Barry emerged from his apartment building into a downpour. He made a noise of distaste and cursed, not for the first time, the fact that he'd never gotten around to buying an umbrella. In his defense, he hadn't expected to ever actually need one- Central City's climate tended toward sunny and dry.
Ducking through the crowd on the sidewalk, Barry did his best to use the people around him to shield himself from the worst of the rain as he headed for the curb. Once there, he spent the next few minutes trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab, getting splashed by the spray of water from the tires of passing cars for his trouble. By the time a cab finally did pull over, he was soaked through to the skin.
It's like the universe is trying to mess up my trip, he thought grumpily to himself as he climbed inside the cab. Things only got worse from there. The weather must have been affecting the cab driver's mood, because he took offense to Barry's well-meaning and extremely helpful suggestions for alternate routes provided by the great new traffic app he'd just downloaded, grumbling that no skinny kid was going to tell him how to do his job and irritably ignoring them. As a result, Barry ended up missing his train to Starling City, and then, to add insult to injury, the next one wound up being late.
"This is the only guy we got on camera," an SCPD crime scene tech was saying as Barry entered the Queen Consolidated Applied Sciences building, having finally made it to his destination. "The rest of the crew must have come in after him."
"Actually, it was just one guy," Barry spoke up, approaching the group consisting of Oliver Queen, his bodyguard John Diggle, an SCPD detective, and the pretty blonde Barry remembered seeing on the news after being saved by the Starling City vigilante.
"Sorry I'm late," he went on as they all turned to look at him. "Actually, my train was late. Well, the second one, the first one I did miss, but that was my cab driver's fault. I've got this great traffic app, and..." He trailed off, noticing the stares he was getting and realizing that he was rambling. "Well, he uh, he thought that he was right," he finished lamely. "But I'm here now, so-"
"Great," the SCPD detective interjected. "Who the hell are you?"
"And do your parents know that you're here?" Oliver, standing next to him, put in. Barry bristled at that. He knew that he looked much younger than he was, but he was so sick of hearing comments like that. He resisted the urge to snap that no, his parents didn't know that he was here, because he was an adult and could come and go as he pleased and instead said, "I'm Barry Allen. I'm from the Central City Police Department. I'm with the crime scene investigation unit." He held out his badge for them to see."We're working on a case with some similar unexplained elements in Central City, so when the report of your robbery came over the wire, my captain sent me up here." He hoped they couldn't tell that the last part wasn't true. He'd always been a terrible liar.
"And you think one guy ripped through this door like it was tinfoil," the detective- Quentin Lance, Barry remembered suddenly- said, distracting him from his thoughts. He chose to respond to that like it was a question, though it hadn't been said like one.
"One very strong guy, yeah," he confirmed. Pulling out his tablet, he continued, "It takes about 1,250 foot pounds of torque to break someone's neck." Pulling up an autopsy photo and turning his tablet around for everyone to see, he added, "See the marks on the guard's neck? The bruising pattern suggests the killer used only one hand." Barry noticed that Oliver looked increasingly more worried as he pointed out all the evidence, and he wondered why.
"I'm guessing you don't know how hard it is to break someone's neck," he said.
"Hmm?" Oliver asked in a distracted tone, looking up from the autopsy photo. "No. No idea."
"We're going to need a list of the entire inventory here in order to figure out what was stolen," the tech from earlier said, addressing Oliver.
"Actually, I think I know what was stolen," Barry put in. "A centrifuge. An industrial centrifuge. Probably the Kord Enterprises 2BX 900. Maybe the six series. Both have a three column base. Here"- he pointed to a spot on the floor- "you can see three sets of broken bolts where the thief just ripped it out of the ground."
"And what exactly is a centrifuge?" Lance asked.
"It separates liquids," the blonde from the news answered before Barry could. " The centripetal acceleration causes denser substances to separate out along the radial direction."
"The lighter objects rise to the top," Barry simplified in response to Lance's confused look.
"What did you say your name was again?" the blonde asked.
"Barry," Barry answered. "Allen."
"Felicity," the blonde said. "Smoak." She smiled, and Barry felt something that he might have called a spark if he'd been a hopeless romantic like his sister. Then he noticed the look Oliver was giving him, like he was encroaching on his territory.
He and Felicity must be dating, Barry thought. A shame. Kara was always nagging him to put himself out there and actually date instead of spending all his time pining after Iris, and he honestly wouldn't have minded doing so with Felicity. Just from her explanation of what a centrifuge was, he could already tell that they had a lot in common.
"Um," he said awkwardly, turning away from Oliver's dagger sharp glare, "you can see the cracks heading toward the door. Footsteps. One guy. Anyway, it's just a theory. One backed by a lot of evidence."
"There has to be another explanation," Lance insisted.
"Yeah, I'm sure you're right," Barry agreed just to humor him. Lance pulled Felicity aside and they had a hurried conversation in low, inaudible voices. Barry wondered what about, especially when, in the middle of it, Felicity glanced toward Oliver, who was studying the spot where the centrifuge had been with a troubled expression. As Barry watched, he got to his feet and headed for the door, leaving without so much as a backward glance or a single word to anyone.
Felicity stepped suddenly into Barry's field of view, startling him.
"Hey," she said, smiling sheepishly. "So, Oliver"- she jerked her head towards the door he'd just disappeared through- "really wants to keep this whole investigation in house, you know, bad for publicity and all that, so do you think you could come by QC later? Maybe give us a hand?"
"I'd have to clear it with my captain," Barry replied, afraid that if he didn't include that detail Felicity might figure out that he was lying about being here on official CCPD business, "but I think I can do that, sure." Felicity smiled.
"Okay, great," she said, and turned to leave.
"Just what are you to Oliver, anyway?" Barry asked before she could, noting that most people weren't on first name terms with their boss.
"Me?" Felicity asked. "Nothing. I'm just his assistant." There was a bitter, angry twist to her mouth when she said that, but before Barry could inquire about it further, she had left.
When Barry arrived at Queen Consolidated, he found Felicity, Oliver, and Diggle deep in conversation.
"Can we help you with something, Detective?" Oliver asked, spotting him over Felicity's shoulder.
"Oh, CSIs aren't detectives," Barry corrected, approaching the group, which dispersed and turned to face him as he came near. "We don't even carry guns. Just some plastic baggies." He laughed awkwardly. It was a pretty lame joke, but it got Felicity to laugh, which had pretty much been the goal. He wanted to make up for upsetting her earlier.
"Uh, where should I set up my equipment?" he asked.
"I'll show you," Felicity piped up, stepping away from Oliver and Diggle.
"What's going on?" Oliver wanted to know.
"Your assistant said that you preferred to keep the investigation in house," Barry explained, "so I cleared it with my captain to give you a hand." Oliver nodded, then put a hand on Felicity's elbow and guided her off to the side, where they had a conversation that both their distance from him and the low volume of their voices kept Barry from overhearing. He noted that Oliver's hand hadn't moved from Felicity's elbow and the way he leaned downward into her space as they talked. He wondered if CEOs were usually so familiar with their assistants.
"I'll show you around," Felicity said abruptly, turning toward Barry again. She closed the distance between them, leaving Oliver and Diggle behind, and led him out of the room.
Eventually, they ended up back at the crime scene, and Barry moved quickly to get his equipment set up and get right to work.
"What exactly are you looking for?" Felicity asked, peering over the monitors to watch him as he examined the floor.
"Your thief's shoes touched the ground, "Barry replied distractedly, his attention on what he was doing, "which means he tracked in dozens of clues as to where he's been the past few days." Finding what he was looking for, he plucked a particulate from the floor with a pair of tweezers and stuck it under a microscope for analysis.
"So you've seen him, right?" he asked, trying to make conversation. "The vigilante? I read that he saved you. What was he like?"
"Green," Felicity replied bluntly.
"Green," Barry repeated. "That's interesting, right? I mean, why green? Black would be better for both stealth and urban camouflage. Me personally, I think he trained in a jungle or forest environment, and the green is a nod to that."
"I don't give the vigilante much thought," Felicity said. It was clear that she would have rather talked about something, anything, else, but Barry was on a roll now.
"Police reports show that he uses carbon arrows," he said, "but if he switched to an aluminum carbon composite, he would have far better penetration."
"Maybe he thinks he penetrates just fine," Felicity put in, clearly trying to bring this conversation to a close.
"Do you want to know something?" Barry went on. "I think he has partners. Definitely someone with a background in computer science."
"Yeah," Felicity said. She didn't seem particularly interested. "Why are you so interested in the vigilante?" Barry shrugged.
"Working as a CSI," he said, "I've encountered a lot of unsolvable cases. Murderers the police couldn't stop. Maybe he could have." Felicity nodded, and Barry went back to examining the particulate he'd found.
"The soil," he said after a few minutes. "There's a crystalline structure in it." He examined it for a few more minutes, then added, "That's weird."
"What's weird?" Felicity asked.
"It's sugar," Barry replied. Felicity looked like a lightbulb had just gone off in her head, and she ran over to one of the computers and began typing furiously.
"You found something?" Oliver asked by way of announcing himself as he walked into the room with Diggle in tow, some time later.
"We found something," Felicity confirmed.
"There were trace amounts of sucrose in a speck of dirt the killer dragged in here on his boot," Barry supplied.
"Which got me thinking," Felicity put in, jumping off of what Barry had said. "There's a sugar refinery two miles from here. The land around it is suffused in waste sugar, so I checked. They had a delivery truck stolen a few days ago."
"Their truck matches the make and model of the truck the thief used to steal the centrifuge," Barry added, privately reveling in the way he and Felicity were tag teaming off of one another, working together like a well-oiled machine, as if they'd been doing it for years.
"Can you track the vehicle?" Oliver asked.
"We've been trying," Felicity said. Behind her, something beeped. She went over to the computer that had made the sound, frowning as she studied the screen.
"What was that?" Oliver asked.
"You're not going to believe this," Felicity answered. "The truck was just used to rob a blood bank." Her voice rose in pitch at the end of her sentence, turning it into a question.
"Are you sure?" Oliver asked. Like the rest of them, he seemed utterly confused by that turn of events.
"Yeah, our guy just made off with thirty thousand ccs of O negative," Felicity confirmed.
"Wait, super strong, likes blood?" Diggle, who'd been silent up to that point, put in. "Please don't tell me we suddenly believe in vampires."
"We should give this information to the local police," Barry advised.
"I'll… take care of that," Oliver said. "Did you say you were working a similar case in Central City?"
"Oh, yeah," Barry stammered, not expecting to be called out on that at this precise moment. "Um, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's similar. Has similar elements. A lot of similarities."
"Right," Oliver said. He sounded skeptical.
"Yeah," Barry replied. He watched Oliver have a murmured conversation with Diggle before leaving the building.
"He's not really going to the police, is he?" he asked, noticing that he had seemed cagey about it earlier.
"If I answered that," Felicity replied drily, "I'd have to kill you."
Nighttime found Barry at the train station, running toward the ticket counter as fast as his legs could carry him. He'd enjoyed his time in Starling City, despite the distinctly negative experience of being taken to task by Oliver- in front of Felicity, no less- for lying about having been sent by his captain. Now he'd been found out by Captain Singh as well, and he'd made it clear that Barry needed to be back in Central City by tomorrow if he wanted to still have a job. Which he did, hence why he was at the train station.
"One way to Central City," he said breathlessly, reaching the ticket counter.
"It left ten minutes ago," replied the old man behind it.
"Of course it did," Barry muttered with a sigh. "When is the next one?"
"In the morning," the old man said bluntly. He folded his coat over his arm as he stepped out from behind the counter. He switched off the light on his way out, leaving Barry alone in the semi dark. With a sigh, he sat down on a nearby bench to wait for morning and the next train.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he felt a sudden sharp pin prick on the side of his neck and everything went black. He came to in a strange underground room. As his gaze roved around it and he spotted the empty display case that was obviously meant to hold some kind of suit and the racks of freshly sharpened arrows, he realized that he must be in the lair of the Starling City vigilante.
On a table directly in front of him lay a person clad in green leather- the vigilante himself. Barry hoped to God that he was unconscious, not dead, though from this angle it was hard to tell either way. Starting at his feet, Barry let his gaze travel slowly up the vigilante's body, stopping briefly at his chest to make sure he was breathing- he was- before moving on. When he saw his face, he could hardly believe his eyes- the vigilante was none other than Oliver Queen. Barry felt a brief, renewed spark of anger at the way he had treated him earlier- what right did he have to be angry with him for lying when he was keeping a secret this big? But his anger quickly faded when he realized that something was obviously very wrong.
Reeling from shock and still trying to process everything, Barry flinched when someone suddenly stepped in front of him. He glanced up and saw that it was Felicity.
"Please save my friend," she said in a voice trembling with fear and some other emotion that Barry couldn't name, and he knew that he was going to have his work cut out for him.