Trap

"I think you have a problem, man," said Kang, standing in the doorway. He was holding a warped piece of iron in his hand, a misguided if somewhat admirable attempt at fashioning a weapon for himself. "What's going on? Someone pull a fire alarm?" He noticed Roy and gave him an unflattering once-over. "Who's the sidekick?"

Roy hefted the twin rods he held, as though he was itching to use them on Kang. "Where did you get this kid?"

"Oliver," said Diggle, watching their backs.

Oliver gave them both a look. "Not the time. Kang, can you get everyone to move?"

"Always," he said, and shouted over his shoulder for the others.

"You really have a thing for child-based exoduses," said Roy, as Kang streamed through the door with the male half of the children.

But he shut up when Mia came through the other door with the girls. Oliver chose to think that Roy was in awe of the fact that she'd fashioned a crude bow and a quiver of arrows for herself out of the same rudimentary materials available to the boys. Not because Mia was strong and a fighter and bore a passing resemblance to Oliver's little sister.

Roy looked almost guilty when he intercepted Oliver's quizzical stare, and cleared his throat loudly. But Oliver didn't press it. He of all people knew what it felt like to have unresolved feelings for someone who'd walked away.

"So what now?" Kang twirled the warped piece of iron in his hands, the scars on his forearms rippling with the movement of his muscles.

Oliver realized that most of the older kids were holding some crude weapon — either a broken dish or a piece of metal or wood. They couldn't have known what was happening, with the alarms and the locked doors. But they all had weapons in their hands because none of them wanted to go back to Nanda Parbat, not to their underground, lightless prisons — and they were all willing to fight for their freedom.

"They're not taking us back," said Mia, and it wasn't a question.

Oliver shook his head, a shiver of understanding passing between them.

"No," he agreed. But the children weren't going to fight. Not today.

Oliver's earpiece crackled. "Four hostiles, left corridor."

He'd just turned when Diggle's gun went off, startling a few children into cries. An assassin went down, but a few more rounded the corner.

"Queen!" hissed one of them.

"Get down!" Oliver ordered. He parried an arrow straight out of the air with his bow and returned fire, all in the same fluid motion. Like the League had taught him.


Ra's al Ghul wasn't anywhere.

Felicity had searched. Twice. And then some. No sign of Ra's al Ghul or Nyssa. They were either very good at avoiding cameras they had no way of knowing existed, or they weren't in the building, and without the facial recognition software Waller and Lyla weren't supposed to know about, Felicity couldn't search for them.

Felicity watched tensely as a second wave of ARGUS agents clashed with the League contingent, but her main focus was on the boys, fighting their way through the corridors with the children behind him. Her hands clenched involuntarily when Oliver narrowly dodged a flying arrow, but otherwise he didn't appear to be injured.

There was something fundamentally wrong about her being separated from the team. Especially in a war. The science-nerd in her knew that her unwillingness was just a reflexive response to massive uncertainty and complete chaos, but the Felicity Smoak who'd survived a van crash and a city full of Mirakuru soldiers knew that the team was the strongest when they were all together.

It was the kind of niggling feeling at the back of her skull that threatened to throw Felicity off her game. But only if she let it.

"Next corridor, fifth door on the right," she said, her arms folded because it was the only way she could stay still. "No hostiles."

She switched to the surveillance feed and decrypted the doors as they approached, so Oliver and the others could get the kids.

"Quite the team, Miss Smoak," said Waller slyly, without looking away from the main screens. "Just how often do you send your boys off to war?"

Felicity glanced at Waller, struggling to control her rising irritation at Waller's nonchalance. She was starting to take after Oliver in that respect. "I send them out, but they always come back," she answered, and she said it as if she could be sure it was true.

"You wouldn't have to," Waller said, loaded with the implication — of a job offer in ARGUS that Felicity was more than ever inclined to refuse, or her smugness at the fact that she'd seen Felicity fail to stop Oliver from leaving. Again.

"Oliver." Felicity leaned forward, typing commands into the massive keyboard. "Evacuation point — one floor up, two doors over. Holy —" She muted her side of the comms as something caught her eye.

It was surveillance of the floor below, one of the many battlegrounds against the League — except the agents there were dropping like flies. Felicity swapped angles and squinted at the screen.

The sudden movement made her jump. Some kind of black vapor erupted from the ground, and when the mist faded, the agents were on the floor, twitching faintly.

"What the…"

"Felicity!" The crash of metal from unseen weapons made her jump, and remember that she was meant to be making sure the way was clear.

"I see you," Felicity said, checking their path out. "Head up the stairwell, and be careful." She didn't say anything about the black gas, and the way it looked and felt like something she should have remembered.

Felicity divided her attention between the two tasks, watching the ongoing battles and activating the evacuation protocols. More and more agents were going down, succumbing to the strange black gas.

"Amanda." Lyla had noticed too. They were both watching the screens with grim expressions. "We have to pull them back."

Waller didn't even flinch. "Miss Smoak."

Felicity never looked up from the screen. Whatever Amanda wanted, she didn't have the time for it. Her hands were flying across the keyboard. The children were filing into the elevator, but they were vulnerable during that window of time and Felicity was making sure the corridors stayed free of hostiles.

Felicity breathed a sigh of relief when the kids were finally in the clear. She activated the elevators and sent the kids shooting down to the railroad, checking one more item off the gazillion-long list of things she was meant to be worried about.

"When Mr. Queen finishes his current task, I need him to find out what the League is using against our agents." Waller's voice was hard. "I assume you know what I refer to."

Nerve gas — paralytic agents — tabun — sarin — Felicity's mind raced through the possibilities, her imagination only limited by her lack of knowledge regarding biochemical weapons.

She looked up at Lyla, who nodded, her mouth downturned. She didn't want her husband anywhere near the bodies either. "But tell him to keep his distance," she said.

Felicity reluctantly opened the communications channel. "Oliver?"


Oliver bent over a fallen ARGUS agent and peeled back the uniform collar. He put two fingers to the bared pulse.

It only confirmed what he'd already guessed.

"Two minutes," said Diggle, his gun trained on the far wall.

"Do we know what it is?" Roy asked, adjusting his grip on the rods.

"Blisters? Pupil dilation? Any excessive secretions?" He could hear Felicity typing at triple-speed. "Are they having trouble breathing? Are you having trouble breathing?"

Oliver peeled back an eyelid, and saw only the whites of the eyes — because the pupils were moving too rapidly to register.

"Nothing," he said, quietly, as if to himself. "They're dreaming — or hallucinating." Oliver moved further along the trail of ARGUS uniforms and towards the only black-robed body in the hallway. This death was probably an accident, a random shot fired by an agent losing control of his limbs. There was a mass of blood and clumped flesh where the skull should have been a smooth line, so he was relatively certain that it wasn't feigned death.

Roy gulped, loudly, as Oliver turned the corpse over.

"Plenty of time for an autopsy if we survive this, Oliver," said Diggle, his eyes not leaving the far wall.

It wasn't the brain injury Oliver was interested in. He lifted the hood with a faint unsticking noise and looked at the face. It was half-covered by a metallic face-guard, one that left the eyes unobscured but snugly covered the mouth and nose.

Oliver touched his earpiece. "Felicity, check the other hallways. Are all the assassins wearing some kind of mask that covers their mouth?"

"I take it from your tone that it isn't just a weird fashion statement," she said, over the sound of rapid typing. "From what I can tell…it's dress-up day for the Psychos in Black. What is it — some kind of gas mask?"

"Probably." He exhaled and grasped the head by the tattered hood.

The mask squelched as it came away from the film of coagulated blood.

Even Diggle looked disgusted. "Please tell me there's a reason you did that."

Oliver stood, rust flakes showering the ground around him. "Felicity, tell Amanda to give the order. We have to retreat. This gas — it's from the Pit."