AN: This update is long overdue; I'm so very sorry for the delay. My real life schedule is such a bother =/
Also haven't had time to respond to reviews lately, but I will get on that ASAP. You guys continue to wow me with your overwhelming support. Thank you :)
We'll be seeing a lot more of Oliver's POV from here on, with maybe a few exceptions here and there. I hope y'all don't mind too much. As always, I'm very eager to hear your thoughts!
XOXO hlee
Oliver stared at the label for longer than was necessary, feeling his pulse jump in his throat at its implications.
"What is this?" he asked, unwilling to open the folder just yet.
"That's everything I have on Alan Smoak," Waller replied matter-of-factly.
"Lyla said there was no A.R.G.U.S. file on him."
"She was correct," she replied. "Any mentioning of his name in A.R.G.U.S. records has either been permanently redacted, or the file removed altogether. Mr. Smoak saw to that personally before his unexpected departure."
He looked away from the name to narrow his eyes at Amanda. "Then where did these come from?"
She set her briefcase on the floor and took the folder from his hands. "This is my own personal file on him. One I started long before he disappeared, and have maintained in the years since," she answered, flipping through some of the contents.
"I had suspicions about his questionable allegiances for years. Unfortunately, those doubts fell on deaf ears. My predecessor had a soft spot for Smoak, entertaining his wild ideas and fantastical projects. He had transformed our software programming and digital defense system, making it virtually impenetrable. Because of that, my superiors turned a blind eye. But I saw through him, saw him for the traitor that he was." Pride had seeped into her tone, momentarily high jacking her otherwise bored recall of events.
"I found evidence that he'd been programming in secret on a personal, nonregistered computer which was against one of our strictest regulations. My investigation garnered me an official reprimand for delving into matters beyond my pay grade. The next time, when I found his digital fingerprints on an encoded message between two Russian generals, I took my evidence straight to the Vice President. I was told the matter would be looked into discreetly, but the next thing I knew, I was being reassigned to Hong Kong."
Oliver's eyebrows shot up, to which Waller smiled sardonically in response. "That's right, Mr. Queen. You were my punishment for trying to expose Alan Smoak. Life's little ironies can be quite funny, can't they?" But she didn't sound amused in the slightest.
"Nevertheless, it must have brought the wrong kind of attention to him because it wasn't long after that he'd gone, wiping his existence from our records and taking with him very dangerous, very damaging knowledge. My predecessor was removed from his position and I was promoted. It was made clear to me from day one, however, that finding Smoak was not a priority. My new duties at A.R.G.U.S. prevented me from pursuing him with any fervor, but I still maintained an open, non-computerized file on him.
"In the years since, Alan became a ghost. He's been spotted in random places across the globe, leaving his insignia on programs and firewall systems from Kazakhstan to Chile, all the while countering the counter-intelligence practice that he'd helped build. Rumors spread about a man who commanded the computer cosmos, who could hack into any system to commandeer it, or defend it. He held no allegiance to any government, selling his services to the highest bidder, and going by the name translated from the binary code of his digital fingerprint."
"Mordecai," Oliver guessed. Amanda nodded.
"Of course, knowing that Mordecai and Smoak were one in the same didn't make finding him any easier. I had several bait-and-switch contingencies at play, but we hit a stroke of luck two years ago when we intercepted a letter intended for Alan's one and only daughter. Posing as Felicity, several letters were sent back and forth, though the return address – a PO Box - always changed. I was close though, I could feel it.
"But then I received a text message on my personal phone from an untraceable number stating that if anything were to ever happen to him or his daughter, he had set in place a series of failsafe operations that would leave A.R.G.U.S. crippled beyond repair. I didn't doubt his ability to do so. Especially now that we have reason to believe that he's planning something to that effect, something that could disrupt every operating system on the planet."
"Where's that information coming from?" Oliver asked.
"I had someone on the inside," she answered, causing all the blood in Oliver's face to drain at once. "Before you let your imagination get the better of you, it's not Felicity. Though in hindsight, it would have been a good plan." Oliver breathed out a sigh of relief, thanking God that Waller hadn't thought to enlist Felicity in her cause.
"My bait-and-switch finally paid off. Smoak has built himself an impressive following of like-minded individuals. He recruited one of my sleeper agents, who was able to send several short communications regarding a 'plague to end all plagues.' And plans to move their base of operations. The last communication we received was shortly before Felicity went missing."
Oliver felt his anger rising as he considered this. "So you still have no idea where he is?"
"Do you think I'd be here if I didn't?" she asked, pulling a document from the folder and handing it to him. It was an aerial photograph of what looked like a compound. "This small island appeared on our satellite last night."
He studied the photograph for several seconds, already memorizing the layout. "Why hadn't you seen it before? Ray Palmer has a satellite, too. If Felicity was here, it would've found her already," he argued, despite the tendrils of hope that were forming inside of him.
"We believe it's cloaked, somehow shielded from satellite photography and thermography. We only had it in sight for six seconds."
He handed the photograph back to her, a disconcerting feeling rising. "Why haven't you raided it yet?"
"The situation is delicate, to say the least. If Smoak's threats are sound, sanctioning an official raid could have repercussions that I cannot risk at this time."
Oliver crossed his arms, recognizing Waller's conniving tactics clearly. "Meaning you don't want the blame if all goes to hell."
She smiled cynically in response. "Regardless, A.R.G.U.S. won't go in. I have orders to handle it remotely," she told him, her implications obvious.
"You're going to bomb it." Oliver felt suddenly sick, tasting bile at the back of his throat when he knew he'd guessed correctly. "Amanda-"
"I need you to understand the sensitive nature of this operation, Oliver. Should you go in, there can be no links back to A.R.G.U.S., or any government for that matter. Meaning no police, no moonlighting D.A.s, no Lyla Michaels or the father of her child. Do you understand? If I give you the location of this base, it can only be you."
He turned away slightly, rubbing his palm over his jaw. He wasn't a fool, he knew Waller was manipulating him for some ulterior reason, but he failed to see a different way. John and the others would be adamantly against it, he knew. But if getting Felicity back meant momentarily shaking hands with the devil, it was a price he was willing to pay.
"How do I know Felicity is even there?" he asked several moments later, imagining the possibility of going to a painted target only to find that it had all been for nothing.
She'd anticipated his question, pulling the last sheet from the back of the folder and handing it over. It was a grainy photograph, the image distorted by advanced focusing from a far off lens. Despite that, Oliver could easily make out who was pictured.
"Felicity."
There was no sign of Johnny or Sara when Lyla entered their home, but she could hear her fiancé's deep voice coming from the nursery. She deposited her bag on the counter top and mindlessly flipped through the mail she'd just picked up downstairs, fully aware that she was delaying the same conversation that greeted her every evening after work. The past couple of months had been hard on Johnny, and watching the disappointment on his face every time she came home with no information on Alan Smoak or Felicity had become all too painful.
And now that she did have news, Lyla wasn't so sure which she actually preferred. She had no idea how to share with him what she'd learned.
With a sigh, she left the mail in the kitchen and made her way to the nursery. Johnny was singing softly to Sara, rocking her gently back and forth in his arms, his back toward the door. Heart swelling at the sight, she leaned against the doorframe, happy to watch her family for a few perfect moments. She'd never know what she did right to be so blessed, but she thanked God every day for smiling upon them anyway.
He laid Sara down in her crib, finishing the last few lines of the song as Lyla approached to look over her sleeping daughter. She ran a hand lightly over her still hairless head, letting out a hum of contentment as Johnny wrapped an arm around Lyla and kissed the top of her head. She smiled and kissed him back, which he quickly broke away from to search her face with intense eyes.
"What's happened?" he asked, sensing rightly that today was different somehow. She motioned for him to follow her out of the room. She walked over to her briefcase on the kitchen island, keeping her back to him as she opened its flap and found the document she needed. "Lyla, what is it? Did you find something on Smoak?"
She left the document face down on the counter and turned around to face him. She gripped the edge of the island behind her, letting it support most of her weight. "We found him, Johnny. Well, A.R.G.U.S.' satellite did actually. There was no keeping it quiet this time. His compound is now a priority target."
"Where? Is Felicity with him?! Priority target for what?" Lyla could plainly see he had more questions, but was limiting them to the most important for now.
"A small island off the coast of southern Japan. He's got a small army stationed there in the ruins of an old mining colony. It's a fortress, physically and virtually – there's a sea wall around it. And we have intelligence that he's planning a cyber-terrorist attack. They're going to take it out."
He began pacing the length of the kitchen, tension setting into his entire fame. "We can't risk being crippled by what he's got planned," she added, starting her defense before he could mount his argument.
"So what's A.R.G.U.S.' plan then? Nuke the entire island? Felicity could be there, Lyla!" She flinched at his words. Sliding the document off the counter behind her, she held it at her side and braced for what would follow.
"Not 'could be,' Johnny. Felicity is there. Working alongside her father."
He stopped pacing at once, fixing anxious eyes on Lyla. "No way that's true."
She held out the document toward him. He eyed it warily before accepting and met her serious expression with one of his own before dropping his eyes. His eyebrows pulled together in confusion as his grip tightened on the photograph she'd given him – the satellite image of one Felicity Smoak walking freely along the grounds, tablet in hand.
"This isn't right," he finally deduced out loud. "She wouldn't work for him willfully. Something else is going on here. He threatened her, or someone else-"
"It doesn't matter," she interrupted, shaking her head.
"The hell it doesn't!"
Lyla took a deep breath. "It doesn't matter to A.R.G.U.S. Even if they could somehow be convinced that she is there as a hostage, despite the fact that she's obviously free to move about the compound, and the fact that she has in her hands there the ability to contact someone on the outside… they've already considered her collateral damage."
"I don't accept that, Lyla! You get on the phone, go back to headquarters, do whatever you have to do to delay this. At least until Oliver and I can get her out," he demanded, remembering Sara in the next room and lowering his voice toward the end.
"And how do you plan on doing that?" she shot back, taking a step forward. "I told you, it's a fortress, Johnny! This guy has enough guns to arm a small country. And enough tech at his disposal to make A.R.G.U.S. and the NSA sweat. He'd see you coming twenty miles away."
He lowered his head, staring at the ground between them. "No way this plays out with Oliver not at least attempting to get to Felicity first," he told her calmly.
Unless you don't tell him, she thought and guilt immediately seized her. She knew he'd never agree to that, knew also that she couldn't live with keeping this from Oliver either. "I know. And that's what scares me. Because you'll go, too. Just like he did when you broke me out of prison."
"Felicity went, too," he whispered. Lyla blinked away tears and let out a shaky breath. "It might be too late. By the time the news reached me, Waller was already gone," she warned, hoping to prepare him for the worst.
He pulled out his phone. "I gotta call Oliver," he said, putting it to his ear at the same time someone knocked at their door. He raised his eyebrow in question and she shrugged, moving to look through the peephole.
"Oliver," she greeted, opening the door wide enough for Johnny to see. He pulled the phone away from his ear. "I was just calling you. Lyla has news."
Lyla tried and failed to read Oliver's expression upon hearing John's words. Instead of surprise or excitement at the prospect of new information, he just looked…resolved? Determined, perhaps. And also like he'd aged ten years in the 3 days since she'd seen him last. All of which she mentally catalogued just before seeing another figure behind him in the hall. "I do, too," he said, stepping into the apartment and out of the way to allow Amanda Waller to follow him in.
"What's she doing here, Oliver?" John asked, not attempting to hide his consternation at the sight of Lyla's boss in their home.
"I assumed, and it seems correctly," Waller began, nodding toward the satellite photograph on the island. "that Agent Michaels wouldn't be able to resist sharing this highly classified intelligence with you, Mr. Diggle. So I suggested to Oliver here that we might as well join you while you plot to thwart a top secret government-sanctioned mission," she said icily, cutting her eyes toward Lyla.
Lyla didn't try to deny it, or defend herself, instead raised her chin slightly and closed the door behind them.
"Waller, you can't bomb that island," Johnny stated, drawing her attention away from Lyla. "Felicity is there," he directed at Oliver's back.
Lyla watched him carefully after his entrance as he'd walked straight to the refrigerator to look over the pictures they had secured there with magnets. His eyes lingered on the one he himself had taken in the hospital the night Sara was born. In it, Lyla was sitting up in the hospital bed, flanked on one side by Johnny leaning over her, and the other by Felicity, who sat at the edge of the bed smiling down at the baby she cradled in her arms. Lyla saw his Adam's apple dip as he stared at the picture she knew he'd seen at least a 100 times since it was taken. His hands opened and closed several times before he buried them into his pockets.
"I know," he replied to Johnny several seconds later. "I'm going after her."
Though Lyla already knew this would be his course of action, her heart still sank at the words. "So you called off the attack?" John asked Waller, but Lyla already knew the answer.
"That call is coming from the very top of the chain of command, I'm afraid. The best I could do was buy 72 more hours," she answered, not meeting his or anyone else's eyes. Lyla had crossed her arms, regarding Waller suspiciously.
"Why?" she blurted. Waller met her suspicious eyes with a sharp glare of her own.
"You'd do well to accept this offer without wasting valuable time trying to flesh out my motivations. The delay is only that, and it's far from a guaranteed successful extraction. Three days from now I will blow that island off the map, with or without Oliver on it. No one outside this room will know of his presence there. Should things go badly, to the rest of the world, and my superiors, it will appear as if Oliver Queen vanished into the same thin air as his ex-secretary. The tabloids will eat it up."
She let that resonate among them, glancing from Lyla to John, before moving back toward the front door. "This is where I leave you," she announced, passing by Lyla. She opened the door and paused in its wake. "And if I find out that you've so much as breathed a word of this to anyone, I won't hesitate to orphan your little girl."
She looked toward Lyla once more over her shoulder, conveying her sincerity before leaving the apartment.
Lyla's eyes met John's, unspoken words and promises passing between them in milliseconds.
"So what's your plan, Oliver?" he asked him, causing Oliver to turn away from the refrigerator and face them. "You can't parachute in undetected."
"And if you approach from the mainland, you've got trained guns and nine miles of sea between you and Felicity," Lyla added, moving to stand next to Johnny and taking his hand. Oliver nodded his agreement to both, glancing down at the satellite image on the counter between them. A ghost of a smile passed over his face so quickly that Lyla thought she'd imagined it.
"Good thing we know someone who can walk on water."
Oliver sprinted across the beach, loose sand spraying around his feet which soles' were barely given enough time to plant, let alone gather particles, at his current speed. His legs burned in a familiar feeling of exertion not unlike the countless times he'd found himself running for his life on Lian Yu. After undergoing years of the exercise, he'd begun to relish in the burn of his muscles, using it as fuel and strength to go even faster, even further.
He harnessed it now, for just as those times before, Oliver was again on an island, it had to be an island, running for his life. Running toward Felicity.
As such, it still would've been convenient if Barry had been able to go further than the beach. Four hours after meeting with Waller at Lyla and Diggle's, Oliver and Barry made it to the small piece of land where Smoak's compound was located, shedding thirteen hours off what would have been the normal travel time. But once arriving on the beach, Barry, with Oliver in tow, had collapsed in a flurry of limbs and sand, his superhuman ability rendered powerless upon reaching the border.
There hadn't been time to theorize as to why, Oliver instead ordering Barry off the island. "I can still help you!" Barry had argued.
"No offense, Barry, but you'll only slow me down now." He hadn't waited for his response.
The compound consisted of a dozen or so dilapidated buildings, once serving as apartment complexes, grocery stores, and restaurants to the island's 5,000 occupants in the 1950's. A few of the structures had since collapsed in on the themselves, littering the ground with concrete and rusted rebar; the rest were overgrown with vegetation crawling up the walls and into the windows, where some furniture could still be seen through the open gaps.
For half a century it had remained a ghost island, eerily harboring the remains of a once bustling civilization. Oliver nearly ran right into a child's tricycle, in the last second jumping over where it stood on a cracked sidewalk, as if its owner vanished suddenly during his afternoon play.
Among the ruins, five buildings stood out in stark contrast from the rest. They were obviously newer than the rest, structurally sound, and had electricity operational throughout. They were of various shapes and sizes situated in the center of the island. The northern most building was larger than the rest and several stories high, Oliver guessed that it served as a sort of housing unit for the unknown population residing there now. The building in the dead center of them all was smaller in area, but at least 400 feet taller than the others. It reminded Oliver of a cross between a light house and a prison watch tower. That was Oliver's goal, having assumed it served as the base's eyes and ears.
His approach was hidden under cover of darkness as he halted, placing his back flush against the wall of one of the smaller adjacent buildings to scan the area. A clicking sound was heard behind him and he turned to see an armed guard lighting a cigarette as he rounded a corner. Oliver silently made his way to the man, who stood facing the black line of water extending past the beach. Oliver grabbed his rifle from where it rested against his side attached by a strap on his arm and pinned it across the man's throat, subsequently restricting his right arm by the strap.
"Where's Felicity Smoak?!" he growled through the modulator. The guard gurgled and coughed, dropping his cigarette at his feet as he reached to relieve some of the pressure at his throat. Oliver tightened his hold. "Answer me!"
Coughing again he barely managed to breathe out his response. "Watch…tower." Oliver then relieved him of consciousness, catching the brunt of his weight before letting him hit the ground. He dragged his body further into the shadows, ridding him of his weapons before moving back to check on the clearing.
Deciding it was now or never, he sprinted across the most exposed area of the island, reaching the side door and using the guard's magnetic key card to gain entrance.
Inside was pitch black, Oliver drew his bow and waited for his eyes to adjust. He was just barely able to make out another door immediately in front of him, which he opened to reveal a circular room. The familiar humming of computer processors reached his ears as he entered the room, alit by the bank of screens lining the circumference of the area.
Oliver approached one of them cautiously, hoping a cursory glance might determine the nature of the ongoing programs. He leaned in closer, bow dipping forward slightly with him, and heard the light footfall behind him a second too late. Followed by a voice that simultaneously halted whatever defensive maneuvers he would have mounted and froze his heart on the spot.
"You have a gun pointed at the base of your skull. You so much as flinch and I'll pull the trigger."
