Day 70 of 100

Volume 2, Chapter 35

MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH
(ARGUS designation)

ARGUS HEADQUARTERS

The agent at reception, seeing the three of them forced to wait without being seen to while everyone else attended to the Desert breachers' stand, had eventually offered them coffee, having it brought over to them. As Nora Allen, Moira Queen, and Robert Queen went on talking, it seemed after a while that any sort of pretense between them became pointless. Before they knew it, Nora learned of Oliver and Thea Queen, better known to her as the Flash and Kid Flash, while the Queens were told of Firestorm, also known as Barry Allen, Nora's son.

As the Queens had not set foot on Main until very recently, hadn't even known of their children's heroic endeavors, it was something of a blessing to find themselves in the presence of Nora Allen. While she had not known about the people under the masks, she had been aware of the various interventions of the speedster siblings. She had happily relayed some of those to the stunned parents, feeling many a swelling of pride in their hearts with each additional story.

They had not gotten so friendly as to divulge the fact that neither they nor their children were in fact human. It was by no means out of distrust for the woman who so generously caught them up on their children's stories, but having spent all these years on Earth, they knew the fate that could await certain aliens if they were not careful with their identities. Perhaps in time this would change.

As a whole, Nora Allen would find herself doing most of the talking. When she wasn't telling Robert and Moira about their own children, she would speak of her own son. She knew very little as to what could have led to these powers he had or the transformation that came with it. She had never spoken to Barry directly about the whole thing, though she'd had conversations with Firestorm.

He would speak to her, always with this 'protection' given to him by the fact that she wasn't supposed to know it was him under that head of fire, and she worried he might stop confiding in her if he knew that she knew. Even then, whenever she would try and discover the origin of his powers, he would never actually tell her. He'd say he didn't know, but she could see right through him. He just wouldn't say. Eventually she would just stop trying to get him to say it. Someday, maybe…

The further they'd spoken, they had come to at least put some of Nora's mind at ease. Moira had heard, through Iris, of another situation happening back on the other Earth. If Barry wasn't here on Main, then he had to be out there, with the others. Whether or not this would actually be reassuring, when they didn't know what this other situation was…

"We've been sitting here a long time," Robert spoke slowly after a moment of silence had fallen over them. Under his words was the real statement he couldn't get around to speaking: Something big is going on out there… where our children are. Moira looked down to her cup for a moment, catching her reflection in the last of the liquid it held and feeling as though she could see exhaustion and worry rippling in that cooling coffee.

"Yes, we have," Nora Allen let out a breath, setting her empty cup at her side before getting up to go toward the poor reception agent again. She was ready to give the guy an earful, coffee or no coffee.

But then Iris West came skittering toward them.

"Moira, Robert…" she looked to the pair of them, breathing deep. They got up to their feet at once, knowing… something had happened. Something had happened with their children.

X

As much as they had attempted to minimize the contact with the breachers, eventually there'd been no other way, especially as they had to keep pushing them back to ensure the light would wash over them. There had been many injuries, some of them minor, some not so minor. Five agents had died, and two officers with them. They had done everything they could, and they tried to tell themselves that it could have been so much worse, but how were they going to sell that reasoning to the dead's families?

Among the heroes, the injuries had thankfully been, for the most part, minimal. There'd be some bruises, a few bandages, but nothing that would keep them off their feet for whatever came next… The only ones who'd needed to be rushed back, via Jim Olsen's van once again, had been the Queens.

Thea was still reeling, confused by what was happening with her brother, and still sort of jittery and unbalanced by everything she'd dealt with. The benefit of their being speedsters, a lot of the time, was that they would bounce back a bit faster, heal up a lot of the times, and she was sure that she must have, that this was all mostly in her head. But then her brother… he wasn't coming around yet, was he?

After he'd collapsed out there, as much as they tried, he would not come around. He was out cold, even as they packed him on to Jim Olsen's van and they took off, Thea and Oliver, Jim and Amaya, while the rest of them had stayed behind, tending to the wounded, waiting for their teammates who were still off in Desert Quarter.

The entire drive back to headquarters, Thea kept hold of her brother's hand, giving it a squeeze every other second, hoping he would finally wake up. She'd pulled the mask from his face, needing to see him. Sometimes the smallest static spark would leap from her fingers to his hand, wanting so desperately to see him start to come around. But he hadn't, not yet, and finally they had reached headquarters. The next thing she knew, they were loading him on to a stretcher and wheeling him into the building. She never left his side, and she would have liked to see anyone try and stop her.

The other injured from that morning were just starting to arrive along with them, so it felt like the chaos had rolled in with them. Thea barely paid it any mind. All she could think about was how they might not know how to help him. He wasn't even human, they…

"Thea!" She turned around, the sound of her name carrying more weight still than to realize whose voice this was. She still didn't know her parents' voices that well. But she saw them there, hurrying in their direction, and it filled her with such staggering relief. Her mother reached them first, and it took Thea a moment to realize… Everyone else had slowed to a crawl, except her, and her mother and father… It was the first time she witnessed them actually showing their speed.

When they caught up and slowed back down, Jim, Amaya, and the medics who'd already joined the stretcher's progress, had briefly been startled before they carried on their way.

"What happened?" Robert asked.

"I don't know…" Thea told him. She felt just a bit stronger now that they were here. Was that even possible, after so little time, so much of it spent running around the city? "He was fine one second, being his overprotective big brother self as usual, but then he just… What if they don't know how to help him?" she looked to her parents, not saying aloud what she knew they had to understand.

"If we were back in Haven, we know someone, his name is Wells, he…" Moira started to say, but then she spotted people coming through at the other end of the open area, seeming to have only just come through the crossing room. Going off a brief conversation they'd had when the young woman had visited along with Tommy and the women who were even now accompanying the two of them, she had to wonder…

Thea had hurried over to catch them and bring over to where they were now examining Oliver. Tommy looked to the unconscious speedster with evident concern. He may have only just gotten to know the Queen children, but their parents were the closest thing to family he had and actually liked, and this bonded Oliver and Thea to him, too, half-sibling or not.

"He'll be alright," Felicity told the Queens with confidence. "When I arrived here, I was in a coma, but they took care of me, they nursed me back."

"They might not know how," Thea went on. Ever since she'd learned that she and her family were not human, one of her greatest fears had been… well, this. What if something happened to her that was so different because of what she was?

Felicity looked to the stretcher for a moment. The medics were checking his vitals, attempting to find the source of his ailment… Taking a step forward, she let her eyes take a look through him. There might have been something, a projectile of some sort, or…

"Can you turn him on his side?" she told the medics, who looked to her like they wouldn't.

"Do it," Agent Drake stepped up, and the two sighed, turning Oliver on to his side. Felicity gave her a nod of thanks before moving up.

"There's something here, it's small…" The others grouped in. If she hadn't pointed it out, they might never have seen it. They still had to follow her insistence or it might have looked like a freckle. "You need to be careful, the way it's burrowed in there… you might do more harm than good by taking it out, but if you don't I think he might stay this way."

X

BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER

One of the things Ava Sharpe had come to understand, as she and the rest of the Waverider team would travel from one quarter to another in their day to day dealings, was that sometimes it was best to stand back and let the people of any given city deal with their own problems where they could. They would intervene where they were needed, but beyond that…

Here in Desert, they had done their part. They had brought the device and they had activated it, bringing back those who'd gone and crossed on to Main to cause trouble. Now that they were back, the old woman and her people appeared to have things well under control. Ava had brought Sara back down to the ground, next to where the case still sat on the ground, before letting go of her.

"Not mad about being back on my feet," Sara admitted, and Ava laughed. Sara's hand went to her bandaged side, looking down to make sure she wasn't bleeding again. All was well.

Looking out ahead of them, as the breachers were dealt with by their people, Sara took a breath that felt a lot like relief. Some of them appeared to have been injured, but overall most of them seemed to be alright. Whatever they had done out there, they would be punished as it was fit, but they wouldn't have been sent to their deaths by whoever had set all this in motion… most of them.

Four bodies had been among the returned breachers, each of them clearly dead. They had sort of wondered if the wave would pick up anyone that no longer lived, if any deaths did occur. Now they knew. Four… out of over a hundred… How many deaths had the other side suffered? How many injured? They would find out sooner or later.

"We should head back to Main," Ava told her. Sara turned to look at her, looked down to the case on the ground, looked up to the crossing point. It was still open, wasn't it? They hadn't scrambled it, like the one from War on the first day, but somehow she didn't see it being a problem again. Whatever had been meant to happen had happened.

So they started back for the jump ship. It wasn't until they were back inside and out of the sun that the exhaustion really seemed to kick in. They sat there in their seats in silence for a minute. Ava got up for a moment, returning with water for the both of them.

"Cheers," Sara raised her bottle and Ava did the same. "When this is over," she spoke after another beat of silence. "I'd kind of like to see some of the other quarters out there. Does the Waverider take… guests?"

"Depends on the guest," Ava tipped her head. "If we're going off of accomplishments… I'd say you earned it today."

X

MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH

The appearance of the jump ship in the sky, flying down to land in the field where the breachers had held their ground, filled those who'd stayed in wait with much needed relief. The two women, pilot and passenger both, emerged once again dressed as they'd been before their departure, the Green Arrow and Agent Sharpe rejoining their teams.

"Looking a little red there," Sin declared, her greeting matched with a happy tap to Sara's arm. "Should have put on some sunscreen."

"Glad you're okay, too, Speedy," Sara gave her a smile. "How did it go out here?" she asked then, looking from Sin to Michael, to Cisco and Cynthia. There was no point in putting off the bad part, she needed to know.

"Seven," Michael gave her the answer. "Five agents, two officers." Sara took this in, just as she'd needed to back in Desert. Seven here, four there, but… how many more saved? Those eleven would be mourned, remembered. If they could just have gotten through with everyone alive, that would have been best, but they had done the best they could, and now they had to move forward.

Even as Sara and her team were sharing their sides of the breachers' stand to one another, Ava and hers were doing the same. They told her of the seven lost here, and she told them of the four lost there. She told them how the people in Desert had dealt with the returned breachers, and they told her about the Flash's collapse and how he'd been taken back to headquarters.

"Any word?" Ava asked.

"Not yet," Lucy replied.

"And now that we're done here, I can guess it won't be long before we're back to ferrying breachers back to their quarters," Leonard moved to the jump ship, eager to ensure the jump ship was still in good condition. Ed went to assist him in his diagnostics, leaving the two roommates/agents to talk some more while Quentin went to see his daughter. Sara saw him walk up and excused herself from the others to join him.

They talked briefly, both wanting to know that the other had fared well on their side of things. It was getting to be easier for them to interact in this way, both of them aware the other's secret identity and all that came along with it. When this was all over, when they could actually stop and breathe and be themselves again for longer than the time to get some shut eye, they would get the chance to really talk, but until then… So long as they could touch base, it was all they could ask for.

"Welcome back," Laurel's voice sounded in her ear as she moved off with her team, watching her father head toward the jump ship, and Sara smiled.

"Good to be back," she spoke in all honesty. "Good to hear your voice, too. You did good with that device of yours."

"Might just be the gift that keeps on giving," Laurel informed her. "I've been talking with someone here, Samantha Arias?"

"Yeah, how's she doing?"

"They still don't know about her leg, but she's not letting it slow her down. We've been talking about creating a smaller version, to send breachers back on an individual basis."

"Can you actually do that?" Sara asked, stunned. That would save a lot of time, no doubt.

"Of course," Laurel replied confidently. "Although unless we can send them somewhere specific and not just to the same point in their own quarter then they'll just be roaming and probably just jump back the first chance they get. It's a work in progress."

"I have all the confidence you two will figure it out. I heard about the Flash, anything new there?"

"No. There's something embedded in his neck, they're trying to find a way to get it out without making it worse. No idea how it happened or when either." There was a pause, Sara taking all this in and sending some thoughts toward the downed speedster. "So you and yours are heading back into the city?"

"Looks that way. Hasn't stopped while I was gone, has it?"

"Unfortunately not," Laurel told her.

"Didn't think so." If there was any way, she really needed to grab something to eat on the way to… wherever. Loosening up her arms as she walked, she frowned to herself. "Hey, while you're trying to figure out that portable device, any chance you can get your hands on some… after sun lotion or something?"

"You got it," Laurel promised, a chuckle in her voice, and Sara couldn't explain how thankful she was for this brief moment with her sister, her mind leaping back to memories of beach days, the two of them as children… It all seemed like a whole other life ago, but in that moment it felt like the memories were hers again, of this life. "Hold on, Cait says there's a situation a block north from your location."

Sara let out a breath… Here they went again…

TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)