Chapter Three – Watchtower is Empty
It had taken him the better part of two days, but Oliver made it back to Metropolis. Lexcorp men had seized their plane, which forced him to take other steps. He'd realized during the fight at 33.1 that the Lexcorp security forces were tracking them through their own Comm units, so he'd dumped his and slipped away in the confusion when they turned their full attention on Boy Scout. He felt bad leaving his team behind, but he needed to get back and check on Chloe. Together, they'd find a way to get the others out.
He hadn't shaved in two days, and a bottle of hair coloring had left his normally golden locks a muddy brown. He'd stashed his costume and weapons, traded a hundred dollars to a street person for his ratty boots and a long trench coat with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.
Peering out from the end of an alley, he decided that the coast was clear. He crossed to a pay phone on the corner and picked it up. He called Chloe again. Still no answer. He put in another coin and called Lois at the Planet. Voice mail.
"Lois," he said after the beep, "it's your old boyfriend. I'm in trouble. Be very careful. I'll get in touch with you soon." He hung up and started moving, taking a moment to check over his shoulder, hoping to slip into the darkness of the Metropolis night. The darkness was his friend.
He made his way to Watchtower, criss-crossing through the Metropolis streets, ever watchful for a tail. When he'd finally convinced himself that there was indeed no one following him, he made his way into Chloe's building and up to the top. The damage from the explosion that had breached the doors was obvious. He flattened himself against the wall and peeked inside.
The stained glass window on the far wall had been shattered as well. Judging from the the spread of the glass across the floor inside, someone had crashed in, not out. He slipped inside and scanned the room again. Nothing. His eyes moved over the monitor. It was dark, but the lights were on. Maybe Chloe had trashed the system, or the invaders had.
His eyes continued on until they found the overturned chair. The chair didn't bother him so much as the obvious pool of dried blood. His heart clenched in his chest. Chloe. He stumbled once as he moved to the chair. The cloth of the chair was also covered in blood. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. He leaned on the edge of a nearby desk to help support him.
He'd been training himself for years to be the Green Arrow, and for the last three he'd been out on the streets. Those instincts, honed to near enough a razor's edge, told him then that he wasn't alone. He'd checked the room, twice. How did he miss the intruder? He regretted having hidden his costume and weapons. His eyes fell upon a Bic pen, without a cap laying on the desk. He slowly turned, palming the pen as he did. It wasn't much of a weapon, but better than nothing.
He was surprised when his eyes fell upon the empty doorway. There was nothing there, no one. Clearly, his nerves were shot. He'd barely slept in the last seventy-two hours. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and set the pen back on the desk and started to move toward the door. "I'll start with MetGen. If Chloe isn't dead, she'll likely be there."
He only managed a single step toward the doorway when a deep, raspy voice came from the shadows behind him. "She's not there. And she's not dead…anymore."
He turned, slowly. Whoever it was, he'd had more than enough time to kill Oliver, or hit him with a tazer, or whatever else he might have wanted to do. He still didn't see anyone, until a large man in a black suit, with a long scalloped black cape stepped forward. His face, all except his mouth and jaw were covered in a black cowl. Oliver simply shook his head. He'd seen the Batman pull that particular trick before, but he still had no idea how he did it.
"You want to tell me what happened here?" Oliver asked, his voice tired.
"A Lexcorp Tactical Team led by Tess Mercer assaulted this place. The young woman who was here at the time was drugged, and eventually shot in the chest by Mercer." Oliver winced at that. He knew Chloe would get better, but the pain must have been excruciating.
"You were here for it?"
"I took out the Tac Team, including Mercer, though I was bit too late on that. By the time I got Miss Sullivan to MetGen and returned, they were gone. No police, so I assume it was another Luthor team."
"Where is Chloe now?"
"Gotham. I returned to collect forensic evidence from her body, only to find that she had a weak, thready pulse, and her wound was almost healed. She's a metahuman." It wasn't a question. Oliver just nodded.
"You should come with me. Luthor has this place under surveillance. He's looking for you."
"I assume," Oliver replied, "since no new Tac Teams have come charging in, that you disabled the surveillance." A tiny smirk, little more than a twitch at the corner of his lips was the Batman's only response.
"I need to get some equipment from my place," Oliver said.
"I emptied out your hidden room earlier this evening. Everything you might need is already loaded up on my plane."
"How did you get past my security system?" Again, the tiny smirk was his only answer.
Oliver was exhausted, but he wasn't about to just let the Batman order him around. At the least, he intended to get some answers. "When I approached you in Gotham last year, you declined to join the League. Why are you here now?"
"I found out about some serious weapons tech being moved through a Luthor subsidiary, through Gotham. I came to Metropolis to investigate. I found a safe in Tess Mercer's office, hidden under a false portion of the floor. There was a file, a plan for the assault on this place. I came over to stop it."
"You took my equipment from my place? How did you know who I was?"
"It wasn't all that hard to find out, once I started digging. Not you, nor any of the others, Stone, Kent, Allen. Lance, Curry, Sullivan." Oliver sighed. He'd thought their secrets were well hidden. Clearly, not well enough to keep them from the Batman.
"So, what now?"
"You come back to Gotham with me. Between the two of us and Miss Sullivan, we come up with a plan to retrieve your team."
"Does this mean you're with us now?"
"It means, nothing good can come from them being held by Lex Luthor. Anything else we can discuss later. Now, let's move." The Batman had a motorcycle hidden in an alleyway a block over. It was one tricked out ride. Any other time, Ollie would have loved to give it a go himself. On this night, he just climbed on behind the Bat and held on.
Ten minutes later they were outside Metropolis and flying, at over 120 mph. It didn't take long to figure out where they were headed. The plane he'd mentioned was hidden in the field behind the Kent barn. It had two seats in the cockpit, though Ollie's seat in the back was a bit cramped. There was enough of a storage space in the back for the bike to be rolled right in, almost as if it had been designed that way.
Two minutes later they were rising straight up from the ground on jets of air. VTOL. Ollie was impressed. And then they were rocketing east toward Gotham at near enough 1,500 mph. The trip took less than thirty minutes, and Ollie slept through three quarters of it.
