It's been too long but I'm finally back! This is a short chapter but hopefully, a good one. So, I won't keep you from it any longer. You know the drill. XOXO

Chapter 9

Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 9:00 pm

It had been a long night and it wasn't even midnight, Felicity thought to herself. She and Cisco had just finished an initial audit of the memory dumps and it seemed that they had found their culprit. It looked a lot like an APT, short for Advanced Persistent Threat, which is basically spyware that calls home to transmit whatever data it had pilfered. "It loaded itself as a device driver from the thumb drive Barry plugged into his station when he got back from his slushie run," she said to Cisco, who was nibbling on a pencil.

"So all this just to gain access to the CCPD?" Cisco shook his head, unbelievingly. The perp risked murder just to get into a poorly defended system? It didn't make any sense.

Felicity nodded as she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "Looks like it," she sighed. She had a lot of digital forensics to carry out and still a lot of code to deconstruct, but she had left all the boring parts to her bots. She needed her brain for other, more pressing stuff. "What did you get off Barry's hard drive?" she asked as she remembered yet another possible lead.

"Oh," Cisco exhaled as he was reminded of his other discovery. He stood up and walked over to his station to retrieve the laptop he used to access Barry's external hard drive. "It looks like Barry had found cases with the similar M.O. from all over. He had tracked unusual spikes in deaths due to anaphylactic shock in and around Central City. He found five cases – two in Metropolis and another three in National City – all adult males but from different backgrounds. M.E. reports all point to anaphylactic shock as the cause of death but not all of them had the lip rash or a previous allergic condition."

"So what connects everything?" Felicity pondered aloud. So much of the data they had right then was disjointed and was coming from all different fronts. It was beginning to make her head ache.

Cisco shrugged. His brain couldn't make heads or tails with the data they had. "I haven't read through everything yet but maybe we should have everybody else take a look at it?" he said as he looked at Felicity expectantly.

Felicity was about to nod her agreement, but Caitlin and Digg's arrival with cartloads of equipment had interrupted her.

Oliver himself came rushing back into the cortex, but skidded to a halt when he saw Caitlin and Digg. "What's up?"

"Caitlin's figured out a more efficient way to deliver the cure to Barry," Digg said as he pushed the carts into the treatment room.

Oliver, Felicity and Cisco looked at Caitlin – who nodded back at them. "We just need to set-up the treatment room for the procedure," she stated as she followed Digg, "and for Cisco to reprogram the tech."

"On it!" Cisco said as he removed himself from the cortex to start yet another task.

"Okay, we'll handle things here," Felicity said as she looked at her friends leave. She then shifted her focus to Oliver. She was pretty sure he had something huge. His energy was ratcheted all the way up, "What did you get from the detective?"

He hurried over to her. "We have a sketch of a possible suspect and I think I've seen her before," he said as he made a few keystrokes of his own on the main console.

Another piece of the giant puzzle. Felicity didn't know whether to rejoice or bang her head on the nearest flat surface. There were too many moving pieces. Normally, she'd be hopping up and down right then, working on the latest mystery with gusto but now… She huffed. She had to admit that she was a little rusty. It used to be so much easier. In her mind, things usually went faster.

The sketch Joe sent over popped up onscreen. Felicity studied it for a moment and was pretty positive that she hadn't seen this woman ever. Another one of his ex-girlfriends, maybe? You know he had and still can have a thing for gorgeous model types, right? She didn't know whether it was the rational part or the jealous part of her brain talking. But since it wasn't even remotely helpful, she just shook her head to clear it of the wayward thoughts.

"I called Lyla to quarterback this mission from Starling," he quickly said as he established a comm link with the team they had left behind.

What?

At her scrunched eyebrows, he continued, "Don't worry. Tommy has Sara. Luckily, Laurel's already in place. Lyla's picking up Thea from Verdant before they make their way to her now."

Starling City, 9:05 pm

Thea had just gotten into Lyla's backseat when Lyla picked up Oliver's call, "Hey, I just got Thea."

"Yeah, I'm here!" Thea greeted as she began to change into the more formal outfit Lyla had quickly put together in the five minutes it took for Tommy to report for manny duty. She, Lyla, Laurel and Tommy were on standby in Starling while Oliver, Felicity and Digg left to help out with Barry. Roy had business to attend to in Blüdhaven.

"Hey, just need to get Laurel in on this," Oliver said over the speakerphone as Lyla sped through the city streets. "Laurel, can you hear us?" he asked.

"You guys are 5x5," Laurel said as she checked in.

"Wait, why are you on comms, Oliver?" Thea asked as she finished zipping herself up. "Where's Felicity?"

"Right here, Thea," she heard Felicity interject. "But your dear old brother still hasn't read me in."

Uh-oh, Thea thought. She could hear the pique in Felicity's voice.

"I got Jessica Danforth to add Thea as a last minute donor to her charity gala at the Botanical Gardens tonight. Speedy can play interference for Lyla and Laurel while they retrieve security footage from two weeks ago," Oliver explained. Then to Laurel he asked, "How's security?"

"Security's a bit loose and concentrated in the key access points around the Main Pavilion."

"Lyla, what's your ETA?"

"Ten minutes."

"Just in time to be fashionably late," Thea quipped as she retouched her make-up.

"All right, we'll check back with you in ten." Oliver said as he clicked off.

Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 9:07 pm

Felicity was clearly unsatisfied with Oliver's hasty explanation. "Okay, so what's really happening?" she asked.

Oliver winced at the edge of frustration that laced her voice. He grabbed the nearest chair and patted it for her to take a seat. She huffed as she plopped down beside him and waited for him to answer.

He pointed at the screen. "I remember seeing her at the Botanical Gardens after the talk," he said as he recounted the incident that happened two weeks ago. The two of them accompanied Barry, Caitlin and Cisco to the Gardens and helped them get in touch with an expert they needed to consult about the toxin. They didn't get much by way of the expert but at least, this was another possible lead. "It was just a split second but I remember her bumping into Cisco."

Understanding finally dawned on her, "And you organized the team to recover the Gardens' security footage."

"Uh-huh," he answered.

"How are we getting it?" she asked as she reached for her keyboard and started to establish a link to her babies in Starling.

"The system's a closed loop. Everything's run in-house, so it's going to be a smash-and-grab, hopefully without the smashing," Oliver said as he watched her stop typing.

"So, there's nothing I can do from here?" She grumbled.

"There is," he said as he reached across and squeezed her nape. "How about catching me up with what you've found so far?"

Central City Police Department, 9:10pm

Joe had made his way to CCPD Vice after checking the evidence room for Barry's phone. All the evidence had been processed and logged, but his phone was nowhere to be found. He made a mental note to check Barry's lab as he crossed into the domain of one of Central City PD's special units.

He had been hoping to speak with Frank Curtis, the head of CCPD's premier drug squad but only Perez seemed to be there.

"Hey, Joe," she greeted as she saw him come up.

"Hey, Val," he answered as he took a seat opposite her.

Valerie Perez was the only female detective in Vice. Tall, tanned and beautiful, she was often mistaken for a swimsuit model. But in truth, she was one badass cop who had been instrumental in busting several drug cartels, prostitution rings and porn hubs that used to operate in the city.

"How's Barry, by the way?" she inquired. News about Barry's earlier brush with death had quickly spread throughout the precinct.

"Resting," Joe answered glibly. He hadn't told anyone where Barry actually was. They all thought he was at his house, resting.

"Good to hear," she sighed and then asked, "So, what brings you by?"

"There's a case I'm working on that involves a drug. Thought you guys can help," he said. "Trace amounts of scopolamine was found on the victim." Again, he really wanted to keep things on the down low. He didn't want a good detective nosing around especially since he needed to keep Barry's secret safe.

"Was it in powder form?" she pondered aloud.

"Why'd you ask?"

"Because there's been a string of weird incidents around the city of people being 'robbed' with no recollection of their willingly handing over the items that were 'stolen' from them," Detective Perez provided as she rummaged through her desk to retrieve several files. She handed them over to him to have a look.

Joe browsed through them. "It wasn't. It was liquid. Likely injected," he relayed as he leafed through several accounts of mostly elderly people being had, and later found to have traces of white powder in their faces and clothing. The white powder had been analyzed and was repeatedly confirmed to be consistent with hyoscine hydrobromide a.k.a. scopolamine. He looked at the signatory for the test results. "So, Barry was the one who signed off on the test results?"

"Uh-huh. There are also uncorroborated reports linking this drug to a number of spiked drinks and sexual assaults but I haven't heard of any scopolamine injection attacks," she answered. At the defeated look on Joe's face, she continued, "Look, from what I know, its distribution used to be tightly controlled by the Darbinyan family. They parceled and sold the contraband as Twilight Mist. But ever since they got offed, this stuff has been all over the place. Word on the street is that there's a new player in town but we've never gotten any solid leads. As far as we know, it enters the city the same way most drugs do now –"

"The docks," Joe supplied. Ever since the Central City docks were transformed into a freeport zone, all sorts of stuff has been entering the city that much easier.

Detective Perez nodded.

Well, at least there's that, he thought as he returned the case files to her desk neatly. "Thanks, Val."

She nodded in acknowledgement. "Sorry, I couldn't be of any more help," she said as Joe stood.

"Don't worry about it," Joe said. He already had a vigilante who could look into it.

Notes:

M.O. = modus operandi def. a distinct pattern or method of operation that indicates or suggests the work of a single criminal in more than one crime

M.E. = medical examiner

Hope you liked it. Let me know what you think below. It'll help me greatly in figuring out the tone for the rest of this story. Thanks again for reading! Kisses!