The next day, Felicity spent the entire morning trying to figure out what to do. It wasn't a matter of whether or not she'd investigate any further - she needed to in order to both sate her curiosity and to make sure her secret was safe. No, it was more a matter of how than should.

It was Friday, which meant that Verdant would be open and booming. She'd be able to sneak in, hack around, and get out without raising too much suspicion. The only drawback was that it would put her right in the middle of the proverbial lion's den.

There was also the problem of not having anyone to go with or anything to even wear. Slightly less important in the scheme of things, but still very important.

Felicity sighed and decided to look back over the finished encryption code one last time to try and clear her head, chewing on her red pen as she did so. Coding was the usual mechanism she turned to when she needed to clear her head and figure something out.

It was only a few minutes later when she heard the sound of someone clearing their throat, "Felicity Smoak?"

She looked up from the computer screen, pen still resting on her lip, and saw two men standing in the doorway. One had arm muscles the size of her head, clearly visible even beneath the tailored suit. He stood partially behind the other man, the one who'd called her name.

Not waiting for any confirmation, the man continued on, "Hello, I'm Oliver. I was sent to check on the encryption project you were assigned."

"Well, that's a first. Usually no one can be bothered to come down here and check me out. Not that you're, ya know, checking me out - checking me out. You're just checking out my skills ... hacking skills. Not sex skills. I'm not propositioning you, I swear," Felicity took a deep breath and counted backwards in her head, "I am actually finished writing the code. Just looking it over one last time."

He nodded, a tight smile pulled across his face. He let out a breathy laugh before pulling a chair over and settling himself down. The second man remained standing behind him, arms still crossed and face still serious. Felicity felt the odd sensation of bad cop - good cop.

Trying to do her best to ignore the two men, Felicity turned back to the code. That lasted a minute until, "So, Miss Smoak -"

"Felicity," She corrected, out of habit.

"Felicity," He corrected with a short nod, "How long have you been working here?"

"A few years," Felicity said, "I came here straight out of M.I.T."

He nodded, "Impressive. And far away. Do you have family here?"

"Uh, no?" Felicity said, beginning to transfer the file to an external hard drive, "Just a great job opportunity and good weather."

The computer let out a little ding that let her know it was done transferring files. Ejecting the drive, she held it out to him, "Here it is. One high level encryption, hold the viruses." She chuckled slightly at her joke, pleased to see tall, dark, and muscles actually cracked a smile. Oliver, on the other hand, just raised an eyebrow at her, "Sorry. I'm a dork. Anyways, here's the code. Everything should work fine, but let them know if they have any problems they know where to find me."

"I will let them know," Oliver stood up and took the drive from her hand.

"Nice ring," Felicity said. It was dark gold and ornate, two crisscrossing patterns going up the sides to meet in the middle, where a red stone was set - transparent and glasslike.

"Thanks," he shoved both the hand and the drive into his pocket, "It's a family heirloom."

She nodded, "Sure thing. See you around."

Oliver turned to exit, but as he did so somehow managed to knock over a cup of pens that was sitting on the corner of her desk.

"Ah," Felicity called out as she tried to catch a few as they all tumbled to the ground.

She was already scooping them all up by the time Oliver apologized, "My apologies. I'm not usually that clumsy."

"Well, I am," Felicity chuckled, craning her neck and to lol at him, "Wow you're like, really tall. Especially from down here. I mean ... uh, don't worry about knocking these over. It's fine. I've got you ... it. This. The pens. I can pick up the pens."

That ramble, at least, got the man to smile. From behind Oliver, muscles did more than smile. He let loose a deep chuckle, nudging the other man with his arm, "I think everything's okay, Oliver. We should head out before you're late for that meeting."

Oliver nodded, heading towards the door, "It was a pleasure meeting you, Felicity."

She called out a breathy, "Yeah," but, they'd already left the little office.

The rest of the day went by quickly after Oliver and his friend (bodyguard?) left her office. Now, it was a little after nine and she'd just made it into Verdant. She'd been in line for 20 minutes, the entire time arguing with herself about whether or not she should just go home. But, she finally made it to the front of the line where a bouncer took a quick glance at her ID before gesturing her in.

Inside, the club was jam-packed with people. The entire place had an industrial feel, with large steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling and low levels of green and blue lights interchanging.

Pulling out her phone, she finished the quick hack into their security cameras - she wouldn't risk messing with them (both for her safety and the clubber's); however, she could use it to avoid having her face seen. Walking over to the far right of the bar, where there was a camera blind spot, she sat up on the high barstool. While waiting for the bartender to make his way over, she searched through the different crisscrossing wireless signals until she found the one that was underneath both the other signals and the club itself (well, beneath the old steel factory, but since it was attached to the club Felicity counted it in.) That would probably be the Vigilante HQ (Arrow cave? Quiver?)

"What can I get for you?" The bartender stepped over, wiping a rag across the metal countertop.

"Mai tai?" Felicity asked, sliding across her (fake) ID.

"Will do, Miss Matthews."

As he made her her drink, Felicity began digging further into the wireless signal to see if there was anything worth finding behind the firewalls and proxies. Overall, the security was okay (it would keep out piddly hackers and bored teens); but, like most things, it was no match for her hacking abilities.

Whatever system they were using was archaic - 80's at best - and she could tell what ever coding they had was top dollar. Though, that meant it was bought (legal or not) and whoever was the coder didn't care about the system in a way that would allow the best protection - the firewalls and security were too cookie-cutter. Of course, that meant that whoever was involved in this whole green-leather-and-arrows scheme was probably not computer savant. Which meant they wouldn't notice her poking around in their system.

She'd managed to down two of the Mai Tais in the time it took her to properly root through their system and see what they'd been up to (it was definitely multiple people).

There were searches currently running (like some high grade RSS feed) for several prominent business men (who were known crooks) and a few running on several of the local crime bosses. There was even a recent search for her name - which would frighten her, but she knew exactly what they would find - nothing. She'd made sure anyone researching her would only find what she wanted them to find.

Deciding she'd done enough sleuthing for one night, she began erasing traces of herself in the system. It wasn't until she was almost completely out that she saw something that caught her eye. Her own coding.

More specifically the coding that she'd hand delivered to Oliver just this morning.

Frack.

a/n: Next chapter up, sorry it took so long, haha.

As usual, shoot me a comment of kudos and let me know what you think!

Next chapter's almost done and will be posted next Sunday. :)

((standard disclaimer still applies: I don't own Arrow, Flash, DC, or any related characters.))