Tempest: Chapter Seventeen: On the Run
The world spun and both bodies hit the ground and Amara's room swam before her eyes, her fingers groping at her neck around the injection site. But she was barely drowsy…what had he injected her with?
She pulled herself upright, rubbing at her neck and swallowing thickly as she looked down at the body crumpled on her bedroom floor. Amara was no stranger to dead bodies, but she had never been forced to actually kill a person before.
His eyes were wide and sightless, gazing fixedly at her bedposts as the blood pooled around him from where she'd shot him through in the chest.
Amara swallowed thickly, grabbing her rucksack and hopping up onto the bed to avoid the spreading of the blood, grabbing up the syringe that the mysterious man had used on her.
"The fear will kill you first," Cheshire had once said, "rely only on your instincts."
And Amara was more than ready to vault through the window and take off, but now until she knew what she'd been injected with.
She pulled her laptop, clicking open an analysis cartridge that she'd managed to add four months previously by completely dismantling her laptop and putting it back together. Amara squirted the last of the liquid within the syringe onto the scanner.
For a moment, all that was read on the computer was: Scanning in progress.
Then it gave a sharp ding.
Positive: Subcutaneous microtransmitter
Amara swore. What was it people with liking this kind of tech to track her down? Of course, there was nothing really bad with the tech, in fact it was really great tech; subtle and operational, just the way Amara liked it. But she was getting a little annoyed with people using it on her, though it was just a little gratifying that she forced them to go to that level to find her.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Amara hissed, moving to her desk, pulling out the case Robin had given her that contained the cure to the location-specific subcutaneous microtransmitter that Merlyn had left her with. He had given her two things, the first had been the cure that had given her the flu for eighteen hours, and the other was a thick inhibitor bracelet.
Amara was pressed for time and she had no way to deactivate the microtransmitters without the solution Wayne Tech had…and Amara couldn't go there, she didn't have that kind of time.
So she pulled out the bracelet, jabbing a finger and adding a drop to the small compartment before binding it tightly to her wrist, wincing as it gave her a small shock.
Then she took the small crossbow Roy had given her for her birthday and added it to her rucksack, pausing as she looked at her image in the mirror.
Her dark curls were in wild disarray and her green eyes were slightly dilated and wide. Amara hardly recognized herself, but it wouldn't take anyone affiliated with the Justice League.
She pulled a small box out the jewelry box that she knew, if she opened it, would hold the very first hair-color-change earring that Barry had given her with a ruby gem as reference to the crimson color.
Amara pocketed it and opened her window, making her way down the tree planted outside it without a second glance back.
"Recognize: Oracle –B00," came the disembodied voice as Amara entered the Cave, taking off running down the hall until she found the compartment where her Storm Chaser uniform was kept.
This was not how she'd anticipated her day was going to go.
She had planned on going to lunch with her mother, eat dinner with her parents and sneak out in the middle of the night to Gotham to kick some ass with Artemis.
Yet here she was, packing up her things, ready to leave at any minute.
Amara shoved her utility belt into her bag, zipping it up over the bulge before looking around the Cave sadly.
She'd left a jacket over the edge of the couch that was perched in front of the large television, the bowl of nearly empty long-stale popcorn from when she had managed to convince Roy to watch the Mummy with her (Iris had banned her from watching it when she'd first watched it with her and Barry, only to freak out halfway through because of the scarabs).
Amara loved this place and now it was feeling like every time she took one step forward, someone was forcing her back. Merlyn had crippled her for months and it had taken her so long to get back on her feet (and Amara meant that in the physical and mental sense) and Amara had gotten so close to being allowed back out on Star City's streets as Storm Chaser, the sidekick to Black Canary.
But she couldn't let her family get involved in this crusade that Weather Wizard clearly had for her. She didn't know how she'd be able to forgive herself if they'd gotten hurt because of her…
Amara flinched, thinking of the photographs her would-be kidnapper had possessed. He knew what they looked like, her family, her friends…he had photographs of Wally and Roy and Dick and Barry and Iris…the fear settled like a lump of coal in her stomach.
"I'm doing this to keep you safe," she promised to the silence, raising her eyes to stare steadily to one of the visible cameras, her jaw clenching tightly. "I'm sorry."
She swallowed and hardly dared to whisper, "Goodbye," before yanking on the strap of her rucksack and rushing off in the direction of the main door that led outside.
"Recognize: Oracle –B00," came the voice once more as the side-wall scanners traced over her and Amara had one last glimpse of the inside of the Cave before the door of grass shut once more.
"So long," Amara murmured, clipping her gem to her ear, turning her hair red before she leapt up into the sky, spinning the air around her to carry her upwards.
"You know this would be faster if we had Oracle on it," Roy complained, swiveling in the chair beside his mentor as he tried his hand at hacking, though, admittedly, his skill in it wasn't nearly so developed as Amara was.
Dinah was off on assignment with Wonder Woman ("Try to keep your heads on straight without me, boys," she said, squeezing Roy's shoulder and blowing Oliver a kiss), which left Speedy and Green Arrow to hold down the fort in her absence.
"I think she's still sulking that Dinah isn't allowing her out in the field yet," Oliver replied, his mustache twitching slightly as he gave a small smirk.
"Well, she's been waiting to get back out on the streets for weeks," Roy had to concede.
Watching Amara sink into a deep depression when she'd first come out of the hospital had been remarkably difficult, especially since hardly nothing anyone ever said seemed to snap her out of it. Then she'd been trapped in that wheelchair of hers for months before she'd finally decided to try her hand at walking.
Roy could sympathize with her frustration; if he felt he was completely healed, he'd be pretty annoyed that no one was letting him take up his bow and domino mask.
"Besides, I would have asked her for some help, but Amy's not picking up," Oliver added, hitting a few keys on the keyboard, before fiddling with something on the screen, but Roy was too caught on his words to focus on just what his adoptive father was doing with his negligible hacking skills.
"Wait," he said, his brow furrowing, "what do you mean she wasn't picking up; Amy always picks up her phone."
And that was true; you'd be hard pressed to find Amara without her phone, she had it on her person at all times. Roy could count on one hand and still have fingers left over of the times he'd actually heard her phone go to voicemail.
"I know," Oliver said, "but she could be busy with Barry, so I didn't push."
"That's not like her," Roy murmured to himself, ignoring Oliver briefly as he pulled out his own phone, checking to see if she'd called him at one point before hitting the speed dial for Storm Warning.
The phone rang piercingly for a few moments before ending in the typical: "Hi, you've reached Amara Allen, sorry I can't pick up the phone, I'm probably doing something vastly important. If I don't call you later, hit me back and I'll probably pick up. BEEP!"
"Hey, it's me," Roy said into the speaker, "call me back when you get this, okay? GA's trying his hand at hacking and it's not really going so well. We could use some help."
Then he ended the call with an odd look on his face.
The phone resting on Amara's bedside table buzzed and buzzed, but there was no one to pick it up, not even the corpse on the floor, already stiff from rigor mortis.
Missed call, it read, Arrowhead.
Dick Grayson sat impatiently in his classroom, drumming his fingers against the table as he pretended to be interested in what the teacher was saying. They were almost done with class for the term; he didn't see what was the point of trying to shove as much information down their throats before they could be let go for summer.
It was times like these that Dick couldn't help but be envious of Amara being able to take all her classes online.
His friend, Barbara Gordon, who was called by Babs by everyone who knew her including Dick, elbowed him suddenly, just in time for Dick to raise his head, focusing on the board his teacher had scrawled a math problem that he was now being asked to solve.
Dick stifled his groan and moved to the front of the classroom to take the marker from him and write it out.
"It's always good to hang out with just some girls," Diana Prince told Dinah with a smile as they walked through the Justice League's Hall of Justice. "There aren't enough in the League."
"Amen," Dinah concurred with a laugh. The men in the Justice League were far more numerous than the women, of the most notable were Wonder Woman, Black Canary, and Hawkwoman. "We don't get to hang out nearly enough, Diana."
Wonder Woman gave a small shrug. "Well, Washington DC is on the opposite side of the US compared to Star City."
And she wasn't wrong there. Star City was located in California, but Dinah wasn't entirely sure that Diana could handle California's heat, as the woman tended to avoid making any appearances in Star City unless it was absolutely necessary (say what you will, but Dinah was positive it was the heat that was getting her down and absolutely nothing else).
"Come on, Diana," Dinah snorted, "we both know you could take a zeta-tube and be there in seconds."
Diana smirked widely as she made her way towards the doors, branching off from her old friend. "As it so happens, I'm rather busy this week, sorry, maybe next time."
"I'll get you to swing by sooner or later," Dinah called after her, laughing at Wonder Woman's attempts to elude her.
Then she pulled out her phone.
"Hi, you've reached Amara Allen, sorry I can't pick up the phone, I'm probably doing something vastly important. If I don't call you later, hit me back and I'll probably pick up. BEEP!"
"Hey, I guess you're a little busy," Dinah said into the phone, "but its official, next week you can start back on patrol with me and the archers. Call me back when you get this, okay? We've got some things to go over before you can start up again…"
Lunch time came and went but Iris' daughter was nowhere to be seen. She shouldn't be really worried about it, though, Amara did have a habit of time getting away from her when she got distracted…but Amara had been on her way out of the house…what could have come up that suddenly?
So Iris made a call before she went back on the air.
"Yeah, babe?"
"Hey, Barry, could you do me a favor and run home and check on Amy for me?" Iris asked her husband in a single breath.
"Why?" Barry asked in surprise. "Did she not make it to your lunch? Because she does get sidetracked—"
"Yeah, I know," Iris sighed, knowing how she sounded, "but can you check on her anyways?"
She could just imagine the confusion taking over his face before he said, "All right, I'll run home and I'll call you when I find her, all right?"
"Thanks, babe," Iris said in relief. "I've got to go, I love you."
Barry took the car rather than running speedily back to the house, no matter how he felt it would be better to run, he knew the rules; no use of powers near where you could be recognized.
As soon as he pulled up into the driveway and pulled the key out of the ignition and pulled himself out of the car he had the eerie sensation that something was wrong, and all because the door into the house was open.
There was no way that he or Iris would have left it open when they left for work that morning, and even Amara knew to lock the door after her when she went out; there was no reason for it to be open.
He approached the door cautiously. "Amy?" he called lightly. "You here?"
Barry pushed against the door, opening it further to allow him to gain a better sight of the site within. The small table that held a bowl that the Allens left their keys in when they returned home for the night had been knocked to the ground with Amara's tell-tale keys resting on the floor –her keychain held a Flash lightning bolt with two keys that went with the house locks, one key with a rose pattern that went to Bouquet Boutique's main door, and one to Roy's motorcycle back when Amara used it to drive around while Speedy shot off arrows behind her.
And with the keys on the floor were scattered an assortment of pictures that Barry had to kneel to examine, his throat clogging as he took in the images…there was him with Iris and Amara during a night out back when Amara still needed her wheelchair, she was laughing and their faces were crossed out with red.
All the pictures were like that, Barry noticed, and there were a lot of them. All of Amara with her friends and family and her co-worker and boss, and in all of them, Amara was the only one untouched.
And Amara…where was she?
"Amy?" Barry called again, standing again and peering up the silent staircase, but there was no answer. "Amy, are you still here?"
He felt a little apprehensive about going up the stairs, his own eyes playing tricks on him, forcing him to draw up a horrifying image of his daughter with her eyes wide and vacant, clouded from death. Barry had seen dead bodies before; he was a forensic scientist, of course, but he knew he wouldn't be able to handle it if his daughter's body was in her room.
That door was open to, though it had been opened forcibly as opposed to the front door…like it had been locked, like Amara had run to the room to get away from whoever had given her the photos, but he'd followed.
And then Barry stepped inside his daughter's room. There was a mess beside her bed, dominated by the corpse of a man who had long since bled out onto Amara's carpeting. The items on Amara's bedside table had for the most part been swept to the floor with her alarm clock and comlink and lamp that she used late in the night, the only thing left on it was her phone. They were clearly knocked over in a struggle.
There was a syringe on the floor that Barry was certain would be found to be the man's…but he had died from a gunshot wound, and there were no guns in the house, neither Barry nor Iris believed in them; if there was one thing Iris believed in, it was tasers.
But Amara wasn't there.
There was clothes missing from the closet and her laptop was gone, and Amara never went anywhere without her laptop.
Barry pulled out his phone, releasing a sharp breath as he dialed Bruce Wayne's number.
"Bats, we've got a problem," he said, "and I need your help."
All in all, Dinah really shouldn't have been surprised; it wasn't as though Amara hadn't gone missing before. But last time Amara had performed her disappearing act, it had been in an effort to find her missing friend, this time it was for self-preservation.
If she'd found out that someone was spying on her, she would have done the same thing as Amara; just up and left. She probably thought it was the best option, a way to keep the people she loved safe, and she wasn't wrong, but Dinah worried about where Amara was planning on hiding out; her protégé's safety was her priority.
"I'm going after her," Roy said stonily as Barry spoke with Batman, leaving his wife sitting beside Dinah, leaning forward and pressing her hands into her eyes while Dinah rubbed soothing circles into her shoulders.
"No, you're not," she nearly barked, quieting briefly when Iris jolted at the noise. "You don't know where to start looking, none of us do! We've searched her typical hideouts, Speedy! She isn't there!"
"I can't just sit here and do nothing!" Roy insisted.
Iris gave a short laugh that was inappropriate, given the circumstances, but she couldn't help it. "You sound like her," she said with a small smile towards the young archer, "back when you went missing…she said almost the same thing."
Silence descended on them as the image of Amara collecting her Storm Chaser costume replayed on the screen before she ran off with barely a look back. The look on her face…the kind of determination she'd had…it was just a little frightening.
"We'll get her back, Iris, don't worry," Black Canary tried to console her friend with a kindly smile that Iris saw past easily; Roy didn't blame her, Amara was better at pulling the wool over others eyes and she still was bad at fooling Iris.
"You don't know that," Iris denied, pulling herself a little away from the meta-human. "She left because someone knew where she lived and worked, who her family and friends were! My –my daughter won't come back until she knows it's safe for us…" Her shoulders gave a small sag. "That's just the way she functions."
And it was true. If there was one thing Amara prized above everything else, it was her family and her friends. She wouldn't risk their safety for her own.
It proved difficult to keep the authorities from finding out the identities of the Flash and the one former known as Storm Chaser, but they couldn't very well keep a dead body rotting in their house.
So, the Allen house was cleaned out in the dead on night with the body taken away to be examined and the blood cleaned up without any trace that there had been anything unsightly there before.
But then there was the matter that Amara had a job and disappearing had put them in a precarious position of explaining her disappearance…but that was a problem to be tackled the very next day.
Amara had nothing against traveling on foot, but flying was certainly faster, though it did have its downsides, most of them were because Amara could only last so long up in the air. Her control of air, of the clouds, wasn't as good as she would like it to be, so she'd ended up having to buy an expandable raft (purchased with cash and far from Central City).
The destination that Jade had given her was far from the shores of the United States, which did very little to help her with her little problem of prolonged flying.
By now she was sure that the Justice League had been made aware of her disappearance and had at least made some attempts at finding her. She was beyond certain that they would have tried to find her location from her laptop, but Amara had long-since disabled that feature.
For know Amara gave in to rest, slumped in the small raft, her bag resting across from her as she guzzled down some water –careful to conserve but also needing enough in order to survive.
Her whole body was sore from the effort of her air-manipulation, but she knew she could only rest for so long, it may have been the middle of the night, but she didn't feel very comfortable in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (or was she in the Indian Ocean now? She didn't even know), especially since she was so out in the open, capable of being attacked from all sides.
"How much farther?" she moaned to herself, pulling out the burner phone Jade had left her with containing the single set of coordinates. Where it led Amara could only hazard a guess, and the guess at the top of that list was a safe house, but it seemed pretty out of the way for a safe house.
Amara would just have to find out when she got there, she supposed.
So she removed the air from the raft for probably more than the twelfth time that day (though, honestly, she had stopped counting after seven), hovering in the air as she compressed it back into her bag, before she threw the straps over her shoulders and vaulted up into the sky with only the phone to guide her to her coordinates.
The night passed quietly into day, marked only by the sun creeping over the horizon, painting it pink and orange. Amara had never quite been able to appreciate just how beautiful the view was when you were so high up, but, then again, Amara had never had a need to be up so high in the sky that she disappeared into the clouds.
And it was nearly midday when Amara reached her destination, descending slowly from her great height to the land lightly on the sandy beach that was hidden by sharp, craggy rocks and a veil of fog…
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Amara said, looking into the jungle as a stunned realization overtook her.
She knew this island, Oliver had told her about it one time…it was one of the Fiji islands, the one that he had been shipwrecked on for five years. Oliver hadn't said much about it, but he'd given a very rough description that made it clear where she was.
This was Starfish Island, where Oliver Queen became Green Arrow.
