Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it; you know the drill.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Run and Repeat
Oliver supposed that he shouldn't be surprised to find Barry Allen already back at the lair when he and Diggle returned to their base. He would have been tempted to try and continue interrogating Malcolm even after Barry was attacked by that other speedster, but when Tommy had arrived in the garage, Oliver hadn't been able to even consider the idea that he might have to attack his best friend on top of torturing his father. He was grateful that he'd had the foresight to ask Barry to just meet him near the mansion after he drove to it on his motorbike, as it made it easier for him to get back into town after Barry vanished with that man in yellow, but that didn't mean he wasn't still concerned about his new ally.
Considering the way things turned out, it's a good thing I sent Thea somewhere else for the evening; it's best she only learns the full picture after we've straightened things out...
Still, the direct approach might not have worked for finding the location of the second device, but once Oliver had met up with Diggle back in the city, his friend had been able to confirm that he had successfully infiltrated the building and destroyed the device that Barry had already told them about. He'd gone in with tranquiliser darts to take down any late-working scientists or potential security forces, and once he'd found the device itself, breaking it had been fairly straightforward. There was always the possibility that Diggle's recent attack on Malcolm would inspire the other man to escalate his own plans for the other device, but it would still take time for Malcolm to adjust his efforts to accommodate their current efforts, which should give Oliver time to respond accordingly in turn.
"Uh… hi?" Barry said, nodding apologetically at the other two men.
"You're all right?" Oliver asked.
"Took a few hits, but I gave as good as I got, and I got away alive." Barry looked urgently at Diggle. "Did you get it?"
"Got it," Diggle nodded, allowing himself a brief smile. "Took out the security systems, tranqued all the guards and night staff, and smashed that machine before tracking down the files."
"Files?"
"A few extra physical records," Diggle explained, reaching into his jacket and pulling out the papers. "I didn't see anything about where that other device you mentioned might be, but there are a couple of references here to 'Device 2'; I'm hoping there might be a clue or two in there, but we probably shouldn't pin our hopes on that."
"Damnit…" Barry shook his head. "And there was me hoping that we might get more information if we got in early enough…"
"And on the topic of things happening, can you explain what actually happened at Merlyn Manor?" Oliver looked firmly at the younger man. "Who was that man in yellow?"
"Man in yellow?" Diggle asked in surprise.
"The man who killed my mother," Barry replied virtually simultaneously with the bodyguard's words.
"Hold on; you're saying that other speedster you told us about was there?" Diggle looked anxiously at Barry.
"That's who that was?" Oliver looked uncertainly at the speedster. "What was he doing in my city?"
"I think… he wanted to figure out what I was doing here."
"What makes you think that?"
"He… we talked."
"You talked?" Oliver repeated sceptically. "You talked with your mother's killer?"
"He wanted to know what I was doing here, but he was a bit slower when we were fighting than he was when I fought him… well, in the future," Barry shrugged, clearly aware of how bizarre that scenario was. "I don't know how that could have happened, but I managed to put the guy down long enough for us to talk a bit, and when he started asking how I had my speed already, he… helped me fill in a few details."
"Such as?"
"Well, there was some stuff about the physics of how I ended up in the past like this that are a bit complicated and aren't important right now. The important part of what he told me is that, because of how I ended up in the past in the first place, I've only got a limited amount of energy to sustain my speed, and then… well, I'll lose my memory as well as my powers."
"You'll lose your memory?" Oliver repeated, looking at Barry with new anxiety.
"Just of everything I know of the future, but I think we all know that's a bad thing given the current stakes."
"Hold on; you seriously believe stuff you heard from the time-traveller who killed your mother?" Diggle looked sceptically at Barry. "How can you know he isn't lying?"
"I get that I can't be sure of that, but it's like… what he told me fits what I already know is happening to me," Barry clarified, waving his hand awkwardly. "After I caught the Dodger I suddenly couldn't remember exactly how I knew where he was going to be, now that I'm thinking about it I can't clearly recall any of the cases that I'm meant to help investigate between now and the accelerator explosion, and I'm starting to forget some of the metahumans I've fought in the future…"
He bowed his head for a moment, clearly trying to think about something specific, before he looked at the two men with new intensity. "Anyway, if I'm going to lose my memory and speed eventually, there are some things you need to know about your future."
"Are you… sure that's safe?" Oliver asked, suddenly wishing he had watched more science-fiction so that he might actually have some idea what the 'rules' were for time travel. "Isn't there some… rule against telling people their future when you go back in time?"
"From what… the other guy… told me, so long as neither of you do anything to stop the accident that actually gave me my speed in the first place, there's still some potential for me to give you a few tips about what's coming without it… well, without it really screwing up the timeline," Barry explained, a dark smile on his face as though he was fully aware of how bizarre it was to be saying such a sentence. "To deal with the important details about your own future, Slade Wilson's alive."
"What?" Oliver looked at Barry incredulously.
"Slade who?" Diggle asked.
"He was a friend of mine back on the island," Oliver explained grimly. "He went crazy after I injected him with Mirakuru to save his life… but I thought he'd drowned?"
"I don't how he survived your last fight, but he did," Barry explained. "Most of it only came out while I was in a coma after the particle accelerator explosion, but from what my team told me, Wilson was able to create an army of Mirakuru-enhanced soldiers by somehow… distilling his own blood so that he could give them his own strength."
"I stopped him?" Oliver asked, trying not to consider the nightmarish possibilities of facing an army as strong as Slade had been.
"My future team were able to help you find a cure for the Mirakuru and turn all of his soldiers back to normal," Barry explained. "I think you needed some back-up to take the army on, but from what I heard, you left Slade on some island prison afterwards because he was still…"
"Still crazy?" Oliver finished grimly (he wouldn't think about the possibility that he could have spared Slade his apparent continuing insanity if he'd tried the cure earlier).
"Yeah," Barry nodded. "There was something about him having a couple of allies in the city as well, but I never… I get the impression I didn't ask you for details about that particular time in your life after it was all over…"
"It's… something to be going along with," Oliver concluded solemnly. The notion of Slade being alive was troubling, but at least he knew about it in advance, and would also know to keep an eye out for anyone who might be working with Slade in turn. "Do you remember anything else about his plans?"
"He had some insider at your company… Isabel…" Barry waved a hand in frustration for a moment before he shook his head. "Sorry; the name's gone."
"But you're sure about 'Isabel'?" Diggle asked.
"That part… definitely stuck out," Barry nodded. "You needed a sample of Slade's blood… or the blood of someone else infected with Mirakuru… so that Caitlin and Cisco can create the cure for you, but you got that from… somewhere… an early test subject of Slade's…"
"All useful to know," Oliver nodded at Barry, fighting down his initial frustration; Barry had already explained his faltering memory, and after everything he'd done for them so far Oliver doubted Barry would lie to them about something this apparently important. "We'll keep all that in mind; is there anything else you can tell me?"
"Just… a few personal favours for me," Barry explained, now looking awkward for a different reason; evidently Barry wasn't comfortable making what Oliver was suddenly sure would be a more personal request. "Like I said, I apparently can't do anything to stop the actual particle accelerator explosion, so I'm going to have to deal with a range of metahumans no matter what happens, but there are a couple of people who were affected by it who… deserve special attention."
"In what way?" Diggle asked.
"Well, like I said, there were a lot of metahumans created by the original particle accelerator explosion apart from me. Most of them would have been criminals whatever happened, like my childhood bully and a couple of thieves, but there are a few who tried to be better, and one of them really got the short end of the stick."
"Who was that?"
"Bette Sans Souci," Barry said, his tone solemn as he remembered the woman he still considered an almost-ally if she'd had the chance to work with them for longer. "She was an explosives expert who was in Central City to get shrapnel out of her body after an accident in Afghanistan. After the accelerator exploded she ended up with the ability to turn anything she touched into an explosive because of the shrapnel fragments in her cells, with the catch that she… couldn't turn it off."
"Couldn't turn it off?" Oliver repeated.
"I mean, I think it must have only applied to anything she touched with the palms of her hands or she wouldn't have been able to eat or change her clothes, but otherwise, anything she touched would just blow up. My team were able to give her gloves that would let her touch things safely so long as she wore them, but we had no way of actually getting rid of her powers, and… she ended up getting killed by this psycho general who was trying to use her as a weapon."
"Man," Diggle said, shaking his head grimly. "That really sucks…"
"Exactly," Barry nodded. "Which is why I wanted to ask if you could see about getting her treated somewhere other than Central City that night."
"Me?"
"Well, you've got military contacts, right?" Barry looked cautiously at Diggle. "I'm not asking you to guarantee that Bette gets the absolute best medical care possible or anything too extreme, I just need to be sure that she'll get treated by a professional doctor somewhere other than Central City the night of the explosion."
"Help out a fellow soldiers so that she doesn't get crap powers and end up dead?" Diggle smiled at Barry. "Weird situation, but I can't fault that kind of motive."
"Thanks," Barry nodded gratefully at him. "The particle accelerator being turned on was pretty public, so you just need to keep an ear out for any news about Bette around that time and get her transferred as soon as you hear about her accident."
"Could be tricky to justify, but with the next few months to come up with a good story, I think I can do that."
"Do what you can," Barry smiled. "Bette… I'm not sure if I knew her for long enough to call her a friend, but she was the first other metahuman I met who wasn't using her powers for her own benefit even though she had an easily destructive power; she didn't deserve what happened to her."
"We can all get behind that," Oliver nodded at the young man in understanding. It was a bizarre situation for anyone to be in, but he could appreciate Barry's desire to save a young woman whose only flaw was to have a terribly superpower rather than being a bad person in herself.
"The next one's… a bit complicated, and I'm not sure how much you'll be able to do, but I want you to know anyway," Barry explained. "On the night of the accelerator explosion… I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but project engineer Ronnie Raymond and visiting physicist Professor Martin Stein end up… merged."
"Merged?" Oliver and Diggle repeated.
"When I found them, they were in a kind of hybrid form with Stein's mind in control of Ronnie's body, which gave them some ability to generate fire but obviously… well, it wasn't exactly easy for them. We were able to figure out a way to help them separate with the aid of a device called a quantum splicer, and after that Ronnie and Professor Stein were able to merge and separate from each other whenever they wanted."
"And that's a bad thing?" Diggle asked.
"Not exactly," Barry explained "Ronnie and Professor Stein were good allies when they sorted out their initial… communication problems… but they spent months walking around the city with no idea what had happened to them and no way to tell anyone else about it. I'm not expecting you to be able to create the quantum splicer yourself, but maybe you can… get someone else to make it?"
"…I take it you can't remember exactly how that 'quantum splicer' worked?" Oliver asked.
"I'm not even sure I understood it when I had all my memories," Barry said apologetically. "I think I recall it had something to do with hitting Ronnie and Professor Stein's atoms with enough energy to match what they experienced in the accelerator explosion, but after that…"
"That's… something to work on, anyway," Oliver nodded tentatively at the young man. He wasn't sure exactly how he and Diggle were expected to make that kind of scientific breakthrough in just a couple of years, but if they had a name and knew what to look for, at the very least maybe he and Diggle could find this 'merged man' and give him somewhere safe to stay while they tried to put it together.
"Is that everything?" Diggle asked.
"…Everything I can remember that's a big enough deal that getting your help in advance would make a difference," Barry nodded, before he turned back to Oliver. "So what do you want to do about Merlyn?"
"I'm… not sure," Oliver shook his head grimly. "If we could just get a look at his private files, we might be able to work out where he's keeping that other device-"
"Pretty sure you did that in the original timeline and only found the first one," Barry cut in. "I'm guessing that Merlyn kept the second one's existence off available electronic files so that he could be sure nobody else would know about it until he was ready; he went to a lot of trouble to make sure… other people… only knew so much about his plans before he was ready."
"Right…" Oliver nodded in grim understanding. "So what now?"
"Maybe we sue him?"
"Sue him?" Oliver looked at Diggle in surprise. "Are you serious?"
"We could use it to get access to his paperwork and see if we can find where he hid anything that way," the bodyguard clarified. "It's a grey area legally, I'll admit, but considering the stakes, we can probably pull it off… and hey, we do know a good lawyer."
