A little chapter to get us from A to B…

Chapter Four

Oliver awoke with a gasp as consciousness returned. His five years away meant there was no such thing as a slow awakening. He either slept or he was on alert.

Oliver tried to sit up and was immediately pressed back into the bed by a hand on his chest. His instant reaction was to fight it, but a familiar voice stopped him.

"Don't," Digg said.

Oliver took in several things at once. He was in the hospital. He was drugged far more than he found acceptable. Digg was there and Felicity was not.

"Felicity." It wasn't a question and Digg immediately understood.

"They took her and disappeared."

"They used her as a hostage to get away?"

Digg shook his head. "No, they got away clean, Oliver." And the way he said it made Oliver's stomach clench. "Michaels had an escape tunnel out of the mansion. Paranoid bastard. His assistant told them about it trying to get rid of them. Apparently, Michaels was terrified the Hood would come for him one day."

"Why Felicity?"

"They weren't there for you or Michaels. I heard them talking. Oliver, they were there for her."

All of the air left Oliver's lungs and he barely managed to eke out, "What?"

"They'd been following her, looking for a way to take her when no one would notice, but one of us was always with her. Seems they're on a time table. When they got wind of the meeting, they decided it was their last chance. There are too many people at Queen Consolidated and we've been working so hard she hadn't even been home in a couple of days. They didn't know about the panic room, though."

"Then why did they have the explosives?"

"They were going to take her and blow up the rest of us to cover their tracks, make it look like an attack on the evil corporate bigwigs. Nobody would have noticed there weren't enough body parts. The police wouldn't have even known Felicity was missing."

Oliver closed his eyes, guilt washing over him. He was the one who'd opened the door. He was the one who'd practically handed Felicity over to them.

"Before you beat yourself up too bad," Digg cut into his thoughts, "I gotta thank you for saving my life. They were gonna blow my head off if you hadn't opened that door. I kinda pissed 'em off when I took out a couple of their guys."

Oliver pursed his lips. He was always being given impossible choices. Save one friend, lose another. Stop one bad guy, while the other one runs off to create chaos elsewhere. Sometimes he felt like he'd never left the island. Worse, he felt like he'd brought the island home with him. There were no good choices, just disaster management, trying to keep the catastrophes to a confined area. There was no rest, no peace to be had, just one lose-lose situation after the next.

"You ok?" Oliver asked, realizing he'd forgotten to even inquire about his friend.

Digg grunted. "Roughed up, but better than you."

"How long have I been out?" Oliver glanced around and saw he was still in the ER, rather than being given his own room. He was shirtless and he had fresh bandages over his wounds. He had an IV attached, an oximeter and a blood pressure cuff, but that was it.

"Not long. You were relatively stable and there are several more serious gunshot wounds in the other rooms, Michael's security people and his assistant," Digg said by way of explanation for their being alone. "For once you were lower on the priority list. They won't be long though. One of the nurses will be back any minute."

Oliver easily grasped his meaning. They needed to be gone before someone came back to check on him. They couldn't afford the delay of the doctors trying to make him stay. If he could get back to Verdant, he could get to his supply of herbs as well as his own medical supplies. A quick patch-up job was all they had time for.

Oliver made quick work of the leads attached to him and the IV while Digg turned off the machines so the alarms wouldn't sound. Oliver then half rolled, half pushed himself into a sitting position, letting his legs fall over the side of the gurney. This time Digg didn't stop him. Oliver looked up, and saw the same desperation on his friend's face that he was feeling.

"Any idea where they took her? Or why?" He was breathing too hard with the effort of sitting up, but he couldn't let it stop him. Some things were too important. She was too important to let an injury stop him.

"No clue. And they left behind everything Felicity had a tracker on."

Oliver shifted forward to put his feet on the floor. The movement was excruciating and he had to wonder how bad it would be if he weren't medicated. As so often happened, Digg seemed to understand. He put an arm beneath Oliver's and helped him stand.

Digg had apparently been preparing for their escape. He produced a scrub shirt and helped Oliver pull it over his head. It wouldn't do anything to cover his blood-stained dress slacks, but it was better than nothing.

"Like I said, I took out a couple of their guys." Digg turned and peeked through the curtain that was acting as a screen. "If we can get pictures of the bodies, I can run them through Felicity's facial recognition software, maybe figure out who they are and why they took her."

"Sounds like a plan. Where are the bodies?"

Digg pointed. "Two cubicles down. I'd have already done it, but I had to disable the security cameras first." He held up a hand in a fist, his military training showing back up as it often did in these situations. Oliver saw someone in police uniform walk past, then Digg gestured again for them to move.

Oliver fell in behind him, moving as fast as he could in his state. The ER was in a full flurry of movement, doctors and nurses hustling back and forth between several rooms that were closer to the main ER doors. Several policemen were standing around as well, but their eyes were on what was happening closer to them thankfully.

Digg ducked into a curtained room and Oliver followed. There were two men lying on gurneys, one with gunshot wounds and the other with a broken neck.

"Your work?" Oliver asked.

"Yup."

"Good," Oliver growled.

"Not good enough," Digg replied. He shook his head, his expression filled with self-recrimination. "They still got past me. They got to you and they took Felicity. That was on my watch."

Oliver put a hand on his friend's shoulder. This wasn't Digg's fault. This was Oliver's fault. He'd been right next to Felicity when she'd been shot. He was the one who'd opened the panic room door and let them get past him. "You did the best you could, Digg."

"That supposed to make me feel better?" Digg shot him a disbelieving glance.

Oliver shook his head. "We can both talk about how bad we are at our jobs later. Right now, we focus on getting Felicity back. You want a hug, you're going to have find her. That's her job in this outfit."

Digg looked like he wasn't sure whether or not to be annoyed, but he finally pulled his phone out of his pocket and started taking photos of the dead men's faces.

Just as he was putting his phone away, they heard a voice, louder than the rest of the clamor. "Where is he? Did someone move Queen?" Oliver couldn't hear a response because there were suddenly a lot more voices all talking at once.

Digg pointed to a door just across the way. "You see that door?" He waited for Oliver to nod. "It leads out of here into the rest of the hospital. You go down the hall, take two lefts then a right. I'll be waiting with the car."

"Two lefts, then a right," Oliver repeated.

"Time's a-wasting." Digg eyed him suspiciously. "Don't fall down. Think you can manage that?"

"The longer you stand here, the higher the odds I pass out. Go."

Oliver waited several seconds after Digg left, then dared a glance outside the curtain to see if the coast was clear. Whatever reason the men had taken Felicity was time sensitive. That meant he and Digg were on the clock, too. As soon as they had what they needed from Felicity, there would be no need for them to keep her alive.

Oliver couldn't do his job without her, either job. She'd insinuated her way into nearly every aspect of his life. He wasn't going to give that up any time soon, not ever if he could help it. Too many times now, his team's only non-combatant had been dragged into battle. Each time he'd made the men pay who'd dared to touch her. This time would be no different.

Oliver braced himself to move. After another glance to ensure the coast was clear, he was through the door, moving as fast as he could.

Oliver finished wrapping the ace bandages around his waist. They would hold the gauze underneath in place, keep pressure on the wounds which were still relatively dry thanks to the hemostatic powder. The bandages would also give him some extra support since there was no time to be stitched up properly.

He turned to see Digg sitting in Felicity's chair and just the sight of it hit Oliver like a ton of bricks. That was her chair, her space, her domain and she was gone.

Oliver limped toward him. "Anything?" It sounded harsh even to his own ears.

Digg sighed and ran a hand over his face. "I'm trying. I'm just not as good with computers as she is. I need…" He trailed off and Oliver nodded in agreement.

"We need Felicity."

"Near as I can figure it, the two dead guys were part of 'The Movement.' Felicity's been keeping tabs on them ever since that Shrapnel guy tried to blow up Alderman Blood's rally. It looks like there's been some extra activity in the past couple of weeks."

Oliver remembered her mentioning the anti-government militia group when they'd been dealing with the bombings, but he'd been more concerned with stopping the man from blowing up the rally than with his political affiliations or with the rest of his group of angry bloggers.

"What kind of activity?"

"Mostly, it looks like they were making arrangements for a meeting to discuss things in person. People coming in from all over the place, coming here to Starling. Whatever they're planning, they didn't want a record of it online. It can't be good."

"Can we find out who the other people are who were going to be at the meeting?" Oliver asked.

"Give me a minute." Digg frowned and kept pecking at the keyboard. Oliver simply continued to stare over Digg's shoulder, hoping he could glare the computers into submission.

Suddenly a new window opened on the screen and Digg held his hands up defensively. "I didn't do that."

"What is it?" Oliver leaned closer.

"It's coordinates and… Hang on…" He trailed off, typing as fast as he could manage. A few seconds later, Digg smiled for the first time since Oliver had woken up in the hospital. "Felicity. It has to be. Our girl found a way to send us a message."

Oliver felt a fresh surge of adrenaline begin to pump into his system. He needed to hit something and hopefully Felicity was about to oblige with a target. "Where are the coordinates to?"

Digg kept typing and finally a spot pulled up on the map. "That's Blood's office, Oliver. Looks like they want to finish the job." Digg frowned. "But there's a time here, too, and it says 'Diversion.' Let me look at the link she sent." He clicked on it and immediately swore. Oliver looked over his shoulder and saw a short article, little more than a blurb saying Mark Scheffer, better known as Shrapnel, their friendly neighborhood bomber, was being transferred from Iron Heights to a different facility. "They're going to blow up the offices to tie up all the law enforcement in the area and then break their buddy out before he's transferred."

"What's the time in the message?" Oliver asked.

"1530."

Oliver looked at one of the monitors to check the time. It was 3 o'clock. Blood's campaign offices would still be full of workers. They had half an hour to stop these people from killing them all as a diversion.

"Call Lance," Oliver said. "Let the police handle the bomb threat. Can you tell where Felicity sent the message from?"

"Maybe. You call Lance while I work on it." Oliver heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, "Jackass thinks I can multitask like an MIT grad."

Oliver made the call to Lance in the guise of his alter ego, giving him the bare basics while he watched Digg typing, frowning and occasionally swearing. Oliver hung up with Lance, immediately putting that part of this mess out of his mind. The police and the bomb squad would have to earn their money today. He and Digg had their own problems.

Finally, Digg let out a noise Oliver took as triumphant. He pulled a location up on the map and pointed. "She's in a warehouse not far from Iron Heights, or at least she was when she sent the message. My guess is they're using her to hack the prison's security."

"Why her?" Oliver asked, newly furious that of all people they chose to take Felicity. "Why go to all of this trouble? She's not the only hacker in town."

Digg stood up and checked the clip on his gun, one of his default pre-battle rituals. "At this point, does it matter?"

"No." Oliver shook his head. "Let's go. We can be there in a few minutes."

Digg cocked his head to one side, frowning. "What about Shrapnel, Oliver?"

"I don't care," Oliver said through gritted teeth. "Let him escape and we'll catch him again later. Felicity comes first."

"You think it's that easy?" Digg demanded. "You think she'll forgive us if they kill some of the guards to get him out and we ignored it to save her instead? What if Shrapnel manages to set off a bomb once he's out and kill innocent people before we catch him again? She'll think it's her fault, Oliver. She expects better of us. More. She'll expect us to fix all this."

Oliver's jaw hurt it was clenched so tightly. "And if they kill her and dump her body while we're trying to stop a jail break? I am not giving them another second with her." He knew exactly how high Felicity's expectations were for him and how disappointed she was when they, he, failed. He could handle her disappointment as long as she was alive to voice it.

Digg ran a hand over his close-cropped hair in frustration. "She's given us a jump on them. We just have to get to them before they make their move." He, too, looked at the clock. "The bomb's set for 3:30, so the prison break must be for shortly after that. We get to them first and take them by surprise."

Oliver glanced at his hood, but shook his head. It was broad daylight. The hood would draw more attention than they could afford and they couldn't wait for the cover of darkness this time. He couldn't. If someone saw Oliver Queen doing very un-billionaire type things, then so be it. Felicity was more important. "Let's go."

More soon…