Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. All characters owned by CW/WB. Most dialogue from Arrow season 3 episode 2 "Sara" written by Jake Coburn and Keto Shimizu.

AN: A large part of this chapter is from season 3 episode 2 "Sara". I have added AU and inside thoughts of the characters in an attempt to add to the excitement of the story and to fix missing details. I hope you like it.

The next day Maseo brought Oliver to the rooftop across from a luxury hotel. Oliver watched Maseo take out a gun and apparatus out of the back pack. "We'll take our position here."

"Who is your target?" Oliver asked, adopting an adolescent 'I don't care to be here' attitude. He was hoping today's assignment would only be to observe Maseo, instead of what he was dreading.

"I don't have a target. You do. Like I said yesterday, this is your first assignment."

"What? No. I've changed my mind. I'm not doing it."

Maseo sighed. "It might have escaped your notice, but Amanda Waller doesn't have a sense of humor."

"Really. Then why did she drag me off of Lian Yu to bring me all the way to Hong Kong? To become her hit man?"

"To become her operative. Obviously she needs you for something; otherwise she wouldn't be threatening my family to assure your compliance."

Oliver rolled his eyes and grabbed the gun out of Maseo's hands. He straightened the legs of the tripod, positioned the gun and looked through the scope.

"The target will be entering our line any moment," Maseo stated in a flat tone. "The target will walk ten paces through the roof garden and arrive at his hotel suite. That's your target window."

"I see it," Oliver stated as a man walked into the target field, his back to Oliver. Oliver aimed…..and looked away in disbelief after the man turned and Oliver saw his face.

"Tommy?" Oliver murmured to himself.

Tommy! His best friend, was in the cross-hairs! Tommy, a man who never hurt anyone ever in his entire life. Here in Hong Kong, and someone wanted him dead?

Oliver dropped the gun onto the building ledge, raised his hands, and walked away. "No way, this ain't happening!"

"You didn't eliminate the target."

"That is not a target That is my best friend. Why am I pointing a gun at my best friend?" Oliver looked around wildly, as if attempting to get the answer out of thin air. "Is this some sort of test?" he asked, looking Maseo in the eye.

"Yes, one that you failed."

Oliver's eyes widened. "Good! Flunk me, then!"

A look of pity momentarily appeared on Maseo's face, then disappeared. "Do you think it is a coincidence your friend happened to show up in Hong Kong? He's looking for you." Oliver's eyes shifted to a look of mixed panic, hope and shock. "When you logged into your email, you sent off an account alert. Dead men don't check their email, Oliver. He must believe you are alive and came here looking for you."

"Are you saying all this is my fault?" Oliver brought a hand to his forehead, trying to rub the pain away. "That I essentially put a target on my best friend's back just because I want to go home?"

"Waller needs you. You cannot be compromised by some rich kid flashing your picture all over Hong Kong. Whether you are the one who pulls the trigger or not she wants Tommy Merlyn off the board."

Off the board. Whether you are the one who pulls the trigger or not. The words echoed through Oliver's brain. That Waller woman meant to kill Tommy, his best friend. What was worse, because of something he, himself, had done. His mistake. It did not matter Oliver only wanted to save his own life. Oliver could not risk Tommy's life in order to be rescued.

There had to be another way to get Tommy out of this mess. In desperation, Oliver suggested, "There must be another way. I mean, what if we go to a local morgue and we find a body that looks like Tommy, and we….."

Maseo scoffed at that suggestion. "At the Hong Kong morgue? Look for a corpse that looks like a white millionaire's son? You stand a better chance of winning the lottery and paying Amanda off."

Oliver got into Maseo's face. "I am not going to assassinate my best friend. Do you understand? There has to be another way."

"There is, but it involves Amanda Waller finding someone else to executing your friend."

"No, I mean another way that does not involve killing." Oliver turned and looked Maseo in the eye. "Please. I think I have an idea that might work."

~OQ~OQ~OQ~OQ~OQ~

Tommy Merlin was in his hotel room. Thinking about his father. What a loser. Of course he would not understand why Tommy needed to drop everything and come to Hong Kong. To find Oliver, the man he considered to be more than a friend. Oliver Queen was his brother, a brother he had not seen in over two years.

That day, when he was notified about the ping on Oliver's email account…that was the day a part of his heart started beating again. He missed his friend so much. And the possibility of him being alive, it was almost too much for Tommy to take. Nothing was going to stop him from researching this possible lead. Tommy had commandeered his family jet and hurried to Hong Kong. He lost no time upon his arrival and walked through Hong Kong, attempting to find anyone who might have seen his friend.

It felt like he had walked all over Hong Kong, talking to almost every person in the city, showing Oliver's picture. Finding no leads, Tommy had returned to his hotel room. He was almost at the end of possible leads. The feeling of crushing defeat was almost too much to take. He poured himself a drink from the mini-bar, not aware of another presence in the room. About to sit down in the armchair, he barely felt the prick of the dart that brought darkness.

He woke up in an unknown room, in complete darkness. Suddenly the room was flooded in light because the sack over his head was removed. In his fright, Tommy barely noted his wrists tied behind his back, and that he was sitting in a high back chair. No one was in his eyesight, but he felt a presence behind him.

"How did I….What's going on here? Where am I?" Groaning, Tommy attempted to see the person behind him. "Please don't hurt me. Just let me go. Please, I promise I wouldn't tell anyone about this." He was too scared to feel humiliated by the whininess of his voice. He was alone, in a foreign land, held by unknown people. It was not the time to worry about being macho.

Oliver, dressed in black with a veil covering everything but his eyes, adopted a threatening voice. One that was darker, deeper, than his normal speaking voice. "Would a fisherman throw his prized catch back into the sea?"

Tommy was caught off guard by that statement. Not what he expected a kidnapper to say. "What? What are you talking about? Look, whoever you are, you really don't want to do this." Tommy was able to drum up bravado as an idea entered his mind. "Do you have any idea who I am? Who my father is?"

"You're Thomas Merlyn. You've been looking for Oliver Queen."

And now he returned back to being scared. "How do you know that?"

"Because it went according to my plan. A simple hack of a missing billionaire's email account. I knew someone would come looking for him. But I thought it would be his mother, his sister." Tommy heard the man pacing behind him. "But you, the son of the CEO of Merlyn Global? Jackpot. My friend, you are going to make me a very rich man."

Sadness overwhelmed him, helping to momentarily distract him from his fear. "So Oliver didn't…" Tommy gasped in an attempt not to cry. "He isn't…?" Hope died within Tommy. The email alert was only a trick. It did not mean Oliver was alive. His heart crushed, Tommy fought against tears.

Oliver stopped his pacing and removed his mask. He looked down, and tried to remind himself it was in Tommy's best interest to convince him of this. "Oliver Queen is dead. He's rotting at the bottom of the ocean. You will be, too, if your father doesn't pay that ransom."

Suddenly outside a police siren was heard and calls of "Stop! Police!"

Maseo, dressed in a police uniform, entered the room, gun drawn, circling around room to the front of Tommy. He nodded slightly to Oliver, who leaned against a pillar and sighed in relief. This masquerade was almost over! He watched as Maseo untied Tommy and comforted him.

"You're going home. You're safe now."

Behind a pillar, Oliver looked away. Tommy's cries of his relief pierced his heart. Maseo then led Tommy away to the outside of the building. The plan was for Maseo to return Tommy to his motel, where he would pack up and head back home.

~OQ~OQ~OQ~OQ~OQ~

"Oliver Queen is dead. He's rotting on the bottom of the ocean with the fishes."

Oliver sat in his room in Mateo's apartment, staring at the wall, those words reverberating through his brain. He almost got his best friend killed because he tried to escape Amanda Waller. Even though he flunked out of three colleges, Oliver knew the meaning of irony. It did not escape his notice Amanda used his friend against him as a direct result of his attempt to escape. Just another way to hammer the fact others would be harmed if he continued to attempt escape

Did he have any other choice? If he did not escape, he was doomed to do whatever awful things Amanda wanted him to do. Oliver did not want to wait around to find out what the 'big mission' was. However, if he attempted to escape and did not succeed, his 'punishments' would only get worse. Maseo had practically told him that in actual words.

"Oliver Queen is dead. He's rotting on the bottom of the ocean with the fishes."

Those words he had spoken to Tommy, he now realized were actually true. The Oliver Queen the world had known indeed was lying on the bottom of the ocean floor with the fishes. He was no longer the boy who had left his home two short years ago. Instead, he was becoming someone else, someone Oliver was afraid he won't like.

~OQ~OQ~OQ~OQ~OQ~

"What happened?" Amanda asked the operative standing in front of her.

"Queen refused to kill Merlyn. A fact I am sure you are not surprised with."

"Even with the threat against your son? Even with the threat of someone else doing the job?"

"Yes, but the threat has been neutralized regardless."

Amanda clenched her teeth in a moment of frustration, and then mentally centered herself. "How is that?"

"Mr. Queen came up with the idea of staging a kidnapping of Mr. Merlyn."

"How did that neutralize the threat?"

"Queen, as the kidnapper, told Mr. Merlyn a story the email hacking was a ploy to lure one of Queen's family to Hong Kong in order to kidnap them for ransom. That Merlyn was not supposed to have been the one to come, but would certainly prove a worthwhile substitute. We allowed Mr. Merlyn to sweat for a moment, then we played a police siren. I then burst the scene pretending to be Hong Kong police in order to rescue him. Mr. Merlyn bought it." Maseo paused, then stated, "He left Hong Kong immediately upon release."

Amanda shook her head. Part of her was not surprised, for she had already seen some of Mr. Queen's ingenuity in the past two years. It was part of what had drawn her to the young man. What he lacked in experience, he certainly made up with ingenuity.

"The question is, has Mr. Queen learned the lesson of all this? Or did you have to spell it out for him?"

"No, he did catch the significance he almost brought death to his best friend due to his attempt at escape. I believe he will now have second thoughts before he attempts another escape."

"I certainly hope so." With a curt nod, Amanda indicated the meeting to be at an end.

Maseo left, and Amanda leaned back into her office chair, and steepled her fingers together. In her experience, the tools requiring the most work in honing them at the beginning became the most useful. Oliver Queen was one of the most aggravating individuals Amanda had ever met, but certainly could become one of the most talented operatives possible. She hoped he would indeed prove to be worth all the trouble he was going to be in order to get him there.

AN: Thanks for reading! If you can, please leave a comment and/or review!