Arrow - A Generation of Vipers Read online

  Barry nodded in agreement.

  “Oliver, I want to thank you. We called you originally because we needed help on the streets with Pied Piper and his metahumans. But I should’ve thought about you for this other issue I’m going through. Nobody has your focus, and even though I don’t always act like it, I really appreciate you bringing your expertise to help me.”

  “It’s been an hour,” Cisco’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Everybody okay?”

  “We’re good.” Oliver retrieved his bow and quiver. “Open up.”

  As the door slid away, Barry’s gaze locked on Oliver’s tunic. He took a deep breath and reached over, tugging on the green Kevlar costume.

  Oliver looked down to see a hole in the heavy fabric of his tunic dotted with dried blood. One of those .50 calibers had just nicked his ribs. A fraction of an inch the other way could’ve been death. Fortunate, but Yao Fei would’ve reminded him the universe didn’t care one way or the other. The archer slung his bow on his shoulder and briefly touched the cloth hood crumpled behind his head. The stale institutional air beneath S.T.A.R. Labs still carried the faint scent of the dangerous Lian Yu forests.

  4

  Felicity Smoak grabbed her coat and her tablet and headed for the door out of the underground command center for Team Arrow, the lair or, more humorously, the Arrowcave. Her attention was so focused she literally bumped into the broad chest of John Diggle.

  “Oh, John. I was just going to call you.”

  “Then where are you going?”

  “I was going to call you from outside, where I was going.” Felicity noticed the grim face. “But what’s wrong? Is something the matter with Lyla or your daughter?”

  “No, they’re fine,” was his gruff response.

  “That’s the same kind of fine Oliver uses when he’s hiding the fact that the world is about to end.”

  John grunted.

  “Oh my God, is the world about to end?”

  “Not quite so biblical.” John let out a pensive breath. “Lyla is worried an incursion into Markovia could compromise A.R.G.U.S. operations. She wants us to stay out. I explained Barry’s situation, and she understands, but answers to people high in the government and that puts her in a precarious position. She knows we have to go in, but trust me, it just doesn’t make for a very pleasant date night.”

  Felicity smiled. “Oh. Okay.”

  “That’s it? Oh. Okay.” John shook his head.

  “I’ve got something that may save your marriage and help Barry at the same time. You’re welcome. That’s what I was going to call you about. While I was nosing around looking for more information about the research done in Markovia, I found leads to similar work here in the United States at the same time.”

  “That’s a coincidence.”

  “Maybe not. The programs may have been related in some fashion I just don’t know yet. And even so, parallel research programs on big subjects aren’t rare. Like when Hollywood brings out two blockbusters about singing killer whales at the same time.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It’s just that Markovia made public announcements about their research, and then it apparently went nowhere, whereas the American research was kept under wraps in case it went nowhere.”

  “And where did it go?”

  “Nowhere.” Felicity slipped into her coat as they went up the ramp out of the Arrowcave. “But we’re going to see if we can find it. The research was done at Queen Consolidated years ago, before it became Palmer Tech. I’ve called up all the old files, including old Queen data tapes they had to dig out of the archives. If we’re lucky, we may not need to invade Markovia, and the Diggle house will be its usual love nest.”

  “Have you told Oliver?”

  Felicity scowled. “I don’t have to tell Oliver everything. He’s busy in Central City getting in touch with Barry’s inner Flash. I can do a little groundwork on my own.”

  “So what we’re looking for is here in Star City?” John brightened, holding the door.

  “I think there may be information at one of Queen’s former office buildings. In the Glades.”

  John’s humor faded. “That’s a bad area, Felicity.”

  “Hence you coming with me.” She waited by his car.

  Once he was behind the wheel, they headed downtown. Soon they were passing into the impoverished neighborhood called the Glades. It had once been home to factories and businesses, but now was blighted and decayed, not even worth the money to tear it down.

  They pulled up in front of a brick building that in its glory days had stood tall and glittering in the sun. Now its windows lay shattered and cracked. The walls dripped rust across the graffiti scrawled over its surface. Weeds had grown from mere stunted sprouts to tall grasses and even a few oak saplings reached up to the first floor.

  “You’re sure it’s in there?” he asked her.

  “Yes. Well, no. But this is where the records lead.”

  “Let’s check it out then.”

  Felicity’s shoes crunched on the broken glass scattered about the ground as they approached the main doors. The frames hung empty and they stepped through into the lobby. It was also empty. Anything that wasn’t nailed down had long since been hauled away. Felicity expected that to be the case throughout the building. Her stomach knotted.

  Her shoe sunk into something soft and wet. Thank goodness she hadn’t worn her best heels. John reached out to steady her as they found the stairwell.

  “Which floor?”

  “Tenth,” she told him. “Not too bad, right? It could have been worse. It could have been the eleventh.”

  John produced a flashlight and shined it ahead of them. The stairwell smelled terrible; devoid of air for years, it was musty and stale. Dirt and debris had piled up on the sides, though the center appeared clear enough.

  “Looks better than I thought it would, really,” Felicity said.

  “People live here.”

  A look of horror swept over her face. “It’s leaking and rusting and it smells of… garbage,” she put politely, but that wasn’t the only pungent smell.

  “It’s got a roof. That makes it viable housing.” John scanned the dark landings above them. “So what are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The project was intended to create small, stable wormholes in order to generate plasma energy. The lead scientist was a man named Jackson Straub. He ran the program—from what I can tell, he was the program—until he left Queen Consolidated, and the project was mothballed after that.”

  “Where’s this Straub guy now?”

  “He’s dead. Heart attack, I believe. He died a few years after leaving Queen, but it wasn’t suspicious that I could find. He was nearly eighty years old. For most of his years with the company, his office was here.”

  A barely discernible 10 lingered on the door ahead of them. John signaled for quiet as he turned the knob. It swung open with a rusty squeal that made them both wince.

  The hallway had natural light due to the fact that some rooms had no doors and shafts of sunlight dappled the floor. Nature’s colors abounded in areas of green as weeds sprouted in the sunshine while moss crept to claim the shadows. More graffiti was scrawled across the walls.

  An old man whose tight black curls were now aged white opened the nearest door and leveled a baseball bat at them.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted.

  “We’re just passing through,” John assured the man.

  “Pass through faster. There’s no room for no more here.”

  “Pretty sure I don’t want to stay here,” Felicity muttered.

  John pulled out what cash he carried in his pocket: a couple of twenties and a fifty, and handed it to the old man. Eyes darted to the cash, probably more than he had seen in a year.

  For a moment, Felicity watched pride and desperation fight a small war over his features before the gnarled arthritic hand snatched up the money.

  “I ain’t got anything to tell you.
”

  Felicity thought it funny he told them that after he took the bills.

  “Just for interrupting your day,” John told him patiently. “We’ll be done here quickly and on our way.”

  “Don’t take nothing. It don’t belong to you.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, it—”

  John grabbed Felicity and tugged her along before she could finish her sentence.

  “What room are we looking for?”

  Felicity pulled out her tablet and opened a schematic. “Office 1025C. Far left side.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t have a current occupant.”

  They squeezed past overturned desks piled in the hallway, along with other fixtures that were barely recognizable. At the end of the corridor they found the office. It looked like it was being used as a storage room or a dumping ground. Another room lay beyond this one with an actual door still on its hinges.

  Light fixtures hung by mere wires as the decaying ceiling could no longer support them. Wallpaper rotted like flaking skin. A vine crept in through broken glass and took up the whole bay window; limited light shone in, but it was enough.

  “I can’t see how anything would still be here,” John muttered.

  Old computers sat moldering on desks. Felicity rummaged through the drawers. Most of the paperwork was gone, either hauled away when the building was decommissioned or burned for fuel by the residents. She didn’t know what she expected to find after all these years.

  A sense of sadness fell over Felicity. The ghosts of technology lay everywhere. The detritus left behind waited for nature to take its course; relics of the past long forgotten, abandoned in a desolate landscape.

  A tin garbage can stood nearby. Inside were ashes. She blew through the top layer but there was nothing left. But then by her foot she saw some half-burned scraps that had escaped the fire to drift down to the damp floor where the embers were snuffed out.

  She flicked the scraps about with a finger. Fragments of spreadsheets, datebook pages, and some office memos. Most were not applicable until her eye caught two words—plasma shielding. She plucked it from the litter.

  They scrounged for a half hour more, but found nothing else. Just when they were about to move onto the next room, something made John jerk upright and immediately Felicity paused in her work.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  He held up a hand for quiet and she fell silent, listening for what he had heard. Painstaking seconds of stillness passed but nothing happened and Felicity’s wild heart rate slowed to a more normal pace. Finally, John relaxed and nodded at her. She continued to search through the tumbled desks and toppled filing cabinets.

  A soft scrape interrupted her thoughts. Rats, maybe.

  John heard it too and he moved to the outer door, motioning her back out of sight. She crouched behind a barricade of desks.

  Shadows moved out in the hall. Squatters? Maybe they were just curious. Please let them be curious, Felicity prayed. She heard no footsteps at all. That was never a good thing.

  A face peered into the door and she shrunk down farther behind her barrier, pulling a Taser from her satchel. The figure wore a heads-up display over his right eye and sported a telltale earwig. That sort of tech ruled out gang members or irate residents.

  John quickly grabbed the man and yanked him into the room to sprawl across the floor into the metal desks Felicity hid behind. The towering structure teetered and she pulled back just in time to avoid a falling drawer.

  A second commando dressed in black fatigues pointed a 9mm pistol at John. With a swipe of his leg, John kicked the weapon out of his hand. Grabbing the still-outstretched arm, he yanked him into the room but then swung the body to slam against others crowding into the door. John blocked and punched, using all his considerable skills.

  The man sprawled on the floor in front of Felicity rose to his feet, furiously drawing a knife. He moved toward John’s unprotected back. Felicity lunged at him, pressing the Taser against the man’s shoulder. The electricity crackled, arching the man backward. Felicity jumped aside as he flopped onto the floor. She sidestepped him and darted back behind the metal desks as bullets pinged all around her.

  “Move to the next room,” John commanded.

  Felicity crawled over a broken desk and struggled with the door. It moved stiffly, its hinges rusted and warped. But slowly it opened. Behind her she heard John fighting and she turned back, desperate to help.

  “Go!” John ground out, ducking under a blow and stiff-arming a man that rushed him.

  She shoved the door the rest of the way open with a shoulder and a determined shout. The next room was piled with as much debris. The only other way out was the window. Outside the dirty glass, she saw a rickety, rusted mockery of a fire escape. Half the bolts were gone and it listed off the brick wall. She looked back to the door where John fought to hold ground.

  “There’s a fire escape,” Felicity called, “sort of.”

  Outnumbered, he gave ground, darting into the room with her. “Get on it!”

  “It’s not safe!”

  “Safer than here!”

  Felicity gingerly climbed out onto the unstable fire escape. Flakes drifted down as the entire structure shifted. She clutched onto the rusting rail, feeling the sharp iron filings dig into her palm. She started climbing down when John yelled at her.

  “Go up!”

  “Up?” she shouted back incredulously, but she started heading for the roof. They were two floors from the top. Her hand slapped the edge of the roof just as John leapt out on the fire escape below her. The added weight caused the structure to pull away. Felicity held on. The iron assembly shuddered again as two commandos jumped onto it after John.

  “Jump!” John shouted over the ringing footfalls coming up from below her.

  She did. Her waist hit the edge of the retaining wall, pushing her breath out in a rush. Her legs kicked free over empty air. Squirming, she flopped ungracefully over onto the roof. As soon as she had solid footing again, she scrambled to reach back for John.

  The fire escape slammed back against the brick wall with a rusty screech of twisting iron. The two commandos wrestled to hold onto John until they realized the structure was falling apart beneath them. It was every man for himself. All three struggled to reach the top.

  John leapt for Felicity. She reached out and grabbed for his hand. A gasp of relief escaped her lips that turned to one of alarm as she took John’s full weight.

  The fire escape wrenched free of the brick and collapsed, taking the other two men down in a tangled rumble of wreckage.

  “I can’t hold you,” she shouted.

  John braced his boots against the wall and pulled himself up onto the edge of the roof. Felicity let out a spent breath and collapsed next to him.

  The roof door slammed open and five more goons piled out. The soldiers moved without speaking, operating off hand signals.

  “Come on.” John climbed to his feet, pulling her up too. “We have to go.”

  They ran for the far side of the building. Felicity saw the edge of the roof coming up. She shot a look at John sprinting next to her.

  “What’s the plan?” She dreaded the answer.

  “Get you to safety.”

  “There’s too many for you to handle alone.” Felicity slowed her pace, but his hand was firm on her arm.

  “Don’t stop.”

  She didn’t, but then the gap between the buildings yawned wide and she knew she wouldn’t clear it. John grasped her belt and heaved her across.

  “No, wait!” she shouted.

  A red shape flew past her as she tumbled onto the opposite roof.

  “Cavalry’s here,” the new figure quipped. A bowstring twanged as she released her arrow while vaulting in midair. One of the paramilitary men flew back from John.

  Speedy.

  She wore a red version of Oliver’s hooded outfit. Speedy landed and rolled. Three arrows fired in rapid succession. One pinned a comm
ando to the rooftop. The second disarmed a man, while the last slammed a blunt end into a third commando and punched him to the ground.

  Speedy leapt among them, drawing a gleaming short sword. The blade struck, but didn’t kill. Flat-bladed blows instead of deep cuts. She moved between her enemies like blood in the water, a mere wisp visible before dissipating. Both she and John moved among their targets like a well-oiled machine and the men fell before them.

  One last commando aimed his pistol at John. The ex-Ranger rolled forward under the shots. Coming to his feet, he grabbed the wrist and twisted, causing the man’s nerveless fingers to open and drop his pistol. Then he stepped up like a boxer and slammed a fist into his unprotected jaw. The man collapsed to the ground.

  Felicity cheered John and Speedy from her spot on the far roof. Then she winced from a pain in her hip. She twisted to look, but she didn’t see any wounds.

  John searched the unconscious men and came away with nothing important. He shook his head at Speedy, and they turned and jumped the gap over to Felicity.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I thought I was shot.” Felicity smiled. “But I’m not, so yay.”

  “I could’ve sworn they caught me too, but I don’t see any blood.” John flexed his arms and legs to his satisfaction. “So we’re done here?”

  “Yes. I’d like to leave,” Felicity said. “It looks like Straub’s project might not be quite as mothballed as I thought. And I think I’ll call Oliver now.”

  5

  Barry Allen returned to the cell in the Pipeline once used to restrain Reverse Flash. If he couldn’t stop the growth of the plasma in his body, it would eventually cause him to blur out of existence. Barry knew Oliver was right, but no matter how important these exercises were, he still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that they were more important than being the Flash. If he knew someone needed help, he would help no matter what it cost him. When you ran so fast, it was hard to think about long-term consequences. But this wasn’t just about the Flash. The concern on the faces of his family and friends reminded Barry every day that he couldn’t be self-sacrificing in this. His life mattered to them.