When he woke, he was surprised to find himself in a hospital.
What he assumed to be a hospital at least. It didn't look like a government run secret facility. The sheets were slightly scratchy. There was a general hum of hospital noise, people walking by, machines beeping. He could hear a baby crying somewhere farther down the hall. He could still see Prague outside the window, at least he hadn't been taken out of the city.
A nurse entered.
"Ah, Mr. Green. You're awake."
Roy took a moment to look at the nurse. She wasn't being overtly friendly, just stating a fact. There were bags under her eyes, and she moved around the room in a quick fashion. Trying to get through her shift no doubt. So not likely to be someone trying to lull him into a false sense of security. Trying to make him think he was anywhere other than a hospital.
She had called him Mr. Green. Considering his wallet and phone had been stolen, he should have been listed as a John Doe. And she was speaking English to him.
Whoever had brought him in, had given him an alias. Roy tried to move and his side pulled. He put a hand there, as though he had no idea he was injured.
"Yes...I'm sorry. I'm not sure what happened."
"Of course, you lost quite a bit of blood. The police will be in to speak with you in a moment."
Roy kept his voice calm, but allowed a little bit of disbelief to color his words.
"The police. Why the police?"
"You were mugged Mr. Green. Some men attacked you in an alley and robbed you. You were stabbed during the attack."
Roy lightly touched the area where a large bandage was covering his abdomen. That was a surprise, considering he had been shot.
"Stabbed."
"Yes. Like I said the police want to speak with you..."
"How did I get here?"
"Your friend, Mr. Bumarit brought you in. I believe he has already spoken to the police. He just left an hour ago, said he was going to head back to your apartment. Get you a change of clothes."
Mr. Bumarit.
Son of a bitch.
Digger.
None of them had heard from Digger in over six months. What the hell was he doing in Prague? How had he found Roy?
Digger must have been the one to give him the alias. The one to...that asshole stabbed him. Had to make it look like a mugging. Make it look like a stab wound. Otherwise the hospital would report it as a gunshot and whoever was looking for Roy would be able to find him.
Roy imagined that Digger had to pay off a few doctors as well to keep it quiet.
Roy didn't know if he was going to thank Digger for the save, or kill the son of a bitch.
"You think you can talk to the police?"
"Of course."
Two cops entered the room. They didn't appear to have any ulterior motive to interviewing him. They asked him the most basic of questions. What was he doing in the alley? Did he see his attackers? What items were stolen?
"I...had a watch, it was relatively knew. Silver. My wallet and cell phone. And a jacket. I don't know the brand it was a gift from a friend."
The cops had just nodded along. Apparently that alleyway was a haven for criminals.
"I didn't know. I just…I must have gotten turned around. Thought I could cut through there on my way home."
One of the cops, the one who spoke the best English, had stepped forward at that comment.
"We found a strange substance in your bloodstream. One the hospital hasn't been able to identify. Mr. Green, had you taken any sort of medication today?"
Medication. Well. Roy averted his eyes. On this, he needed to appear slightly guilty. Perhaps even contrite.
"No...It ummm, it wasn't medication." Roy rubbed at his neck where the needle had been injected. He remembered how his powers had sort of fizzled out without him knowing it. He would have to test them out later to see if they still worked.
The cops gave him a knowing look.
"Look we aren't here to bust you on a drug charge, we want to find the people that did this to you. Can you think of anything else about your attackers?"
Roy thought about the two men who had tried to grab him. About the other men that had herded him into the museum. They had wanted him there. Must have thought it would be simple enough to drag a known art thief out of a museum without arousing suspicion. He had sent a photo of the first two men to Hartley, surely the kid would have identified them by now. The Rogues would be able to track the men down and mete out any punishments necessary.
"No. I...I wasn't paying attention. That must have been how they managed to hit me from behind."
"Thank you Mr. Green. We will be back later for some follow up questions."
There was something in their tone. Something in the way they gave him one last look as they left.
They didn't believe him.
He could see it in their eyes. But they didn't have a choice. Why would an American tourist lie about being mugged?
Roy needed to get out of here before someone ran his fingerprints or recognized his photo from a wanted poster.
Roy waited until it was almost nightfall. Waited until he could barely hear anyone outside his door. He found the remains of his clothes. It was just his pants, folded in the small cabinet in the corner. They must have cut off his shirt. He put on the pants, and left on the scrub top. It would have to do for now.
He didn't figure Digger would come back to the hospital. The man had left, going back to Roy's apartment. He would probably be waiting there.
The security in the hospital was almost non existent. He didn't need to use his powers to escape. He was certain he was getting strange looks as he walked back to his apartment. His wound pulling and stretching with every step. Thankfully he was less than a mile away. By the time he got to his front door, he was sweating and breathing heavily.
He opened the door and almost collapsed in a chair. He lifted his eyes and looked around, there was no sign of Digger.
Just a note and a cell phone sitting on the table in front of him. He reached out and picked up the cell phone. The note was short, only a few lines. It took Roy several attempts to read it. His eyes were barely cooperating.
Get out of the country. Don't call the others.
Roy looked at the phone for a moment. Every instinct in him was telling him to call Cold. To let the other Rogues know what had happened. That if he just called them, they would be able to figure out what happened. That he could be back in Central City by nightfall. Back somewhere safe, surrounded by people who had his back.
How did he even know this note was from Digger? The person who dropped him off might not have been the mercenary at all. Just someone leading Roy to believe that it was Digger. Roy was only passably familiar with Digger's handwriting. It could be from anyone.
There was something written on the back of the note. Roy flipped the piece of paper over.
Don't be a twat.
Roy rolled his eyes. No longer any doubts in his mind that the note was from Digger.
It was true that Harkness was still technically a Rogue, that the kidnapping of his son had been the motivator for his betrayal. But...there was this lingering doubt. What if someone else had gotten ahold of Owen? What if when Digger went to put the kid back, he had gotten snatched up again?
Digger could be working for some one else now, using his skills and training to make Roy think that he could trust him. Maybe get Roy to lead him to the others.
Although…Digger knew where all the old safe houses were. Roy rubbed his eyes. The pain in his side was increasing with each moment, he should have stolen some pain pills on the way out of the hospital.
He looked at the note again.
Get out of the country. How the hell was he going to do that without his wallet? Roy glanced over to his bed and he saw a small backpack. He gingerly rose from his seat and sat down on the bed.
He pulled the pack open. There was cash, a fake passport with the name Mr. Green, and….a gun.
Roy laid down on the bed slowly, placing the gun just within his reach. He should probably get out of the country as soon as possible, but he was just so tired. He would just rest for a few minutes. Get his breath back, then he would head out.
When he opened his eyes again, it was daylight outside.
Shit.
Well, clearly the people looking for him hadn't found him yet. The pain in his back was throbbing. The backpack with the cash and papers was still beside him, he dug through it a little more and found a small bottle of pain killers at the bottom.
Huh.
Looks like Digger had really thought this through.
He put two pills in his hand...and hesitated for a moment. He had no idea what these pills were. Roy sighed and swallowed them. If someone was planning on taking Roy they could have done it in the, he glanced over at his clock...eleven hours he had been asleep.
He took a quick shower and changed into some clean clothes.
Roy stuffed the cash back into the backpack and the gun into his pants pocket. He looked around the apartment. He had really liked this one, thankfully most of his paintings were already stored elsewhere. He had learned long ago not to get too attached to any single place, odds were he wouldn't be there for long.
Still, he had bought this place outright. Everything about the purchase had been legal. So maybe someday he would be back.
He walked out the door and headed for the train station. He needed to get out of Prague, then he could try to get a flight back to the US. He would have to take a few detours, he couldn't fly straight into Central. That would be too suspicious.
The phone in his pocket still felt like a weight pulling at him. He should really call the others. Anything could have happened to them.
He supposed if he was trusting Digger this much, he was just going to have go all in. He tried to ignore the idea that the phone had a gps tracker in it, that someone was deliberately herding him towards something.
Again.
He was being paranoid.
Sure two men had tried to kidnap him two days ago. And he was following the instructions of an incredibly untrustworthy man he hadn't seen in six months. Since the last time said man had betrayed the Rogues. And he wasn't even entirely sure it was Digger that had saved him or left the messages.
But that was nothing to be paranoid about.
He made it to the train station without incident. He bought a ticket and sat in his private car. He locked the door and went to close the blinds of the window, when the phone in his pocket started ringing.
He pulled it out and answered.
"Hello?"
"Long time no see mate."
"Digger."
"Sorry bout all the cloak and dagger shit, had to see if you were still being followed."
"What is going on?"
"Not entirely sure. Haven't seen any bastards since the ones tried to take you. Got some leads I need to look into. The passport I got you should hold up. Altered your face in it a little so it won't hit on facial recognition software."
"Digger..." Roy looked out the window and saw Digger leaning against a wall. He wasn't wearing his usual trench coat, just a dark motorcycle jacket. The man turned his head and locked eyes with Roy.
"Don't try to call the others. Odds are, they're being tailed too. You got a place you could meet up with them? I'm sure Cold made you all pick a place."
When Roy had met up with Lisa and Shawna in Paris, they had met at a designated safe house. Cold had one picked out in every country.
"Yea...there's..."
"Don't tell me. Just go there. I gotta see if they got to anyone else yet. Can't waste time, chasing every Tom, Dick, and Harry that might've gotten taken."
"Wait what?"
"Whatever this is mate, it's bigger than just the Rogues they're after."
"Who?"
"Don't really know yet. Working on it though. Keep your head down, don't use your powers if you can avoid it. I think that's what they're after."
"Isn't it always…Did you stab me?"
Roy could see Digger give a small smirk at that.
"Sorry about that."
Roy found he didn't have it in him to hate Digger for stabbing him. He was just so relieved to see the mercenary. To know he wasn't alone in whatever this was.
"I'm sure."
"See you around mate."
Roy had hundreds of questions he needed answered, but he doubted Digger was going to give him any of them. It sounded like the mercenary didn't have too many answers at the moment. Or was trying to make sure if Roy got caught, he couldn't give away anything.
Harkness was the black ops expert. Roy would just have to trust the man's judgment. Which wasn't always the best of plans.
Roy sighed.
"Don't do anything too stupid."
Digger didn't respond. Just hung up the phone and gave a small wave. Roy waved back in return.
Roy closed the blinds as the train started to pull out of the station.
He laid down on the sleeper bed in the car, checking the bandage as best he could. He had become much better at learning how to take care of a wound in the past several years. Although he could have done without how he gained that knowledge.
Roy popped another pill and tried to find a comfortable position. He pulled out some food and juice from the bag and ate slowly.
Roy managed to stay awake most of the train ride. He switched trains twice before he made it to Paris. He thought about checking the safe house but decided against it. He didn't know if whoever that been following him knew about the jobs they had pulled here.
He caught a flight from Paris to London. Then bought a ticket to New York for three days from now and checked into a hotel in a shadier part of town. He waited a few hours, then caught a bus to Liverpool. He took a quick flight from Liverpool to Dublin then immediately booked a flight from Dublin to Orlando, Florida.
He hated flying into Florida. He never cared for the humidity, but it would be crowded with people. A larger airport, but one far enough from Central City that hopefully they wouldn't think to check for him there.
He hoped he had made enough false turns and dropped enough false leads to throw off the scent.
There was a safe house in Kansas City. One that Roy had never been to, but knew was sort of a back up. A place where Cold had only once told them about.
"We have to be prepared for the idea that Central might be too hot at times. That we might need to find a new place to lay low for awhile. There's an abandoned apartment complex in Kansas City. Far enough away that they won't think to look for us there, but close enough that we could get there in a hurry. This is for emergencies only. Don't go there unless you have nowhere else to go."
Cold had told Roy about it a few months prior to Roy leaving. Before everything with the Reverse Flash.
He just hoped he had remembered the address correctly.
Roy sat in his stolen car and watched the building. There were no lights on. No sign that anyone was inside. Which was entirely the point. Apparently the reason Cold had chosen this place was because of the extensive basement underneath. One that happened to link up to some old underground tunnels built during Prohibition.
Roy walked up to the apartment. Keeping the hood of his jacket up, and the sunglasses covering his face. He snuck inside. He couldn't hear any sounds from downstairs.
He crept down, pulling out the gun from his waistband. He pulled off his shades.
He thought he could hear music playing.
Roy peaked his head around the corner. He lowered the gun slightly but didn't drop it completely.
Axel.
The kid was sitting at a work bench, working on some kind of electrical device. There was a small pile of Mountain Dew cans around him, and bags of assorted chips and candy.
Roy raised his gun and walked forward.
The kid really needed to learn to pay more attention.
"Walker."
The kid jumped up with a start. Pulling his arm back, with something that looked like stink bombs in his hand.
"Holy shit dude, you almost gave me a heart attack." The kid lowered his weapons. Roy didn't lower his.
"What are you doing here Axel?"
"This is a Rogue safe house right? And I am a Rogue so I'm allowed to…"
"Why are you here?"
The kid looked at Roy like he was an idiot.
"Um duh. Probably for the same reason you are. Some freaky dudes in suits tried to abduct us. I managed to get away but…"
"But what."
"They uh, they took Cold and Mardon. And seriously bro can you lower that thing for a second. I didn't have anything to do with what happened to them."
Roy thought about keeping the gun where it was. But Axel was looking him directly in the eyes. Not hiding, not stalling for time, or making any sort of signal to anyone else out there.
He lowered the gun, but kept it in his hand. Axel put his hands down, then picked up an unopened can.
"Mountain Dew? It's code red. Basically made for you."
Roy rubbed his eyes.
"Tell me what happened."
"Ok so, me, Mardon and Cold were at the safe house on Wilkening. And I need some glitter for my new project so I slip out and run down to the nearest store. Except when I get back, there are dozens of dudes in suits just swarming the place. Figured they were feds or something. So I hold back and keep an eye out. I mean it was like a dozen of them, I thought Mardon and Cold could handle it no sweat. I pulled out my phone to get the epic smack down on tape. It would be a pretty sweet video when Mardon knocks them all through the windows. Definitely a couple thousand retweets. Except that wasn't what happened. Couple minutes go by and then they are dragging Cold and Mardon out with bags over their heads."
"You didn't try to help?"
Axel's grin faltered for a moment.
"There were a dozen of these dudes and they had just taken down Mardon without so much as a rain storm forming overhead. I just kept videoing, you know. Kept thinking, oh Cold's got this. Must be some kind of plan. But then the vans just drove away."
"You got it on tape? The people who took them?"
"Yea, check it." Axel grabbed a laptop and pulled up the video. It was exactly as Axel had said. "I tried cleaning it up, got a few snapshots of some faces. I tried running them through facial recognition but…"
"Nothing came up."
"Which isn't even the weirdest part. I ran them through a social media program. Had it running for a couple days now, and still no hits. I mean this program checks the faces in the backgrounds of every single photo on Facebook and I'm still coming up empty. I'm going to try Instagram next, but it's freaking Facebook. How can these dudes not even be in the background of some selfie somewhere?"
"I don't know. Hartley had the same problem. Have you…"
"Radio silence. Tried texting them. Hell I even went old school and tried calling them and I got nothing. Hartley, Shawna, Mick, Lisa, all their phones are out. Dude they even got into my Twitter somehow and shut it down. Which, is the biggest crime here, all my genius tweets, lost forever."
Roy watched the video again. Looking for anything. Any kind of clue.
"The van?"
"Whoever this is, has reach. Like, I did all the normal stuff you know. I scanned security feeds, ATM cameras. Nothing. Every single one in that area went down at the same time. Twenty minutes of a complete dead zone. By the time they come back up, everything is hunky dory. There isn't even a record of the missing time."
"I was talking to Hartley before they tried to take me, and then my cell phone just dropped out of service."
"Like I said man, they must have bills to pull this big of a scam off. You were in like, Europe or something right."
"Prague."
"So you were in Germany and we…"
"The Czech Republic."
"Sure. Whatever. My point is, this is way too big for the feds or even ARGUS to pull off. Trust me, neither of them have the cash. I've checked."
So Mark and Cold were kidnapped. Hartley had been in Starling. Damn. There were too many of them separated.
"Do you know where Mick, Lisa, or Shawna were?"
"Mick was headed to Cali, Lisa was in Europe too I think. No idea on the other chick."
Roy hesitated for a moment, debating on how much he should tell Walker. Then decided that Axel was his only ally at the moment. Roy finally put the gun away.
"I saw Digger in Prague."
"The boomerang dude? I thought he fell off the map."
"He did. He saved my life. Kept me from being taken.
"Well shit. Dude's got black ops connections right? Figure he must have heard something?"
"Must have."
"Can we get in contact with that guy?"
Roy thought about the phone in his pocket. It was a way for Digger to get ahold of him. He doubted Digger still had the phone he called Roy on.
"No. No way to contact him."
It wasn't that he didn't trust Axel…
Well maybe that was it a little bit. The Rogues had never been attacked on such a grand scale before. Never been so thoroughly caught unawares. It would make sense that whoever this was, had some kind of inside information. How else would they have known exactly where all the Rogues were?
"Bummer. Looks like you and me are going to have to Sherlock this shit on our own."
Roy just nodded and watched the video again. It was dark and grainy. And…wait.
"That's the guy I shot in Prague."
"Wait, you shot a dude?" Axel pulled up the image of the man Roy was pointing to. There was no doubt now, it was one of the men that had tried to grab him from the museum.
"That's him."
"So what like, evil twins or something? Pod people?"
Roy didn't respond. He just stared at the image. Maybe it had been the drugs. Maybe he was remembering it wrong. Maybe this was just some guy who kind of looked like another kidnapper in a suit.
Roy didn't think he was wrong.
"What the hell is going on?"
First time he got lost in his head had been during his first stint in juvie. Couple months after he met Snart. The punk kid got out two months before he did. Good behavior. Which was bullshit, but Lenny was good like that.
All Mick had to do was keep his head down and he would be out right behind him. Len had told him how to keep his mouth shut, how to say what the doctor and the social workers wanted to hear.
Didn't even make it a week before he got into a fight.
Before they found his lighter.
Suddenly, it wasn't a little time in the hole. It was being sent over to the psych ward with the freaks. Mick knew he liked fire more than was normal. Knew he couldn't control it no matter what he tried. But he shouldn't have been over there.
You set one kid's arm on fire during a fight and suddenly you're crazy.
That bitch of a doctor had said she would figure out how to cure him
He had been an idiot back then. Actually thought that was possible.
Actually thought there could have been some hope that he could make the obsession go away. Or at least keep it a little farther back in his mind.
He had gotten an extra three months for the fight. So the doc kept trying different meds. Different therapies.
Nothing worked.
Some made it worse.
Couple scars on his arms he doesn't remember having before the psych ward. Just remembers thinking that the fire was in his veins and he had to get it out.
Anybody else would have stopped. Should have stopped. Mick wondered if it was even legal what they were doing to him sometimes.
But that doc had been convinced. Seemed to think it was her personal mission to make Mick better. Make it so he would fit in with normal society.
He told them he didn't want it anymore. That he wouldn't fight. That he would just sit in his cell and wait out his sentence. He only had a few weeks left by then.
But she wouldn't let it go. Wouldn't just let Mick be.
Maybe throwing a punch at her hadn't been the best idea, but he was sick of being prodded. Sick of getting a new pill each week. Sick of the side effects.
Sick of thinking he could be fixed.
Clearly he couldn't.
Don't know why she couldn't see that.
Then she found it. The perfect drug. Experimental. Said it would keep him calm, keep his mind off of the fire.
Maybe she had given up and Mick just hadn't been able to see it at the time. Mick figured it was little more than a glorified sedative.
Sure, it kept him calm. Kept him lying still in his small room, staring at the wall all day. Must have been a relief to the docs and the guards. Something that would finally keep him from attacking anybody who looked at him wrong.
He didn't really remember too much when they would give it to him. He would eat when they told him to, go outside when they told him to, hell they probably could make him piss on command.
And then the hallucinations started.
First he just thought it was a trick of the light. Being inside so long, playing tricks on him. But then he could see it. The sky was on fire. He wanted to move towards it, but his body barely worked anymore. So he would just sit on the floor and stare out the window. Looking up at the sky like it would rain down hellfire on him. Burn him out of this place once and for all.
He was standing in a field.
The trees around the field were on fire. He could hear screaming. He wondered vaguely if it was his parents. He thought he could see figures in the tree line, standing there waving out towards him.
Beckoning him.
Every time he tried to get closer to the fire it would get farther away. He ran and ran but he could never reach it.
Then he was lying in bed at a halfway house in Central City.
And he had no idea how he got there.
He waited for the scene to change. Waited for the next vision to take over his mind.
But nothing came. He laid in that bed for almost two days before he finally got up. Finally managed to convince himself that this was real. That he wasn't in juvie anymore.
He found his release papers, and all the info for his parole officer.
He had been released three days ago.
To this day, he didn't remember any of it.
He shook the incident off. Figured it was just the strong meds, must have taken a few days for them to wear off. He moved on.
Forgot about the fire in the sky. And the field.
He got locked up a couple more times. Nothing serious.
Then a job him and Len were working went south. Some stupid punk ratted them out to the cops, trying to get in good with the pigs.
Lenny had covered their tracks pretty good. Evidence was circumstantial, based on the word of a known thief. But they both had priors.
So they got two years a piece.
Probably should have been closer to ten, but Len was good. Hell, Len could get out with good behavior in a year.
Probably would have too.
Except for those damn Santini bastards. Tried to jump Mick for some arson he had done a few years back. Burned down one of their safe houses. Mick hadn't known it was a mob house. He had just taken the job, didn't care much what it was. He just wanted to see it all in flames.
They had waited until Lenny wasn't around, knew the two of them watched out for each other. One of them managed to stab Mick in the shoulder.
That had pissed him off.
He didn't stop punching until there were guards pulling at him from every angle. Hell, he didn't even stop then.
Plus he had his lighter.
Mick had barely burned the guy that stabbed him. Not even third degree on his torso. But the warden acted like Mick had roasted the guy alive.
Which he would have if given the chance. But Lenny had been teaching him how to keep his mouth shut in front of the warden.
Apparently some asshole was allowed to stab him, but defending himself was against the rules.
He expected to end up in solitary for a couple weeks.
But the warden had his file in front of him.
Said Mick had a history of this type of behavior. Had a history of extreme violence.
Mick had kept his mouth shut. Waited for the warden to give him some bullshit speech about how he was a lost cause, that people like him should only look forward to a needle in the arm.
But the asshole was new. Still thought even people like him could be "reformed."
"You will spend the next few weeks in the psych ward, once the doctor believes you are no longer a danger to others, you can be returned to gen pop."
Mick had rolled his eyes.
Great. A couple weeks in a padded room, putting together puzzles, and listening to the crazies talk to themselves.
Mick had just taken the pills they gave him after the transfer and then…
He was in that damn field again. Sky was still on fire too.
Except the field wasn't empty.
It was his old house. Whole place was on fire. He could remember sitting outside, watching it all happen. He walked in through the main door, the flames were everywhere. But every time he would reach for them, they would shy away. Wither and die.
He couldn't feel them.
The fire didn't want him.
It was frustrating as hell.
His parents weren't in their bed.
He didn't know why he checked there.
Then he was in a warehouse with Len. Going over plans for a job. Len telling him that all he had to do was set one little fire and everything would be fine.
He remembers memorizing the plans. The details of it. The schedules of the security guards. He thinks that weeks go by in the planning stages. Len always had to plan every little thing out.
He gets to set a few cars in the parking lot on fire. Len is running out with the cash. But Mick can't control it. The fire jumps from car to car. Moving in a way that Mick knows for a fact fire doesn't move.
With purpose.
Straight towards Lenny.
Len catches on fire. He's screaming something fierce.
Mick doesn't move to help him. He can't. It's…just the way the fire moved and the colors of it. It was so…
There are mashed potatoes in his mouth.
At least, what he thinks are mashed potatoes.
He looks up and he's in the cafeteria.
He's back in gen pop. And Lenny is sitting across from him.
Not on fire.
He's got a look in his eyes. One Mick can't really place.
Might be mistaken for concern on a normal person.
"Mick?"
"Yea Len?" Mick looks Len in the eye, and that must be some kind of signal that Mick isn't aware of because Len relaxes a fraction of an inch.
"You back with me?"
Mick looks down at his food. Thinks about lying.
"Don't really know."
Len could tell if he was lying anyway.
Len don't say another word till they're back in their cell. Can't risk other people hearing something that could be used against them.
Starts talking in that matter of fact way he's got. Like what he says is the truth. Whether it is or not is irrelevant.
"You were in the psych ward for three weeks. I had to pull some strings to get you transferred back over here. I might even owe a few favors now."
Mick is sitting on the bottom bunk, staring at his arm where he knows a stab wound should be. Skins mostly healed.
"Three weeks?"
Len's got that look on his face again. Mick doesn't much care for it.
"I managed to come over and see you after the first week. Smudged a few work orders around. You…"
Len hesitates. Len never hesitates.
It makes Mick angry.
"Spit it out Snart."
"You didn't recognize me. You barely moved. Just sat in a corner and stared out the window. I managed to get a look at your file and see what meds they had you on."
Mick had no idea how Len managed that, but he had stopped questioning it at this point. Mick's got a pretty good idea he knows what they gave him.
"Little white pills with X-48 stamped on 'em?"
"Yes. You've been given them before?"
"Remember that blonde doc from juvie? The one with the glasses? She gave that to me after you got released. Said it was the only thing that "worked" on me. Keeps me docile, compliant."
"But."
Damn. Len would figure out something was up.
"Makes me hallucinate or something. Can't…really tell what's real and what ain't. Lose time. How long I been back over here?"
"Almost five days."
Damn.
That was longer than last time.
"Last time it took me two days to shake it off. To realize…"
"Realize you weren't hallucinating any more."
Mick hated it when Len finished his sentences like that. Hated it, and was sometimes grateful. Len usually had the words when Mick couldn't find what he was trying to say.
"Thought we were pulling a job. Thought we were at the warehouse on 6th. Job went sideways. Everything burned. Then we was eating lunch. Both things…feel the same."
Len didn't respond to that. No doubt he knew what Mick meant by everything.
Len could have gotten out after a year with good behavior.
Couple days later he gets caught running an illegal card game out of the kitchen. Warden decides to make Len serve out his full sentence.
Mick doesn't end up in the psych ward again.
They get released a couple of days apart.
Mick and Len don't always pull jobs together.
Sometimes they get sick of each other's company. Sometimes it's a screaming match over a job gone wrong. Sometimes it's a fist fight over a card game.
Point is, they ain't joined at the hip. So Len will fly off to London for a year to steal some big painting, and Mick will take a job in Coast City. Torching abandoned lots for some kind of insurance scam.
Mick's got a reputation separate from Snart.
Pyromaniac. Fire bug. Arsonist. Whatever people want to call it.
Mick likes it.
Likes the way people flinch away when he pulls out a lighter. Tends to make people not ask too many questions. Make them think he's just some dumb thug they can use and toss away. Makes it easy to turn the tables on them.
Course, Mick knows he ain't the best planner. Which is why he usually just joins crews and does his thing.
He blames Snart for the next time he gets arrested.
He got used to working with the bastard. Used to knowing that every detail would be planned out. That the boss in charge would know if there were six security guards or seven. Would have the common sense to check on all the cameras to make sure there weren't any changes in the three months since he had gotten the damn plans.
Mick's got a bullet in his leg and cops on his ass. And even if Snart is half a damn world away, it's still somehow his fault.
Mick manages to evade the cops for a bit, but the bullet slows him down. He gets caught after a cop sideswipes the car he has stolen.
He barely resists arrest.
Barely.
Cops should learn to defend themselves better if they don't want broken bones.
Twenty-five years.
Not eligible for parole for fifteen.
Mick hadn't even killed anybody. The boss, some idiot named Jacobs, had freaked when there was an extra guard. Figured the best way to stick to the plan was to bring the number back down to six. Course the gunshot had just attracted all kinds of attention.
Mick had bailed right then and there. He might not be smart, but he sure as hell wasn't stupid enough to stick around after that. One of the other crew members had shot Mick. Bastard had said it was an accident. Mick had believed him. So he had only beaten the guy half to death when they cross paths in prison.
Jacobs had gotten life. No chance of parole. He was just lucky to avoid the chair. Lucky the state didn't do the death penalty no more.
Course the problem was, after about four months, Jacobs came to realize he had nothing to lose. Starting blaming the rest of the crew, saying they were reason he had been caught. That one of them must have ratted them out to the cops.
Mick sure as hell wasn't no rat. Never opened his mouth once to the cops, no matter how much he hated Jacobs. No matter how much he thought the guy was an idiot.
But people with life sentences can go a couple of ways. They can try to make the most of it, read all the time, get a few degrees, write a damn book. All they got is time now, might as well use it.
Some of them get so hoped up on drugs they don't notice the years passing. Mick knew one or two that took the easy way out.
Or they decide they don't want to spend however many years sitting in one room, eating shitty food, and staring at gray walls all day. But there isn't anything they can do about it. Nothing they can do will change the food or the walls or the same thing over and over. So it starts to drive them nuts. Jacobs was only 32, guy had a lot of years left.
Which is probably why he thought he could take Mick alone. Corner him in the laundry room with a shiv.
Mick had snapped the idiot's neck.
Self defense.
Funny how no one ever seemed to believe him.
This time, they did throw him in solitary.
It was torture down there. No fire to focus on. Started banging on the walls. Pulling at the door. Making a racket.
They tell him to shut up.
Just makes him louder.
Next meal time, there are two white pills with his food.
He doesn't take them.
He doesn't like the false fire. Doesn't like the missing time. Doesn't like how hard it is for him to tell what's real.
They must know he's flushing them down the toilet because a couple days later, four guards swarm into his cell and shove them down his throat.
Mick hates the goddamn field.
Doesn't know why he hates it. Just knows that he does.
Doesn't even know where it is. He's just laying there though, watching the sky burn. Watching the fire fall down from the heavens. He knows that ain't right. Fire is supposed to come from down below not up above.
If he had known there was fire in heaven, maybe he could have tried to actually work towards getting there.
A large flaming asteroid lands in the field not too far from where he is laying. He's certain there is someone standing behind it. But the fire is distorting everything, the heat making everything blurry. Can't hear what they're saying.
"Nice place."
Mick turns his head. Lisa is smirking at him.
Yea, it was a shitty one bedroom apartment. But it was his shitty one bedroom apartment. She pushes her way past him. Says something about crashing on his couch for the night.
Somehow he ends up on the couch and she's sleeping in his bed. He doesn't ask her why, or where she got the bruise on her arm. Just lets her sleep the night. In the morning, she's telling him about something to do with fashion. He barely listens when Len is telling him plans for the next job, he isn't listening to Lisa now.
He looks up from his eggs…and she isn't there anymore.
Mick looks down at his food. Still eggs. He's…eating eggs?
"Mick…damn it! Drive!"
Lisa's in the back seat, there are lights flashing in the rearview. Mick and Lisa don't usually pull jobs together. Not without Len. But this was a special case. Len was serving a six month stint. And Lisa was going to do it alone. He couldn't let her do the job alone.
So he was there. He was just the driver.
They get away. With jewels and some kind of…
Lisa slaps him in the face.
Mick looks up at her.
Len is standing beside her.
"Lisa…"
"What? We have literally tried everything else. It's been almost two weeks since you busted him out and he is just…"
Mick looks around slowly. He doesn't recognize this safe house. Doesn't recognize the couch he is sitting on.
Mick puts a hand on the fabric. It's gotta be from the seventies, feels almost like velvet. Ugly as hell, orange and brown. It feels real under his fingers.
Mick doesn't trust it.
"You're in London."
The siblings stop arguing.
Len's got that look again.
Mick hates it so goddamn much.
"I was. But Lisa told me about your incarceration. So I decided to keep an eye on things. A contact told me Jacobs was becoming unstable, so I started on a plan to bust you out."
"You busted me out."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Len wouldn't fly back early from London to get Mick out of prison. He'd wait till whatever job he was doing got done, then he might come back. Let Mick stew for a year or so, just so Mick could learn whatever lesson Len thought he needed to learn.
Len and Lisa shared a look.
"Mick, sweetie, why don't you eat something."
"Just had eggs. We…"
There wasn't a job with Lisa. Or if there was, it was years ago. A memory mixed up and around in his head.
Maybe there wasn't an ugly couch in some safe house he didn't recognize either.
He was still in his cell. Still drooling on the floor like some nutjob. He wasn't out.
He couldn't be out.
Lenny wouldn't come back early.
It took him almost two months to accept that he wasn't still in a cell.
Managed to convince Len and Lisa that he was fine after about two weeks though. Course they both got super pissed at him when they realized he had been lying about it. Not like either of them got hurt.
He just…hadn't ducked when some guys started shooting at them. They had yelled at him and he had slipped up. Said he didn't know why they were so mad.
It didn't really matter. It wasn't like it was real.
Len had been furious.
Got real quiet.
When Len gets to the point where he don't even want to lecture you, you know it's bad.
Figured they'd kick him out after that. But they didn't. Just kept him around the safe house, didn't let him go on jobs for awhile. Let him burn small fires when he got bored.
"Never again."
Len had finally started talking to Mick again. Mostly the man had just forced Mick to eat, left blue prints around for Mick to memorize, made sure the television was working.
Startled Mick a bit to hear Len's voice again after a few weeks of silence.
"What?"
"I promise you Mick. I won't ever let them give you that shit again."
Mick hadn't really been sure how to respond to that. Wasn't like Lenny could be there every time Mick messed up. Every time he got thrown into prison.
He had heard Len and Lisa talking a bit. Talking about how Mick had looked. The way he acted when they had broken him out. Like a zombie, only moving or eating when they forced him to. Even then, he had barely reacted.
Couldn't have been easy for them.
Mick knew Len liked to be in control of everything. Liked to think that he if he just made a plan for something, it would all work out.
Mick owed Lenny a lot. Least he could do was give the man a little piece of mind. No matter how false it was.
"I know you won't Boss."
Never got sent back after that. Len always had an escape plan. Always had a way out.
Course.
Then there was the fire.
And Lenny saying they were done.
He knows that was real.
Got the scars to prove that.
The pain from the fire was agony. He had managed to escape from an ambulance. Only help he could get was back alley doctors. Who didn't always clean their tools or have a steady supply of pain killers.
Mick knew he lost days in pain filled delirium.
Weeks.
And then suddenly, he was healed up. Walking around with scars all over. And then Len was there, offering him a super powered flame thrower. Calling himself Captain Cold. Wanting Mick to help him fight a man who could run faster than the speed of sound.
And then Lisa was there. She got a gun too. They were all back together like the fire hadn't happened. Like Len hadn't said Mick was becoming more unstable as he got older.
They were crashing in some mansion of some guys they killed. Mick was sleeping on a king sized bed with satin sheets.
He dreamed he was laying in a padded room. Staring at a white wall, and seeing it catch aflame. He could feel the heat, but the flames stayed away from him. He wanted them to come closer. He wanted to touch them.
When he woke up in the morning, he kept clutching the sheets beneath his fingers.
It felt real.
But so did the padded room. So did the straightjacket he had been wearing.
He didn't tell Len or Lisa about the dream. Didn't tell anyone. Not even when their crew started expanding. Not a guy who could control emotions with his eyes. Or a chick that could disappear in a puff of smoke. Or a guy who could control the weather.
He didn't want to know.
Didn't want to know if this was real or not.
It wasn't always in the back of his mind. But sometimes, when things were good. When they would pull off a job. The Rogues. When they would pull off a job that netted them millions. When they would get away scot-free. When they were yelling at the television during a hockey game.
It would start to slip into his mind.
This isn't real.
He couldn't remember how he escaped from that ambulance. And there was so much missing time when he was healing from his burns. He could have been taken to a hospital. They could have injected him with those meds when he was still unconscious. Saw in the file it was the only thing that would work on him.
He wondered if it was.
He had been seventeen the first time they gave him those pills. Must have been new meds created since then. Mick just figured the prison docs didn't want to risk trying anything else. That shit worked just fine for their purposes. Not like they actually thought he could be helped anyway.
Maybe there was some med, some therapy, out there that could calm the fire in his mind. That wouldn't make him into a damn zombie.
Mick just figured it was too late for him at this point. Why waste the time now?
Especially if he was still locked up.
He knew he wasn't the smartest guy. Knew that crazy people didn't always know when they finally split off from reality completely. Sometimes he could ignore the thoughts. But sometimes they were so damn loud.
Besides, what made more sense?
That he was a part of some bad ass group of super powered freaks. A group that always had each other's backs, that didn't fall apart like a group like this should? That suddenly his family wasn't just the ashes of his parents. Wasn't just Len and Lisa. But now included a whole mess of people.
Or…
Or that he never got out of that ambulance.
That Len had realized how dangerous Mick was. How after twenty five years of working together, Len realized that Mick was only going to get worse. So he had cut his loses. And left Mick to rot in some padded room for the rest of his life.
Len was a practical guy.
Mick knew which one made the most sense.
Mick reached out a hand towards the fire. His sleeve caught almost instantly. He could feel the heat of it. The almost pain as it started to burn the fabric. His jacket was fire resistant, so it shouldn't reach the skin.
Mick stared at it for a few more minutes, then reluctantly removed his jacket.
This felt real.
Fire was real.
He needed the fire now more than ever.
The fire in his hallucinations didn't burn him.
Whenever the thought would start to move to the forefront of his mind. The idea that he was still trapped. He would pull out a lighter or a match and he would let it hover just beside his skin. Just enough so that he could almost feel the pain.
It grounded him.
It was real.
Mick walked back to his car. He released the parking brake and pushed it towards the fire. He would have to walk back out a couple miles. But it would be alright. He grabbed his bag out of the trunk, he had couple of bottles of water in there. Couple of candy bars.
He had positioned the two dead men in suits in the front seats of the car.
Mick had tossed his cell phone in with them. Figured that must have been how the bastards found him in the first place. Hopefully if there were any more, they would just assume Mick was dead.
He flipped the needle in his hands over a few times. One of them had tried to stick him early on. Almost got him too. He shoved the needle in the bag. Ignoring the idea that it contained the same meds he had been given before. That was crazy. Why would these assholes have that stuff?
Mick watched the flames get closer to the car. He walked slowly backwards down the road. The flames from the forest fire were only just starting to reach this area. Soon the smoke would be too thick for anyone to come looking this way. Mick pulled out his gun and set the car ablaze.
No one would question another burnt out husk of a car in this area. Probably just some dumb campers who didn't realize how close they were until it was too late. Be weeks before anyone could get around to finding the car, let alone identifying the men. Or realizing that one had a stab wound to the throat. The other a broken neck.
Mick turned away from the fire, though he kept an eye on it. Kept a watch for any sign that it would turn. That a sudden gust of wind would blow it towards him.
He made it back to the main road after a few hours. The wildfires lit up the night sky. Between the smog from the city, and the clouds…
It almost looked like the sky was on fire.
Mick pulled out his lighter and flicked it on and off a few time. The movement familiar. Soothing.
Real.
He needed to get to a phone.
Call Len.
Find the rest of the Rogues.
See what kind of shit they were in this time.