Chapter 37.

The Interview.

Sara Lance came slowly out of a deep sleep. For a precious, precious moment, she thought she might see her family when she opened her eyes. She would be in a hospital room, having miraculously survived the sinking of the Queen's Gambit. Her dad would be holding her hand. Her experience on the island would be a bad dream. Oliver would come in, smiling, and Laurel would forgive her, just thankful that she was alive.

But when she opened her eyes, she had no such luck. She was in a small room, lying across a hard bed. Her limbs felt heavy and her throat was dry. Oliver was lying on his stomach beside her, eerily still save the slow rise and fall of his back with each breath.

She stirred, eyeing the open door. Two guards stood in the doorway, heavy rifles hanging over their backs and handguns on their hips. They watched her steadily, but neither of them reacted when she sat up. Her head throbbed. "Oli?" she said, laying her hand on his back. His clothes were still damp from the ocean. It had not been long since Waller took them off the freighter.

"Let him sleep."

Sara hid her surprise when Amanda Waller appeared at the door. She was wearing the same suit, all black, and her hair was tied up tightly. Her eyes combed the room, like a hawk scanning for prey. She lingered on Oliver for a moment, and then focused entirely on Sara.

"You woke up first. I expected it to be the other way around."

Sara was hoarse, "Where are we?"

Waller beckoned her, "It'll be easier to show you."

Sara looked at Oliver, unwilling to leave him here, unconscious and vulnerable. But she reasoned that if they wanted to hurt him, they would have done it already. And they needed to know where they were and what they were dealing with. She could gather some information to bring back to him, to see if he knew a way out of this.

She crawled off the bed, stumbling on stiff legs. Waller stepped aside to let her through, and then strode by her side down a dark metal hallway. One of the guards broke away to follow them.

Waller took her up two flights of stairs and then down a long corridor. On either side, they passed bulky, shiny metal doors with keypads or fingerprint locks. Soldiers and civilians passed them by, some garbed in silvery blue uniforms, some wearing lab coats, and some wearing jeans. Sara had a growing sense of dread that she did her best to hide – but Waller must have seen it on her face.

She said, "It looks intimidating, but most of this is the research division."

Sara nodded wearily, wondering if her friendliness was a honeytrap. Oliver had told her a lot about what happened to him after he left the island and went back to Starling City, but he was vague about what happened during the five years he was away – vague until some issue hurtled them into danger. He had told her little about this woman, or about this crazy place they were. She had no way of knowing if this was how it had gone last time, or if this was new for him. He seemed pretty surprised on the freighter.

She settled into a cautious distrust, hoping that Waller thought she was some innocent bystander in all of this – although if she wanted her like she wanted Oliver, she must think Sara was capable of something.

"In here." Waller opened a seemingly innocuous door with a fingerprint scanner, motioning for Sara to lead the way.

It was a circular room with stadium-seating, with computers in a ring in the center. The screens showed radar images – floating lines and dots on a green backdrop. Sara took the stairs slowly, observing the sparse crowd in the seats surrounding the computers. Most of them were writing on notepads or typing on laptops. The people sitting at the radar screens were adjusting knobs and murmuring amongst themselves, oblivious or uncaring of their visitors.

Barely anyone looked up at their entrance.

"What… is this?" Sara asked.

Waller strode past her, examining one of the radar screens. "You're standing in the navigational control room. It makes sure we don't bump into anything."

Sara said, "We're on a boat."

"A ship. You're on the ARGUS mobile base, the Ashray."

Sara examined the screens, but none of the information meant anything to her. She was sure Oliver would be better at this, deducing their location from coordinates alone – but she had failed geography twice. Still, her eyes went straight to the coordinates in the corner, and she willed herself to remember them. "Where are we?"

"Our location is classified." Waller took a seat in the first row, motioning for Sara to join her.

Sara looked doubtfully at the seat.

"I didn't bring you here to kill you," Waller said. When Sara sat down beside her, she said, "You must want to rest after all that fighting you did."

Sara hated her tone. She suddenly felt like Waller was poking at her, trying to find a weakness. She asked, "Why did you bring us here?"

"I have some questions for you, Ms. Lance. Maybe if you cooperate, I'll answer some of yours."

Sara waited.

Waller beckoned one of the people in the seats above them, and a woman scampered down to hand her a file. Sara saw her picture on the inside of the cover.

"Born in 1987. You were nineteen when the Queen's Gambit sank."

"I know that," Sara said. She was interested in what that file could say. Her life was boring.

"Parents still married?"

"Why do you care?"

Waller looked up, waiting.

Sara shrugged, "Yes."

"What put you on the Queen's Gambit that night, Sara?"

She had swapped to using her name. Sara found that jarring.

"I was… Oliver and I are friends. I wanted to come."

"Were you aware that the Queen's Gambit was severely off-course that night?"

Sara remembered the storm, the creaking of the yacht, the way the water felt as it rushed around her. She shivered. "N-No."

"How much survival experience did you have before you arrived on the island?"

"W-What? Nothing, I guess." Sara felt like she was cornered. Waller's voice was growing more intense and she was leaning in. Her questions felt like daggers, like accusations.

"What I want to know is how you all managed to thrive on that island. Oliver Queen, a twenty-two-year-old playboy with no discernable skills; Robert Queen, a millionaire who lived in cities his whole life; and you, a girl barely out of high school. How?"

Sara stumbled for an answer, "We met a man on the island."

"Yao Fei, yes. I know."

"He helped us."

"You survived because of Yao Fei, yes, but how did you and Oliver go from who you were to who you are now? We watched you fight. Oliver shows the skill of someone who has been fighting for years, and you're not far behind. Not only that, but his tactical awareness seemed to put him one step ahead of potential dangers. You moved camps just before Anthony Ivo fired on the island. He would have killed you all. How did you know?"

How long had she been watching them? Sara was chilled just thinking about it.

"…Slade."

"Slade Wilson. Yes. I suppose that could explain it." Waller regarded her suspiciously. "But something is off here. Something doesn't add up. What am I missing?"

Perhaps she was missing the fact that Oliver had lived this all before. He knew what was going to happen. He knew who was coming after them. And he had been fighting for years. But that information was dangerous. Sara could only imagine what someone like Waller would do if she knew. She was a shark, waiting to smell blood.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Sara said honestly, doing her best to suppress her worries about Oliver and his secret. She put on her best poker face, the same one she used when she lied to her dad about studying – and then hopped out her bedroom window.

Waller stared at her for a while, like she could pry the information out telepathically, and then she finally smiled. It was a knowing, challenging smile. "You've said enough."

"You said you would answer my questions."

"I said I might."

Sara resisted a retort. "What do you want from us?"

"ARGUS has need of people with your talents."

"A need of them for what?" Sara persisted.

"I'm surprised you haven't asked what ARGUS is."

"You seem like spies to me," Sara answered.

Waller's eyebrows went up, "Observant."

"I've seen a lot of spy movies. You guys wreak of super-secret government stuff."

Waller took a deep breath, "We need you for a variety of things. The specifics will come when opportunities present themselves."

"That's very vague."

Waller nodded. "It is."

"And what if we don't want to do what you say?"

"We already discussed that."

"You're going to hurt Oli, if I don't do what you want?"

"I've considered other options. But you seem smart. I want to trust you to make the best choice. I don't want to bring your father and sister into this – but I will if I must."

Sara felt like she'd been slapped. She couldn't come up with a response.

"I want to show you something else before you go back to your quarters." Waller stood up.

She led Sara outside and down a few flights of stairs, into darker hallways with fewer doors. Sara began to feel the cold creeping into her combat gear.

"Our holdings," Waller said, as she opened a door at the end of the hall.

Sara hesitated. It was dark in there. A man with a rifle was standing by the door, watching them, and their guard was still trailing behind.

"We're just visiting, for now," Waller assured her.

Sara stepped inside. It was way colder in the prison. She was at the beginning of a long, straight path, along which they had a dozen cells. Each cell was made of bars, with concrete floors, no walls, no toilets, no beds. Most of them were empty. Sara saw human shapes in the dark in the back cells, but little else.

Anthony Ivo was curled up on the floor in the first cell on the right.

Waller stepped up to his cell, her arms crossed. "Recognize him?"

Sara nodded. "He was… he was on the freighter."

She kept her knowledge about this man to herself.

Waller went on, "He owned the freighter. Anthony Ivo. He spent a large portion of his considerable fortune on a mission to the North China Sea. He never told anyone why he was going, but he left behind a very sick wife. Do you know why he came to Lian Yu?"

Sara wished that was a rhetorical question, but Waller was looking at her for an answer.

She knew why he had come. His wife was sick, and he thought the cure could be found in Mirakuru. But Oliver had destroyed it all. His mission, his purpose, had ended there.

But those were things she wasn't supposed to know.

She shook her head.

Waller stared at her a moment longer, and then looked at Ivo. "Oliver killed a lot of people on that ship, but not this man. Why?"

Sara said, "You should ask Oli that."

"I will. I have a lot to discuss with him." Waller looked to the guard, "Take her back."

Sara tried to map the way back, but it was too confusing. Her head hurt by the time they made it to the little room. She sat on the bed, her back to the wall, and watched the guards as closely as they watched her. Oliver was still unconscious, as still as ever. Sara kept a hand on his back, hoping he would wake up soon and tell her that he knew a way home from here.

He had never told her how he got away the last time – or if he got away.

XxX

XxX

"I think you should really consider turning around and going home."

Oliver turned into a grungy alley, now out of the glow of the streetlamps. It was quiet in this part of the city at night – it was where the Juggernaut had been hunting the past few weeks, and so the population had shifted somewhat. Sara followed him closely, glancing around, light on her feet. She gripped the knife that was strapped to her side.

"Scared of the dark?" he wondered.

She responded quietly, "If being with the Legends has taught me anything, it's this – there are some things you don't play with."

He paused, "It's not as serious as you think."

She imitated his voice, in the way she used to when they were young, "Oh, hey, Sara, do you think you could give me some backup on this super-secret time traveling mission?"

"It's not super-secret," he retorted.

"Oh yeah? Then how come nobody on your team knows about it? Not even Felicity."

Oliver turned away from her, done with this conversation. She had been pressing him all night, relentless. "She should be through one of these doors. Are you with me, or not?"

Sara sighed. "I'm always with you."

Oliver started trying the doors along the alley, even the ones that looked like they had not been touched in years. He was beginning to wonder if he had been given the wrong directions when one of the door handles turned. He looked at Sara, willing her to be ready, and then pushed it open.

It was a small apartment, seemingly built under some office space. Its walls were red brick, its floor polished concrete. The smell of warm cinnamon hit him immediately.

In the main room, there was a single short table, and a young woman was on her knees in front of it. She was carefully tending a plant when they arrived, and she finished what she was doing before she finally turned to look at them. Her eyes were a vibrant blue – almost unnaturally so – and black tattoos like reaching vines cascaded out from the sockets, pouring over her cheeks and stopping just short of her mouth. He hid his surprise, swallowed his caution.

"Are you Or?" he asked.

She smiled, "You must be Mr. Queen. Or, should I say the Hood? Or the Arrow? Or the Green Arrow? What are you calling yourself these days?"

Sara stiffened beside him.

He gave no reaction. "Oliver is fine."

"Oliver," Or repeated, nodding. "Yes, I'm Or. John Constantine told me you might be stopping by." She gestured to the table, "Please, sit down."

Oliver and Sara sat cross-legged on the other side of the table.

Sara said, "Cool tattoos."

Oliver shot a warning glance at her.

Or smiled, "Thank you. But they're not tattoos." With no more elaboration, she focused on Oliver, "What makes you think you need my help?"

Oliver pieced his plea together. "Have you heard of the Juggernaut?"

"Unfortunately."

"I want to stop him, but so far it seems like nothing is strong enough to take him down. He showed up out of nowhere in Russia a few years ago. I think that if we can find where he came from, we can figure out how to stop him."

"Did you tell John this?"

"I did."

"What did he think?"

Her words were polite, her tone giving nothing away. Her unusual eyes were wide and curious, the black tattoos lending them brightness.

Oliver found himself lost in them. "He thought it was a stupid idea."

Or laughed. "Yes, well, so do I. You understand that what I do… it has reaching consequences?"

"Yes, but I don't want to change the past, I want to see it."

Or considered him, and then looked down at her plant for a while. She started fiddling with the leaves, clipping a few off, patting down the soil. It almost looked like she was ignoring them, maybe hoping they would leave, but her brow was furrowed, and her jaw was tense. She was thinking. Sara tried to say something, but Oliver put a hand on her knee to stop her.

He waited.

Finally, Or sighed and said, "The consequences I mentioned apply to that, too. What you find out will change the future."

"It's no different than a historian looking back to see what caused a war, and trying to avoid it," Oliver argued.

"Or a doctor finding out what caused a disease, and stopping its spread," Sara said.

Or nodded, "Yes. But those things both have massive impacts on the future. Lives saved. Lives changed. People who were never born. People who should have never been born." She looked tired all the sudden. "Time is like that. But I just wanted you to understand that before we proceed."

Oliver sat a little straighter. "So, you'll do it?"

"I will. But I need more information, and something-"

"Something connected to him. Here." Oliver pulled a bit of cloth and a sheet of paper from his back pocket, passing it to her over the table. "John told me what you would need to know about his time in Russia, and I took this from his clothes last time we fought."

She took them both, laying the cloth out in front of her and regarding it wearily, like one would look at a snake. "I've only done this a few times, mostly for John… But this should be enough. If I mess this up, your mind could become trapped in the vision."

"What does that mean?" Sara said.

Oliver cut in, "I know. We just have to try to avoid that."

Sara scowled at him, "You never said this was dangerous."

"You've been telling me it was dangerous from the moment I told you about it."

"Yeah, dangerous for the future, not for you right now!"

"I'm doing this, Sara. Either you're here, or you're not."

She groaned but said nothing.

Or looked between them. "Okay… let's get started."