Chapter 11

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"Felicity?" Caitlin asked her quietly. Everybody else had left, heading for the weapon. Caitlin and her were the only ones left in the cortex, as everybody else had something come up.

"Yes?" she asked, not looking up.

"Are you ok?" she asked her. "I mean, you seem more… determined, or serious, than usual about this threat. It seems almost personal."

"I'm fine." Artemis told her. She didn't turn away from the computer. She had to do something.

"You're driving yourself crazy trying to get into their computers. Are you just trying to distract yourself from your feud with Oliver?" Caitlin guessed, worried.

She paused, acting like she was giving it thought. She knew why she wanted to do this so much. She couldn't tell Caitlin though. Nothing good would come from that.

"I guess so." she admitted. "I'm just trying to ignore the problem really. I'm driving myself into this, trying to not think about it. It's working so far."

"Why don't you just talk to Oliver about it?" Caitlin asked her.

"Because I'm not going to have to share my personal life with him." Artemis paused again. "I'm sure that you know he found out about Wally from my shouting match with Diggle?" Caitlin nodded. "All he knows is that Wally is my boyfriend. I told him we were having a long distance relationship, which we technically were. He doesn't know about Bart, or that Wally's a meta. If he did, it would be much easier to explain to him that Wally was the meta that pranked me at 12:00 on New Years. Except I respect Wally's privacy, and I'm not going to tell Oliver that Wally's a meta. Wally doesn't want me telling people, I wouldn't either, so I can't really share that information." she turned to Caitlin, who had been listening patiently. "Would you really do something different in my shoes?"

"I'd at least try to talk it out with Oliver." she told her. "I mean, you guys are good friends. Why can't you just tell him something and explain it. Tell him that you explaining the whole thing would violate somebody else's privacy, and you have no right to reveal any of that to him."

"Because it's not that simple." Artemis told her. She turned back to the computer. "It doesn't explain anything else that he's wondering about. Like why I ran to Starling as soon as possible. Or why I never mentioned having a boyfriend."

"But can't you guys work something out?"

"Ok, I will try to talk to him." Artemis said, giving in. "I will try to clear the air. But I make no promises."

"At least you'll be doing something about it." Caitlin told her, trying to reassure her about the idea.

~xXx~xXx~xXx~

"Ok, can everybody hear me?" Artemis asked over the coms. A bunch of variations of yes flooded through the coms. "Ok, there's no lock or anything on the warehouse." She frowned. "That's weird, there's no more radiation either."

"I did a check around the perimeter of the building." Barry said. "I didn't see anybody."

A moment of silence passed. "I'm in." Oliver said. "There's nothing here. They're gone."

"I bet we just missed them." Roy muttered.

"With our luck, probably." Diggle admitted.

"We're heading back now." Sara told the people in the cortex. Everybody had returned to be on coms.

"Ok, I'll start looking for it again." Artemis said. Barry and Jesse suddenly zoomed in.

"Do you think they knew we were coming?" he asked. Kara arrived as he was talking.

"Maybe. They could be constantly moving to avoid detection." Artemis theorized.

"Could they have known we were coming? Like, could they of known you'd found the device?" Kara asked her. Artemis sighed.

"Probably. One of the first things I did when I found the machine was try to access it, see if I could figure out what it is."

"Ok, so they probably knew we were coming. What now? They probably stopped the radiation signals it was giving off." Cisco added.

"Maybe the radiation could be a clue to it's function?" Artemis suggested. "It looked like brainwaves almost, but a machine doesn't have a brain."

"Maybe it affects brain waves?" Barry suggested.

"Like mind control!" Cisco exclaimed.

"They want to use mind control on people. Who though? I mean, if they didn't know about us until I tried to hack the device, then they had to be planning to control someone else." Artemis noted.

"Well, maybe they're not planning on invading earth, maybe they're planning on controlling it." Caitlin said as the realization dawned on them.

"That device surely can't control all of earth." Artemis said disbelievingly.

"Maybe it's just meant for Central City. They could have more stored in space." Cisco said. "That's why I didn't see more - they weren't there."

"Wait, Oliver said they were going to use this soon." Joe said. "So if they're going to use a mind control device on Central City soon -"

"Then we need to evacuate of something!" Artemis said. "I mean, if we can't find it, then all of these people will get mind controlled by them."

"We're here, what did we miss." Diggle asked as the non superpowered individuals walked in. Quickly, the group already there explained their mind control theory.

"Well then we need to do something!" Roy said. "We can't let them take control of a whole city!"

"We can try to start an evacuation." Dinah suggested.

"How? How do we alert the public about something like this? Yes, Barry could run to the police and tell them, but wouldn't that take a while?" Oliver pointed out.

"It's better than nothing." Dinah argued. "Maybe some people could be protected."

"And if we're wrong? It would only cause chaos."

"Let's put more effort into finding the device first." Barry cut in, trying to find a compromise.

"How about we start evacuating ourselves." Roy said. "I mean, we can't help anyone if we're under mind control."

"He had a point." Artemis agreed with a sigh.

"Ok, let's grab what we can and get out of here." Diggle said. "We'll evacuate the rest of the town once we're out."

"Isn't that a little selfish?" Iris asked.

"On a crashing airplane, is I selfish for the parent to put on their oxygen mask first? For them to be safe so they can protect their children? If we're under the mind control too, we can't do anything to help anybody." Artemis stated. That shut up everyone who was going to protest.

I hope you enjoyed it! I will keep on adding to this story, and who knows, maybe, one day, I'll have a schedule for doing it! Yeah... that'll definitely happen, I'm so organized enough for that! (Note: Sarcasm.)

Happy Reading!

-LeiaKasta