Attempted hacking

Felicity blocked Diggle's strike with her forearm, wincing as pain shot through her muscles, feeling like it was going straight down to her bone. That was going to bruise. He'd promised to hold back; if this was him going easy, she never wanted to come up against a bad guy going hard. But she'd insisted, and he'd agreed, that she needed basic fight training in case someone broke through their defences and attacked her. After all, how close had she come to being a human icicle only a year ago?

She tried to punch Diggle in the stomach, but he shifted his weight so the blow fell short by inches. 'Never let me go into the field,' she said, and he laughed. 'By the way, is blocking supposed to hurt?'

Diggle's eyes shone as he smiled. 'Not planning on it, and yes.'

His leg lashed out at her side, and she scrambled backwards, trying to mimic the way he'd shifted. But instead of a slight, graceful movement, her foot landed on the edge of the foundry's training mat, and her stomach was swept out from under her as she fought to keep her balance. Diggle pulled his kick in at the last second so all she felt was whooshing air, and she shuffled diagonally to the side to buy herself more room.

'You're improving,' he said. 'You didn't drop your guard once.'

'I guess one silver lining is better than none,' she deadpanned. Last time had consisted of a lot more flailing about in her attempt to avoid strikes that seemed to come from anywhere and everywhere at once. At least now, that feeling of panic didn't overwhelm her quite so much.

They started again, slower this time, with Diggle correcting her technique and talking her through which blocks to use.

She understood why Oliver was uncomfortable with her learning to fight; someone with an overinflated sense of their fighting skills was in more danger of winding up hurt than someone who knew when they were in over their heads. But given the people she hung out with on a nightly basis, she didn't think she was at any risk of thinking she could go out on the streets and take down criminals.

Thankfully, Oliver had been busy over the past week, first catching up with Tony Stark — who, to everyone's surprise, had flown to Starling to take him up on his offer to talk — and now helping Sara deal with the aftermath of Nyssa's most recent visit. She'd warned them that a group of assassins had broken off from the League to target Sara. So Felicity and Diggle had stolen evenings here and there to make her look less like a pinata in the wind — he hadn't made that comparison, but he had to be thinking it.

A low chime sounded from the computer, followed by two higher pitched dings. Felicity's heart dropped and she lowered her guard. She'd set up that alert when she built her servers for Verdant and the foundry, but this was the first time it had ever sounded. She rushed over to the desk, leaving Diggle behind on the training mat.

'I take it that's not a good sound.'

'It means someone's rifling around in places they shouldn't.'

Someone had accessed the honeypot server.

No one in the foundry or the club had any reason to do so, which most likely meant a hacker had tried to get into private company information and followed her security-measures-with-least-resistance path of breadcrumbs to the fake server. Hopefully, that was as far as they would get.

She opened the logs. As she assessed which server had been affected and how far the damage spread, she explained what was happening to Diggle. 'Maybe they just want to fleece the most popular nightclub in town out of a truckload of money,' she finished, 'but given what Verdant's a cover for…'

'They could also be after the Arrow.'

She nodded. 'This is a case where "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply.'

Thankfully, it looked like the hacker had followed her breadcrumbs precisely, always seeking out the most obvious weak point; there were no signs that they'd accessed the other servers. Good. While Verdant's computer system didn't contain any sensitive information about Oliver and the rest of them, it did house personnel files for Oliver, Roy and Thea, as well as CCTV footage that showed the members of the team entering and leaving the club's basement at odd hours. Not enough to pin anything on anyone, but enough to arouse suspicion.

'How bad is it?' Diggle asked, settling in beside her.

'Whoever it is, they haven't gotten very far, but it's going to be a long night.' If the hacker stayed in the honeypot server, kicking them out wasn't a priority. At least, not until she worked out anything she could about them and how they hacked it in the first place.

-x-

Ocean waves crashed against the cliff outside Tony's Malibu home as he scoured the server for any references to Nyssa al Ghul, his half-eaten dinner abandoned beside him. Ever since she tried to take down Stark Industries, he'd searched the world for her, trying to pre-empt her next move. But League assassins could fade into and out of the woodwork like the best of them, and even Jarvis had struggled to find her in one place long enough for Tony to catch up. Finally, he'd spied her in the background of some girl's Facebook photo, location-stamped at a club in Starling City. A familiar one, owned by none other than his old party buddy, Oliver Queen.

So he'd taken Oliver up on his earlier offer of drinks, insisting that they should go to Verdant so he could finally see inside his club. While there, Oliver briefly stepped away to talk to his younger sister, and Tony dropped a USB loaded with a software backdoor in a corner where he hoped an employee would find it.

Now, finally, he'd got his in. Someone had plugged it into a work computer, and he'd launched his attack, searching for any surveillance footage, bar tabs or personnel files relating to Nyssa, assassins, or other shady dealings.

The club's cyber defences had major flaws, which he'd exploited like a bloodhound scenting its prey. He'd made more than one scathing remark to Jarvis about hoping Queen Consolidated's tech team kept their security tighter than Verdant. But now he was inside, everything looked a little too curated. Like he was only seeing what someone wanted him to see.

If he didn't know better, he would have thought it was a fake server entirely.

A chill trailed down his spine, and he ran a hand through his hair. He should have known the ease with which he broke in was too good to be true, but he was so used to dealing with amateurs that he hadn't spared it a second thought.

But why would a nightclub go to the hassle and expense of setting up a honeypot? What did they have to hide?

He backtracked, trying to find the point when he'd fallen into the fake. But before he could, the connection cut, and he dropped from the system.

Verdant's security person must have traced the IP address to whichever workstation the employee had plugged the USB into and revoked his access.

Tony shoved himself away from the desk and ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. Yet again, another lead ran cold — except this time, it didn't make sense.

Happy had run background checks on Oliver's work and social circles before Tony flew out here, and the only person with this kind of technical knowledge was his assistant. She used to work in the IT department and had even turned down a job offer for Stark Industries in the past. Good for him for having better cybersecurity than Tony had given him credit for… but if Oliver trusted his assistant to set up the IT for the club, why had she changed departments at Queen Consolidated?

Something didn't add up. The easy answer would have been covering up an affair, and he would have believed that about the Oliver he used to know. But the man he'd met a few days ago was different. More sombre. His time on the island had changed him as much as Afghanistan had changed Tony, and Tony couldn't shake the seed that settled in his gut that said there was more to it.

In the past, that seed, that instinct, had been what led him to his greatest inventions and most shocking discoveries. He couldn't ignore it now.

'Sir,' Jarvis said, breaking him from his thoughts. 'One of Nyssa's fake passports was used to board a red-eye flight heading to Washington DC. She is due to land at 6am.'

'Tell Happy to prepare the jet.'

He could nurture this seed of curiosity later. For now, his priority was discovering what Nyssa's mission was in the capital.