Chapter 15- Discovery, Secrets, and Fallout
Anna and Oliver held glowrods, with Felicity following them in a wheelchair. "Okay. We're here. Now what?" Oliver asked.
"The mainframe has a built-in cellular chip, but our rewire didn't generate enough kilowatts to jump-start it," Felicity said, bringing her chair to a stop beside Anna and Oliver when they stopped walking.
"Right because everything with an electronic circuit is fried," Anna said, rolling her eyes.
"Everything with an electronic circuit, " Felicity said, picking up the glowrod she had on her lap and shining it on what looked like a motorcycle. Oliver went to it.
"My old bike," Oliver said in a hushed whisper of admiration.
"She's a beaut, good old-fashioned combustion engine," Anna said, touching the handlebars almost as reverently as Oliver's voice.
"You know motor bikes, Ann?" Oliver asked.
"Somewhat. My stepfather and brother were crazy about motorcycles. Jim and Owen would spend hours at motocross events. I wasn't interested until I saw the Disney Channel movie Motocrossed where a girl pretends to be her twin brother and enters motocross in his place. But Jim would have gone into gleeful fits over this old engine. He would say no school like old-school," Anna said.
"So we can generate electricity without an electronic starter," Oliver said.
"Oh, yeah," Felicity said.
"That is smart," Oliver said as Anna proceeded to open the housing around the engine.
Diggle looked off into space. They had just sent Rene and Curtis into the elevator shaft and now that he had a time to think, his mind went back to the fight he had had with Lyla about Anna and her father. "John? John?" Dinah asked, trying to get his attention.
"Yeah," John said, snapping out of his reverie and typing away on the computer in front of him.
"Anything in particular you're looking for with that thousand-yard stare?" Dinah asked dryly.
"It's that obvious, huh?" Diggle asked.
"Rene wasn't the only one who could clock tension between you and the missus if that's what you mean," Dinah said.
"Right," Diggle said as he went to a map of the United States.
"Let me guess. You confronted Lyla about the A.R.G.U.S. black site, and it didn't go too good," Dinah said good-naturedly.
"Something like that," Diggle said cryptically.
"You want to talk about it?" Dinah asked.
"Not really," Diggle said.
"Ok. Well, if you did, I'd tell you about Vinnie and me," Dinah said as she turned back to her computer.
"Vinnie?" Diggle asked.
"My undercover partner who I was in love with when we weren't being cops. Working UC, we had to keep certain things from each other, and we didn't do it because we wanted to. We did it because we had to," Dinah said as Lyla came into the room.
"Okay. It took some horse trading, but I got everything Curtis asked for," Lyla said, putting a duffel bag down on the table.
"Oh, great," Dinah said.
"What's the status here?" Lyla asked, refusing to look at Diggle.
"He and Rene are getting the lay of the land. Kodo and Podo, any updates?" Dinah asked into her computer radio.
"No good ones. The EMP fried the hydraulics system. We have to cut through the magnetic seal in order to reach the manual override," Curtis said.
"We're gonna need the acetylene torch," Rene said.
"And the wideband active field probe. Without my t-spheres, there's no telling what's on the other side of this thing after the EMP blast," Curtis said.
Oliver started up the engine on the motorcycle. "Is it working?" Oliver asked, looking over at Felicity and Anna as he idled the bike's engine. Anna looked at the mainframe on the wall.
"Give it a second, Ollie," Anna said and Oliver sat down.
"Thanks again for trying things my way," Felicity said.
"First time for everything. Regarding Helix and your dad, Felicity, Anna, you both know why I didn't back your play. And you know-or you should-that it had nothing to do with a lack of trust," Oliver said with a slight edge in his voice.
"If you're going to start saying yet again that it's because you don't want either of us to be like you, you can hold your breath, particularly since we are running out of oxygen," Anna said, looking at the door.
"Ann, your father, Cayden James, is a criminal-" Oliver started to say. Anna turned and interrupted him.
"My father, Cayden James, is a hacker, as in so much less worse than the Bratva. Me and Felicity made the exact same tradeoff you did to get Chase. We picked the lesser of two evils and Dad had something that really could have helped us," Anna said stiffly.
"The fact that I didn't want you to do that doesn't make me a hypocrite," Oliver said, his voice raising.
"What does it make you then?" Felicity asked.
"It makes me someone who doesn't want either of you to...be like me," Oliver said, hesitating on the last part.
"Yeah," Felicity said as the mainframe started to power up. Anna went to it.
"Bam! That's what I'm talking about!" Anna said as little lights appeared on the mainframe and then exploded in a blinding white light. Oliver went to both of them as the light faded and the motorcycle engine died.
"Are you two okay?" Oliver asked.
"Yeah. Depending on what that sound is," Felicity said and they all went quiet as they heard a hissing sound in the air.
"That's not good, guys. One of the pipes is damaged. I just hope it's not the highly toxic and flammable gas pipe," Anna said as she went to a pipe that was releasing smoke. Anna looked at the letters on it, dread filling her. It was the methane pipe.
"So much for doing things my way," Felicity said in a soft whimper.