"Barry!" Iris groaned. "I can't believe you're making me meet my soulmate at this dumb science thing!"

Barry rolled his eyes. "Come on, think of it this way: they could be a jock creep at a bar, but instead they're a nerdy creep at a STAR Labs press conference. Much less to worry about here."

"Stop that," she snorted. She gave Barry a playful shove. "My soulmate is not a creep!"

Her purse slid from her shoulder to her elbow.

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" Barry overacted getting shoved, knocking into the crowds behind him, earning more than a few dirty looks. "I don't know what any self-respecting non-creep would be doing here tonight anyway."

"The key word there is self-respecting, Barry. I'm here because I need to get a certain number of articles in the Vindicator if I want to get credit for it. You're here because something something science something Wills-"

"Wells," Barry corrected.

"-something nerdy. My point is," she said as she began digging through her purse, "is, um, I don't have a point. Want gum?" she asked as she popped a piece in her mouth.

"No thanks. I'm not the one who has to prepare for a hot date tonight." He smirked, holding up his wrist, with a clearly visible 9 months printed on his timer.

Iris rolled her eyes, and tried to stick the gum back in her purse, holding it open with her hand and elbow.

"Want help with that?"

"No, I-" she was cut off as someone rushed between them, snatching the bag out of her hand. "God dammit!"

"I got it," Barry said, starting after the thief.

"Two minutes, Barry! You got two minutes!" She yelled after him. He didn't hear her. She huffed, and started following at a slower pace.

Barry followed the figure through the crowd, shoving into people and stepping on toes. As the thief ran out into the facility, the crowd started thinning out and the architecture looked less modern and more industrial. The thief ran out a service exit and into a loading dock. Good. Barry could use the open space to catch up to them.

There was a narrow space between two shipping containers. The thief spotted it at the same time Barry did. Barry was gaining on them, but if the thief got out it was game over. The darkness in between the containers was more pronounced. Barry didn't see the thief tripping until he had tripped too.

Or, well, been tripped, it seems.

"CCPD. What exactly is going on here?" asked a figure silhouetted by a floodlight.

Apparently, the thief had the wind knocked out of them when they hit the cold January pavement. Barry was better able to get up, but he still had some trouble breathing too.

He coughed. "I'm also... also CCPD. This person stole my friends purse. I was trying to get it back for her.

The guy laughed. "Oh, you're CCPD too? What precinct? I'm sure I would have remembered a cop as... scrappy as you. I'm Detective-"

He paused as they heard clicking footsteps coming down between the containers.

"Barry! Did you get him?" Iris yelled.

He answered, "Yeah, well, sort of, I mean-"

He was cut off by a loud beeping. Barry had only heard Timer Beeping once before, when he'd met Iris, but its sound was unmistakable. Iris and the detective both looked at their wrists.

"Aww," said the thief, still laying on the ground.

"Um, should we-" Barry began to ask.

"Why don't you book him. I... have other plans," the detective said distractedly. Iris tried to suppress a smile.

"Yeah, sure, yeah, I totally have the authority to do that, okay, let me just-"

Barry was cut off by the ground starting to rumble. Iris and the detective looked confused, but Barry knew enough about particle accelerators to know that something bad was going down.

"Shit. We need to run, you guys." They started off around the side of the building, and were about halfway to Iris's car, when a loud siren started going off. People were streaming out of the building and into the parking lot.

"Is that a tornado siren? It's January," Iris wondered.

"No time! We gotta go!" Barry yelled. Iris was starting to look panicked as she unlocked her car and got in the drivers seat. Barry slid into the back seat behind her, and the detective hopped into shotgun.

"Do you think we'll be able to get through this traffic?" the detective asked.

Iris rolled her eyes. "My dad made me do stunt driving courses when I first learned to drive, and I got this car at the police auction. We'll be fine."

"Yeah. It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks," Barry joked.

"Shut up and let me drive," Iris said as she drove up over the curb and around the gate, and onto the road past the rest of the cars.

Once they got onto the open highway, they were fine. They managed to beat the rest of the cars and speed ahead towards town. Iris turned on the radio, but no stations were saying anything about STAR Labs.

"So, I never got your name. Um, he's Barry, and I'm Eddie, but, um..."

"I'm Iris. Nice meeting you, sorry about the whole particle accelerator thing. It's probably safe, right, Barry?"

He laughed nervously. "Um, maybe," He checked his watch. "I need to get to work. Can you drop me off?"

"Yeah, sure."

He got out of the car. He went up to his lab. He began setting it up. He opened the skylight. And that's where his memories for the night ended.

5 hours after waking up, and Barry was already tired of waiting. He'd met back up with Iris, and gone back to the house, and was making himself another sandwich when he looked down. It had been about 9 months since he'd last checked his time.

He took a breath. Flipped over his wrist. It was zeroed out. He must be looking at the wrong wrist, the one that had Iris's timer. He checked both timers. Both were at zero. And it looked like both had been at zero for a while.

He had no idea when his timer could have gone off. He knew he didn't hear it when it did. He also knew that it would be almost impossible to find out whoever had set it off, and more so as more time passed.

If his face was wet when he ate his sandwich, well, every witness would be eaten by the time he was done.