Paralyzed by a sonic chord, the Flash finds himself, along with the Governor, the Mayor, and the president of the power company, strapped into an aerialist rig, astride high tension power lines, two hundred-fifty feet above the ground. Below them, the diabolical Clown plays chords, on a calliope, to keep the Flash paralyzed, while simultaneously shorting out the gyros in the rig. For several seconds, the Flash is able to maintain their balance, with a steadying pole. Then, they begin to pitch over.
With a herculean effort, the Flash snaps his restraints, then hurls the pole at the clown, knocking him from the calliope. With the sonic chord silenced, the Flash regains his power of super-human speed. The Flash races across the wires, down the tower to the ground, where he catches his fellow victims. The Clown regains the calliope, forcing the Flash to run faster than the speed of sound to avoid being paralyzed again. The Flash generates a sonic boom, that unseats the Clown from the calliope, then dismantles the calliope at super-speed.
The Flash uses the shattered pipes of the calliope to cage the Clown. Before losing consciousness, the Clown writes "Help Me" in the sand. The police quickly arrive to take control of the situation. Unbeknownst to the Flash, he is being observed, from afar, by a mysterious young woman. The following day, the Flash, as police forensics scientist, Barry Allen, continues his observation of the Nephron Project. The highly experimental Nephron Process uses aversion therapy to rehabilitate criminals.
Murderer, Clive Yorkin, has volunteered to submit to the Nephron Process, in exchange for a full pardon, from the governor, for his crimes. Having second thought, Yorkin attempts to flee, only to be brought down by a pair of brutish orderlies. As Yorkin is strapped into the chair, for his next treatment, Allen voices his objections. Allen threatens to expose the Nephron Project to the media, over his growing ethical and moral concerns. The head of the Nephron Project agrees to suspend their research.
As soon as Allen leaves, however, Yorkin's treatments resume. Back in his laboratory, at police headquarters, Allen is drawn to an inexplicable chemical reaction, by his assistant, Patty Spivot. Allen checks the contents of the bottle of silver nitrate, and discovers that it is heroin. The exact same amount of heroin that recently went missing from the evidence room. After confirming his findings, Allen returns the bottle to the shelf. Allen rigs an alarm to the shelf that will notify him when the bottle is moved.
Allen arrives home for a midnight dinner with his wife, Picture News reporter, Iris West. Before the first course can be served, Allen's alarm is triggered. Allan heads back out, as the Flash, leaving behind his increasingly frustrated wife. Rather than apprehend the person stealing heroin from police headquarters, the Flash opts to follow him, in the hopes of bringing down all parties involved. Invisibly in pursuit of the thief, the Flash suddenly feels an uncontrollable compulsion to run in a different direction.
Try as he might, the Flash cannot resist the compulsion. The Flash finds himself racing towards a brick wall. Speeding up, the Flash vibrates his molecular structure into intangibility, to pass harmlessly through the wall. The wall, however, turns out to have been an illusion. When a second wall appears before him, the Flash makes the mistake of believing it also to be illusory. The Flash crashes... hard... into the wall, rendering himself unconscious. The same mysterious woman, who had surreptitiously spied on him from afar, steps forward. Her plans for the Flash... unknown.
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