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Chapter Sixteen
What Goes Around...
"How're we doing?" Oliver asked his friend with a grin. Tommy, who was constantly glowing ever since he and Aly had gotten engaged, beamed back broadly.
"We're in the black, and the green," he replied delightedly.
"I like how we've gone from throwing money at clubs to catching it," Oliver smirked, his best friend matching his smug look.
"Oh, look at these," Tommy laughed, lifting a pair of lingerie out of the lost-and-found box.
"What sort of business has a lost and found that's just filled with women's underwear?" Oliver wondered, chuckling in amusement.
"The best kind of business in history?" Tommy suggested. "Ohh, having this much fun should be against the law."
"Oh, if wishing made it so," Detective Lance drawled as he strode into the bar. "Sorry, am I interrupting anything?"
"Is Felicity ok?" Oliver asked worriedly. Felicity being harmed was the only reason he could think of for Lance to be paying them a visit. Although he doted on Felicity and Will like they were his blood, he'd never liked Oliver and never tried to hide that very hard, though he'd softened towards him over the years.
"Yeah, and Aly?" Tommy added anxiously.
"They're both fine," Lance gentled a fraction. "This visit is about something else. A girl just got mowed down a couple blocks from here. On Starling bridge. Ring any bells with you two?" He held up a photo of the woman.
"No," Oliver shook his head, as did Tommy.
"Should she?" His best friend asked, frowning.
"She was in your club tonight," Lance stated.
"A lot of people were," Tommy pointed out.
"You think someone here killed her?" Oliver asked.
"Not someone," Lance denied. "Something." He held up a see-through bag full of small green and purple pills.
Oliver stepped back, reaching up to grip his hair. "Vertigo."
"Yeah," Lance confirmed. He gave them a pointed look. "You got a problem with that in this club?"
"Not that I'm aware of," Tommy said defensively.
"We don't allow drugs in here, Detective," Oliver croaked out, full of worry. Thea was doing so well, and Felicity would freak when she found out. He knew what she was like, and she would see this as a failure on her part, given it was her who'd taken down the Count in the first place.
Lance shoved the bag back into his pocket. "Control your clientele," he snapped at them, heading for the door. "Before anyone else wanders into traffic."
"Is there any chance she could have scored the drugs in here?" Oliver whispered to Tommy as soon as the detective was gone.
"I doubt it," Tommy answered tensely. "I try not to hire too many drug dealers."
"Get me a list of employees, anyway," Oliver instructed him, heading for the office to call his wife and ask to meet. This was news he had to break to her in person. "I'll get Felicity to cross reference it for drug arrests."
"That includes the two of us, you know," Tommy pointed out.
"Still, I want that list," Oliver insisted, before entering the office and heading to grab his phone. He really wasn't looking forward to telling Felicity about this.
Lian Yu: 2008
After Ivo's men tied their hands behind their backs, they were forced out of the submarine and into an empty clearing at gunpoint. A cricket was chirruping in the distance, and Felicity felt the dampness of the grass seep into her jeans when she was shoved to the ground, forced onto her knees with a gun held to her head.
In later years, Felicity would always think it was strange how the most mundane things stuck out in a person's memory of trauma.
"Anthony, please," Sara begged tearfully. "You have the Mirakuru, you have what you want! Just let us go, please. If you ever cared for me-"
"Oh, but I do care for you, Sara," the so-called 'scientist' answered. The coldness of his voice sent chills down Felicity's spine. "That's why I'm not going to kill you. But she might." He nodded towards Felicity, who shook her head in confusion.
"You, Mrs. Queen, have one minute to decide which of your friends' lives, and which of them dies," Ivo announced as Shado and Sara were shoved down to their knees, side-by-side with Felicity facing them.
She went white, shaking her head furiously. "No, please don't!" she begged, throwing her pride to the wind to plead for the others' lives. Sara's face was soaked in tears while Shado wore a look of resignation, shoulders slumped defeatedly in a way Felicity had never seen her. There was no way out of this. Slade was dead, they were disarmed, outnumbered and bound too tightly to escape. Only if Ivo took mercy on them would all three of them survive, and the man would clearly never do that. There was no care in his eyes, not even for Sara. Only a coldly calm anger that made his eyes blaze.
"You got what you came for!" Felicity went on desperately, willing to plead if there was any chance of it succeeding. "Just take it and go!"
"30 seconds," Ivo drawled, indifferent to her pleas.
"Me, I choose me!" Felicity begged. She couldn't think of her son and husband, or getting back to them right then. Only of the two women she considered sisters, and her desperation to save their lives.
"You're not an option," he shrugged indifferently. "Choose. Ten seconds left."
"You fucking psychopath!" She sobbed.
"History will make that judgment," he stated. "Five seconds."
"Please, kill me," she repeated desperately. "Not them! Please!"
"Time's up," he answered.
He aimed his gun at Sara's head, and Felicity flung herself between her oldest friend and the barrel. "No, no!" She shrieked.
"I guess you made your choice," Ivo stated, cocking the gun at Shado, who wore an expression of grim acceptance.
"No!" Felicity screamed, helpless to do anything but watch as one of her dearest friends was shot dead before her eyes. Warm blood splattered across her face, staining her hair and cheeks. "Shado!"
Already off-balance from her nightmare of Shado's death, Felicity was burning with rage by the time she broke into the mental hospital.
The part of her that wasn't occupied with finding the Count scoffed at how abysmal the so-called security of the place was. She wanted to hurt somebody, to deal with the helpless grief and anger invoked by the memory of Shado's death and all it had triggered, and the Count, who had invented the damn shit that had nearly killed Thea, would do just fine.
"Here I was born, and there I died," Cecil Adams, a.k.a the Count, was mumbling incoherently to himself when she broke into his room. "It was only a moment for you. You took no notice." He groaned when she grabbed him by the throat and pinned him against the wall.
"A woman died tonight from your poison," she hissed at him.
"Lots of women die," he replied in a high voice. "Lots of nights, for lots of reasons."
"Someone is selling Vertigo again!" She snapped. "Where's it coming from?"
Suddenly, Adams gained an intent expression, peering at her. "I remember you," he murmured. She leaned back, disturbed by the look in his eyes. "The woman in the mask. You are never far from my thoughts, Mask Woman."
She heard people approaching and quickly released him, hurrying to escape through the window.
"You have failed this city!" The Count screamed after her. "You have failed this city! You have failed this city!"
You have failed this city, her mind repeated. The thought replayed itself over and over as she returned to her base, making her stomach twist into tight knots.
"This new version of Vertigo, it's more addictive, more unstable," Oliver briefed Dig as Felicity perched on her computer chair, one leg lifted to her knee as the other rested lightly on the floor, brooding on her stupidity. Slade had always warned her that her heart, her hesitance to kill that nothing, whether it was the island or ARGUS or the Bratva had fully destroyed, would come back to haunt her. If she'd killed the Count when she'd had the chance, this wouldn't have happened.
'You have failed this city' the Count's voice kept whispering in the back of her mind, even as she tried to figure out a way to locate the source of the Vertigo.
"It killed a girl who was at Verdant, same as it nearly killed Thea," her husband went on, expression grim.
"Right, so what's the plan then?" Diggle asked, both men turning to Felicity, who was staring sightlessly at the opposite wall. His voice being aimed at her pierced her thoughts and she turned to them, expression stoic. "I'd suggest paying the Count a visit-"
"I did already, straight away after Oliver called," Felicity sighed, frowning. "But no joy. He's sumasshedshiy, insane." She made the universal hand sign for crazy as she spoke. "My best guess is that one of his producers figured out most of the recipe and decided to produce it themselves. That'd explain the discrepancy between the two versions as well. But almost none of them were caught, and the ones that were are in prison, so I don't know where to begin."
"Guys, look!" Oliver exclaimed before Diggle could respond. Oliver grabbed the remote for the TV (always set to the news channel) and quickly turned up the volume. The reporter stood outside the Starling City mental institution, but it was the headline that made Felicity's heart fall.
'Count Escapes Mental Institution!'
"I'm here at the scene where police say a disturbed patient escaped only hours ago," the reporter announced. "Authorities issued an immediate lockdown at the Starling County Institute for Mental Health following the breakout. Police are warning people to avoid contact with the drug dealer known as the Count."
"Not so crazy after all, huh?" Dig remarked, glancing her way.
Felicity stood calmly, going over to the currently empty table where she made her arrows and cared for her weapons, turning it over and letting out an angry yell before storming out of the room, burning with rage.
Once she had regained her composure (via beating up a couple of muggers and two rapists), she returned to the base where the guys were waiting for her.
Neither of them mentioned what she could only call her temper tantrum, and she was thankful for it.
"So, we have an idea to track down where the drugs are," Oliver told her instead.
"I'm all ears," she urged him.
"We attach some trackers to some money," he began. "And then one of us goes out and buys some vertigo. We can follow the dealer, find out where he goes. Could lead us to the Count."
"Good idea," Felicity agreed. "I can disgui-"
"No, you scream narc," Oliver protested. "Even in a wig and contacts, you don't look like a druggie of any type. And I can't go either, I'd be recognized right off the bat and everyone knows I haven't touched drugs in years."
"Clearly, the only solution is to send in the black guy," Dig huffed, blatantly annoyed by what he no doubt considered racism and stereotyping. Felicity, who was in a constant battle against sexism as a pretty blonde woman in STEM, understood his frustration entirely.
Oliver raised his hands in a surrender motion. "We could hire somebody to do it for us," he suggested warily. "But-"
"No," Felicity said firmly. "We're not risking some innocent getting caught and arrested. It'll have to be one of us, and Dig's the best option. Sorry, Dig."
He sighed resignedly and went to change into some rapper-style clothes kept in their closet of undercover outfits.
He returned two hours later and threw a bag of vertigo pills on the desk. "The person of colour has successfully purchased the drugs," he announced. "You're welcome."
"I don't deserve you," Felicity replied earnestly, kissing his cheek briefly before grabbing the bag and taking it over to her spectrometer to start a spectro analysis. There was a clear difference between the two versions of the drug, and there was always the chance that something in the new recipe that might help them find the Count.
"Tracker's already active," Oliver noted, peering at the computer screen. "Looks like a strong signal."
"Drug money is like a pigeon, it always finds its way home," Diggle said sagely as he removed his disguise, returning the clothes to the cupboard.
"And we'll trace it all the way back to the Count," Felicity nodded, pulling on her jacket and wig. "Keep an eye on the signal."
He nodded curtly, but she noticed his glance toward the far computer, the one that was constantly running facial recognition software for Floyd Lawton. It worried her a bit, how obsessed he was with finding Lawton, but she understood too. Until Lawton was dead, Dig would have no sense of closure for his brother. She had no leg to stand on in regards to protesting an obsession with revenge, and frankly she supported his desperate need to make Deadshot pay. She'd been in that situation more than a few times herself, after all. And it had been she herself who had organized a file on everything she could find on Lawton, including the name of his broker and given it to him the day before, so she had even less room to protest when she was facilitating his actions.
Putting aside her concerns to focus on the situation at hand, Felicity left, bow and katana forming an x against her back as she rode around the Glades for the best part of an hour until Oliver sent her the coordinates for where the money ended up.
She pulled up to a construction yard where a bunch of homeless men were gathered around a barrel fire. Felicity observed from where she had perched on a rooftop just above the group as three fancy-looking (she had no interest in vehicles, except for maybe their engines) cars pulled up, and the men start scrambling to hand over their money and receive the drugs. Without hesitation, aggravated by the memories of Reiter and Conklin that drugs always brought to mind, she aimed at a brick of drugs, and vertigo capsules burst all over the place.
She slid down a chute, still firing into the crowd, but the person (or people) in the car managed to escape when she was forced to take cover under one of the trucks to avoid being hit by flying bullets.
When she returned to the basement, Oliver was the only one there, still watching the now-useless signal as the police scanner on her right-hand computer issued a call for a hostage situation in progress at the aquarium. For a moment she wondered where Dig was, then recalled him mentioning to her earlier that he had set up a meeting with one of his contacts to hand over a copy of the information on Lawton. She cursed the timing, but there was nothing to be done about it. They couldn't have expected this, after all.
Pushing away thoughts of Dig, she leaned past her husband and hacked into the aquarium's security to get a better look, swearing in Cantonese when she recognized one of the homeless guys from earlier standing beside the tank, waving a gun over a dead security guard.
"Scanner said witnesses saw him pop some green and purple pills," Oliver informed her gravely.
She didn't respond, hurrying over to the 'science table', as Dig and Oliver had dubbed it. She pulled out a pouch of her island herbs and began stewing them into a tea to give the homeless guy to purify his system. She made a mental note that she was running low. Thankfully, one of her first actions after buying her apartment was to set up a small pot on the balcony of her lift to grow more in, and some should be ready for harvesting soon enough. The herb was invaluable, and she wasn't about to let herself run out of it.
"There's a guy waving a gun at hostages in the aquarium we took our son to last Saturday and you're making tea?" Oliver said disbelievingly. " You don't even like tea. What am I missing here?"
"The fact that they're herbs from the island and counter the effects of most poisons and toxins," Felicity explained curtly. "They countered the effects of vertigo when the Count dosed me back in February, so I expect they'll do it again this time."
"Ah," he muttered. "So you're not gonna," he faltered, rubbing a hand over his scruffy jaw.
She stiffened. "Not gonna what?" She asked him coolly. Things had been tensed since their kiss nine days ago. They were stuck in a limbo, constantly taking one step forward and two steps back, and they'd been like this since her return from Lian Yu. Felicity wanted to move forward, but so much held her back, ranging from her shame over everything that had happened, to her lingering sense of (and she knew it was irrational, but it existed all the same) resentment over him hooking up with Laurel when she was gone, plus his frustration with her refusal to talk about what had happened to her when she was gone, why she had changed so drastically.
They needed to talk, but there was never any time, between their day jobs, their night job, and raising their son.
"Knock 'im off," he said hesitantly.
She stamped down on the hurt she felt at the way he doubted her. It wasn't as though she didn't understand why he did, but it still stung. His lack of faith in her new character was another topic they needed to discuss. Felicity thought they were going to have to make time to talk, soon, otherwise everything they were keeping pent up was going to boil over and they'd both have meltdowns.
"Firstly, I'm not a fucking mob boss, Oliver. I don't 'knock people off," she reminded him sharply. Granted, she was technically the Bratva captain of Starling, but she mostly left all of that to Alexei, and she hadn't told her husband about that yet. "Secondly, did I knock Thea off for getting high on this crap?" making him wince guiltily. "She didn't deserve to be shot for being stupid and reckless, and neither does this guy. It wasn't him who failed the city, Oliver, the city failed him. And so did I."
"What?" He blinked. "That's ridiculous, Lis. It's not as if you forced him to take drugs or anything. He made his own decision."
"I had the opportunity to kill the Count, and I let my respect for my father stop me," Felicity replied stonily. It was the truth. Overdosing him would have been wrong, but letting him live had clearly been the wrong decision too. But she wanted desperately to persuade the only father she'd ever known that she was working for the good of the city, and so she'd let him live instead of following her instincts. Somewhere in the afterlife, Slade was loudly declaring that he'd told her so.
"You caught him, he was locked up," Oliver argued. "Nobody could have predicted this would happen."
"And because of that, the city's burning!" Felicity snapped. "That girl is dead, her parents are never gonna hold their daughter again, because I was a weak fool and showed mercy to the wrong man! Clearly, it was a mistake!"
He recoiled, but she simply set her jaw and shoved the arrow she had filled with the tea into her quiver before running for the door.
"Send a text to Dig," she ordered as she rushed away. "Tell him to get to the aquarium if he can. I could do with the extra eyes."
She was too late to save the man at the aquarium. She managed to locate him and herd him away from the hostages and into an empty room, but he gasped out a final breath even as she raised the arrow to plunge the antidote into his heart. The sound of sirens kept her from reacting, though, as she had to flee before the cops arrived.
She stormed back to the base, seething with anger and helplessness. For all she'd told Oliver that you couldn't save everyone, she would never not be able to care when she failed to protect somebody. She hoped she didn't, at least. In her opinion, it was a sign that she hadn't lost her humanity, despite how she sometimes felt.
When she returned, Dig was there but Oliver had gone to collect Will from school. Her hands were balled into fists so tight she could feel the short nails digging into her palms. She wanted to yell at Dig for not being there when the guy died, but she didn't. It wasn't Diggle who had fucked up, it was her, and her loyal partner deserved better from her than to be used as an outlet for her self-directed rage.
She headed straight for the punching bag instead, not bothering to remove her brass knuckles or gloves, or even set down her weapons, before attacking it fiercely, picturing the Count's face as she hit.
"I want his head on a platter," she hissed. "I'm gonna kill him!"
"You will," Diggle agreed calmly. Softly, he added, "I'm sorry, I got the message too late."
"I'd be pissed, but you're not responsible for this," she replied, not turning her face from the bag. "And catching Lawton's important."
Andrew Diggle wasn't even close to being the only person deserving justice for a premature death, after all, and every minute Lawton was loose was another minute that he was able to increase his lofty body count.
Dig reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. "We're gonna get him, Felicity," he insisted.
"But how many more'll die before that?" She wondered darkly. She sighed, dropping her fists and turning to him. "How'd your meeting go?" She asked, wanting to think about something else for a moment, even if it was the hunt for Lawton.
"Well," Dig nodded. "I gave a copy of the information you dug up to Lyla. Deadshot's on ARGUS' wanted list, so this'll be priority for them. They didn't even have his real name before tonight."
"ARGUS?" She repeated sharply. "As in the Advanced Research Group United Support? I didn't realize you were giving the info to one of them." She didn't bother hiding her dislike (to give a severe understatement) of the agency.
Dig nodded calmly. "Yeah, Lyla and I have a lot of history," he said simply. "I figure they have the best resources to track Lawton down."
Felicity chewed the inside of her cheek before deciding she had an obligation as Dig's friend to bring it up. "Are you sure you can trust her?" She questioned him carefully.
She knew that Lyla was Dig's ex-wife, but she was also a high-ranking ARGUS agent. And not one who was coerced into joining the black ops unit, the way Felicity and Maseo had both been. No, Lyla Michaels had joined them willingly. Maybe she hadn't known what sort of acts Waller considered justified when she joined, but she had to know by now, and what type of person considered torture and threatening the lives of kids to force their parents into becoming government assassins acceptable? A sociopath, at best.
Dig stiffened, narrowing his eyes at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" He demanded sharply.
"It means that ARGUS isn't trustworthy, Dig," Felicity replied lowly. "I've dealt with Waller before, far too many times."
Once was too many. God, she hated that woman, even if she grudgingly respected her too. Her hatred outweighed that respect by far. The woman was a ruthless psychopath. She had tortured Felicity and threatened her family to turn her into her personal assassin and torturer, her arrogance had gotten sweet little Akio murdered, she had hired mercenaries and ordered them to shoot down a civilian aircraft to kill one woman, and dropped Felicity back on that godforsaken hellhole. Felicity was more than familiar with the feeling of despair, but the time that she opened her eyes on that damn helicopter to spy Lian Yu, and learned that, after months of running through Europe, trying to avoid ARGUS and too ashamed of her actions in Hong Kong to go home, she was being sent back to hell, had definitely been the worst. She had actually tried to throw herself out of the aircraft to avoid it, preferring death, but the agents aboard had stopped her.
Felicity couldn't trust anybody who willingly worked for Amanda Waller, even with the blackmail material she had put together to ensure the woman stayed away from Felicity's family.
"Waller's a ruthless psycho," Felicity insisted as she went on. "And I don't think anyone who trusts her, who thinks her methods are justifiable, is trustworthy either."
Dig glared at her. Felicity wasn't surprised. She'd be just as defensive of Oliver, possibly more, if someone said something like this about him to her. But she still had to try.
"You don't know Lyla!" Dig snapped. "I do! She's a good person, she's dedicated her life to protecting this country! I'm not gonna stand here and listen to you talk shit about her, without knowing the first thing about her!"
"I recall you saying something similar about Gaynor," Felicity said lowly. Dig's expression darkened in rage at the reminder of his treacherous ex-CO. Instead he just snarled at her, turning on his heel and storming out. Felicity was kinda surprised he hadn't punched her. She wouldn't have blamed him if he had. Even Felicity knew she'd gone way too far, and her only excuse was that she had been trained to go for the jugular when threatened.
She watched stonily as he stalked out, slamming the heavy alley entrance shut behind with a loud bang. Then she turned and walked over to her computer, setting up a programme to work on carefully infiltrating ARGUS' systems to see what they would do with the info on Lawton. Maybe Lyla Michaels was trustworthy, maybe not. But either way, Dig was right that ARGUS was definitely the ones with the best chance of tracking down Deadshot, and Felicity would happily use them (as they'd used her) to ensure he got the closure he deserved.
Later, once he'd calmed down and the Count was dealt with, she would go and talk to Diggle, explain her point of view to him. She hadn't expressed herself properly this time, had gone about discussing her concerns in the wrong way, and bringing up Gaynor had been a low blow. She would apologize to him for that, too.
Oliver came trotting down the steps from the office entrance as she was finishing up with hacking ARGUS and turning her attention to brainstorming a new way to get the Count.
"Will's working on his homework in your office," he reported. "Where's Dig? I thought he was back."
"He's taking the rest of the night off," she muttered, not looking at him.
"Are Carly and AJ okay?"
"They're fine," she said briskly. "We just had a, disagreement, that's all. I'll talk to him once this is all sorted out. Speaking of which, the autopsy report on the druggie from the aquarium is back. I'm about to look it over." As she spoke, she pulled it up to begin studying it.
"Well?" Oliver asked, spying the frown she gained. "What is it?"
"He didn't die of an overdose after all," she replied slowly.
"Then what happened?" Oliver wondered, looking confused as he crossed his arms over his chest.
"He had an allergic reaction, to chlorpromazine," she stated, tapping urgently at her keyboard to bring up the spectro analysis she'd done. She hadn't had a chance to look it over yet. "It's an anti-psychotic, and it's in the rest of the vertigo samples too. Veronica Sparks had some in her system as well. The Count must have added it to his recipe. That must be why it's so much more unstable now."
"Why would he add something like that?" Oliver questioned her in bewilderment. "Anti-psychotics are controlled substances, and I'm willing to bet they cost a fortune on the black market. It wouldn't be worth it to add it to the recipe, especially not in the amounts that he would need."
"Unless he has access to it now," Felicity breathed as realization dawned on her. Her head snapped over to look at her husband with wide eyes. "Oliver, we've been looking at this all wrong!" She exclaimed. "He faked his escape from the hospital, same as he faked being insane!"
He stared back at her, aghast at the realization. "I guess you're breaking back into the mental institution, then."
Assuming that the Count would've had the smarts to realize that he needed to hide out in an unused part of the institute, Felicity made her way to the basement, bow raised and arrow knocked. It didn't take her too long to find the Count. He was sitting with his back to her at a desk, his silence a stark contrast to the last time she had come for him.
She strode up behind him, pressing her arrow into his neck. "I should have killed you when I had the chance," she hissed. "Turn around!"
He did nothing, not even twitching, and Felicity's eyes narrowed in suspicion, her instincts warning that something was wrong here. She edged around to see his front, startled to see him staring vacantly, a dribble of drool escaping the corner of his mouth. There were probes attached to his forehead, with leads going to some sort of machine beneath the table.
She realized the truth at the same time as a quiet footstep caught her attention. She spun, raising her bow like a staff, but she had been foolish, too distracted by the Count to notice the orderly sneaking up on her, and the man managed to knock her out before she could defend herself.
/
She woke up strapped to a table. The restraints were good, too firm for her to break out of them, too tight for her to wriggle out, and positioned in a way that stopped her from getting to any of her wrist arrows or switchblades. Credit where credit was due, they'd done well in securing her.
"Felicity Queen," a man's voice said, the soft tapping of dress shoes alerting her to his approach. "I guess all those years on that island really did drive you crazy after all."
Felicity rolled her eyes. "Isn't it against the rules of being a psychologist to label somebody with PTSD as crazy?" She shot back, taking an educated guess as to the identity of her current captor. "Not very politically correct, is it?"
"How'd you figure it out?" The doctor asked curiously, coming into view at last.
She shrugged as best she could with her wrists tied so tightly. "I have an IQ of 170," she explained casually. "Once I realized what shape the Count was in, it was obvious. You'd be the only one with enough access to him to do this. Speaking of, how'd you get the vertigo recipe? Guy doesn't exactly seem in the shape for teaching a chemistry class."
"Oh, he couldn't tell me if he wanted to," the man shrugged. "I ordered a biopsy on his kidneys. The tissue was suffused with the narcotic after his O.D. When I got the results, I realized I could reverse engineer the chemical compound of the drug, produce a synthesized version myself using the facilities here."
"And made a few improvements, like adding chlorpromazine," Felicity added distastefully. Oh, she was going to kill this guy, and she wouldn't regret it. He was a psychopath. He reminded her of Ivo, and she hated that. She worked on getting the remote for her explosive arrows into her hand as she spoke, using the conversation to prevent the doctor from noticing her actions.
"So that's how you found us," the doctor murmured in comprehension.
"Cops came around, started asking questions, you faked the Count's disappearance to draw attention away from yourself," Felicity stated. She inclined her head. "I'll give you this much, it was a clever plan."
"I wasn't trying to be a criminal mastermind," he answered. "I just needed the money. Something I'm sure that a billionaire's wife wouldn't understand."
Felicity sneered at him in disgust. "Believe me, I understand you perfectly," she spat.
"Open her mouth," the doctor ordered his minion.
Felicity fought, but bound as she was there was nothing she could do to stop them wrenching her jaw open and pouring the concentrated vertigo into her mouth.
The effect was instant, even with her managing to refrain from swallowing most of it. Her sense blurred, sight and sound and touch all mixed together, giving her a sick feeling. But she pressed down on the button in her hand, and the arrow let out a rhythmic beeping sound before exploding, the explosion causing in the table she was strapped to topple to the floor and letting her escape her bonds. She struggled towards her quiver, recalling in her messed-up mind that she still had the antidote intended for the junkie at the aquarium in it. A moment later, she heard the sounds of scuffling as she grabbed the arrow.
"Dig!" She called, recognizing the sound of the grunts. He didn't answer, occupied with the orderly, and she shoved the arrow directly into her chest, groaning in pain and subsequently throwing up the liquid drug.
Her senses began stabilizing immediately, and when she weakly lifted her head she saw that the doctor was making a run for it while Dig continued to fight the orderly. She staggered up, grabbing her quiver and bow, and rushed after the man as fast as her unsteady legs would take her. Unfortunately for the doctor, Felicity was well-used to having to race against time while sick or injured, and she soon cornered him in the hallway.
"Freeze!" She demanded, raising her bow.
He paused and turned, smirking at her. "You don't look too good," he noted. "I bet you couldn't aim a single arrow."
He was right about that, so Felicity knocked three instead. One hit the mark, and she watched his grin disappear into horror as it hit its mark, sinking into his chest.
She turned and returned to the room, where Dig had just finished off the orderly. The Count was still in his chair, mumbling nonsense. Felicity stared at him for a long moment. She had promised herself she would kill him when she found him, but this hadn't been the Count's fault. Not this time, at least.
She turned away, towards Diggle. "Let's go," she croaked, voice still hoarse from the godawful drug they'd tried to overdose her with. "We're done here."
She launched right into it on their return to the base. "I'm sorry, Dig. I should never have said that. Thank you for coming for me."
He sighed at her, arms crossed over his chest. "You needed me," he reminded her. "One argument isn't gonna make me walk away, Felicity. Friends argue sometimes, only way to avoid it is to never talk with each other."
"I really am sorry," she insisted. "I just-I've had a lot of bad experiences with ARGUS. I panicked." She paused, then went on reluctantly. "The tail end of my second year away, ARGUS picked me up off the island. Made me work for them by threatening Will and the rest of the family. Then they dropped me back on Lian Yu." It missed a lot of points, including that she'd been returned to the island to take out a psychotic drug lord and that Amanda had let her back off again afterwards, but just touching that little bit on it had her struggling to fend off a panic attack. She physically couldn't go on.
Dig's expression softened in sympathy. "I thought you might've been lying about being there all those years," was all he said, not pressing for more. "I won't tell Oliver about it," he added, practially reading her mind.
"I don't deserve you," she said for the second time in as many days.
He grinned and raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. "Maybe you don't, but you have me anyway."
She gave a weak smile and ran a hand through her hair. "Shall we see what your ARGUS friend's done with the info you gave her?" She suggested. "They'll probably set up a sting to catch Deadshot using Garcia, and I think the two of us ought to crash the party, don't you?"
He cracked a grin, joining her at the computers. "Sounds good to me."