The doorknob turned after the click of five disengaged locks. After she opened the door, Ashley Zolomon quickly stepped to the security keypad and entered her code. It wouldn’t have been necessary if Hunter had been home, but Ashley had eventually gotten used to the idea of a college professor working more late nights than a Central City Police Lieutenant.

Before the door could fully close, a strong breeze entered the house. Briefly, the door opened wider and then slammed shut. Rather than give a start at the sudden chill and loud noise, Ashley drew her gun and spun to face away from the keypad.

“Don’t move! Police!”

In the center of Ashley Zolomon’s living room there stood a young man, perfectly still, with his hands raised. He was masked, dressed in a red bodysuit with yellow trim resembling lightning bolts around his wrist and waist. The mask was also red, with yellow wings protruding from the ears. The boots were filthy, Lieutenant Zolomon noticed, but the flakes of dirt that had fallen onto her carpet revealed yellow. Like several of the other costumed characters that had gone public recently, this one too had an emblem on his chest. A golden lightning bolt inside a yellow circle ringed with gold.

“I’m not moving!” said the Flash. “And, uh, I know. Please, officer, I just want to talk.”

“I have office hours.” Lieutenant Zolomon didn’t lower her weapon. “What is it that you want?”

“Um, could you please?” Moving on his fingers, Flash made a gesture to suggest she not aim the gun at him.

“Not a chance.”

“Even though you know I could–”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”

“No!” Flash shook his head rapidly and talked almost as rapidly. “Please. I’m sorry. You have every right to. I shouldn’t have come here. But I am so I’ll talk. I want to work with the police. Officially. Kind of. Not be a costumed vigilante. Some kind of deputy thing. I don’t know how it works so I’m asking. Would you be willing to present my offer? Let me know what needs to be done if it’s possible?”

Lieutenant Zolomon didn’t catch all of that, but she understood what he wanted. “Why me?”

Your husband is one of my professors, Flash didn’t say. “Honestly because you’re a woman and I didn’t think you would shoot me on sight. I’m sorry if that’s sexist please don’t shoot me.”

“I’m not going to…” reluctantly, she lowered her weapon. “You sound like a kid. Okay, so I guess you didn’t mean what happened the other night. Go to the Fire Department. Stick to rescues and picking up strays.”

“Please.” Flash started to lower his arms, but raised them again when her gun rose. “I’m trying to do better, and I want to help where I can.

“Look, we’re not going to accept the help of some anonymous kid. At the least you would have to reveal your identity to someone on the force.”

There was no indication that Flash had moved. One second he was masked. The next, unmasked, with arms still raised. “My name Wally West. My uncle was Barrence Allen, a forensic scientist with the Central City Police Department. My aunt is Iris Allen-West, a reporter and please don’t tell her. Also your husband is one of my professors. That’s why I picked you. I’m sorry I lied.”

Lieutenant Zolomon sighed and holstered her weapon. “Wow. You really are a kid.”

PIED PIPER

By Stephen Crosby

The loud, long whine of the alarm caused Wally to open his eyes. When his hand shot out to turn it off, he realized how fast he was moving and slowed down. The alarm had been a single note of music from the radio. Right then, Wally West knew he was in for a long, long day.

Lieutenant Zolomon had told Flash that she would present his offer to the Police Department the next day, and wait for them to contact him. As soon as Wally got out of bed he checked his phone. No messages, as expected. Lieutenant Zolomon would have to write up a report, contact a superior, move up the chain of command, and then Flash’s offer would enter bureaucratic hell. What would appear to be moving at a snail’s pace to normal people, Wally didn’t want to think about how he would see it.

Nevertheless, Wally continued to check his phone as he walked across the quad with Griffin Grey, one of his roommates. Griffin wasn’t paying any attention to Wally, all his attention focused on the women doing yoga on the lawn.

“Man. That is something I have got to get into. You see how flexible they are?”

“Everybody can see,” Wally said.

“And the girl who started that’s the daughter of a self-help mogul type,” said Griffin. “A body like that and tons of cash. Definitely someone I’d wanna get with.”

As Wally and Griffin were entering the food court, fellow roommates Chester Runk and Paul Gambi were leaving. Class schedules were king at college, so that the men couldn’t do more than nod acknowledgement at one another.

It was when they were sitting down, trays piled with food that Griffin talked again. “You think she’ll be at that gathering tonight?”

“That girl you were ogling?” Wally shook his head. “She’s not in our building.” In light of the recent suicide, all the dorm RA’s were gathering students for an open discussion.

As Wally was consuming pancakes he raised a finger. “But, you could go over there. Make like you’re our building’s ambassador, making connections outside our circle.”

“That’s a good idea, man.” Griffin had just finished his egg sandwich when he realized Wally was done with his far larger breakfast. “Man, you eat fast!”

“Yeah, uh, my dad treated our family like the army. You either ate fast or not at all.” Wally started out of his chair. “Speaking of what happened, I know that girl’s roommate. Gonna try and pay my respects before class.”

“Right on dog.” Griffin gave a wink. “Any chance I get to talk up a girl, I take it.”

The first class of Wally’s day was due to begin in fifteen minutes. He turned a corner, noted he was unseen, and sped up. The uncostumed Flash ran to Pelletier Hall, where the recent suicide had occurred. When he arrived outside the young woman’s dorm room, shared by his classmate Angela Margolin, Flash cursed himself for a fool. The door was sealed and marked as a crime scene, and besides that of course a college student wouldn’t stay in a room where a death had occurred.

Walking down the hallway, Wally saw some students hanging around in the common room. “Hey, do any of you know where Angela Margolin’s staying now?”

A guy spoke up. “Yeah, I heard some girls are letting her crash with them. One’s in my Pre-Law class, Kate…something.”

Another guy added, “But right now she’s probably at the Medical Building. Gotta get all touchy-feely about what happened, make sure she doesn’t follow her roommate.”

“Thanks.” Wally nodded and gave the guys a small wave as he walked off. Once again out of sight, he ran out of Pelletier Hall faster than anyone could see and went toward the Medical Building. He’d asked after Angela at the desk. If she was in session he’d try to find her after class.

But as it happened, Wally saw Angela outside the building, walking away. Doing a quick lap around the building, Wally slowed down where nobody could see and hurried at a normal pace into Angela’s line of sight.

“Angela, hey.”

“Oh, hi Wally. Um, what…what brings you here?”

“I was looking for you actually. How, how are you doing, after–”

“Last night? I’m…kind of numb, actually. A doctor gave me something. It’s ironic, Kelly must have swallowed every pill in our room.”

“Where are you going now? I can walk you to your…somewhere to lie down, or if you want to go to class…?”

“No I, maybe I should lie down. I just feel I need to do something.”

Wally eventually left Angela in the company of some of her friends. By that time his first class was a few minutes from ending. There was maybe a half-hour until the next class, so Wally stopped at the Quad to grab some food. Those quick bursts of speed from earlier had caught up to him, physically.

As he was helping himself to a second helping of mashed potatoes, Wally overheard a couple students talking at a nearby table.

“So sad.”

“I heard some jerks were betting on how many there’ll be. Assholes.”

“There probably will be more though. Exams haven’t even started.”

“Oh, totally. But we won’t know them all. Last week I heard a few of those transfers last year…” the girl ran a finger along her throat.

“No way.”

“Way. Last night might not have been the first. And if it’s anything like last year…”

“Excuse me.” Wally stood over their table with his big pile of food. “You said that some of these happened last year?”

“Pills? Yeah, some. A few were cutters, one jumped.”

“One got hit by a car, they said accident, but I heard he ran out into the street.”

Wally turned away as the girls gossiped about the lost lives of classmates. As he settled down at an empty table and started to eat, he dialed a number of his phone.

“Wally?”

“Hi, Aunt Iris. Sorry to call you at work.”

“Don’t be. Is this about last night? How are you holding up?”

“Fine, but I just heard something kind of disturbing. Apparently there were some deaths last year?”

“I remember. One, a girl who jumped, I used it in a large story about campus drug use. But Wally, you should know as tragic as they are it’s not uncommon. As long as you talk to people about your problems and learn to realize things do get better-”

“I know. It just…it’s weird just hearing about this now. I’d have thought the school would make a bigger deal educating us.”

“Well, I’m sure that will change now. Look, if you’d like, I can find some articles for you to read, but if you are interested it might be a good idea to seek out the information yourself.”

“Yeah. I could probably do that here at the library. Thanks, Aunt Iris.”

After a rushed mid-morning meal Wally hurried into the library. Among the largely deserted bookshelves he rapidly rummaged through the periodicals. He started with the school paper, flipping through bound books of past months. Minutes later, Flash moved on to the local papers, paying particular attention to obituaries. He noted a large number of college deaths, most identified as accidents. Flash didn’t suspect any cover-up in that regard; officials simply didn’t want to admit that such a problem existed.

But what did make Flash suspicious was when he looked farther back. Five years, and while the rate of campus deaths from accident or suicide was unsettling, it was nothing compared to the jump starting last year. Three times the previous year, terrifying considering the rates had been on a slow decline.

Running out of the library, Wally West checked his phone. Still no call from Lieutenant Ashley Zolomon, and he would have to run fast to make his next class on time. But something told Wally that this couldn’t wait.

So the Flash ran, off campus and towards the Central City Police Headquarters.

“You realize this could be a complete waste of time?”

Once Flash had found Lieutenant Zolomon, he’d again faced down a gun. She had presented Flash’s proposal up the chain-of-command and was awaiting a response, but she had not appreciated the speedster interrupting her at work. It had taken a lot of cajoling on Flash’s part, but Lieutenant Zolomon had calmed down. And while she wasn’t willing to let Flash investigate anything, he had been permitted to observe while she gave his suspicions an hour of her time.

“The key word is could.”

“I get it though. You feel helpless, so you want this to be something that can be controlled.”

“I know.”

“But even when they are, they aren’t.”

“I know, it’s just…she was dead when I got there. When I heard about it, before I could do anything, she was already dead. If it’s part of something, something bigger, then maybe I can stop the next one.”

“That’s crazy.”

“So is the idea of me.”

A young doctor entered the room, carrying a stack of medical charts. “Detective, hello, I’m–”

“It’s Lieutenant, actually.”

“Sorry. I’m Dr. Frances Kane. And you’re…wow, you’re the-”

“He’s an observer. You’re not who I asked to speak with. Where’s–”

“Yes, he’ll be a few minutes. But you actually do want to speak with me.” She set down the charts. “After, um, well, I’m not sure if you know about the deaths last year.”

“I’ve been educated.”

“Yes, well, given that high rate we’ve begun a study, though officially this is for something different, unrelated. A sampling of the campus is given brain scans on a weekly basis, and one happened to be, well–”

“The woman from the other day?”

She nodded. “Here is her scan on top.” The folder was opened. “You’ll want the medical examiner to look at this, of course, but you can see these changes in the most recent scan.”

“If you’re telling me that you saw evidence this girl was going to kill herself and you did nothing about it–”

“No, there was nothing to indicate that. This section with the change has to do with auditory stimulation.”

“So at the time this was taken she was listening to music.”

“No. At least nothing more than the previous visits. I looked at the others, and there is similar activity in their recent scans. I even checked myself an hour ago, and look.” She presented a scan and pointed at the region. “I’m hearing things and not knowing it. A lot of people are.”

“Okay, I’ve read about this, that we’re only aware of certain frequencies. Are you suggesting there’s one that, that made this girl kill herself?”

“I don’t know, but it should be looked at. We have equipment that can detect and isolate anything beyond our range of hearing.”

“Okay, we’ll need to get on that. Flash, maybe you can help spread the word or transport–” She turned and saw that he’d gone. “Okay, this was not our deal.”

“Aaahh!” Frances put her hands over her ears, which were suddenly throbbing with pain. They recognized the feeling of loud noise, but couldn’t actually hear anything.

It was the talk of sound that moved Flash into action. Just the other day, Wally West had spoken with a man about sound. Piper had even mentioned its ability to make people do things. That couldn’t be a coincidence, Flash thought, so he ran from the building and towards Hartley Rathaway’s dorm.

The door flew open and Flash was inside. Swiftly he began searching, tearing the room apart in the blink of an eye. He focused on electronics, taking apart each one that he found. It was half a minute before Flash realized that he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, certainly wouldn’t know it if and when he did. Stopping in the middle of the room, papers fluttering around him, Flash decided the best course of action was to return to Lieutenant Zolomon and share what little he did know.

Then it caught his eye. With his adjusted senses, the fluttering papers appeared to be frozen in mid-air. Snatching the sheet he noticed, Flash glanced over a summary outline for Hartley’s thesis.

“What is this?”

Hartley Rathaway stood at the entrance of his dorm room, regarding the oddity that was the Flash. “It isn’t my birthday, and if you’re a thief red is very conspicuous.”

Flash rushed at Hartley, spinning him about and slamming him against the wall. “You’re the criminal here, Hartley! Now tell me where it is!”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking-”

Flash moved one hand to Hartley’s throat and with the other slammed the sheet of paper against the wall. “Stuff your denials! I just finished reading your little theories about college suicide. And to prove it you’ve been driving young men and women to their deaths!”

“How could I make anyone do anything?”

“With sound. Was it about a year ago that you moved on from animals, Hartley? You’re upsetting your victims’ brain chemistry with sound frequency, and you’re going to tell me where the source is. Or so help me…” Flash held his fingers in front of Hartley’s eyes, vibrating so rapidly they were a red blur. “You’re going to feel what I can do to the human brain!”

“Okay wait!” Flash lets go and Hartley collapses to his knees, hands to his sobbing face. “Please, I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just don’t hurt me.”

“Get a hold of yourself m–” Flash started to say with disgust. But then came a high-pitched whine at the edge of his hearing. Flash tried to move and found that he couldn’t, as though his body were encased within a skin-tight barrier of sound.

“Hehehehe.” Hartley lowered his hands, revealing the sobs to have been feigned. A tilt of the head showed off a device in his ear. “Nobody questions the deaf man’s hardware. Do you like my little private safety device? It’s the result of a lot of tinkering, much like my mood-altering pipes.”

Walking slowly around Flash, Hartley began to monologue to his heart’s content. “I must say, it’s impressive that you found me out. I thought my method so creative that nobody would believe a crime occurred, let alone consider me. Clearly I was too confident, opening my mouth to everyone on campus who’d listen. Obviously it’s time to move on from the experiment, to explore the full potential of my technology and its financial benefits. But first I have to deal with you.”

Hartley picked up a heavy paperweight, considering. “Making contact with you may disrupt the field. And besides, a final test could be interesting. I’ve played the pipes in small doses, measuring the time they took to affect different people. Quickest was a little over a week, but a play at full strength could leave you a gibbering wreck within minutes. When the field collapses, you’ll be all too willing to run into death itself. Of course, all of campus will hear my music, so they’ll do the same thing. I’ll be like a Pied Piper, death following me out of town.”

Hartley walked out of the dorm room, chuckling to himself. Flash remained in the room, immobilized in a field of sound. He struggled though, attempting with all his effort to at least flex muscles however minuscule. Hartley’s words had entered Flash’s ears at a horrifically slow hum, he could only guess at what’d been said. Nothing good. Flash had to get free, stop the madman.

There was a small movement, the faintest vibration deep inside Flash’s core. He concentrated on that, building the vibration until, after what seemed like days, his entire body would seem from outside observers to be an unmoving blur. Finally, with a scream that struggled to keep up, Flash shifted out of the sound field, free to collapse to the floor.

Unconsciousness threatened to overwhelm the famished and exhausted Flash. He’d no idea how much time had passed, what Hartley could have already achieved. Flash struggled to his feet and out of the door. Men in the hallway weren’t moving to Flash’s eyes, for what he was moving at what he felt was a slow pace, it was far beyond what others could achieve. At this easy run Flash left the dorm and toward the electrical engineering building, intending for Hartley’s lab.

A sight caught Flash’s eye that nearly stopped him in his tracks. A person was standing on the building’s roof, right near the edge. He’s done it,Flash thought to himself. Pushing himself, Flash intended to enter the building and make for the stairs, but as he got closer he saw that he was already too late. That person, a young man, was not standing at the edge but on empty air, having already jumped.

Deciding the stairs would take too long, Flash pushed himself further, approaching the sound barrier once again. Giving a little hop just before he would have smashed against the building, Flash planted his feet and ran up the side, too fast for gravity to take effect. Arriving on the roof in the blink of an eye, Flash grabbed the man before his slow fall could place him out of arm’s reach, and pulled him to safety.

From the rooftop vantage, Flash saw this was not an isolated event. Every nearby building had men and women on the rooftops. Many windows had a body in them, also prepared to jump. Flash didn’t want to think about those preparing other forms of suicide. Every instinct in his being cried out for the Flash to run, to save all of them, but he knew it would be moot if he couldn’t stop Hartley.

Running down the stairs, Flash reached Hartley Rathaway’s laboratory. The man appeared still as a statue, in the process of turning from a medium-sized device set against the wall. The best that Flash could describe it was a small pipe organ, similar to what he’d seen at church, though he didn’t see any keyboards or pedalcords. Still, remembering what Hartley had said about pipes, Flash knew this had to be the murder weapon.

Hartley had a hand halfway in his pocket, holding something that Flash couldn’t make out. A mean’s of controlling the pipes, perhaps. Flash didn’t have time to question or consider options. Every second he took, people were closer to their deaths. Making a silent scream, Flash rushed at the pipe organ as fast as he could, well past the speed of sound. And just before colliding with the device, Flash stopped vibrating.

Flash wasn’t sure which had hurt worse, the collision or the sonic boom that preceded it. He was fairly certain though, that slamming against the device and wall was what drove him unconscious.

The first thing Flash saw when he opened his eyes was Lieutenant Ashley Zolomon. She was standing over the hospital bed he was lying in. The first thing he did was check that his mask was on, and mercifully it was. Remarkably enough, so was the rest of his costume.

“I told them to leave it on,” the Lieutenant said. “Though to be honest, it wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d looked injured. From the looks of that…whatever that thing was, you should have been a smear on the wall. Your costume didn’t have so much as a rip in it.”

“I’m just as surprised.” The pain that shot through Flash’s jaw as he spoke indicated that he hadn’t walked away unscathed. He hated to imagine running with broken bones. “H-how long?”

“Fifteen minutes since we found you, which was about forty minutes after you took off on me and this campus went to hell. Next thing I knew I had a scalpel to my wrist. I take it that student we found with you was the culprit?”

“Hartley Rathaway, a self-styled Pied Piper. Where is he now?”

“Downstairs getting X-rayed. Whatever you did, he most definitely did not walk away from. Some broken bones and lacerations from shrapnel, but he’ll recover. Just in time for his trial.”

“What about…everyone else?”

For the first time since Flash had met her, Lieutenant Zolomon smiled. “Campus security is still going building-to-building, but as near as we can tell nobody is dead or seriously hurt. You saved them all kid.”

The feeling of elation that went through Flash’s body nearly overtook the exhaustion. He felt tears running down his eyes and struggled not to blink them away, fearful he’d never get his eyes open again.

Noticing his struggle, Lieutenant Zolomon tapped Flash on the shoulder. “You’ll need to make a statement, but that can wait. Get some rest Flash. You’ve earned it.”