Arrow--Vengeance

by Oscar Balderrama

  “Not really.” Slade dipped a finger into the stew for another taste. “But hearing it, coming from him. I never really thought about it before.”

  “Is that why you’re home early tonight?”

  “What do you mean?” Slade eyed his ex-wife, caught off-guard by the question.

  “I know you, Slade,” she said, still chopping. “You’re not pulling these hours trying to find A.R.G.U.S. agents. You’re after something else.”

  Slade grabbed a kitchen towel from the handle of the oven, wiping his hand. He peered closely at her.

  “You sound like you’ve been thinking about this for some time,” he said. “Where’s it come from?”

  “We’ve been divorced more years than we’ve been married, Slade,” she said. “I lost the right to question you a long time ago, but I will say this…” She scooped the salad greens into a bowl and wiped her hands dry on her apron. Then she turned toward her ex-husband, meeting his gaze. “Whatever happened to you out there, whoever was responsible for that eye—leave it there. Leave it behind. Forget that island.”

  Before he could respond she kissed him on the cheek, then exited, taking the salad out to the dining room table. Left behind in the kitchen, Slade inhaled the smell of the stew, felt its warmth in his belly, spreading up and outward to his limbs. Then he heard his boy laughing in the next room and walked over to the doorway, looking in. He saw his ex-wife tickle his son, trying to get him to help set the table.

  Moving over to a chair in the den, he let his weight sink deeply into the soft cushions. He gazed out through the window, taking in the last of the day’s light, the sun setting fast on the horizon, stars emerging from overhead. He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, the smell of dinner in the air and his son’s laughter in his ears.

  For the first time in longer than Slade could remember, he felt happy.

  * * *

  The Japanese had developed the mirakuru while under duress, the atrocities of World War II bearing down upon them. Desperate to level the playing field, they kept the serum’s existence secret, hiding the laboratory in a submarine deep in the North Pacific. Safely hidden, they rushed the drug directly into clinical trials, testing the serum on their soldiers before research could be adequately conducted.

  The results were immediate and terrifying. Many of the soldiers died instantly, their organs ruined by the serum’s effects. The select few who survived, however, emerged with strength and agility far in excess of normal men.

  In that respect, the mirakuru was a success.

  However, with those abilities came an unintended consequence. The soldiers’ minds became twisted, slowly overtaken by a vicious rage that sent them rampaging through whatever and whoever had the misfortune of standing in their path. These superhumans could not be controlled. So the Japanese abruptly ended the trials before further research could be conducted, deeming the situation too high risk to continue.

  Dr. Anthony Ivo, the scientist who had traced the serum back to that submarine run aground on Lian Yu, had managed to counter the serum’s destructive effects while studying its regenerative properties aboard the freighter. He developed an antidote based on a simple observation—the serum could be exhausted. With every feat of strength and injury healed, the concentration of the mirakuru thinned within a subject’s blood, lessening its effects. In a sense, the drug could “run out.”

  Yet if any trace of the serum managed to remain, it would replicate itself. As time went on, it would regain its strength and its grip on the host.

  All the mirakuru needed was time.

  8

  Slade squared off against Digger Harkness in the A.S.I.S. training room, holding his tactical machete at the ready. Harkness gripped his dual metal boomerangs. Unlike their first session months before, he looked harried, his chest rising and falling, sucking wind. Slade, meanwhile, was the picture of calm, the only outward indication of exertion the sweat beading near his temples. The hair there had started to gray.

  With a nod, each to the other, the men rushed forward, clashing at the room’s center. Harkness was a swirl of motion, spinning his body with arms outstretched. The arc of the boomerang blades struck high and low in the same movement. Slade parried the attack with his machete, deflecting each blow with quick protective thrusts up and down, finely carving the air.

  Abruptly Harkness switched tactics, sending one of his blades airborne toward Slade’s head, causing him to duck. As the blade arced back around, Digger used the momentary distraction to charge, slashing at his opponent. Slade blocked the strike, but then Digger spun, caught the second blade as it returned, and swiped him across the arm, drawing blood.

  The wound did little to stop Slade, however, serving instead to anger him. He charged with a battery of thrusts and swipes, driving his opponent backward. He threw the machete, surprising Harkness, embedding it in the wall just wide of his head and diverting his attention. Then he landed a kick to Harkness’s chest, following it with a low roundhouse sweep to his legs, knocking them out from under him.

  Harkness landed on the sparring mat with a loud thump, his boomerangs clattering to the floor in either direction. Slade grabbed his blade from the wall and pressed its edge against the man’s neck. Harkness put his hands up, conceding the point and the match.

  “I’d say you’ve recovered,” Harkness grunted. “Fully.”

  Slade helped Harkness to his feet. “One more round?”

  “And suffer another defeat to the ‘Silver Fox’?” Harkness replied wryly. “No thanks, mate—I’ve had my fill of humiliation today.”

  “Don’t feel too bad… mate.” Slade slapped him on the back. “I owed you one.”

  “I guess what they say is true,” Harkness said. “What goes around, comes around.” He grinned at the thought, and as the men headed off toward the showers, he changed the subject. “So when’s your next deployment?”

  Slade shook his head. “Not looking for one.”

  Harkness gave Slade a curious look. “A man of your skill, I figured you’d be itching to get back in the game.”

  “Trying something different,” Slade said. “New priorities.”

  “Then I wish you luck, my friend.” Harkness regarded the man, meeting his eye, drawing from an experience unspoken. “Warriors like us, it’s not easy leaving that part behind.” Slade nodded, knowing all too well the depths of that truth—but he had made his peace. Adie was right. For the better part of a year, there had been no sign of Oliver Queen. For Joe’s sake, maybe it was time to consider the Starling City playboy dead and buried.

  “Sorry about your arm, by the way,” Harkness said. “Though it doesn’t look as bad as I thought.”

  Slade glanced at his wound, surprised to see that the cut, so bloody mere moments ago, had already begun to heal.

  * * *

  Slade sat at his desk, his search for Oliver put aside, when a new batch of intelligence arrived from the agency’s ongoing surveillance activities in Hong Kong. A man had been stabbed, murdered in an alleyway just off of one of the busiest urban streets. According to the Chinese authorities, the crime was a common one, an unfortunate act of violence perpetrated against foreigners by local area gangs. They had declared the victim a John Doe.

  A.S.I.S. Intel, however, had identified the man as Adam Castwidth, a well-known handler of mercenaries with suspected ties to Edward Fyers, the mastermind of the carnage on Lian Yu.

  The incident had A.R.G.U.S. written all over it, and Slade was tasked with reviewing the emerging surveillance. The importance of the task, however, did nothing to assuage the tedium. He did his best to stave off boredom as he analyzed the hundreds of photographs and security camera videos taken near the crime scene. An endless procession of faces streamed across his computer screen, the SIIRA program crosschecking each designated person against the internal database. A haystack being deconstructed one straw at a time, in search of a needle.

  He broadened SIIRA’s processing parameters, asking the program to
isolate every face of unknown origin in the crowd. It was a long shot—despite widespread paranoia, most people weren’t worth cataloging in a database. Nevertheless, the technique had proven successful a few times before.

  One image caught Slade’s eye. It had been taken just a few moments before an innocent bystander had discovered the body. The majority of the crowd was being drawn toward the commotion. However, one man—Caucasian, medium-length brown hair—was clearly moving against the tide. The man’s face was mostly obscured by shadow, his face turned to the side, the motion of his walking blurring the features.

  As recognition began to dawn, Slade felt the hair rise on his arms and his heart rate quicken. His vision tunneled and the sounds of the bullpen dropped away. Though the man was little more than an obscured blur, his identity was unmistakable. It was the face of the man who had betrayed him, and left him for dead.

  Oliver Queen?

  Slade isolated the picture, then had SIIRA run a search based on a computer simulation of how Oliver would appear today. The program reported a fifty percent possible match. It would have been a coin-flip for most, but it was confirmation enough for Slade.

  His hand began to tremble slightly, and the familiar sensation startled him. Oliver’s picture was beginning to set off the mirakuru rage that had remained dormant for so long. His mind began to spin backward. In his mind’s eye, Slade relived the moment he arrived on Lian Yu with Billy—their band of brothers stronger than ever. Another flash of when Shado joined Slade and Oliver in the fuselage. Slade and Shado, sparring together vigorously, and as their training continued, falling for her for every moment she challenged him.

  Finally he saw Oliver, drenched as he hovered over Slade with an arrow, before driving it into his head.

  The crunch of plastic snapped him back to the present. He looked down and opened his hand. The computer mouse fell from it in pieces, crushed.

  * * *

  “Harkness is already in Hong Kong, infiltrating A.R.G.U.S.”

  “Then pull him back,” Slade demanded.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” DeForge replied.

  “Why not?” Slade’s voice boomed in the office. Then the room fell into a tense silence. Slade stood over DeForge at his desk, fists clenched. The commander calmly stared him down.

  “You gonna sit, or you gonna punch me?” he said. “Either way, make up your damned mind.”

  The confrontation shook Slade from his rage. He sat down, his weight balanced on the chair’s edge. Neither man broke eye contact.

  “Full disclosure?” DeForge said. “It hasn’t been easy for me, seeing you back in their lives. But I put my feelings aside because I know how much you mean to Joe… and Adie.” The commander broke eye contact at the mention of her name, a reluctant concession. “So like hell I’m gonna stand idly by and let you leave them again. Not to search for some bloody rich kid from Starling City.”

  It was Slade’s turn to let his composure slip.

  “Yeah, Slade—I’ve been keeping tabs on your work. All those late nights you’ve been putting in? Adie was worried.” He let that land. “Why the obsession with Oliver Queen?”

  Slade was caught unawares. Oliver was supposed to be his private crusade. Now that DeForge knew, what was his next move? No sense keeping secrets now, but there was no need to tell the whole truth, either.

  “Because,” Slade said carefully, “he’s the one who killed your brother.”

  DeForge scowled, and scanned Slade’s face.

  “If that’s true, then why didn’t you disclose it in your debrief?”

  “No one would’ve believed me,” Slade lied. “I needed proof he was still alive, and now I have it.” He held out the photo of the man leaving the Hong Kong alleyway. DeForge looked at it, shaking his head.

  “This is little more than a blur.”

  “No,” Slade said, his voice a growl. “That’s him. SIIRA confirms it.”

  “That program is far from infallible,” DeForge argued. “Despite what Mr. Nakauchi might have you believe.”

  “How can you not want justice?” Slade demanded. “He killed your brother!”

  “Even if that were true,” DeForge replied, his composure back in place. “There’s no justice to be gotten from the corpse of the wrong man.” He opened a folder on his desk, and slid a sheet of paper over to Slade. “We intercepted this email, earlier this month. It’s a report sent by one Tommy Merlyn to Laurel Lance. They’re names I believe you’ll recognize.”

  Slade started reading. Merlyn had traveled to Hong Kong in search of Oliver, after his email portal had been accessed in a local Internet café, but the entire incident had been a ruse designed by kidnappers to lure him there and hold him for ransom. If it hadn’t been for the local police, Merlyn would have still been in their clutches, maybe even dead.

  Oliver is dead, the report said, giving supporting data. It’s time to move on.

  Slade slumped under the weight of the revelation.

  He had been so sure.

  DeForge broke the silence. “When you asked to be kept out of the field, I honored that request, despite my misgivings,” he said. “Do the same. Be with your family. Stop chasing ghosts.”

  Slade nodded and exited the office in a daze. As he walked down the hallway, the glow of the halogen lights harsh overhead, his footsteps echoing, he tried to clear his mind. For the briefest moment, the possibility of Oliver had reignited his hate. He was shocked at how quickly it had overwhelmed him.

  Thinking of Adie and Joe, he tried to smother his rage.

  Like Tommy Merlyn, he knew it was time to move on.

  9

  It had been nearly two years since he had returned home, yet with the passage of time came new purpose.

  The new A.S.I.S. recruits, a mixture of ten men and women, were lined up against the wall of the training room. All were young and eager to impress. Future killers in the making.

  Slade walked the line, evaluating them.

  Amateurs.

  The hair at his temples had grown grayer as the seasons had changed from winter to spring to summer. His tremors had increased, as well, and he felt one emerging in his right hand, flexing it away with a clench of the fist. Then he grabbed a set of training batons from the weapons rack.

  “Does anyone know what these are?”

  One of the more cocksure recruits, a man named Ian, stepped forward. He was baby-faced but handsome, his close-cropped hair colored sandy blonde. He was the spitting image of Oliver Queen. Slade did a double take, shaking it off.

  “Eskrima fighting sticks,” Ian said. “From the Philippines.”

  “You sound like a man who’s held them before,” Slade replied.

  “I’m a black belt. So yeah, I’d say I have.”

  Mocking the kid’s boast, Slade raised his eyebrows. “Impressive.” Then he turned to the class. “Most ‘masters’ wouldn’t declare themselves as such, unless they were seeking a challenge.” His eyes fell back on Ian. “That true?”

  Ian stepped forward, not backing down. He nodded toward Slade’s eye patch.

  “Aren’t you a little handicapped, old man?”

  “Disabled and old,” Slade said. “Guess you have no excuse if you lose. Grab your weapons.”

  As Ian moved to the weapons rack, Slade fought off another tremor in his hand. Again he flexed it away, and walked to the mat’s center, preparing for the sparring session. When he turned to face Ian, however, he found himself face to face with Oliver Queen.

  It’s not possible, Slade told himself. He closed his eyes, shaking off the hallucination.

  When he opened them again, Ian’s face had returned.

  Ian stared at him, bemused. “You alright?”

  “I’ll be asking the same of you soon,” Slade said. “Go.”

  With a nod, Ian launched himself at Slade. He showed proficiency, but in a way that suggested that he had never fought beyond the boundaries of a ring. Not at all practical. Drawing from his field expe
rience, Slade easily parried the man’s attack, then surprised him with a deke to the head, followed by a quick strike to his plant leg, flipping the young agent on his back.

  “You fight like you’re at the gym, kid.” Slade’s use of “kid” slipped out, catching him unawares. It had been Slade’s nickname for Oliver back on Lian Yu, during their sparring sessions together as friends. Before the betrayal. The reverie momentarily distracted Slade, allowing Ian to flip back onto his feet and land a strike to Slade’s head—a glancing blow but enough to disorient him.

  A stilted fighter but hardly stupid, the young recruit took advantage of Slade’s lapse in concentration, launching a variety of strikes both by stick and kick, driving him backward. Slade parried, but Ian was getting into his stride and finding his mark more often than not.

  Slade’s vision blurred, until all he could see was Oliver Queen, attacking him. The hallucination faded in and out with each blow like radio static caught between stations, and rage kicked in. The rush of mirakuru-driven adrenaline cleared his vision, allowing him to strike back.

  He did so brutally, without mercy.

  Blow after blow landed with force until, powered by the serum, he gathered in for one final strike. He reared his hand back and, in one fluid act of fury, drove his stick down through Ian’s own, shattering it. The strike continued onto the man’s leg, breaking the bone with a sickening snap. Ian reacted with a loud howl, jolting Slade out of his rage. He looked up.

  The recruits were staring at him in horror.

  Wade DeForge, passing in the hallway outside, was drawn to the commotion and entered the training hall. He locked eyes with Slade.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Slade surveyed the scene, taking in Ian on the ground, writhing in pain, and the class, all riveted in place in various stages of shock. He dropped his fighting sticks onto the mat and made his way out toward the door of the training room, eyeballing DeForge as he passed.

  “He asked for a fight,” Slade muttered. “So I gave it to him.”