Arrow - A Generation of Vipers Read online

  “Oh, she’s feisty.” Cisco winked at Barry. “There’s no stopping her once she gets like that. Look out.”

  Barry’s gaze drifted to the blackened veins bulging along his biceps while Cisco checked his cell.

  “Uh oh,” Cisco muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Cisco tried to look innocent. “It’s nothing he can’t handle.”

  “He who?” Barry pushed himself up in bed. “He who?”

  “Oliver.” Cisco held up his phone, displaying a red blinking dot on the map of Central City. “Remember that militia group that was talking about robbing the gold exchange? Well, they’re robbing the gold exchange. And Green Arrow is in the middle of it.”

  “Gotta go.” Barry swung his feet onto the floor with a grunt of pain.

  “You’re in no shape to—”

  Barry was gone in a flurry of papers blown off tabletops.

  * * *

  A red streak swept across the street and rushed into the shattered shop with a gust of wind.

  “Flash! No!” Green Arrow shouted.

  His words barely stopped echoing when a red-suited figure appeared on the sidewalk holding up a semiconscious man with one hand. The Flash held the heavy semiautomatic pistol with two fingers.

  “This the last guy?” The Flash grinned. “You okay?”

  “Get down!” Green Arrow pressed against the wall and turned away.

  A blast from inside the shop threw out a shower of glass and wood shrapnel amidst a thick wave of tear gas. Green Arrow turned back coughing to see the sidewalk empty.

  The Flash stood farther down the street still holding the gunman, who wore a gas mask. He whistled. “Man, I hope their insurance will cover that.”

  Green Arrow heard a noise. He pulled a blunt-tipped arrow and loosed it at a rifleman on the street who sat up cradling his assault rifle. The arrow clipped the man’s head and he fell over unconscious.

  The Flash zipped back up to Green Arrow with a look of admiration for the knockout shot. Arrow took the .50 caliber pistol from the Flash, ejected the magazine, and cleared the chamber.

  “Check him for weapons,” Green Arrow said, “and be careful.”

  Before the sentence was finished, the Flash had his hands full of knives, ammo magazines, and two small revolvers. He nodded his head toward the smoking storefront. “This area was pretty hard hit by Weather Wizard’s tornadoes anyway, so a little bomb arrow won’t make much difference I guess. So all this for gold?”

  “Yes.” Green Arrow went to each of the other gunmen, depriving them of their small arsenals. “They had heard rumors that the owner of that coin shop didn’t clear out his inventory after the storms.”

  “Hm. He didn’t?” The Flash took long plastic zip ties from Green Arrow and secured all the gunmen’s wrists and ankles.

  “We’ll find out when the tear gas clears. Or the police will.” Green Arrow spoke into his comm link. “Cisco? Are you online?”

  “Right here,” Cisco replied over the comm. “C.C.P.D. is on the way, G.A.”

  “Don’t call me G.A.”

  “Green Arrow?” The militiaman squinted up through red eyes and struggled against the zip ties. “You’re in the wrong place. This isn’t fair.” He looked over at the Flash. “You gonna let this happen? This is your city, ain’t it?”

  The Flash pointed down at the man. “You’re lucky he got to you first.”

  “Oh please.” The militiaman lay back on the street. “You may be fast, Flash, but you won’t kill us. You’re a good guy. That guy, though. Everybody says he’s nuts. I almost died!”

  Police sirens drew closer. Flashing blue lights appeared a mile up the avenue. Green Arrow stepped over to the cable still hanging from the rooftop. He slid the bow over his shoulder and took hold of the rappelling device.

  “Flash,” he commanded in his altered voice, “stay here and talk to the police. Then meet me back at base.”

  “Base? Oh, oh yeah. Base.” The Flash waved. “You got it.”

  “We have things to talk about.”

  The Flash smiled, but suddenly went deadly serious when he saw the stern expression on Arrow’s face.

  “We do?” The Flash swallowed nervously.

  The archer triggered the cable recall and was drawn skyward into the darkness.

  3

  Green Arrow entered the Cortex at S.T.A.R. Labs. Barry was already back. He sat in civvies, long legs dangling off a table. His Flash costume now covered a mannequin that stood in a lit alcove across the command center. Caitlin and Cisco sat at their workstations and streams of data flashed over the monitors. The Cortex was almost barren in its cleanliness, not too different from the operations space he kept under Palmer Tech back in Star City. The three turned to greet Green Arrow with smiles of congratulations.

  The archer stared at the faint black lines on Barry’s forearms.

  Barry self-consciously rolled down his sleeves.

  “So I assume the magnetic channel didn’t work,” Green Arrow said.

  “Not as such,” Cisco replied. “But it showed us some interesting possibilities.”

  “Barry, can I see you?” Green Arrow walked up the ramp into the med bay.

  When he heard Barry enter the room behind him, he said without turning, “What were you doing out there?”

  “Out there? Talking to Cisco and Caitlin.”

  “Not now. On the street earlier. Why were you there?”

  “Um…” Barry’s voice was hesitant, unclear why he was being questioned. “…because you were facing four goons with guns.”

  “I face four goons with guns every day. That wasn’t your job, Barry.”

  “Look, I’m sorry for helping you out. What’s the issue, Oliver?”

  “The issue is –” Green Arrow spun around and pinned the younger man with his intense gaze, “– you asked me to help you, but I can’t do that if you won’t listen to me.”

  “But you were—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. It only matters what you’re doing.”

  “So I should just sit and meditate while you’re under fire?”

  “Yes. You have one job now. Work on controlling your emotional responses. You practice in the morning with me, and in the evening by yourself. Without fail.”

  Barry Allen slumped his shoulders. For a second he looked like a kid on the wrong end of a scolding he didn’t understand. He struggled with arguing or apologizing because he genuinely didn’t know which was appropriate.

  “Do it now.” Green Arrow refused to reach out or soften. “Go work.”

  “Look, I can’t just stop being the Flash. Isn’t that the reason you’re here, to keep me running while Caitlin works on a way to fix the anomalous plasma in my body?”

  “No. I’m here to train you.”

  “Right. So I can run.”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the purpose?” Barry’s hands slapped against his thighs in frustration.

  “You’re training so you can learn how to train.” Green Arrow peered out from inside the hood. “I thought you understood that. This isn’t about you being the Flash. It’s about survival.”

  “The goal of all this work I’m doing has to be so I can keep being the Flash. So if I have to stop being the Flash in order to practice, that seems counterproductive.”

  Green Arrow stood quietly for a moment. He pulled the mask away from his eyes and pushed back the green hood. He was Oliver Queen now and some of the hardness slipped away. He did feel sympathy for Barry because he remembered his own earliest days training. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he first fell under the influence of Yao Fei back on the island of Lian Yu. Oliver had felt as if he was being misled and bullied, but he needed the rigor and strain because otherwise the island would have consumed him.

  Unlike Oliver, Barry was no privileged trust-fund kid washed up on a dangerous island. He was the Flash and had several years of the severity of being a metahuman Super Hero un
der his belt. His experiences were far outside those of everyday humanity. Barry had endured incredible rigors, both physical and psychological. Still, apparently his mind worked very much the way a normal young adult’s would. That had to change, and change soon, or Barry was going to disappear forever under the terrible threat building inside his own body, his own Lian Yu.

  “Let’s go.” Oliver made for the door of the med bay.

  “Go where?” Barry followed. “You know, communication is our friend. We talk a lot more in Central City than you guys in Star City.”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  Oliver led him past Cisco and Caitlin, who suddenly pretended to be engrossed in their work. The two men left the Cortex and went down to the sub-level. A huge tunnel ran around the perimeter of the circular building. It was once the home of S.T.A.R. Labs’ crowning achievement, the particle accelerator. Now it was a tomb-like structure curving infinitely away both ahead and behind. The curved walls of the Pipeline, as they called it, showed new cracks and fissures from a recent battle.

  Oliver and Barry walked silently past dangling wires and ruptured pipes. The archer turned into a short hallway that led to a chamber—a cell. The particle accelerator tunnel had been modified into a makeshift prison to hold metahuman criminals too dangerous for traditional incarceration. The Pipeline prison was empty now, but the cells remained. Oliver and Barry entered one of them. It was bland, featureless, and disturbingly sterile.

  “Cisco,” Oliver said, “do you hear me?”

  “Roger that, G.A.,” came a voice from above. “I mean… uh…” He trailed off into silence.

  “I want you to close and lock the door. Then shut down communication and visual contact. In an hour, you can check on us and—”

  “Wait a second,” Barry interrupted. “What if something happens?”

  “Then it happens,” Oliver said.

  “I mean like a metahuman attack in the city.”

  “I know what you mean. Cisco, go ahead.”

  “Cisco, wait!” Barry called out, and then gave Oliver a reasonable smile. “Okay, I get the point. I’ll try harder from now on.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  Barry grew angry. “You can’t lock me up to make me do what you want.”

  Oliver stared.

  “No, really.” Barry laughed now. “Oliver, really, you can’t.”

  The archer removed his bow and quiver, and sat on the hard floor. He folded his legs into a lotus position and then raised his eyebrows at Barry as an invitation to join him.

  “I promise.” Barry held up his hand in the Boy Scout salute. “Okay? Promise. I’ll practice twice a day. No distractions. No rescues or crime fighting. I’ll just sit and breathe even if Deathstroke is hitting you with a crowbar.” He pointed toward the door. “So let’s go.”

  Oliver didn’t budge.

  Barry leaned casually against the wall. “Listen, they’ll tell you that I can follow through. Hey, Cisco, Caitlin. Tell him. I’ll practice like I’m supposed to. Right?”

  The door slid shut and locked.

  Barry rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? Come on, Cisco. This isn’t right.”

  “Shutting down communications,” Cisco announced. “See you boys in an hour.”

  “Don’t!” Barry yelled up at the ceiling speaker. “Hey! Cisco. Caitlin. Open up. Hey! Guys?”

  Oliver remained in the same position.

  Barry huffed in disgust and swayed off the wall. He settled next to Oliver while muttering under his breath, “I could just vibrate through the door if I wanted to.”

  “No, you can’t.” Oliver laid one hand atop the other in his lap. “This is the cell where you kept Reverse Flash. Get into position and we’ll start with breathing.”

  “This is so bogus.”

  Groaning, Barry drew his lanky frame into a lotus position and unconsciously began the specialized breathing regime Oliver had taught him. It wasn’t long before the tension left his face and, as his breathing grew deep and regular, he settled into the proper frame of mind.

  “Remember, Barry, associate this mindful state with your trigger. The microscope you owned when you were a kid. Remember the calm. The timelessness. No rush. No hurry. Follow your process. Everything ahead of you. Step by step. One foot in front of the other.”

  Barry settled deeper into a meditative posture.

  Oliver followed suit. He began to breathe. Air filled his lungs, held, and released. And again. And again. He was always amazed by how well it worked. Oliver hadn’t actively practiced meditation for years until last week when he started instructing Barry. It felt good to return to it.

  The world slowed. He felt the texture of the floor beneath him. The pressure of his knees and feet. The impressions of his fingers touching. His mind drew inward.

  Oliver still saw Barry across from him, but his thoughts wandered. He let them. There was no value in forcing the mind. Let it guide you; let it teach you.

  He smelled wet soil and foliage. The air chilled. The distinct and familiar scent of evergreens washed over him.

  Lian Yu.

  It meant purgatory in Mandarin. Oliver spent the better part of five years on that frigid rock in the North China Sea fighting for his life. In some ways, he realized he had actually lost that fight. When he left Lian Yu, there was little left of the Oliver Queen who had washed up there.

  In the early days, when he still believed he could get away from the island with some shred of his previous identity, Oliver recalled Yao Fei sitting cross-legged in front of him in the dripping fir forest. The sun rose in the distance behind Yao Fei, throwing his stern face with its scraggly beard into shadow inside the green hood he always wore.

  “You are staring at me,” Yao Fei had said quietly on that morning.

  “I’m waiting for you to say something,” Oliver replied.

  “Then I will. Stop looking at me. You don’t need to know what I look like. You need to see yourself.”

  Oliver smirked.

  “Is that funny?” Yao Fei had a bit of an edge to his question. He pushed back the green hood, angling his head in a threatening position.

  “No, it’s just so… zen.”

  “How would you know?”

  Oliver tightened his muscles in the lotus position. He closed his eyes and began to chant softly.

  “What’s that noise?” Yao Fei asked sharply.

  “It’s my mantra.”

  Yao Fei chuckled. Oliver smiled too, feeling like he had finally struck a common chord with the general. Suddenly Yao Fei’s hand flashed up with a stick and slapped Oliver hard across the face.

  “Ow! What the hell are you doing?”

  “Every time I hear you making those ridiculous sounds, I will hit you. That will be my mantra.” The general set the stick on the ground next to his leg. He straightened the tattered remains of the People’s Liberation Army uniform he wore. “Now, start again. Breathe. That is all you need to do.”

  “Sitting in the woods breathing won’t get me off this island.” Oliver rubbed his sore face and looked around at the deep green forest surrounding them like a cage.

  “You have spent your whole life thinking the universe is here to help you, but it does not care whether you live or die. You must learn to survive in that universe now.” Yao Fei’s hand inched toward the stick. “Breathe.”

  Oliver’s mind wandered off the island and more ghosts slid past. His father’s last seconds spent explaining his sins to his son while they bobbed helplessly in a life raft in the North China Sea just before putting a pistol to his own head.

  Oliver recoiled at the sound of that gunshot.

  “Oliver?” Barry’s gaze shifted. “You all right?”

  Oliver breathed heavily through his nose. The calm was gone. Worse, he had broken Barry’s concentration.

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  “Isn’t this supposed to be relaxing? Your face was all twisted like you were in pain.”

  “How did you do?” Ol
iver stretched out his legs and twisted to loosen his muscles.

  “Pretty good.” Barry continued to watch Oliver with concern. He checked his phone. “It’s been nearly an hour. That time passed like nothing. I feel a lot better.”

  “Did you blur today?” Oliver jumped to his feet and reached out to help Barry stand.

  “No, not today. It was two days ago.” Barry thought. “No, three. I really think this is helping.”

  “Good. When it happened last, were you running?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see anyone during the blur? Reverse Flash?”

  “No, not that time. It was just a blip really. I came back in a few seconds. And today when I ran out to help you with those goons, I didn’t blur at all. I think you’re helping. Sorry to be so dense about it.”

  “It’s hard.” Oliver wondered if Barry really thought the exercises were helping, or if he was just trying to make Oliver feel better. That would be typical of Barry. “Has Caitlin checked your levels today?”

  “No, but everything’s good.”

  Oliver raised a doubtful eyebrow.

  “Well,” Barry added, “the levels were up a little, but so little it was insignificant. The rate of the plasma increase has definitely slowed. We’re on the right track. When are we going to Markovia to retrieve what we need from this Wallenstein guy?”

  “John’s working on it.”

  “John is?”

  “His wife, Lyla, is head of the government agency A.R.G.U.S.” Oliver continued stretching. “So John’s gathering the latest intel. Don’t want to go in blind, not against Wallenstein. Don’t worry, it’ll come together soon.”

  “I know. I’m just a little impatient to get back to normal.” Barry paused. “I’m not supposed to be impatient, am I?”

  “No. There’s no reason for impatience as long as you are working. And you are. Step by step. Stay in the moment. And I’m not saying you can’t be the Flash while we wait. But control your emotions. Keeping your mind steady will hold down the plasma in your system, and hopefully keep your blurring to a minimum. You have to be able to use your speed and not have it go out of control and feed the plasma. All you can control is yourself.”