GCN's Evening Report with Mike Engel, September 11th 2000:

"...And some startling news out of Kahndaq, the Middle Eastern nation at the center of a delicate power struggle. GCN has learned that this week's successful coup of the military government under General Muhunnad was carried out by the metahuman Black Adam, also known as Teth-Adam, and a loyal cadre of hardliners who carried out the coup with his blessing. We've also learned that the Justice Society failed to stem the overthrow and have returned to their Manhattan headquarters. Word from Capitol Hill indicates a growing contingent of Senators calling for an investigation of the Society for potentially treasonous acts while they were in Kahndaq. Meanwhile, closer to home, President Luthor holds an impromptu meeting with the famous Queen Beatriz of Bialya. The stated mission? Ways the two nations can come to bilateral peace agreements in North Africa. More after this..."

Keystone City.

Except it was no keystone at all. Nowhere remotely important. Certainly not Metropolis or Gotham or even New York where things actually mattered

It bestrode the Missouri River, in a way. One half was Keystone itself, and the other was Central City. A bland name which prideful expansionists created for themselves and the city they wanted. In an older world of frontiers, railroads, and monsters, Central City was the best they could do. The best they wanted. A Central City for the growing nation.

She knew it well. And she knew Keystone. Central's industrious little sister. Blue collar, teetering on the edge of economic depression. And yet. An occasionally-on-strike Kenworth plant on the north side of town, churning out semi-trucks and trailers lo these long years. Good hard-working people who loved their families and their Flashes. A hardy, persistent folk. She knew that too. She almost admired it.

Almost.

But here was the thing about a persistent character:

Eventually it gets old. And persistence is no good on its own—human behavior, she knew, was full of such parasitism. Align yourself to a cause for personal gain while it withers and dies, and you grow in place of it. The world was zero-sum: if you wanted to succeed you needed to step over a corpse.

And step she did.

Amanda Waller was not interested in the business of saving souls. She merely worked around them.

There were other things in Keystone.

People, but they were never very interesting to her.

A Flash or few, and those were slightly more interesting.

And a prison.

Iron Heights sat on a barren promontory overlooking the west side of Keystone, but really staring down at the city, the architecture of it rather frowning at the city. It was hardly a protective prison either. You could say that Stryker's Island, or the Bob Schreck Memorial Penitentiary, or even Arkham itself fulfilled what she had come to publicly state was the most benign function of penal institutes: housing of dangerous offenders away from the general population. To take them away from the people who they by their criminal acts harmed.

Waller felt differently in her private moments. And she knew the infamous warden of Iron Heights felt differently too.

He saw his inmates as experiments. She saw them as opportunities. Perhaps they were both wrong.

And yet.

The Martian's invasion of the White House had only happened a day ago.

If the Justice League were going to throw around heavy weaponry, she was going to combat it. Not quite throw around her own heavy weaponry—and not least because Luthor had given it back to Darkseid, but because her mission required surgery. The Justice League would use a bulldozer to find a china cup. Waller, and Luthor, needed a quieter statement. So here she was.

For now, she stormed into the lobby at Iron Heights and Wolfe stood there waiting and he spotted her and smiled. She knew a fake smile when she saw one. She knew a bullshitter when she saw one. Luthor at least had the courage of his mistaken convictions. Wolfe.

Well.

"Warden," she said. "I'll see him now."

Wolfe made a face. "I was not informed soon enough, I'm sad to say, Director. The inmate has a highly regular schedule we like to keep him on. Medical staff was very insistent."

"No."

Wolfe frowned. "No?"

"We both know you threw him in the Pipeline and hoped to forget about him. I'll be on my way to his cell now, Warden, and if you try to stop me, I'll have you arrested for treason."

She turned and left him standing there. Probably his jaw was on the floor but she told herself she didn't care. She was doing a lot of that lately. The walls were up. She was on guard.

She expected it would be that way for the rest of her life.

And it all felt so mechanical. So easy. When you're in the government, they just let you do it. It wasn't always that way. There was a time before. A time above. No one give you control. She learned it in St Louis. You have to take it. Inch by inch. Block by block.

She was quiet in the elevator. Riding down to the Pipeline, Wolfe's draconian utopia—like Keystone itself, nowhere between anything that mattered—where he kept the worst. Some of them she knew.

Snart.

Rory.

Desmond.

All worthless.

She wanted the cell at the end of the row. At the end of this dark alley that reminded her so much of St Louis it was all she could do to scowl and tighten up every muscle in her body and keep walking. Desmond seemed to call out from behind the force-shield of his cell.

"Amanda," he said and it came as a whimper. "My mind…hurts…"

She stopped. Looked at him. That wolf in the wild stare. Desmond, to his insane credit, noticed. And backed away.

She breathed, a short and angry exhalation, a dragon breath, and went up to the shield of the cell next door and there he was.

McCulloch was the Mirror Master, which was a simplistic way of saying he was another costumed idiot playing cat and mouse with Wally West and, before him, Barry Allen. But McCulloch was a legacy as much as West himself: he inherited the gear, the name, wholesale from the decedent Sam Scudder—who in another life was a gifted member of Task Force X. Scudder had invented the ability to create pathways to alternate dimensions and, like a kid that found dad's gun, he steered the power of his invention which never occurred to him, towards a life of petty crime. Scudder had a storied career, and died in the last multiversal crisis on which Waller had bothered to keep notes.

McCulloch had no similar claim. Cocaine had robbed him of most viability. Oh he was good for Luthor's schemes once upon a time. But that was then, and this was now. And so one summer day in a drug-fuelled rage he'd made a critical error and sent a school and the kids inside it into one of his dimensions which intel called "Wonderland." Never to be seen again. Wally West had McCulloch locked away in here. Another forgotten item on the manifest.

He was on the floor, on the far wall, lazing next to the toilet, one arm kind of propped on it like he was about to pass out into the scummy water. He looked at her through bleary eyes and his breathing was erratic. He seemed to sway in place even though he was laying there on the floor like he'd just—

He gagged, and bent over the toilet.

And vomited.

She rolled her eyes. Looked away, tuned out the and gave him some decency. Prison, she knew, it takes it from you.

He finished retching and wiped his mouth with the back of one trembling hand. Looked at her and swallowed and wiped his lips. Almost all in the same motion. An old drunk's trick.

"Mister McCulloch."

"Aye right?"

"Amanda Waller," she said. "We've met before, although I can't say I expect you to remember."

"Been a while ye."

"How's detox?"

"Ohhh," he said and coughed. "Ma heid's mince."

"I need you. He needs you."

He groaned and looked back at her.

"Ahm paid up."

"One mission," she said. "Just show up and pull the trigger at a particular moment. Sound fair?"

He found strength from somewhere. His face twisted and he said, "Yer incredible."

"If you behave I've also been instructed to grant you a token parole hearing in the Spring and repatriation to the UK. Non-Extradition."

He stared at her.

"And the Squad?"

"When has that ever been your problem?"

He breathed and laid his head on the toilet seat. Stared at the ceiling.

"Ye should kill me. Maybe I know too much, eh."

"Luthor needs you alive," she said. "Whatever else you think you know is irrelevant. Do this mission. And you're gone. Forever."

He breathed.

Rubbed his nose and sniffed and started crying.

"Would ye?"

"Would I what?" She was starting to get pissed.

"Kill me. Lower the shield. Tell them I came at you."

"This is ridiculous," she said and turned to leave. "Enjoy your overdose."

"Wait!'

She stopped and looked back at him.

"This really is poor form, Mister McCulloch."

"I want to be left alone."

"Do this and you can end your life shooting up on the shores of Loch Ness for all I care. Yes or no?"

"Aye," he said and wiped his eyes. "Aye, I'll do it."

Starling.

Oliver was staring at the phone. A landline in those days, and because he was a sucker for the old ways, it was even a rotary in one of those sad off-beige colors. It fit his mood. On the desk in front of him were the letters from, well, from someone. Mister Anonymous, why not. All these assholes gotta have names. Give this one the notoriety he seems to want. I've fought a thousand morons before, one more isn't gonna hurt me. Mister Anonymous.

Someone who knew him. And knew about Roy.

But.

It wasn't like that.

Roy was…

Roy always had his own way of doing things.

Was it any wonder he went off on his own to fight Luthor? And paid for it with his life.

He remembers.

And when Superman floats down one day and asks if he wants to talk about it, Ollie just shakes his head. He feels old and defeated. Nothing else has hit him—has hurt him this much. All the trials of his life—abandonments, bankruptcy, shipwreck. And earlier. Losing Roy to addiction the first time. Losing Hal.

It's too much. Too far.

Superman is hovering there in the evening breeze and the clouds are low and Ollie can't stop staring at them as they roll in. Superman asks, "did you know?"

Ollie waits. He feels a pang of dread, it's like slow fire creeping up into his throat. He looks at the ground and he says to Superman in a broken whisper: "I tried to tell Roy..."

Then Superman's hand was on Ollie's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Ollie smiles at him and looks up. The clouds seems to part and the sky turns this beautiful sunny yellow in the instant before the clouds come back. He smiles. Through a sigh he says, "Oh god. I spent so many years being angry. Being...me. To have a precious few of them back."

"Come on, don't talk like that," Superman says. "Makes me think you're saying goodbye."

"Maybe I am."

"Oh?"

Ollie breathes and looks at him. "Clark, there's someone behind this. I tried to tell Dinah, but…"

Clark looks at him. In that instant they seem to understand, or finally confirm their suspicions.

"Ollie, I hope you can trust me."

"I hope I can trust myself," he says. "Things are about to get really bad. I can feel it. You can't get involved, Clark. Not yet."

Slowly, painfully, Clark nods.

Ollie brings a smile out. It's fakest of fakes, but he keeps it because it might make him feel better in this moment. And it might make Superman feel better too. Despite this madman in the White House. Despite the international powder keg that's about to kick off. He smiles, thinking of all of it. And he says, "Now get out of here. Go find a cat in a tree. The world still needs Superman."

And now here sat Oliver Queen replaying the last year in his mind. How feverish his mind is turning trying to make sense of all this. It might make more sense if it was some buff guy in spandex, some asshole trying to make a name or some old idiot doing something new.

The world still needs Superman.

And you want to know something, Roy?

It still needs the Green Arrow and Speedy. To do the hard work. The grunt work. The stuff Superman can't be seen doing.

He leaned back in the Eames chair. Breathed. Maybe that was the point of all this. From the very beginning. Be the small guy. The man in the street.

The Green Arrow was never going to save the world. But he could save himself, and the people he loved. From an island, from addiction, and the devil himself. And he could do it from the bottom. From underheel of a society that makes men less than what they are, that beats them down and keeps them in systems of oppression by for-profit masters. He could help them break free. Find their value, and their voice.

He could save something.

The phone rang.

He answered.

"Oliver Queen." A male voice, Ollie could tell. Whoever he was he sounded young and full of shit. Ollie sympathized.

"Yes," Ollie said. "You gonna tell me who you are?"

"Oh, you know, I would but I'm kind of liking this. And not even in like a super villain way, right, it's just nice to get out."

"This is not a game."

"Sure it is," the guy said. "You and your bad guys have a merry chase, but when someone comes around and gets real you wanna cry foul because you're losing? Well I say hard cheese."

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

"What did you do with the name I gave you."

"Nothing."

"Really? Melissa Dugan? She's kind of a big deal."

"Figured you were putting one over on me. I wanted to test it by not testing it at all."

"Oh right," the guy said. "That'll show me."

"You tell me," Ollie said. "Who was she?"

"Melissa Dugan," the guy said. "One of LexCorp's earliest employees. Almost before my time. Do you know what he did?"

"Why don't you enlighten me?"

"He killed her."

"He's killed people before, why does this one matter."

"Oh I'm sorry, I thought the Justice League didn't measure lives. He strangled her to death, Oliver. Had his cronies, Mercy and the other one, Jenner, take her back to her place and make it look like no foul play."

"Small potatoes."

"Man, you just hate him. Don't you. You hate him and you wanna go mess him up. That's the worst thing I've ever heard. He's committed actual crimes you know."

"He killed my friend."

"So you're upset in proximity but not overall. Jesus. You know what, nevermind. Here's what I can do. In the next forty-eight hours it can all end, Luthor can be out of the White House and humanity can be free to forge its own path."

"You're full of shit."

"It's the truth."

"I don't buy it."

"Meet me, then. You take the information I have. You give it to Lois Lane or Linda Park and let his deeds play out in the court of public opinion. And it all ends."

"It's a big if. And you imply we'd have to end the Justice League too."

"It's all a machine, man. Feel the burn."

Ollie waited. "You're just some fucking kid, aren't you. Hassling me—"

"Ollie."

He waited. For some reason. "What, kid?"

"If you walk away, he'll never stop."

Silence.

Goddamn it.

"Alright," Ollie said. "Where do I find you."

"A neutral zone, someplace without your buddies. Athens, Ohio. The university runs a small airport outside town. Pretend you're giving a donation. Find me at dark, on the roof of the university library."

What a cliche. Jesus.

Ollie made a face. "What if I say no."

"He's getting paranoid. Everyone knows it. If you don't do this now and try to save what's left, well, between Kahndaq and Bialya, figure he kicks off a super-war in response. Is that something you want on your conscience?"

"I've got a lot on my conscience," Ollie said. "One more thing won't hurt."

"Tomorrow night, then. Maybe your donation can can build the Roy Harper Chemical Dependence Wing, who knows."

"You son of a bitch!"

But the line was dead. The kid was gone.

He breathed.

And tried to stop shaking.

After a moment he picked up the phone and dialed downstairs. Ring. Ring.

"Yes?"

"Felicity," he said. "Get the jet."

Athens.

A secret, albeit a public one, hidden in the foothills. Not a destination except to those looking for its particular brand of yippies and eager academics. A town built around a university, the oldest of its kind in the region. The first of its kind. Built in an older world of frontiers and monsters beyond. Of men pushing their limits and exploring the world outside. And now, all those centuries later, here it was, essentially grimy, hard and unwelcoming. Come in if you dare. The world is hard, he well knew, and it pushes you when you least expect it.

He stood on the roof of the university library. Seven floors, modern in that Seventies way. He stood there feeling a cold breeze and raindrops pattering on his head. Even through the hat he felt them, the microscopic impact tremors of a thousand droplets. He took a deep breathe and imagined it coursed through him. Felt it light up his nerve endings, his whole body. He smiled. But it was only imaginary. Some quotidian thing, here and gone. A flash finish, electricity reduced by direct current. All the similes.

He felt.

Old.

He turned and looked over the side. Down there sodium-filament lights bathed the streets in warm orange. Warm even in this winter desolation. The wind picking up and wrapping around him. Snow drifting on the cobblestones, two-dimensional ghouls in wandering patterns.

He thought maybe the student body was on break. Maybe they were in class. Or maybe gathered someplace in assembly. In protest.

Oliver felt their pain.

He had been at this for a long time.

It was all about to close in.

He could taste it.

He looked one way and saw the student center, Georgian sprawl, seven floors and built into the hill side, and a Starbucks on one corner, tiny humans in the distance, coming and going. He looked up the street, carved over the hill, and saw the cultural center. His note, his contact, placed it all there.

"Oliver."

Oliver pivoted and saw him there, right by the stairwell, the access door. A kid, just a kid. Skinny, decently tall, black trench coat whipping around him in the breeze. Black hair stuck in a shell of Paul Mitchell. His face was thin and he did not smile. He threw a manila folder, stamped and bound in red labels, at Oliver's foot.

"Christ," Oliver said and bent to get it. "I didn't think you'd come."

"It took a lot of effort," he said.

Oliver eyed the packet. Looked at Jesse. "This is it?"

"This is part of it."

Oliver looked at the packet there on the gathered snow. And at him.

He said, "Who are you?"

"No one."

"No," Ollie said. "Not no one. I want to know."

The kid waited. After a moment he opened his arms in a weak so-what and said, "Jesse."

Oliver made a sound. "Tell me what's in it for you."

Jesse threw one hand up. "Because I know things. And because he shouldn't be able to do what he does anymore."

Oliver breathed. Even in the breeze he saw his breath curl out and dissipate into the night. He kept eyeing the packet.

He had been following the trail for weeks. But there was a creeping sense that it was all too rehearsed. All the messed papers placed just so in abandoned buildings. Finally a dead-drop note from an anonymous tip, saying his suspicions were right and to keep going. Not just keep going but that this source itself had a smoking gun on Luthor. Everything from the beginning. Terrorists on the Sea Queen. Illegal cloning experiments. Criminal conspiracies with known felons and multiple murderers, not the least of which was an insane clown with a bodycount higher than any domestic terrorist. Everything.

Oliver tried to resist jumping on it. He tried.

Oliver couldn't fault the kid. Given who Luthor was. Given what Luthor did, or does, to Clark on a daily basis. It was natural. Oliver thought about his own neck of the woods too. Whatever Merlyn, or Deathstroke, does to him, or to Dinah. any of them…it was nothing compared to what Luthor does to Clark.

What he did to me.

Maybe it was the breeze, going right though him, chilling his bones. He felt his breath. His whole body here heaving in the wind. He'd felt this way before. Years ago. The last time he felt the world was ending, with Roy in the throes of addiction and he and Hal going across the country. He always worried he never understood the world. This big…cacophony. All these people, self-involved, not interested in the cause, or helping people. Pigs, he thought. Self-involved. He kept thinking it and felt a pang of heat inside. They don't understand. Of course not. No one understands.

He looked back at the street. Students weaving in and about each other. Infinite lives down there in the maelstrom.

He looked at Jesse.

"I need to know this is the real thing."

"It is legitimate," Jesse said. "We've been talking for weeks, Oliver. You don't trust me?"

"You don't get to call me that."

"Hey," Jesse said. "I'm a hometown boy, okay? This is huge honor and I really mean that. But this is important and if you don't get that, maybe I should take it somewhere else."

Oliver sighed.

"I don't trust you," he said.

"I contacted you," Jesse. "I trusted you. If he finds out you know what happens."

Oliver looked at him.

"Or do you wanna see a dead minority on the evening news? Give me some reading here, Oliver, at what point do the war crimes in that packet shock your delicate liberal sensibilities? At what point is too much not enough? Or do you just like the game? This is cat and mouse bullshit, and you know it."

"Shut up," Oliver said. "I'll handle it."

"I know," Jesse said. "I'm trusting you to."

"Alright."

"There's a private server in the Lindley building, up the street there. Top floor is Art History. That's where he keeps everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything," Jesse said. "I've told you the truth, man, come on. Names, addresses, secret identities, sexual fantasies and little white lies."

Oliver wedged the packet in the gap between his quiver and his back. He put one leg up on a concrete battlement. Captain Morgan, but only just.

"Secret identities," Oliver said.

"Yes," Jesse said. "He's known for a long time."

Oliver breathed.

Jesse said, "I'm sorry."

Oliver flew over the edge. In an instant he had released an arrow into the roof of the next building over and vaulted across. He landed on the Lindley building in a swift flourish, and strolled toward the access stairwell. In a moment he was down the landing and inside. Art History was behind an oak door at the end of the hall.

He turned the knob gently and slid inside.

Jesse lied.

No private server.

Just an empty room, and a plain table with a ripped-out sheet of a legal pad on it.

And a list of names:

Conner Kent
Tim Drake
Bart Allen
Cassandra Sandsmark
Jesse Wright
Allen O'Neill

Oliver frowned. He breathed, almost hyperventilating, and it formed an idea of the word, "What." A flat what. Not a question. A statement. A fear.

"See anything familiar?"

He whirled in place.

There they stood.

"What. What is this?"

"You wish you knew," Luthor said.

Oliver clenched his teeth. His fists. Every inch of him. And every inch was alive. All the terror and excitement that followed an adrenaline surge.

He took them all in:

It wasn't just Luthor. It was the Mirror Master, too. And it was Jesse.

The kid. Prideful piece of shit. Luthor's informant. Oliver glanced at him and felt himself snarling.

"It was all a lie."

"I implied," Jesse said. "You failed a spot check. Just like they said you would."

Luthor said, "We dangled a carrot in front of you and you grabbed for it expertly. I must admit I'm surprised."

Oliver slowed his breathing. He looked Luthor square in the eye. Slowly, purposefully he removed the domino mask and archer's hat. He cracked his neck and put up his dukes. So this was it.

"Alright you bald bastard," he said and steeled himself. "I've been waiting for this for a long fuckin' time."

Luthor waited.

Behind him McCulloch brought up a mirror gun. It flashed in his hand. At Oliver. In the next moment the flash was gone.

Mirror Master was removing a panel atop the muzzle. A square pane of glass.

"Evan?"

McCulloch smiled. "He's in."

The three of them looked into the pane. A small version of Queen, locked away in McCulloch's dimensional hell. Screaming in anguish. He wasn't trapped in a moebius: not recursion, but endless choices. The problem with democracy. Endless mirror worlds into which he could enter. But none of them this world. Trapped in ethereal crossroads, Oliver Queen would never make the leap home.

McCulloch wondered what would kill him first, the hunger or the madness.

Probably the madness.

Jesse made a face. "Can he see us?"

"No," McCulloch said and sniffed. "He's gone."

Deep inside Wonderland—in the crossroads to everywhere to which only McCulloch seemed to have access—Oliver raged, jumping from pathway to pathway. He breathed and feverishly his brain fired, trying to find some way out of this.

After an hour he stopped. And sat. And pulled the packet from the space behind his quiver.

He started flipping through the pages.

And when he saw they were, every last one of them, blank, he screamed and wept. For the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and his own inexorable end.

Continued...