Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. This is where things really start diverging from canon guys, no more ep rewrites.
Instead of a flashback in this chapter, there's a report. It references events from the book Arrow: Vengeance (though I add a small mention of Rose and Grant Wilson).
Hope you keep enjoying it. Updates will come whenever I can manage, bear in mind I started college last Monday and have to prioritize studying.
Remember to always read, enjoy and review!
He who lives to forget his past lives to die of his past. Knowing the past, and keeping the past helps us to shape the future and may avoid past disaster repeating.-Anthony Ugwuoke
Chapter Nine
Avoid(ing) Past Disaster Repeating
"This," Sara stated grimly as she prowled the edge of the training area like an upset panther, a dark cast to her face. "Is an unmitigated disaster."
"And Laurel is involved in it," Felicity added darkly. Her friend grimaced and clenched her hands into angry fists at the reminder of her sister's betrayal. They'd known Laurel was pissed, but going so far as to become involved in murder...
Quentin would be devastated when it came out, and Felicity cursed Laurel for her selfishness. She longed to teach the older woman a lesson. Only her rigid control over herself and her filial love for Quentin allowed her to refrain from storming Laurel's apartment and putting an arrow through her heart. If she really had one, and right then Felicity doubted it.
She sighed, eyeing her friend, who was pacing up and down, hands clenching in a way that told Felicity she was longing for a weapon to be in them.
Unlike Sara, Felicity wasn't moving. She was as still as a statue, her blue eyes narrowed and locked on the opposite wall where a human shaped target was pinned, though her thoughts were all far away from the target, focused on combing through her mind for a plan on what to do about the crisis descending on her home.
It had been a week since the break-in at the Applied Sciences' building that had led to their discovery of Mirakuru's re-emergence. Felicity had been working frantically to try and hunt down the other members of the group that Blood had mentioned, but she had made no progress on the matter, save for confirming with Sara that Laurel was definitely involved in the whole thing, and Officer Daily was the group's inside man at the police station.
Sara wanted the traitor's head for his actions that had led to the death of her godfather, Detective Lucas Hilton along with half-a-dozen other officers and Quentin's hospitalization. Felicity felt the same actually, but she was managing to (somewhat) keep her head on straight. They needed to leave Daily alive at the moment, to watch him and figure out who else was involved in this conspiracy (as well as avoid tipping the members off to their knowledge). Today was the first day that she and her best friend and comrade had been able to meet up privately to discuss the quiet calamity that had struck Starling City.
Dig and Oliver weren't there, and neither was Quentin. Quentin was still in hospital, due for release on Monday, while the guys just didn't understand the seriousness of the situation. And Felicity wanted to consider what to do about Thea without Oliver there. So far, she hadn't shown any signs of irrational anger or unnatural strength, but Felicity had secretly obtained a sample of her blood and she and Sara had both looked at it and run several tests with their sophisticated equipment (courtesy of Felicity's extensive contacts). Thea was definitely infected, which meant it was only a matter of time before the symptoms started to show themselves.
However, until Thea there was no record of a woman being injected with the Mirakuru, or someone younger than twenty-five, so they were all (including the guys, Tommy and Aly, who were all aware that Thea had been injected with the Mirakuru. But without any experience save with Gold, which had been limited, the others couldn't understand the danger, and Felicity and Sara's attempts at explaining just how terrible this catastrophe was for not just Starling City, but America, maybe even the world, were falling flat. Felicity was pretty sure they thought she and Sara were just overreacting due to their PTSD. The fact that they both choked up whenever they tried to explain their experience with it on Lian Yu wasn't helping their case.
What the others did understand was that Thea had been injected with a dangerous, still mostly experimental, behavioural-altering serum. That was enough to worry them, even if Felicity felt they were still being too laissez-faire about it.) on tenterhooks, watching the young woman for any signs of the Mirakuru affecting her.
"But who else?" Felicity mused to herself, forcing her thoughts away from Thea and back onto 'The Group' (she and Sara had no other ID for them, so 'The Group' it was. The title was short for 'The Group of Psychotic Lunatics Who Are Too Arrogant to Realize That They're Going to Kill Us All'.) "Blood and Laurel aren't behind this," she stated firmly, her observation over the past few days, along with the knowledge she had of their personalities. "Neither of them have/had the mindset you'd need to organize something like this, or the resources. And they definitely wouldn't have the inside knowledge needed. There's no way they knew about the Mirakuru."
"A traitor in ARGUS?" Sara suggested.
"Maybe," Felicity nodded. She could easily see that scenario playing out. She wouldn't trust ARGUS as far as she could throw the building they were based out of. "Their morals are so grey; it'd be the ease of a blink for an agent to turn corrupt. But I don't know. It doesn't feel right. There are no living ARGUS agents I have a vendetta with. Nobody who'd come after me, especially not like this."
She'd mostly interacted with the Yamashiros during her time with ARGUS, as well as few others: Diana Patterson, Alan Chang, Kai Wu and of course Amanda Waller herself. Of those, Maseo and Tatsu were God-knew where, grieving their son's death (if one or both of them hadn't committed suicide, which Felicity wouldn't be surprised to hear. Something had broken in the couple when Akio died, and it was unhealable). Diana, Kai and Alan were all still active agents and she kept a loose connection with them, exchanging information and such.
But as far as she knew, Alan and Kai were both undercover at the moment, while Diana was running some operations over in Brazil, and her relations with them were cordial at worst. And she thought that she and Lyla had become friends of a sort over the past short while since they'd rescued the ARGUS agent from the gulag. Anyway, Dig was too sensible and good to hook up with a psychopath, so that struck Lyla off the list of potential corrupt ARGUS agents too.
As for her icy relationship with Amanda Waller, while they both hated each other, they (grudgingly) respected one another too, and used each other for help when necessary. Anyway, Amanda might've been morally bankrupt (at least in Felicity's opinion) but she was shrewd and sensible too. She agreed with Felicity that Mirakuru was far, far too dangerous to risk using, and had worked along with her back in late '09 to erase any trace of it and its' mention they could find, creating a team to keep an eye out for any signs of someone using it (and Felicity was definitely going to be demanding an explanation for their failure to detect its' reappearance). Besides that, this whole thing wasn't Waller's style, and was too overt for the director's tastes. If Amanda decided that she wanted Felicity eliminated, she would have it done discreetly and subtly, and efficiently. A sniper hidden on a rooftop perhaps, or her car subtly sabotaged. Something untraceable and unable to be connected to ARGUS.
Anyone else that Felicity had met while working for ARGUS had only been one or two meetings at most. Not enough to establish a grudge against her that would be so convoluted.
No, this wasn't an ARGUS agent. It just didn't fit the puzzle.
"This is a personal attack on us," Sara agreed. "The Mirakuru being used, something that both of us have a-difficult history with." She was not going to acknowledge that she and Felicity were both traumatized by the events of 2008/09. There was no time for any deep insight into her dark, scarred psyche. They had to find and eliminate anyone involved in the production of the Mirakuru, immediately. "Thea being injected," the Canary continued, both of them twitching at the mention. "The centrifuge being stolen from Queen Consolidated instead of someplace easier to access. I know Gold had a pretty easy time getting in, but QC has way better security than, say, Kord Industries, and they produce and transport those things semi-regularly. If I'd had to choose between them, I'd've gone with attacking a KI transport to steal one. Easier and quicker, less chance of being caught on camera, which he was."
"Me too," Felicity murmured with a pensive expression. "Even Laurel being brought into this conspiracy is a personal attack," Felicity pointed out. They were both keeping their emotions tightly under wraps to avoid letting their judgement be clouded by their hurt and fear. "Given that she's your sister. I just can't bring myself to think of it as a coincidence. It's all to linked to us. This is personal. Someone's vendetta against us."
"I agree," Sara nodded. A hint of hesitance leaked into her expression as she turned to look at Felicity and bring up the elephant in the room they had both been side-stepping. There was only one person who fit the description of their unidentified enemy. It was someone who's name had gone unmentioned between them since their reunion after Felicity had briefly explained what happened, neither wanting to deal with the memories of the events of that terrible year.
But neither of them were the type to choose flight over fight. Not anymore, at any rate.
"Felicity," Sara began, her voice low. "Are you absolutely sure that you killed him? Did you see his body?"
Felicity's jaw clenched and her shoulders tightened. "Well, I stabbed him through the eye with an arrow, and the freighter blew up a few moments later, so I'd think he was dead," she replied in a sharp tone.
"But you survived the explosion," Sara pointed out.
"Because of ARGUS's intervention," the archer shot back. "And barely even then."
"Slade had the Mirakuru," Sara stated flatly. "Would you bet the city that you managed to kill him?"
Felicity's hands curled into fists, her nails digging into her palms. Her voice was flat and neutral, expression blank, when she spoke next after several moments of heavy silence, pointedly changing the subject and signalling silently to Sara that the subject was closed. "We need to put a tail on Laurel and Daily, see who they're meeting with," she declared.
Sara nodded silently. If she felt any distress over the fact that her sister was now their enemy, she didn't let it touch her expression. The League of Assassins had clearly taught her well when it came to emotional suppression. "And somebody needs to watch Thea," the Canary pointed out softly. Felicity grimaced as they exchanged dark looks.
Were it a stranger or an enemy who had been injected with the godforsaken serum, Felicity would've just slit their throat and been done with it, not given them CPR.
But it was Thea, the girl she considered her sister in far more than simply law, the girl she had loved since she was a kid, her son's aunt and her husband's adored baby sister. So instead of following her instinct to kill her and put an end to the threat, she had saved her, and now she was left to pray to a God whose existence she didn't even believe in that she hadn't made a fatal mistake, and that she could succeed in saving Thea where she had failed to save Slade.
Sara was as anxious as her about it, she knew from their earlier discussion on her. Despite best efforts, they couldn't bring themselves to do more than touch on what to do. All they had managed to do was agree that she needed to be kept under a tight watch, one that they would have to do themselves.
The others simply didn't have the experience to let them properly comprehend the danger the city was in as long as this group was around injecting people with the serum, so that left it up to Artemis and the Canary to do the job themselves.
They were caught between a rock and a hard place, with lava beneath them.
No escape from an eternal, waking nightmare.
"So, who takes who?" Felicity wondered, shaking those thoughts away.
"I'll take Thea, you take Laurel," Sara decided. "That's the best option."
It went unsaid that they would be less likely to let their emotions cloud their judgement with these pairings than if Sara took her sister and Felicity took hers.
"And Daily?" Felicity pointed out. "Who'll cover him?"
Sara grimaced. "Dig?" She suggested.
Felicity sighed and nodded. "I guess," she assented reluctantly, disappointed that she'd have to pull her partner from his current guard of her son. He'd been injured when he confronted Gold the week previous, but he was healed and skilled enough to manage so long as he didn't wander into another Mirakuru-laced psychopath. Following Daily probably wouldn't help him avoid that, but Dig was good at their job. "I'll call him now and tell him."
Sara nodded, and began working out on the salmon ladder while Felicity made the call.
She could feel the ghost of their memories, and the question that Sara had asked her earlier, hovering in the room.
"Would you bet the city that you managed to kill him?"
No. No, she wouldn't.
Once Felicity had given Diggle his assignment, she reluctantly turned to her computers and began working, searching for any trace that might indicate whether or not Slade had survived the explosion of the Amazo or not.
Excerpt from a report found in the online archives of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service Database. Final Draft compiled 18th October 2012
Agent Wilson's increasingly erratic behaviour caused concern amongst his colleagues and from his supervisor, Agent Wade DeForge. He appeared to be having hallucinations and flashbacks, but refused to attend either a psychological evaluation or a physical one. He showed signs of an obsession that seemed to be centred on the late Felicity Queen née Smoak, an American billionaire's wife who reportedly died in a shipwreck along with her father-in-law, Robert Queen (CEO of Queen Consolidated), her best friend Sara Lance, a college student, and the six members of the crew of the yacht they were sailing to China on. According to Agent Wilson, Mrs. Queen in fact washed up on the beach of Lian Yu after the wreck instead of drowning. He claims she was the one to kill the late Agent William "Billy" Wintergreen, for unknown reasons, the believed source of his vendetta/obsession with her.
(Note, Agent Wilson's erratic behaviour blatantly occurred for the first time in 2010, when he spotted a photograph of Felicity Queen, apparently alive and well in Hong Kong, China. He demanded to be allowed to go to Hong Kong, track her down and kill her. He relented on being informed that the picture was proven to be a hoax by criminals, as a lure to kidnap her husband for ransom. Prior to that, however, note had been made of Agent Wilson's apparent burgeoning obsession with the Queen family and Felicity Queen in particular, causing red flags as to his mental state. After this incident, along with several mandated counselling sessions, however, he seemed to go back to normal until mid-2012, when his temper turned erratic and unpredictable.)
On October 12th, 2012, the situation escalated. Agent Wilson had a hallucination, speaking to "Shado" (believed to be Shado Gulong, daughter of ex Chinese General Yao Fei Gulong, whom Wilson and Wintergreen were sent to exfiltrate from Lian Yu. Evidence was found that she was on the island as well, though the how's and whys of her presence there are unknown.)
Agent DeForge, due to increasing suspicion of Agent Wilson's truthfulness in regards to his report of the events on Lian Yu, sent a team to investigate the island. There, they learned that Agent Wilson was the one who killed Wintergreen (again, his motives for murdering his partner are unknown. It is possible this was the first sign of his mental breakdown), not Mrs. Queen. Either after the hallucination ended, or during it, Agent Wilson went berserk, and attacked both Agent DeForge and Agent Matthew Nakauchi, injuring Nakauchi severely, before fleeing Headquarters.
He was tracked down to his house, where a team confronted him in the middle of him screaming at his wife and eldest son Joseph (age twelve), both of whom were clearly frightened by his actions. His younger son Grant (age four and a half), and daughter Rose (age two) were later found crying and hiding beneath Grant's bed. The team surrounded Wilson, and Agent DeForge confronted him with what the team learned about his time on Lian Yu. Just then, a reporter came on television and announced that Felicity Queen had been alive on Lian Yu (why her presence went undetected during the team's investigation is unknown at present. Possibly she deliberately hid from them due to the actions of Agent Wilson. Given the length of time she spent there, she would've had the knowledge of the terrain needed to remain undetected). This announcement pushed Wilson over the edge. He confessed to killing Agent Wintergreen and declared that he would also kill Mrs. Queen before attacking the team.
He was brutal, and had an unnatural strength, crushing Agent DeForge's neck with one hand amongst other feats (detailed in the attached report). In the crossfire, Mrs. Adeline Wilson (Agent Wilson's wife) and Joseph Wilson were both killed. The identities' of their killers are uncertain.
All of the team (consisting of ten armed agents, in addition to Agent DeForge) were killed by Agent Wilson, who was unarmed prior to taking multiple guns and knives from his opponents' bodies when leaving his home (according to the video footage from the armour cams used to compile the report on the confrontation, Wilson kissed his wife's lips and son's forehead before leaving, promising-apparently during another hallucination of Shado-to achieve vengeance on Mrs. Queen for her "taking everything" from him.). He made no attempt to retrieve or even check on Grant and Rose, despite Rose being faintly heard crying. It is possible he sunk so deeply into his madness he didn't recall their existence, and couldn't hear her at all.
Recommendation: declare Agent Slade Wilson to be a rogue agent, armed and EXTREMELY dangerous and discreetly alert our sister agencies plus warn the Queen family of the threats against Felicity Queen.
Postscript: Recommendation:
Declare Agent Slade Wilson to be a rogue agent, armed and EXTREMELY dangerous: Accepted
Discreetly alert our sister agencies plus warn the Queen family of the threats against Felicity Queen: Denied on grounds of possible security compromise
Felicity was seething with rage after reading the report she had obtained from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service's database. Sara was out following Thea, Oliver was at QC, and Dig was watching Officer Daily. She was alone, and able to release her fury without any concerned eyes or questions, something she took full advantage of by attacking the Wing Chun dummy with vicious, seething rage that seemed to make her blood boil beneath her skin.
God, what a fucking disaster, was all she could think. And how the hell had Waller not picked up on Slade's survival? How had this slipped beneath her nose?
After a while of beating up the dummy, the archer abandoned it to pace the length of the foundry anxiously, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together in a nervous tick. It didn't take her IQ of 170 to put two and two together and realize that this whole mess was Slade's way of gaining revenge on her for Shado's death. No doubt Sara being around to suffer as well was simply a pleasant bonus in his eyes.
There had been twenty-five dead bodies found around Starling City in the last two months, all dead of the same causes, with trails of bloody tear tracks leaking out of their eyes to dry on their cheeks. The cops blamed overdoses from an unidentified new drug of some sort. Felicity and Sara knew better. Not a new drug, but an old one.
It was obvious that Slade was building an army. That Mirakuru killed most people who were injected with it gave a twisted comfort to the vigilantes. Successfully injecting enough people would take a long time. Time that Felicity and Sara (and the rest of the team) would be able to use to find Slade, and kill him and the rest of his group.
First, however. Felicity changed from her training gear into her vigilante disguise before she stalked over to the 'science table' and snatched up one of the vials of blood she had taken from Cyrus Gold's body before she had burned the building where she'd fought him and Sebastian Blood in to the ground. In that, the chemicals they'd had stocked in the place had been very helpful to her. She had ensured that there was no useable trace of Gold's DNA left that someone could use to try and synthesize more Mirakuru, or something similar. But she had taken some samples for herself before doing so, to use to try and create a counteractant.
Four years ago, she hadn't trusted Ivo's word that his untested serum was even an attempt at a cure, and had chosen her arrow over the syringe. Trusted the weapon she knew and trusted over the one she didn't. This time, she was doing things slightly differently.
Learn from your mistakes and so on.
She stowed one of the five vials in her breast pocket and headed out, making her way to the nearest ARGUS headquarters.
She got in easily, scoffing in contempt at the laughable security they had. The few agents who came across her, she quickly and easily took out before continuing on her way to Amanda's office.
"We need to talk," she announced bluntly, storming into the director's office without bothering to knock. She refused to do Waller the courtesy of politeness.
Waller looked up from the reports she was perusing, raising an eyebrow. "And what do we need to talk about, exactly?' She drawled. "Here to kill me, are you?"
It was tempting, but for the moment Felicity was better off with Waller in charge of the agency. They hated each other, but they respected one another as well. So long as they maintained their alliance, Felicity had no intention of being the one to breach it by assassinating Waller. She couldn't guarantee that the next Director of the Advanced Research Group United Support would be her ally, not her enemy.
"Not yet," Felicity replied darkly, because should the status quo change and it become better to kill Waller, she wasn't likely to grieve the woman's death, or regret it. She'd never forgive the older woman for Hong Kong. Ever. Not to mention what had happened because of her hiring Fyers' group and supplying them with the missile launcher. She, Shado and Slade might've stopped the plane being destroyed, but everything else, Yao Fei, their torture... all of it could be traced back to Amanda Waller and her ruthless decisions, damn her to hell and back.
"Fortunately for you," Felicity went on. "There's someone else who's moved to the top of my list."
"Who is that, then?" Waller raised a delicate eyebrow.
"Slade Wilson."
Waller froze. In anyone else, it wouldn't've been noticeable, let alone noteworthy. In Amanda, who had a rigid control over her emotions and display of them, it was the equivalent to her clapping both hands over her mouth and shrieking hysterically. Felicity might've been pleased that she'd gotten a reaction from the stone-cold woman if she wasn't so frightened and furious herself.
"Slade Wilson is dead," Amanda said after a slight pause, her composure ruffled.
Felicity snorted bitterly, glowering at Waller as she tossed the file of printed reports from ASIS on the desk. In it was the file detailing everything that had happened with Slade between him being found near the Philippines and taken back to Australia up until his breakdown and the subsequent bodies he had left in his wake when he fled. The file contained his report on what happened on Lian Yu (with Wintergreen substituted for her, and Yao Fei taking Shado's place in the events), and his request to be moved to desk duty. Then the reports that detailed the agents' rising concern as to his mental state, including the statement from his wife where she expressed fear that her husband was a danger to their young children and herself (a fear that proved painfully true), and finally the report (crafted from video footage from the assault team's armour cams, given nobody had survived to report themselves what happened) on the confrontation at the Wilson house and their deaths at Slade's hands.
Waller read through it with shoulders that tightened. Her expression was dark when she finally looked back at Felicity.
"How the fuck did this slip past you, Waller?" She hissed, slamming her hands on the desk and looming over the woman. "You were supposed to be keeping an eye out for any signs of Mirakuru! What the fuck happened?"
Amanda's expression was storming. "I'll have an investigation," she promised. "There are multiple ways this should have alerted the team I have assigned to watch for Mirakuru activity as to Wilson's survival. They'll lose their jobs if they're lucky."
"Speaking of that, that's not all your team missed," Felicity bit out. "I first became suspicious and started looking into the possibility of Slade's survival because of the break-in at Applied Sciences' two weeks ago. The man who did was named Cyrus Gold, and he was a successful Mirakuru injectee. Thankfully, I managed to take him out, but when I checked the SCPD database, I discovered that over twenty bodies have been found in the last two months, all showing signs of being failed attempts at a Mirakuru injection."
Waller paled slightly, eyes widening a fraction. It spoke to how dangerous the Mirakuru was that the ruthless woman was afraid of it.
"I destroyed any trace of Gold's body that I could find," Felicity went on tensely, removing the vial of blood and placing it down on the desk. "And I took this from his corpse. Give it to your scientists, and get them to synthesize a cure. In the meantime, I'll work on tracking down whomever else is involved in this conspiracy, seeing as your organization clearly can't be relied on to do so properly."
Waller's lips tightened at the insult, but she gave a curt nod, wrapping her elegant fingers around the vial and picking it up to examine. "If this the only blood you kept?" She wondered. "And have you ID anyone else who survived the serum?"
"If I had, I wouldn't give the rest to you," Felicity drawled in response to the first query. "I believe that you wouldn't try and create more of these psychopaths. I hate you, but you're too smart to try. I have less faith in the intelligence of your scientific division."
Waller scowled but gave a grudging nod.
"And there have been no more attacks that can be contributed to a Mirakuru recipient," Felicity went on, not daring to mention Thea. She had no doubt that if she did, her sister-in-law would get a bullet through the head before the next sunrise. "But there's definitely Slade, and he's an army all on his own."
"And the bodies show that he's working on adding to it," Waller added grimly. "I'll have my scientists get to work on a cure immediately," she promised.
Felicity nodded, but didn't leave just yet. She had one more warning to give before she went to track down Laurel and start following her.
"One last thing, Waller," she said in a low, threatening tone. The director lifted her chin defiantly in response to the silent challenge for dominance. "Starling City has a population of approximately 576,000 people, but no amount of innocents will convince me that you won't blow it up anyway to try and stop Slade.
Let me warn you of this: I have a programme set up. Should a certain criteria be fulfilled, or should it be activated manually via a password known only to my team and I, every major news outlet, both national and international, will receive evidence of all your schemes, all your ops. No agents will be compromised, save for you, and ARGUS will be collapse from the scandal.
The President and Congress will have no choice but to disavow you and your organization and hand you over to whichever country manages to get their hands on you first. I expect they'd be tearing each other apart for the chance to get their hands on you, especially Russia and China. Not to mention Asia's reaction to your confession about how you were going to destroy one of their planes and damage their economy, just to kill one woman.
To put it in simple terms: if Starling City and I go down, you're going down with us."
She felt the sides of her lips curve up at the sides at the sight of the anger and hint of fear in Waller's expression as she pushed herself away from the table and sauntered over to the window, where she fired a zipline arrow at the opposite roof before using her bow to zip across.
Now, to turn her attention to Laurel. Laurel would lead her to Slade, and then. Then she would make up for the mistake she had made half a decade ago on that cursed island, when she had injected him in the first place.
If only she and Shado had just let him die, he'd have died a hero, and never become the monster he was now.