want” Caitlin replied with a small smile on her face. That action in itself was weird to her. She never smiled to anyone, fact that Cisco, her best friend at the time had noticed and was constantly annoying her about.

”How the hell does your master computer has that much storage to keep all the video from the last 3 years alone with all the high tech cameras around?” Barry looked stupefied at her reply

”We just do, maybe Cisco can tell you about that when and if you get the clearance for it” the doctor replied

”Who's Cisco?” Barry asked shortly thereafter

”That would be me, Francisco Ramon, mechanical engineering genius, sometimes master hacker and all around nice guy” Barry saw a figure coming toward them ”Call me Cisco, if I hear Francisco out of you, I'm going to disintegrate you”

Cisco Ramon was shorter than Barry was, with long wavy hair to his shoulders and a large smile that seemed to brighten up the space they were in when he entered it. The impression Barry had was of immediate comfort with him in the room, also he noticed Caitlin relaxed even though they were investigating a robbery. He concluded by his observations that the two must have been good friends.

”Hi, I'm Barry Allen. Just call me Barry. Can you pull up the security footage of the lab for last night?”

”Yeah, sure man, what time frame and which footage?” the joyful man asked immediately.

”From 2 AM to 4 AM. Everything that you can give me from the corridor that leaves this lab all the way to the entrance” The CSI voiced. In a normal case, those times would, in almost all cases, yield nothing; the city was almost inert between 12 and 3 AM, so anything would be simply not there. He hoped this would not be the case here, since Caitlin told him that they do not delete security footage. Nonetheless, Barry was prepared in case nothing showed up, seeing it in many other instances. Cisco started to pull up the requested footage on his tablet while Barry started his analysis of the lab.

Everything was surprisingly tidy. Nothing else had been touched except the containment unit where the power cell had been kept. The containment unit itself had no burn marks, no scorching, no sign of damage and it looked like it was actually opened with the appropriate code. This smelled more and more of an inside job as the evidence suggested.

”Hey Barry, could you come over here for a minute?” Caitlin chimed into the conversation

”Yeah, what's up?” he walked toward her casually

”I'm pretty sure these chemicals have no place in this lab” she pointed to three flasks of different colors that were on the second table in the room very near to the empty storage device.

As he looked to the glass containers, he saw something falling from the neck of the flask into the liquid inside as Caitlin picked it up. It was a trap. He recognized the small piece of material in the clear ball that was about to make contact with the water. It was sodium, quite a big piece for a small flask.

”Trap. Watch out!” He yelled as he took the flask out of Caitlin's hand and threw it outside the lab into the corridor where it would be nowhere near any sort of chemicals that could produce a larger explosion. Without thinking, he grabbed Caitlin and shielded her with his body putting his hands around her. After a few seconds a large thud could be hear and the door to the lab was full with small glass shards.

”What the hell just happened?!” Cisco yelled covering himself with his tablet

”It was a trap, left by whoever robbed this place” he stated coldly ”Water with sodium. It produces a small explosion not really harmful, but those glass shards …”

”Could have done enough damage. Thanks, Barry” Caitlin continued his sentence, feeling a bit uncomfortable with him covering her, but not saying anything because she realized that he only wanted to protect her. She got out of his embrace and went to examine the other flasks that were on the table ”This trap was well designed” She took the second flask and saw that it was pressurized with a clear white powder in it with yellow bevels. ”This is phosphorous. If that flask would have exploded and had broken the seal on this one while providing the heat of an explosion …”

”It would have magnified it enough to create an event that would probably have killed whoever is in this room. And you are welcome, Caitlin” Barry continued.

”Very good, Barry. I see you know your chemistry” She smiled at him, which hid a little bit of admiration.

”There must be some sort of evidence in this room. That trap was designed to burn this room, thus cleaning it of any sort of traces left behind. Also providing enough genetic material from the people that were close enough to the blast to make finding other samples of DNA completely pointless” Barry voiced his thoughts without thinking.

He took out his black light and started scanning every little flask every little corner of the room. Caitlin watched him do his work, the meticulousness and the borderline amazing attention to detail was something she was starting to like in the young CSI. For some people going over evidence was … boring, and they would finish excessively fast not really finding anything, but that was definitely not his way of doing things.

”Eureka” Barry smiled, making Caitlin chuckle. He was holding a flask in his hand that has a bright blue spot on the side, probably not visible under normal light. He started to swab it and put it in an evidence envelope as he put it in his back Cisco called out to them

”Hey, I got that footage you wanted” showing him the tablet.

They went outside and started watching the security videos. One man appeared on the footage that obviously knew his way around the lab. After the door was destroyed they went straight to the lab containing the power cell and opened it with the code for the day.

”Caitlin, Cisco, who has that code on a normal day at STAR?” Barry asked

”The code is changed daily at 8 AM right before the employees come back to work” Cisco started to explain ”In order for them to get the new code they have to go the back of the lab and provide retinal and handprint ID. At that time the new code will be sent to their respective workstations and they are the only persons that can work with it for the day”

Looking at the footage inside the lab they found out with stupor that nobody had worked in that lab the day before, therefore it was impossible to know the code since nobody else had actually used it.

”So…” Barry shrugged and rubbed his head ”Nobody was here yesterday. Who else receives or has access to these codes?”

”Only four people. Me, Caitlin, Dr. Wells and our security chief, Martin Thatch” replied Cisco with a coldness about him.

As they continued to watch, they could see the man broke a flask by accident while putting his hand to lean on one of the tables. That led to a wound on his hand, since the shards of glass were red. Calmly enough, he scooped them in his hand and put them in his pocket, with a coldness to him. That instantly led Barry to believe that the man was more than likely a professional thief or just he didn't care. As he walked out from the room, he made a mistake while carrying the cell, which looked rather heavy, as it not was a reduced size model, but only a prototype. He had leaned against the wall for a split second with his hurt hand, trying to regain his balance while carrying the large object.

”Cisco, can you pinpoint that exact section of the wall from the footage?” Barry asked pointing at the spot on the wall that was on the video

”Yeah” he responded. As they walked back toward the entrance, Cisco was looking up to see the placement of the cameras as he stopped looking at a piece of wall ”This is the section you want” Barry sprayed some chemical on the wall and started to scan with his black light revealing a half hazy handprint and 3 blue spots.

”Wonderful, now I have blood samples and hopefully even sweat samples to analyze. As bad as this looks we might have caught a break guys” Barry threw the two a thousand watt smile.

”Hey Barry, come take a look at this” Cisco waved him over. They could see on the tape that it had some sort of static on it for exactly 2 seconds when the man went in and when the man went out.

”Does that happen often on your cameras?” the CSI asked

”No, that's the problem, it never happens. These cameras are state of the art and EM shielded. Maybe a nuclear explosion might manage to create an EMP strong enough for them to have this level of static” Cisco scratched his head.

”What about military hardware? You do know there are EMP warheads that can produce the level of interference that a nuclear bomb can without actually having an atomic blast” Barry replied

”Yes, I do know that, but we also have sensors that would have detected something of that size. Even if it was enough to completely shut down our system, the logs would be there and for last night, there was no such type of event” the engineer showed him the logs for the last day, which held nothing of the sort.

”Yeah, besides, why would the military EMP the labs, that makes no sense whatsoever. At least not from my point of view” Barry stated thinking about a reason as to why that would happen, but coming up with nothing.

”You know Barry, we can help you analyze those samples” Caitlin offered, somehow hoping in the back of her mind that she would see the CSI more around the lab ”STAR labs has quite a comprehensive genetics department”

”To which he has no access to, Caitlin” Cisco broke her line of thought