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Run and Repeat

"You caught some thief?" Oliver looked at Barry in surprise.

"Well, I remembered where he was going to be from the police files that were sent out about it after the event," Barry explained with a shrug. "I've got a good memory for this kind of thing; once I realised the date, I decided it was worth a shot to take him down."

"So in the future, you knew about some jewel thief but didn't know that…" Thea trailed off, her expression going from hostile to embarrassed as she held a hand over her mouth. "OK, now that I'm saying it, that's just a completely dick thing to complain about someone not knowing; sorry about that."

"What?" Oliver looked sharply at his sister.

"Just… had a close call with some purse thief; it's not important," Thea shrugged before she looked at Barry. "What matters right now is that you got the guy, right?"

"And before he managed to kill anyone… well, here, anyway," Barry said awkwardly. "I mean, you'd have caught him on your own in the original timeline even without me being here, but I just figured… I mean, you had that Ken Williams guy to intimidate, I knew how it would all play out, so I just stopped him a bit ahead of schedule."

"Can't complain about that," Diggle shrugged. "We're dealing with so much we don't know for certain, if you can knock a few small fry out of the picture in the process I'm all for that."

"I still can't quite…" Thea shook her head as she stared around the lair before her gaze settled on Barry. "You're sure that Mom-?"

"I'm sure," Barry nodded grimly. "Trust me, the subsequent investigation was… pretty thorough."

"When you still don't know-"

"Barry explained that, Thea," Oliver looked at his sister with a mix of impatience and indulgence. "He didn't come back here on purpose, so he'd only paid attention to what the news had to report about what's going to happen up to a point, which includes not knowing where these devices were planted."

"But you're sure that you got the names right?" Thea asked.

"Trust me, the fact that these things were called the Markov Device is one detail I'm not going to forget," Barry affirmed. "Seriously, even after both of them were dismantled and destroyed, I heard some rumours that the government was drawing up the necessary paperwork to classify those things as a new WMD to make it a literal war crime if someone ever tried to use new versions of them later."

"…Yeah, that's frankly terrifying," Diggle said grimly before he looked directly at Barry. "You're sure that there were two of these things?"

"Oh, the news reports made a very big deal about that," the future speedster nodded at him.

"And those files Felicity found only gave you one address?"

"And even that new address may not be relevant for much longer, which is why we have to act on that now," Oliver said as he looked firmly at his official bodyguard. "I appreciate that you're not… comfortable going out in the field on your own-"

"With these stakes, we don't exactly have the time to do things a more practical way," Diggle nodded in understanding. "I've got a helmet and a bulletproof vest sorted out for the raid; it's basic, but it should be enough to get the job done."

"We'll make it work," Barry nodded at Diggle before he looked back at Oliver. "You're sure this is the best way to do it?"

"Everything you've told me about Malcolm Merlyn has been backed up by the evidence we've found so far," Oliver nodded solemnly at the speedster. "If we're going to find the other device, he's the only one who might know where it is, and we have to be sure that it won't get deployed even if we take him out of the equation."

"…Right," Barry nodded as he looked at the archer, a new sense of apprehension briefly crossing his face before he returned to a more neutral expression. "Do we have somewhere safe to do this?"

"Actually, I was thinking the safest place would be somewhere close to his home," Oliver observed. "If we can reinforce just how much we know, Merlyn might be more inclined to talk…"


Checking his suit in the mirror, Malcolm Merlyn wondered if he was overdoing it.

On the one hand, he always prided himself on making a good impression, but on the other hand, Tommy had seen him in basically every kind of outfit he owned at some point or another. If he was trying to show that he was serious about wanting to make up with his son, it only made sense to look like he'd put some effort into the meeting rather than just dropping everything on him at once like he had during that last dinner.

It wasn't as though he could risk telling Tommy the reason why he was closing Rebecca's clinic, but so long as they presented a united front-

The fact that what happened next caught him off-guard for the first time since he began his training was almost as disorientating as what actually happened. He knew that there had been some kind of transition between the two moments, but as far as he could tell he had gone from standing in his bedroom to sitting on a chair in his garage, facing the dark-clad form of the Hood and another man wearing some kind of red ski mask over his head.

"Malcolm Merlyn," the Hood said, pointing an arrow at his head, "you have failed this city."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about-" Malcolm began with his arms raised, trying to insert the right element of panic into his voice.

"Then you're going to claim that you don't know anything about the Markov Device?" the red-masked man, his voice unusually deep.

"What?" Malcolm looked at the other man in confusion.

"We know everything, Merlyn," the Hood said with a cold edge to his voice. "We know about the Markov Devices, we know about your plan to destroy the Glades, we know about your list, and we know about your enforcer; all we need from you is the location of the device that's not in Unidac."

"I repeat, I honestly don't know what you're talking-" Malcolm began, only to be cut short when the Hood's arrow leapt from his bow to go straight through his left forearm just as he was about to lower it. Malcolm had enough time to see the arrow coming, but suppressed the instinct out of a desire to try and reinforce the idea that he didn't know what these men were talking about, only to regret that thought when the arrow went straight through his forearm.

Malcolm didn't even have to exaggerate the pain he felt at the wound; he'd grown so used to bluffing his way through any potential fight that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to actually be in pain. Despite his best efforts, Malcolm was forced to his knees as the Hood and his partner stood over him, only dimly registering that the two men standing above her were arguing.

"…don't have time!" the Hood yelled.

"There are lines we can't cross-!" the other man yelled, sounding like he had just stopped himself from saying a specific name. "You have to be better-!"

"I didn't set out to be an inspiration to anyone-!"

"You are to me," the man in red said, sounding surprisingly calm for a man who was working alongside the Hood. "I recognise that there are things you have to do to deal with what you're up against, but there have to be lines you won't cross."

"I don't always have that luxury-"

"But you need to recognise that you've got greater responsibilities now than you had in the past," the man in red said, looking more controlled as he looked at the Hood. "I know you-"

"And I know about you."

For a moment Malcolm thought that the man in the red mask had put on a more exaggerated false voice for some reason, but then he registered the surprised expression on what he could see of the other men's faces. He was about to glance around himself, but when a burst of what looked like lightning suddenly struck the man in the red mask and he suddenly vanished from view, Malcolm seized his chance.

With the Hood clearly caught off-guard by this turn of events, Malcolm abandoned his fragile plan of feigning ignorance as he leapt out of the chair and grabbed for the other man's bow. Unfortunately, he underestimated the handicap of his injured arm, as the Hood easily parried the attack and struck Malcolm in the side of the head before he could take the weapon.

"Not happening," the man in the hood said firmly, before he sharply grabbed the arrow still in Malcolm's forearm and yanked it out. "I came here for the location of the Markov devices, and-"

"Dad?" another voice said.

When Malcolm turned to see Tommy standing at the internal door leading back into the house, he felt a surge of panic. Whatever his relationship was with Tommy at this point, he wasn't going to let his son get attacked by-

As he found himself lying on the floor, he felt a brief surge of panic when he saw the Hood running for Tommy, but fear shifted to confusion when the vigilante just shoved Tommy aside and ran back into the house, followed by the sound of breaking glass as though he'd jumped through a window.

Even as Tommy came over to anxiously look him over, Malcolm had to take care to acknowledge his wound (his old pain-suppression training was taking over, but he couldn't show that trait without raising questions) even as he tried to work out what had just happened; who was the Hood's new partner, and why had he left like that?

More importantly, how had the Hood learnt enough about the Undertaking to know about the two Markov Devices? Even Moira and the others didn't know that detail, and he'd been careful to keep all such information on the second device extremely secret…


AN: Sorry to cut this one short, but considering everything Barry's going to learn from his attack, I thought that the upcoming revelations would merit their own chapter.