Sebastian couldn’t conceal his shock.
“You want me to orchestrate an assassination?”
“No,” Wilson said. “A cleansing.”
“Our hope,” Rochev added, “is that the mayor’s death will be blamed on the vigilante himself, making his capture a priority for the Starling City Police Department and district attorney’s office. Their preoccupation with each other should give you ample space to test the serum, and build your army.”
“While also creating a vacancy at City Hall.” Blood marveled at their ruthless cunning. “And given the circumstances, everyone will be too afraid to fill it.”
“Except for you, Mr. Blood,” Wilson said, his hand stroking his beard.
“Promises like these don’t come without a price,” Sebastian said. “What’s yours? What will I owe you?”
“Your loyalty and discretion,” Wilson said, his voice like gravel, “and an expectation of excellence. I do not tolerate mistakes.”
“Then we’re good partners,” Sebastian replied, deciding to meet the challenge head on. “Because I don’t make them.” He stood and shook hands with both Wilson and Rochev.
“One final word, Mr. Blood.” Wilson stared at him. “Should your activities put you in the path of the vigilante, do not engage him. Do you understand?”
Sebastian nodded, then turned and walked the long hallway toward the elevator doors—noting as he did the carpet underfoot, the color reminiscent of of blood.
* * *
“Robert gave me my first taste of Scotch. ‘A man’s drink,’ he said. I thought it meant he viewed me as an equal.” Isabel took a long sip, feeling the alcohol’s pleasurable warmth travel from her mouth down through her throat to her chest.
“All just part of the seduction,” Slade said, eying Blood’s glass on his desk.
She nodded, then asked something that had been on her mind since their meeting with Blood.
“Our mayor-to-be hates everything the Queens represent,” she observed. “Why not tell him that Oliver is the vigilante?”
“We need his ambition and unwitting servitude,” Slade said. “Not his questions. The less he knows, the better.”
“Yet you trusted me with that knowledge.”
“Of course,” he said. “Mr. Blood is merely a puppet. Your role is far more important.”
“I didn’t realize you valued corporate takeovers so highly.”
“I do when they strike at the very heart of my enemy.”
The two shared a smile. They both understood the importance of Queen Consolidated. Isabel, however, had known this long before Slade Wilson had entered her life. Revenge would only be hers when she had dismantled their precious company, piece by piece.
“When do you want me to start?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
Isabel let slip the briefest hint of surprise.
“You doubt yourself?” he said.
“Never,” she said. “But it is soon. The company is weak, but it’s not yet fully vulnerable. There are still variables I can’t control.”
“There’s only one thing I care about,” Slade said, “and that is drawing Oliver Queen back to Starling City.”
“How can you be sure it’ll work?”
“The company is his family’s legacy,” he responded. “It’s as important to him as his city. He will not allow either to be taken from him without a fight.”
“Well, that legacy is about to end,” Isabel said.
“I have no doubt,” he replied, then he rose up from the desk, preparing to leave.
“Where will you be in the meantime?”
He paused, smoothing out his jacket lapel once more. Then he met her eye, his face without expression.
“Purgatory.”
2
Hidden behind dense foliage, Slade crouched in silent wait, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead to his neck, then to his chest. His black shirt and tactical pants were soaked. Though it was fall, the heat of summer still had yet to relinquish its hold on Lian Yu. He had almost forgotten about the island’s unrelenting heat. He had hated it for the entirety of his stay but now, so many years removed, he found the oppressive humidity oddly comforting.
Perhaps that was the reason, out of all the places in the world he could have chosen, Oliver had taken refuge here. Lian Yu may have been hell, but it was a hell they both understood. That he and Oliver had willingly returned to the prison they had so desperately tried to escape was irony not lost on Slade.
Suddenly, Stockholm syndrome made a hell of a lot of sense.
He rose up from his crouch, slowly moving forward, straining to distinguish signs of movement among the sounds of the forest. Oliver would take shelter in the place he knew best. Slade had started his hunt at the burnt-out fuselage, had been tracking Oliver for nearly an hour, following his trail through the dense foliage, a predator stalking his prey.
Nature and time had covered the structure in dense green vines, all but obscuring it from view, but the camouflage had done nothing to obscure Slade’s memory. This was where he and Oliver had first met. Slade had easily gotten the drop on the inexperienced rich kid, holding a blade to his throat, ready to slit it.
If only I had, he thought.
Slade stopped suddenly, hearing movement on the ridge below him. He took cover behind a tree, looking down through the foliage. Then he spotted him, about sixty yards away. Oliver Queen. Slade gasped at the sight of him. He was shirtless, glistening with perspiration, his chest and back riddled with tattoos and scars, memories of pain expressed in flesh. He held his bow out in front, arrow nocked and at the ready, eyes trained on the brush ahead of him.
This was the first time Slade had laid eyes on Oliver in the flesh since their confrontation on the freighter, when Oliver had plunged the arrow through his eye, leaving him for dead. Reacting viscerally, Slade grasped the hilt of his tactical knife, thoughts of ambush and murder passing through his mind. It would only take a few seconds, the edge of the blade ripping through Oliver’s neck, laying it open, remedying Slade’s hesitation from their first encounter.
Then he shook off his bloodlust, relaxing his grip.
Too easy, he thought. He has to suffer.
Hearing a noise above the island’s wild din, Slade retreated a few steps back from the ridge. Cutting through the chorus of bird chirps and rustling leaves was the sound of an aircraft. Small, with twin propeller engines, the plane was making an approach, flickering in and out of view behind cloud cover. Oliver spotted it, as well, looking up in time to see a dark speck drop from the plane’s body. As it hurtled toward the island, growing in size, it was clear that the mass was in fact two people, one tethered in front of the other.
Seconds later, an olive-green parachute opened, slowing the couple’s descent, course set for the Lian Yu shore. Oliver immediately abandoned his hunt for game and took off, feet pounding dirt in pursuit of the approaching visitors.
Slade, however, stayed put.
They had arrived, right on schedule.
* * *
He took cover in the brush just beyond the fuselage, and watched as Oliver led John Diggle and Felicity Smoak—his two trusted allies—inside the hull. As expected, the two had made their trek from Starling City to deliver the news that Isabel Rochev’s company, Stellmoor International, was attempting a hostile takeover of Queen Consolidated.
It had taken them weeks to track down Oliver, during which time Slade had followed their every move. Using his mirakuru-enhanced senses, he eavesdropped as the two attempted to persuade Oliver to return from his self-imposed exile.
Yet despite their pleading, Oliver said no. He told them he had failed his city. He had been unable to prevent Malcolm Merlyn’s Undertaking from devastating the Glades. More than that, he believed he was responsible for Tommy Merlyn’s death, and was further racked with guilt. He had arrived at the conclusion that the city—the people in his life—were worse off now than before he had donned the hood.
He refused to put it back on again.
He wouldn’t come back.
However, Diggle and Smoak knew what Slade also knew—that to convince Oliver to return to Starling City, they would have to appeal to him not as the vigilante, but as head of the Queen family. They told him about Queen Consolidated, that it had become vulnerable after the earthquake and his mother’s incarceration. It was in danger of being acquired by Stellmoor International. If Oliver did not intercede, thirty thousand employees would be out on the street.
Hearing this, Oliver finally relented, and agreed to return home. Everything continued to unfold just as Slade had anticipated. Oliver’s weakness would always be his family.
* * *
A short time later Slade watched from the trees as Oliver, Diggle, and Smoak boarded the plane and took off, disappearing through the clouds, headed back toward Starling City. He pulled out a satellite phone from his munitions pouch and keyed in the number for Isabel, who answered immediately.
“Is it time?” she said.
“He’ll be there by morning,” he said. “Are you prepared?”
“I’m insulted you have to ask.”
“Good.”
“Are you headed back now?”
“After some unfinished business,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Slade hung up then ventured deeper into the Lian Yu forest, course set on a familiar path.
* * *
It had been nearly four years since Slade had visited Shado’s grave. Time, however, had done nothing to buffer him from the pain its sight evoked. If anything, it made it worse, reminding him of how long his promise of revenge had remained unfulfilled. He felt the familiar rage boil inside of him, his hand beginning to tremble.
“Be still, my love.”
He turned to see Shado by his side. She caressed his face, calming him.
“Don’t lose sight of your plan,” she said.
Slade flexed his hand, regaining control. He looked deep into her eyes.
“Years ago, I made you a promise,” he said. “I will not fail you.”
“Will Oliver Queen suffer?” she asked.
Slade nodded. “Soon, suffering will be all he knows.”
Before leaving the gravesite, Slade noticed that the makeshift cemetery had a new inhabitant. A burial plot marked with the name Taiana, fashioned in the same primitive style as those for Robert Queen, Yao Fei, and his beloved. Though new in comparison to the others, the displaced dirt around it had long since settled, indicating that the grave was not fresh.
Slade gazed upon the mound of rocks, thinking the woman lying beneath fortunate. As someone Oliver truly cared for, Taiana was better off dead and buried than suffer the reckoning that was to come.
* * *
Slade emerged from the trees and stepped onto the rocky beach. He watched the waves crashing on the shore, remembering his leap into the sea. How shortsighted he had been, thinking he could best Mother Nature. It wasn’t a mistake he planned on repeating.
He spotted the mask, still staked where he had left it, about twenty-five yards from the cresting waves. His orange and black balaclava, arrow through the eye, the reminder he had left for Oliver. He yanked the arrow out and pulled the mask free, holding it out in front of him, taking in its terrifying visage. Though the years of exposure to the elements had battered it, and left its bottom half tattered like flayed flesh, Slade felt the mask still had one last purpose. When he next left the balaclava for Oliver to find, it wouldn’t just be as a reminder of his betrayal. This time, the mask would be a harbinger, foreshadowing the death of Oliver Queen and everyone for whom he cared.
He pocketed the mask and stalked across the rocky shore, back to the boat he had hidden off the coast. Once on board, he set course for Starling City.
3
A group of staffers passed out pamphlets in front of what remained of Cyrus Gold’s badly damaged church, while Sebastian Blood, trying his best to draw attention to the neighborhood’s plight, was interviewed by the local news. He was promoting a blood drive in support of the local hospital, Glades Memorial. Their blood banks had been in low supply ever since the earthquake. A throng of the neighborhood’s downtrodden began to gather, drawn to the activity.
Officer Daily kept an eye on the crowd.
“The message from City Hall is clear,” Sebastian said to the reporter. “No one cares about the Glades. We’re on our own. Only by banding together as a community, by helping our brothers and sisters, can we hope to rebuild this neighborhood. This blood drive is the start.”
“Restoring the hospital’s blood bank is a noble cause, but what good is it if it’s leaking through a sieve?” the reporter asked. “Crime in the Glades is up over seventy-five percent, murder up twenty. Can a blood drive really hope to counteract that sort of demand?”
“Like I said, Inez, this is only the first step. A reminder that we possess the strength to find our own salvation.”
“What about the vigilante? There are many in this community who still remain optimistic that he’ll return.”
That struck a nerve within Sebastian, yet he did his best to stifle his reaction.
“The criminal element fled to the Glades to escape that murderer,” he asserted. “Rest assured, the vigilante is no savior.”
“But you might be, Alderman Blood?” The reporter gave him a wry smile. “Is that your claim?”
“My aim is only to give a voice to the voiceless,” he said, refusing to rise to the challenge. “The Glades will rise again, and with it, this city.”
With that, the interview ended. As the news crew packed up their equipment and the throng dispersed, Sebastian saw a man linger. He was in his twenties, an artist type with close-cropped hair. He had the look of a loner. Sebastian walked over to investigate.
“You really think you can make a difference?” the man said.
“These streets are my home,” Sebastian answered. “I won’t rest until they’re safe. What’s your name, son?”
“Max,” he said. “Max Stanton.”
“Well, Max,” said Sebastian, handing him a pamphlet, “whenever you’re ready to help make this neighborhood a better place, please join us. We’ll be conducting these every three weeks. Come on by.”
Stanton took the leaflet without a word, and disappeared down the street. Sebastian watched him, then he glanced over to Officer Daily, who nodded, indicating it was time. Sebastian shook hands with the few stragglers, said goodbye to his staffers, and then drove off, headed toward another church. This one was still intact, positioned underground, in the darkness beneath the city.
* * *
The man’s scream reverberated throughout the chamber and out into the forgotten sewers beyond, the piercing sound of agony sending rats scurrying for cover. Then his struggle gave way to a quiet death, his body’s contortions ceasing, the echoes of his wail fading off into silence.
Deep underneath the Glades, the members of the Church of Blood—Officer Daily, Cyrus Gold, Dr. Langford, Clinton Hogue, and Dr. Vasak, also known as “the Technician”—looked on as Brother Blood, his skull mask terrifying in the shadows, removed the syringe of mirakuru from the man’s arm. Blood nodded to Dr. Langford, who moved to check the victim’s pulse. The doctor hesitated momentarily, the sight of the blood flowing from the man’s eyes giving him pause, before he continued, feeling for the pulse at his neck.
Langford shook his head.
Blood removed his skull mask and regarded the body. Then he turned to his brotherhood and saw various levels of shock reflected on each face. He wasn’t surprised. When Wilson tasked him with testing the mirakuru, he had mentioned only that many of the test subjects would die. In no way were they prepared to witness the torture it inflicted.
He looked to Cyrus Gold, his trusted ally and confidant, and knew at a glance that the man had something on his mind. He was too respectful, however, to speak out of turn.
“Brother Cyrus?”
“You said this ‘miracle’
would save our city,” Cyrus said, “but do these men deserve to endure such agony? Is this truly necessary?”
Blood looked to the rest of the men, inviting them to voice any misgivings. Dr. Langford met his gaze.
“We’ve killed before in the name of the brotherhood,” the doctor said, “but the guilt of those men was clear. Here, I’m not so sure.”
“I apprehended this man after an attempted smash and grab at Pearl Liquor,” Officer Daily offered. “He’s definitely no innocent—but did he deserve to go out like that? I don’t know.”
The rest of the men nodded and muttered, indicating that they agreed. Blood nodded in return.
“Does your belief in our purpose waiver?” he asked. There was no sense of challenge in his voice. The men shook their heads no. “And in me, as your leader?” Again, there was no dissension. “I agree that what we’ve witnessed is horrific. Inhuman, even—and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shaken—but there’s one thought that keeps me certain that what we’re doing, however gruesome, is necessary.” He walked over to a bulletin board. Dozens of photos were tacked there—the faces of all the men and women lost during the Undertaking. Five hundred and three victims in total.
“The memory of the five-oh-three,” he continued. “To avenge their loss. To take this city back and fix it in their honor.” He approached each man, looking them in the eye, seeking to communicate the confidence that was building within him. “These men are being sacrificed for the greater good, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”
The echo of Father Trigon’s purpose further emboldened the men.
“Together,” he said, “we will save this city.”
Blood went on to explain his plan. While the aim of the blood drive was indeed to help restore the hospital’s supply, there was an ulterior motive behind the altruism. By offering incentives to draw a larger pool of donors, he could also use the program to select his test subjects for the mirakuru. Under the guise of offering free mental health exams, Dr. Langford would catalogue each prospective sacrifice, while Officer Daily, through his resources at SCPD, would perform background checks.
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