Arrow

by Marc Guggenheim

You’re wrong.

  The thought burned through his brain, a bullet shot from a gun and plowing its way across his cerebellum. Thea lay here, hurt, because of his actions, because of his very existence. Because of things he did, Adrian Chase had taken Thea to Lian Yu as a hostage. She was only there because she was his sister, a person Chase could use to manipulate him—and finally a person Chase could use to hurt him.

  Images came, flashing against the back of his mind’s eye. A chain of flames covering the island, black smoke roiling through the blast fields, his loved ones burned and hurt. Thea lying on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

  Dr. Schwartz moved around Thea’s bed, coming close enough to lay a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re doing what you can, here and now,” she said. “Hold your sister’s hand, Mr. Queen.” With those words and a strong squeeze on his shoulder, she left him alone with the hum and beep of the machines and the silence of his sister.

  * * *

  “Why is this damn door down?”

  Raylan turned as his supervisor, Crenshaw, came up the stairwell. He wasn’t surprised at the man’s appearance on the scene, he’d heard him huffing and puffing from two floors down.

  Crenshaw used the safety rail to haul his bulk up onto the landing. The big man wore the same uniform as Raylan. Same polyester-blend gray slacks and blue button-up shirt with a DEARDEN TOWER SECURITY patch over the left breast. The fabric on Crenshaw’s had turned dark in the pits despite the abundant air conditioning.

  “You going to make it?” Raylan asked.

  Crenshaw waved away his mild concern, staring at the flat slab of steel that blocked off the doorway.

  “This thing shouldn’t be down.”

  “No, it shouldn’t.”

  “You know when this door is down, it kicks the kill switches on the elevators.”

  “I don’t think they’re kill switches.”

  “Elevators don’t work,” Crenshaw snorted. “Sounds like a kill switch to me.”

  Maybe we should leave that to the engineers, Raylan thought, but he said, “No alarms are going.”

  “Well, thank God for that. If they were, we’d be crawling with all kinds of cops and EMTs and other people all freaked out.”

  A loud click sounded, and the door began to slide up as if it had been oiled. Both men jumped, their hands going to the service revolvers on their hips.

  The door opened to reveal a slender man with a head full of wiry red hair. Coveralls hung off him as he stood with his hand on a rolling dolly, empty but for a paint can with a wire handle. A tool belt hung at an angle off his hips, handles jutting and wires spooling from yawning pockets. He tilted his head, studying them.

  “Why, hello gents! Top of the morning… no, evening to you.”

  “Who are you?” Crenshaw asked.

  “No one of consequence, now that this door is repaired.”

  “Repaired?” Raylan asked. “We didn’t have a repair order.”

  “Gentlemen,” the man said, palms outstretched, “I get it that you didn’t expect me, but honestly, how would I even be up this high unless someone in your department had cleared it?” He stared at the security guards, eyes wide and innocent.

  “Who gave you access?” Crenshaw demanded.

  The man shrugged. “I just go where I’m told. You know how it is. Bosses, right?”

  The security guards chuckled at that, both easing their stances, hands dropping from their guns. Their supervisor was a huge pain in the neck, Raylan mused to himself. “What’s that bucket of paint for?” he asked.

  “Touch up. You try and you try but something always gets nicked.”

  Raylan nodded his empathy, and the man offered a quick salute.

  * * *

  Enough with these two, Alex Faust thought to himself. I’m wasting time.

  “Well, I must be on my way,” he said cheerfully. “Have a safe night, gentlemen.”

  As the two security guards nodded their goodbyes, as clueless as ever, he rolled the dolly to the elevator and stepped on.

  And like that, he was gone.

  5

  Her hands moved on two separate keyboards, each set of fingers typing as she looked into the middle distance between two monitors, eyes flicking slightly to the left and the right, left then right.

  Left then right.

  Left right, left right.

  leftright, leftrightleftrightleftright…

  Processing information and acting on it immediately. View. Process. File. No hesitation, hesitation was for the weak. And in the realm of the cyber, Felicity Smoak had deleted all such weakness, long ago. When she worked like this her hyperactive mind, the mind that constantly ran from side to side, considering everything, from every angle, became streamlined and seamless. Wherever her focus landed, it was laser thin.

  “What are you working on?”

  Felicity jumped, startled, breaking the rhythm of her work.

  “Jeez, you’re like a cat,” she exclaimed. “Like a ninja cat. With a cloak of invisibility.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Yeah, well, mister, I’m going to put a bell on you when you aren’t in costume.”

  “I’ve just been visiting Thea.”

  “How is—”

  “No news.” He shook his head slowly. “I came by to reload my quiver.”

  “Curtis did that for you earlier.”

  Oliver frowned.

  “You know he does it right each time.” Felicity stood, leaning on the steel desk. “He’s obsessive like that.”

  “I know.”

  “And you know you’re going to double-check his work, no matter what.”

  It took him a moment to respond.

  “I am.”

  “So why the frowny face?”

  Oliver looked at his reflection in a swing-line mirror attached to the corner of the desk. He had no idea what it was for, but he was sure it had a purpose. This was Felicity’s world, and everything lived there for a purpose. She probably used it to read some super-secret backward-written hacker code.

  For him it was just a convenient mirror. “This is just my face.”

  “It’s a subtle frown.”

  He grunted in response.

  “See?” She softened the word with a smile. “Subtlety at its finest.”

  He stared at her, blue eyes still sharp as his arrows, pricking her and drawing blood from her heart. She didn’t flinch, didn’t turn away, even though the directness of his gaze pushed at her like a force field. Words unsaid stopped in her throat, threatening to choke her.

  This was Oliver.

  Her Oliver.

  Not my Oliver, she mused. Not for a long while now. Her resolve failed, eyes dropping as she turned back to the monitors on the desk. Her fingers began flying.

  “Did you go out alone last night, and put a bunch of…” She leaned closer to the monitor, reading the words on it. “…‘skull-masked criminals’ in Starling General?”

  “I wasn’t alone.”

  Her forehead creased. “Who did you take with you? Because I’m pretty sure I have everyone accounted for last night.”

  “Sara’s in town. She lent a hand.”

  “Ah, her I did not account for.” Felicity leaned forward, voice tight with excitement. “Are there aliens? Last time she was in town there were aliens.”

  “She assured me it was just a visit, with no aliens.”

  “Ah, well,” Felicity sighed, a bit disappointed. “Aliens are cool.”

  Oliver gave her a look that was less subtle.

  “Well, you know, aliens are weird and super creepy,” she added quickly, “except for Kara, of course—she was cool, and not weird. Okay, weird, but not weird-weird.” She stammered as Oliver continued with his look. “Hey, but you did get ‘skull-masked criminals,’ which I know you prefer.” A thought rushed into her head. “Wait, did you tangle with the Spooky Crew? Are they back?”

  “These were differe
nt. I call them Skulls.”

  “The report I found said they were moving large amounts of drugs, and there was a stolen car ring and an eighteen-wheeler. Was this the operation that’s been moving drugs through Star City? Or are there two operations? Maybe it’s these guys and the Spooky Crew—but that can’t be it, those guys were small fry. They couldn’t grow into a major criminal operation with a big rig and dozens of members. Or could they? I’ll look into it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll track it down. No one can hide from the Ghost Fox Goddess.”

  “No, they can’t,” she said. “Wait, are you making fun of me?”

  “Lightly teasing, perhaps. I’d never make fun of you.” The way he stood, looking at her, made her feel very, well, paid-attention-to. She glanced over at the monitor, determined to keep it professional. She wouldn’t talk about it. Not it.

  “There was another thing last night,” she said. “A known drug dealer found dead in Starling Park.”

  “Over-sampling his own product?”

  “No, he was bludgeoned to death.”

  “Was he a Skull?”

  “A who?” Felicity frowned. “Oh, yeah—no, not one of the drug dealers you and Sara put down. This was an unrelated drug dealer.” She paused, then asked, “Do we have a new vigilante in town?”

  “Could this be Vigilante himself?”

  “The guy with the ski goggles and the machine guns?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Not likely. He tended to shoot people, rather than hit them to death.”

  “Still, we can’t rule it out. Where has he been?”

  “Hell if I know,” Felicity said. “Maybe he won a trip on a scratch-off. I mean, he had to have a real life, somewhere out there. Nobody just sits around watching crappy B-movies until they decide to put on a ski outfit, arm themselves, and go and be a pain in our ass. Maybe he collects stamps, along with his guns. Hey!” She stuck her finger into the air as a point occurred to her. “Here’s a crazy thought—maybe he’s been on a ski trip.”

  Oliver’s mouth twitched into a small smile.

  “What?” Felicity asked.

  “One of the things I enjoy most in this world, Felicity Smoak, is watching you think out loud.”

  Her face warmed from her collar to her hairline. As much as she liked the way her brain worked, there was always the small, niggling fear tugging at the frayed edge in the back that her fast talking secretly bothered those around her. That they simply tolerated it at best. To have Oliver word his compliment the way he had… well, it did things to her.

  And it set her mind back on the trail of the thoughts she’d had since the island. Lian Yu. Not the nightmare parts—not the explosions and the devastation—but the parts of things she wanted to say to Oliver, needed to say to Oliver, but hadn’t.

  “Do you mean that?” she asked.

  “You know I do.”

  She took a deep breath and launched into it.

  “Since we got back and got settled, as settled as we ever get around here, I wanted to talk about us and I know, I know, ‘us’ isn’t an us but it’s still a thing to talk about.” She took a gulp of air. “I’m not crazy, there is a thing here, there’s always a thing here, and I want to talk about that thing that is here, but with all the stuff from Chase, and Thea in the hospital, and William, and you off on solo patrols and all the rest, it just doesn’t seem right that I’m worried about the ‘us’ that isn’t an us.” She paused, then kept going.

  “It seems petty of me and I hate being petty and so I wait and I wait and I wait for the time to be right, for there to be a break or a lull or some moment where I won’t be a selfish person for wanting to talk about a relationship that I ended. But the time never comes, the moment is never right, there’s always a reminder or a new crisis or a thing that gets in the way, and I wonder, always wonder if I need to keep waiting, has it been long enough?

  “How far out from what we went through should I wait? I mean, what would Emily Post say is the proper waiting period after someone’s sister has been brutally injured, and his baby-mama has been killed?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God, baby-mama sounds dismissive, I didn’t mean it to be that way.”

  Oliver said nothing, but the smile was gone from his mouth.

  “See? Wrong time.” Felicity looked down at the floor.

  Oliver sighed. “Things are… complicated for me right now.”

  “I know that. Believe me.”

  “I’m still trying to get the Mayor’s office back in line.”

  “I know.”

  “And Thea…”

  “I know.”

  “And William needs my attention.”

  “Oliver!” Felicity put her hands up to stop him from talking. “I know, believe me, I know.”

  “When things calm down…”

  “Will that happen?”

  “It will,” he reassured her. “William will get settled, soon enough.”

  “That will only happen if you find a way to connect with him.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “By being here, checking your equipment, instead of being home with him?”

  The words hit the air between them, making it a cracked and brittle thing. They stared at each other over her accusation. Felicity’s mouth became a hard line. Oliver leaned forward, about to say something.

  The computer behind Felicity began blaring a low siren of warning.

  “That would be the sound of something happening that is not this.” Felicity turned, dropping into the chair and sliding closer to the monitor on the left. She cut the alarm with a quick strike of her fingers to the keyboard.

  Oliver moved up, looking over her shoulder.

  The monitors each held different information. One was a street map of some part of downtown Star City. In the center of the screen a red dot pulsed, glowing rings rippling outward like a target. Another had a stream of text flowing too fast for him to read, but he caught some words that ticked off in his mind.

  Fire.

  Emergency.

  Explosion.

  A third monitor, further off to the left, held a news report with a logo running underneath, the video feed revealing a skyscraper with black smoke pouring from windows midway up its height. Anxiety rose into a hard bubble behind his breastbone, scrabbling inside it like a living thing. After a long second watching the sooty smoke billow, he realized why this building looked familiar.

  It was Dearden Tower.

  Built by his father as a dedication to his sister Thea, and bearing her middle name, it was a property he had spent months visiting, going with his father to inspect it while it was under construction. His young mind had always been awed that his father would build such an enormous thing to honor the sister who hadn’t yet been born.

  It’s going to be the safest building in the world, his father would say to him every visit. Now it was one of the properties he no longer held, but it still held him.

  “Call the team—including Sara,” he said sharply. “We converge on the location.” He turned, moving away from the command platform toward his locker, where he would suit up.

  Felicity watched him go.

  “Good job, Smoak,” she muttered. “Real smooth.”

  Yet she was already at work. Her fingers flashed, sending out the signals to the rest of Team Arrow.

  6

  They stood just behind the parapet of the Weisinger Building, silently watching the scene below. Across from them rose Dearden Tower. Black smoke roiled out broken windows on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floors. Flames broke the sooty darkness inside the floors, great licks of orange furling and curling as if the tongues of some consuming beast.

  “Fire,” Rene said, his Wild Dog hockey mask pushed up on top of his head. “Why did it have to be fire?”

  None of them responded.

  Oliver glanced down the line.

  Diggle’s face was hard set, creased under his gleaming Spartan helmet and looking down at the fire with
steady eyes. His jaw bulged with tension, the small tic under his left eye fluttering almost imperceptibly. Oliver only saw it because he knew to look for it.

  Dinah Drake’s gaze was just as flinty, eyes narrowed under her mask. Both of her hands were clenched fists.

  Always more demonstrative than the rest of Team Arrow, Curtis rubbed his face, long slender fingers stroking his jaw. His breathing came in small jerks and sweat ran along the edge of the T-shaped mask he wore on his face. Oliver knew the nervous motions were a way to cope with the anxiety the fire caused.

  Rene swayed slightly and turned his head, cracking his neck to relieve tension. Every one of Oliver’s team had been on Lian Yu when the bombs had detonated. He didn’t know exactly what it had been like—he was on the boat with Chase’s corpse and his trembling son—but he could see that they were all affected. Yes, they were strong. If someone didn’t know them well enough, they wouldn’t see the anxiety that laid across all of them like a yoke of razor wire, heavy and cutting.

  Sara stood at the end of the line, and she leaned forward, meeting his gaze.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s been a rough couple of months.” Rene spoke from beside her, eyes still pinned on the flame-filled windows. She rolled her eyes, but if he saw it, he didn’t react.

  “This is what we do, people,” Oliver said. “We got dressed up for a reason.” His words cut off any comment Sara might have made.

  Motion filled a window two stories up from the smoke and fire as four people inside pressed against the pane. Despite the distance, the raw panic was plain on their faces, made grotesque by the shadows and flickering firelight.

  “We good, Boss.” Rene pulled his mask down over his face, his voice changing as it settled in place. “We good.” Oliver nodded, feeling a small knot of pride at his people’s bravery lodged in the hollow of his throat.

  “Overwatch, give us the situation.”

  “First responders can’t get above the ninth floor to rescue people stuck on ten through fourteen.” Felicity’s voice was in all their ears, crystal clear over the Palmertech comm system they all wore. “The stairwells are blocked by something. There’s a crew trying, but they’re making no progress.”