Happy New Year! I know it has been a while. A while seems like an understatement, but well, we're another chapter into this behemoth of a story. This journey has, at times, exhausted me and frustrated me, and if it weren't for your encouragement, this story would've found its place in the well of lost plots. So here's to you, for all the love you've given me and this story! Cheers, my friends! And a Happy, Happy New Year! XOXO

Chapter 17

Unknown Location, 12:10 am

"Wakey, wakey!" came a shrill voice that grated on Caitlin's waking brain. The dimly lit interiors did not stop her from squinting as she tried to shake off the remaining wisps of unconsciousness.

She took in her surroundings. She was on a ratty couch in a shabby room surrounded by grubby walls. There was a distinctly earthy smell that permeated her senses and reminded her that she was as far as possible from her sterile environment in S.T.A.R. Labs as she could possibly imagine. She attempted to sit but was hindered by shackles.

"Welcome to our humble abode!" the voice screeched yet again. It drew Caitlin's eyes to the center of the room. There the abductor stood, excitedly batting her eyelashes as if expecting some cheery response for welcoming her victim into what essentially was a dank and deplorable prison.

Caitlin remained silent. It would probably take anyone a moment or two before their brain settles into this bizarre reality. Hers felt like it was waking up into a nightmare.

Apparently, her abductor had confused her reserve with another thing entirely. "You poor doll, thinkin' 'bout your man, huh?" the woman commiserated with her victim, reminding Caitlin of Barry's uncertain fate. And that seemed to have snapped the doctor into a new and profound awareness. Caitlin blinked away the tears that clouded her eyes but she couldn't stop them from forming. Everything came rushing back to the forefront of her mind.

"There, there. Things will get better when Red comes back. She'll be here soon," the clown lady said as she sympathized. But in the blink of an eye, she was back to her diabolical self. She single-handedly drew Caitlin up from the couch by the chains that bound her arms. It was only when she was upright that Caitlin felt the ball and chains around her ankles. "But until then," the hag said as she nudged Caitlin forward, "there's work to be done."

Central City, Undisclosed Secondary Location, 12:15 am

"Felicity!" Oliver called out as he saw her begin to unload one of the crates from the van.

"What? It's just a crate!" she protested even as she replaced the crate on the van's floor to re-shoulder her backpack. She wanted to bring the crate with her because she needed to set up her backup servers quickly.

"Didn't Digg tell you to take it easy?" he admonished as he moved to assist her.

"Says the guy who almost got choked and poisoned to death," she huffed.

"Fe-li-ci-ty…" Oliver almost whined. He thought he had gotten away with trying to keep his injuries from her. Turns out he didn't and she was more than a little pissed about it.

"You don't get to Fe-li-ci-ty me. I might be a second too slow and a step too short right now but I know that you chose to keep your injuries from me – which by the way, is sooo not cool" –

Oliver interrupted her to say, "It turned out to be no –"

"And don't say it's nothing because it's something!" she grumbled as she tugged the crate from out of his hand. She knew she was being a little petulant but it irked her that he would keep something so serious from her.

"Look, Felicity, I'm sorry for neglecting to tell you about my injuries but I'm not the one with the concussion here," Oliver said as he tried to placate her. He knew he deserved some of her ire but he'd be remiss if he didn't keep her from getting too worked up and triggering another fainting spell. If there was a hard line he wasn't going to budge on, it was her well-being and he wasn't going to apologize for that. "I understand that we all have to work double-time, but there's a fine line between being stubborn and stupid and we won't be helping Caitlin any by being both."

Felicity was taken aback. Oliver wasn't usually one to mouth-off but it essentially shut her up. She may have gone too far by snapping at him so she took a moment to steady her breath. It wasn't enough to douse all of her anger, though. "You're right. We'll talk about this later," she said, still with a bite of irritation in her voice as she turned away from him and headed towards their new location.

It was Oliver's turn to huff, only to realize that she had not taken the crate with her. He shook his head as he carried it with him and followed her anyway.

Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 12: 20 am

Joe went ahead and called in the CCPD, leaving Barry and Cisco to sort through the information that would be relevant to the police.

They had essentially closed the case by successfully matching the toxin and the trace DNA from the barbs obtained from Barry's neck to the main suspect's buccal swabs which Cisco had taken while he had been securing her in a pod. But whatever satisfaction they could've derived from all those weeks of hard work coming to a close was washed away because when it came to Caitlin's abductor, they had nothing.

Barry rubbed a hand over his face. The memory of her anguished scream as he got stabbed in the chest was haunting him.

A review of the in-house footage of Caitlin's abduction got them a whole lot of nothing. Signal analysis showed the same noise pattern that destroyed the footage that could've helped them find his – no, their – attacker.

Barry had wanted to start bagging and tagging evidence but Joe was adamant that he let it go. For their story to sell, Barry was going to have to remain the victim – and that was that. Barry didn't know what to do with himself. Half of him wanted to stay put. The other half wanted to start scouring the city for her but his speed was still shaky at best. Cisco told him to give it a little more time lest he ended up risking his progress by being too quick on the gun.

They had already fed Caitlin's profiles through Felicity's facial and gait recognition programs. Cisco cast a wide net over the city in hopes of picking up the trail but it's been cold. But since they wanted blanket minute-by-minute coverage, he had left the whole system running after installing a special patch that would let Felicity run the whole thing remotely once she got their auxillary site ready. But since they have yet to hear from Felicity, the search was getting colder and colder by the minute.

Caitlin, Barry mentally sighed. His mind was scrambling for another way to find her, to help her. This was the woman who had risked her life time and again for his, saved him more times than he could count, picked him up when he needed encouraging… and he was stuck in S.T.A.R. Labs, unable to do anything for her. He repeatedly clenched his fists in frustration.

A commotion by the entry way jolted him back into the present. Joe ushered Eddie, Captain Singh and a handful of uniformed cops into the cortex without much ado.

"What the hell just happened here, West?" the captain demanded as he surveyed the wreck.

"Dr. Caitlin Snow, a S.T.A.R. Labs employee and Barry's personal physician was abducted by an as yet unknown assailant. We believe that her abductor and the prime suspect in Barry's case are working together," Joe responded.

"How are the cases connected?" the captain asked.

"Dr. Snow ran a test on Barry's samples and found that he had been dosed with scopolamine, a drug that lowers inhibition and causes amnesia. I went to Vice with it to see what they knew. Perez laid it all down for me – how the drug's being peddled as Twilight Mist, how it allegedly comes from the docks and how Barry was the tech who was signing out all of their cases. That's when it hit me: this is how our vics could've been connected. I got two solid leads to work on so I asked Eddie to look further into the drug angle while I looked at the docks."

At this, Cisco jumped in. He knew that they all needed to keep questions to a minimum so that they could control the flow of information and direct their resources where they really need them. "That's where I came in. I tagged along with Joe. When we got there, I used one of our weather drones to snap a few shots to get the lay of the land," he said as he gathered the detectives and Singh around the only working monitor that had survived the assault. "I did a preliminary pass," he commented as he allowed the men to take in the slideshow of pictures he had curated earlier, "And found this," he said as he paused the presentation and zoomed in on a shot of their prime suspect with the Blüdhaven gangsters.

"I was able to get a cleaner picture. We found a match by facial recognition," he said as he showed the hit they got off the program.

"Where were you when all this happened?" Singh asked Eddie sharply. "I thought you're the lead in this case?"

"Running down leads on Twilight Mist. We uncovered older cases that fit our murderer's M.O. in a number of other cities where the drug has a high burden," Eddie answered, relaying what Joe had communicated to him so far. All the running around the docks was news to him though. It annoyed him that he knew squat about that but Joe usually had a good reason not to loop him in.

"We didn't really have any time to call back-up anyway. It wasn't long before everyone was running everywhere," Joe added.

"There was some sort of mini earthquake, I think," Cisco added, as he referenced the ground-shattering emergence of a forest on previously barren land. "Maybe a 3 or 4 on the Richter Scale."

"Where's she now?" Singh asked, inquiring about their prime suspect.

"We got her contained in a makeshift holding room here," Joe reported.

The captain leveled the both of them with a baleful stare. Cisco gulped as several police officers surrounded him at Singh's direction. "Bring them to where you're holding her," Singh instructed. To the officers he said, "I want the place secured. Nobody in or out unless it's us five."

After Cisco and his entourage of cops exited, the captain looked at Joe again and continued to grill him. "All this possibly connects Barry's case to the three victims. What's their case got to do with Dr. Snow's abduction?"

"The pattern of signal disturbance we had at the precinct is similar to the one that disrupted the security cameras here," Barry answered.

"That's awfully thin," the captain said.

At Singh's still unbelieving expression, Barry continued, "Caitlin is gone because of me. I had her working the case. The only thing I remember clearly from earlier today is that I got a phone call this morning. The voice threatened me by leveraging Caitlin. Don't you think that it's a little more than a coincidence that she gets threatened and abducted on the same day?" His voice might've gathered force by the end of his tirade but he wasn't about to apologize.

"Way to bury the lede, Barry," Eddie deadpanned to diffuse the situation.

Captain Singh shook his head. He could feel a headache coming. "Is there any way to ID the caller or trace the number?"

Barry shook his head. "The voice was artificially distorted. We tried to trace it but it turns out, the caller cloned Caitlin's phone. There's no way to tell unless we get access to the carrier's logs." He conveniently left out the word "legally" but that was fine by him. He was seriously hoping that Felicity was already doing her thing right then. If they had any hope of finding Caitlin, it lay with her.

"What do we know about her abductor?"

"Tall, blonde, professional – possibly with field training," Barry answered. "I made a sketch."

"Get away vehicle? Transit time?"

"No dice on a make and model but transit time is anywhere within the last 35 minutes," Joe answered.

Singh shook his head again as he took the sketch from Barry and gave it to Eddie. "Thawne, have our techs run this through facial recognition. All databases. Put a BOLO out for Dr. Snow and the perp. Get people down at the DoT to review traffic cam footage. Tell them we could have a live chase on our hands. And get CSI here ASAP."

Eddie nods at his chief and went to do what he was told.

"Both of you, with me now," Singh said to both Joe and Barry. "Let's talk to our perp."

Starling City, Arrow Cave, 12: 25 am

Lyla continued to stare at the sketch John had sent a few minutes ago while waiting for Tommy to compile the files Felicity had sent over. It was unmistakable. It was one of their agents in Task Force X. The woman maybe taking the clown act a little bit too far but there was no doubt that she was looking at Harleen Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn, reported missing in action after an op to capture a notorious drug kingpin in Hasaragua went south.

It wasn't her op but the failed mission in South America happened just after the Siege of Starling. She was pretty sure that there was a kill order on Quinn's head, especially when Waller's every attempt to engage the kill chip implanted at the base of her skull had failed.

Now, it seemed that she had substituted one murderous cause for another. Lyla sighed as she cradled Sara a little closer to her chest. If what John said was true – that they were faced with a metahuman and Quinn – then they were in for a very long and dangerous night. At first blush, Quinn seemed so far gone that many agents on Task Force X refused to work with her even under threat of outright cancellation, but there was a cold savageness to her, an edge obscured by her almost manic glee and puerile antics that made her a perfectly capable killer.

"Here are all the case files Felicity had sent over," Tommy said as he cued the folders on his screen.

"Does this have the crime scene photos?" she asked as she continued to look at the screen over his shoulder.

"Yeah, and there's an annotated timeline, too," he answered as he sent a copy of the said file to Laurel – who was off working to build some legal cover for the team – and finally vacated his chair for Lyla.

Once she was settled, Tommy took Sara from her. They both didn't want the baby anywhere near their suspect's greatest hits.

Lyla took over from there, scrolling through the photos. If there was one thing she could glean from the photos it was that there was a precision, a delicacy to the kills that she doubted someone like Harley Quinn was capable of. That gave her pause. If Quinn wasn't the one offing these men, then she was the one in charge of extraction. Cold dread seeped into the pit of Lyla's stomach. Extraction to the self-styled Clown Princess of Crime meant only two things: death and destruction.

Central City, Undisclosed Secondary Location, 12: 25 am

Felicity nibbled on her lower lip as she waited for her systems to come online. She had been jittery about this whole thing. She wasn't able to vet the hardware but Oliver had assured her that there was at least a working internet connection in their new rebel hideaway. She was almost afraid to discover a dial-up modem – because who knew what constituted "working technology" to a man who had been stuck in an island for so long – but she almost kissed the guy when she found the fiber optic cable that was to be her lifeline.

She had then set up her servers as quickly as possible, while Oliver and Digg retrieved several crates and more hardware from the van. Once everything was exactly to her specifications, however rough they may have been, she threw the switch on and was now sweating it as her system came to life. She really hoped that this set-up will be robust enough to handle what she needed it to do. Come on, baby, she mumbled to herself. Momma needs you.

For Oliver and Digg though, the last ten minutes had been interminable. With all the running around, moving hardware and equipment (because, yes, they didn't really want Felicity on her feet too much), and setting it up exactly how she told them to (because, yes, they wouldn't even know where to start), they thought that they would never be able to shrug off the nervous energy that had begun to rub off on them. But when her fist finally pumped the air, they expelled the breath they didn't realize they were holding.

"We're in!" she exclaimed as she turned towards them, wearing a smile they hadn't seen since they left for the field earlier that night. "We're in business now."

Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 12: 30 am

Cisco had redirected their suspect's containment pod to the little known viewing dock one level above the main reactor floor. This was where Harrison Wells had spent his time overseeing and directing the construction of his then masterpiece, the piece-de-resistance that would've sealed him into the annals of history. But that was not to be. And Cisco was secretly relieved.

With what he and Joe had been uncovering, he realized just how much he'd been blinded by the man's brilliance and ambition. But what they had now wouldn't have been possible without it – and if there was a silver lining to the fallout that followed the particle accelerator's demise, it was The Flash. He had been having the time of his life, letting his creativity fly. It sucks that he had to keep his innovations secret but if it kept them safe, he was all for it, he thought as he led the whole entourage to the viewing unit.

It was a big space shielded from the prying eyes of their now awake suspect by a one-way mirror. Wells didn't spare any expense on the floor-to-ceiling glass window or the sparse interiors that belied the detailed craftsmanship the room entailed, including the recessed alcoves that still contained precious works of industrial art.

It took a moment for all his companions to take in the room and the woman before them. She was awake, wary but curious, with her now tattered clothes showing the signs of her previous struggles.

Singh approached the window purposefully. "Can she hear us?"

"Not yet," Cisco answered as he brandished the remote that connected the room to the PA system. "Just tell me when."

When the captain was about to go ahead and question their suspect, Joe held him back. The detective remembered Oliver's cautionary words about this woman being unusually persuasive, and more importantly, that they hadn't read her her rights.

"Captain, she doesn't know that we – the CCPD – have her," Joe admitted. "We took her when she was already down and bound."

"Someone got to her first," Cisco said as he showed Singh a wide shot of The Arrow fighting her. The angle fortuitously obscured much of him but had enough detail for anyone with eyes to make their suspect out. He was grateful for the close crop, or else the captain would've surely noticed the sudden sprouting of greenery in the docks.

"Who the hell is this woman?" Singh asked, incredulous at the attention she had seemingly attracted from the criminal underworld, yet frustrated at the lack of such attention from law enforcement until right then. "Do we even have a name?!"

There was a pause before Cisco stammered, "Poison Ivy. We call her Poison Ivy."

Don't forget to let me know what you think. Kisses!