AN: thanks for the follows, favorites and reviews they mean a lot. I hope you enjoy this chapter my apologies about all the talking but its needed.
I do not own Arrow/Mutant X I just wanted to try something new
Chapter 11 - Mirakuru
"To understand my story you need to know my past and to do that." Arrow gave his opening line in his story and pulled back his hood then slid his mask from his face. "Oliver!" Adam sounded shocked. "I am Oliver Queen and 7 years ago I was shipwrecked on a Japanese Island called Lian Yu or Purgatory. I met an Australian Secret Intelligence Service operative called Slade Wilson he taught me to fight and how to survive." Oliver took a deep breath steadying himself he was starting to get sucked in to the memories. Felicity saw Oliver steady himself and she shuffled up in the sofa taking his hand to anchor him here in the present.
"I was captured by a Dr Anthony Ivo." Adam had a horrified look on his face but didn't interrupt. "He wanted to find the Mirakuru that had been lost on a submarine near the island. I had found skeleton remains of Japanese soldiers in the time I was there and Ivo forced me to show them him. He hurt Slade and after I escaped Ivo we found the surviving Mirakuru and injected Slade to save him. At first we believed him dead and Ivo captured us along with the Mirakuru. He then..." Oliver stopped getting agitated.
He abruptly stood and began pacing, Team Arrow watched Oliver carefully. Mutant X remained silent but Felicity noticed Emma looked in pain and she was now worried about both of them. Clenching his fists Oliver continued, "Ivo gave me a choice of who to save, I didn't want to choose, I couldn't choose. Then the gun was pointed at my friend and just as Ivo was pulling the trigger I blocked the gun and he shot the other woman the one I... Slade loved. I didn't choose I couldn't stop him. Slade appeared and took out most of Ivo's men only Ivo escaped. Slade was enraged at Shado's death and vowed to kill who ever was responsible."
Oliver took a steadying breath again then continued, "As we planned to attack Ivo and his freighter Slade slowly became more unstable with his temper. When we attacked the freighter he wanted Ivo and I found him first, I should have taken him out Slade's rage would have been nothing compared to now but I hesitated. Ivo told Slade I had chosen to save my friend over Shado and the rage consumed him. Ivo ended up dead and I managed to destroy the remaining Mirakuru serum and I thought I had killed Slade until a few weeks ago. He made a promise to destroy everything I hold dear and that's what he is doing now. Last night was a warning for you to keep away from me."
Mutant X exchanged looks between themselves before Adam spoke, "We will not stop helping the city and if that means helping you and facing Slade then so be it." "No you will keep away from him he is my problem no one else is going to suffer for my mistakes. You can help stop the Mirakuru in him that's all." Oliver shot back. "Yes but I need him or at least a blood and tissue sample from him." Adam replied. "What about a successful injection from Slade's earlier work?" Oliver asked. Adam looked shocked, "He was successful?"
"This is why I needed to speak with my team. We knew someone was replicating the Mirakuru serum and they created one who stole equipment to mass produce more. We stopped him but there was collateral damage and someone else was injected. We don't know how but he survived. We didn't realise at the time that Slade was responsible we believed we had stopped the man behind it all." Oliver explained touching on Roy's story. "Who is it I would need to examine their DNA and I should be able to reverse the adverse effects in theory." Adam supplied.
"It's me." Roy spoke up before Oliver could answer. He removed his hood and looked at Adam meeting his eyes. Adam nodded, "I'll do whatever I can Roy. Oliver I'm sorry for what Ivo put you through the Mirakuru research was discovered while he was working at Genomex. He was one of my top research fellows but when Genomex was disbanded he continued looking for the Mirakuru. I lost track of his whereabouts on his travels through Japan. If I had known I would have stopped him." Adam said. Oliver nodded his thanks it was a nice sentiment.
"We need a plan to get a sample of Slade's DNA for me to analyse. Do you have any leads on his whereabouts?" Adam asked. "We have drawn a blank on intel its like he's a ghost, I can't find any digital or money trails for him. He's worse than you guys for being invisible." Felicity answered. "We could try our databanks and contacts see if they have anything." Jesse suggested. "I managed to obtain one piece of information from an outside source, he has a masked alter ego being called Deathstroke." Oliver relayed what he had found out from A.R.G.U.S. Diggle looked at him questioningly before Felicity started, "When were you going to relay that to the team! How am I supposed to gather intel without all the leads. Seriously how long have you known that?" Felicity's loud voice started to seep in. "Just last night before I got back I took a detour." Oliver answered.
Before they could continue their argument Brennan jumped in to break it up, "Yo now no lover's quarrels here." Both Felicity and Oliver turned their glares towards him, instinctively Brennan held his hands up in surrender. Diggle and Roy chuckled. "We need to get moving on this I need to see Roy's DNA it may help me calculate how long we have until Slade is successful with his reproduction of the serum." Adam brought the conversation back to the pressing matter at hand.
Roy stepped around Diggle and moved to the end of the sofa and faced Adam. "What ever you need I'm ready as long as you're finished by 5 I've got work and my boss hates it when I'm late." Diggle and Felicity sniggered Oliver turned his glare towards Roy not finding the comment about his baby sister amusing. "If you want to come to the lab with me we can get started." Adam said. "Jesse do you and Felicity want to try and find a location for Slade." Both nodded their agreement. "Emma you can help me in the lab." Adam said. "How about you guys show us what you can do?" Brennan suggested. "I'll watch Roy." Canary said. "I'm a big boy I think I can manage." Roy sarcastically said his pride a little hurt. "Humor me." Canary simply said and Roy just shrugged.
Adam moved towards the door, Roy glanced at Oliver, making sure it was okay, who nodded. Emma moved to follow and paused in front of Roy holding her arm out to show him to follow Adam. Roy left the room, Canary moved and followed Roy and Emma brought up the rear, she kept her distance from Canary.
"Felicity you ready?" Jesse asked heading over to her. "Yes." She replied standing. "We will be in the the Helix if you need us." Jesse addressed Oliver, "You look after her." Oliver replied. "You play nice." Felicity playfully threatened Oliver, "And Dig you make sure he doesn't get carried away." Diggle nodded and smiled. Jesse offered his arm to Felicity like a gentleman and she took it letting him lead the way. Oliver tried his best to not ground his teeth into dust at the display he knew Jesse was just being nice he hoped.
Shalimar stood and moved towards the door followed by Brennan, "You two ready?" She asked with a devilish smirk. "You bet I owe you both a little payback." Oliver said jokingly. "I'm in." Diggle said. Both men followed Shalimar and Brennan.
Roy walked into the room Adam had just disappeared into, he looked about the room recalling his training, always be aware of your surroundings. It looked like a kitchen but there was no food, cooker or microwave. There was a half reclined chair at the far end of the room which Adam was standing next to with a tablet in his hands. Without looking up Adam started speaking, "Roy would you mind taking a seat over here. I need to do a bioscan on you to see what the Mirakuru did and is doing." Roy nodded but realised Adam wasn't looking, "Okay." He nervously said. Adam looked up at this, "Don't worry it won't hurt it'll just be a few minutes then done." He smiled trying to reassure Roy.
Roy reminded him of Shalimar when he first brought her back to Sanctuary, he was older than her but he seemed just as lost in this world. Roy moved over to the chair, "If you could remove the hoodie it will help the scanner." Adam said. Roy complied placing it on a clear part of the nearest bench and slid himself into the chair and looked up at the ceiling.
Canary entered the room and kept herself out of the way watching closely. She recognised a lot of the equipment on the tables but there was equally a lot of things she didn't that seemed very technologically advanced. She listened to the conversation between Adam and Roy hoping to spot any deception from Adam.
"Roy I need to you to keep still while we're scanning." Adam requested. Roy started to nod again then realising what Adam had just asked he stopped and replied, "Okay." Roy watched as 2 beams of light appeared from the box on the ceiling and started moving towards then away from each other. These beams continued for 5 passes before finishing. "All done you can get up when you're ready."
Canary watched as 2 beams were emitted from the ceiling onto Roy. These beams travelled opposite each other from the top of Roy's head to his toes and back again for 5 repeats until they disappeared. This was something new to her. "What did you do?" She asked her voice distorted from the voice changer she wasn't taking any chances at being recognised." "This is an EDD scanner it can capture different depths of imagery of the body so for Roy as I'm unsure what we are dealing with I've done a full spectrum. We have DNA profile, nervous system, organ system, toxicology and general fitness. I'll show you." He explained moving towards the wall at the far end of the room.
He flicked the tablet screen and the wall illuminated with 5 rotating images. Emma came up behind Adam looking at ths images. Roy standing joined them and Canary carefully closed the distance too. Adam handed the tablet to Emma and started manipulating the images. "You DNA is remarkable can you see here its unwinding and rewriting itself. This coding here is the Mirakuru part it looks similar to samples in the bodies. Are your symptoms getting worse Roy or better?" Adam enquired. "I can control it more than before but Oliver has been teaching me Eskrima which has been helping but I still lose it too often." Roy replied.
"What makes you feel happy?" Adam asked. "What?" Roy looked completely confused. "What do you do or who do you know that makes your heart feel light and happy?" Adam clarified. "Are you going all hippy on me?" Adam let out a breath and Roy answered, "I'm happy to be part of the team Arrow saved my life. Then there is Thea she lights up my world and just the mention of her brings me out of my rages." Roy answered truthfully. "I see this is incredible you are actually displaying heart intelligence where by your hearts state of positivity is rewriting your DNA. This has only ever been demonstrated in controlled subjects. I need to look at your code but I would presume the body is fixing the DNA to stop your rages as this is counter productive of the heart intelligence system." Adam was completely in awe of what he was seeing. Roy was speechless he didn't understand a word but assumed Thea was proving to be better for him than they thought.
"Let's look at your organ systems next the Mirakuru could do some pretty nasty alterations." Adam moved the DNA helix aside and enlarged the image with the internal organs on it. "Everything looks good there." He minimised that image and pushed it aside bringing the nervous system up. "Hmm thats interesting." He mumbled. "What?" Roy and Canary said at the same time. "There is some damage to your orbitofrontal cortex." Adam replied. "The what?" Roy asked. "The frontal lobe of your brain. Roy do you know what happened when you were injected with the serum?" Adam asked. "No I just remember waking up at home. Why?" Roy replied. "It's nothing significant yet I'll ask Oliver I just need all the facts and events to ensure correct analysis. Let's look at your toxicology." Adam swiftly moved on he didn't want to reveal his thoughts just yet if he was right Roy may not like the prognosis.
The toxicology image was like a bar chart with different coloured bars and lots of long unusual names Roy didn't recognise. "I don't do drugs." Roy said feeling offended he was being checked for them. "This isn't a typical toxicology screening. This shows all the chemical components in your body from drugs to hormones." Adam replied. Canary was shocked that a single piece of technology could gain so much information if Ivo had had this he might not have been so brutal in his research methods. "That's interesting, you have abnormally high readings for epinephrine and estradiol with low levels of dopamine this is a definite cocktail for rage. It must have altered your endocrine system creating an imbalance." Adam explained before he could continue his hypothesis Roy spoke up, "What does all that mean I flunked science." "Your adrenaline and testosterone levels are high and your brain isn't communicating correctly that might be the reason you're struggling so much with your rage." Canary clarified, Roy nodded understanding her dumbed down version however Adam was shocked to realise how much Canary knew.
"Yes thats the basic how do you know so much?" Adam asked. Canary realised her mistake but quickly thought of a cover story, "I spent some time with a scientist on my travels." "He must have been a good teacher and you a good student." Adam commented. Canary didn't respond she only learnt so she could survive nothing else. "Rage is a predominant feeling of angry behaviour when you are threatened and choose to protect yourself. But with damage to your brain coupled with low dopamine the signals of reward after you have protected yourself aren't getting through. Is there anything else that happens?" Adam asked. "When I'm losing control or just been snapped out of it my hand shakes." Roy answered. "The shaking hands is caused by the adrenaline levels in your system normal behaviour for what you're going through."
"I need to start breaking down your genetic code. I may need a few more scans of your DNA if it continues changing. For now you can go join your team if you want Emma would you show the way?" Emma nodded placing the tablet on the table and turned towards the door. Roy offered his hand to Adam who took it, "Thank you." "I haven't done anything yet." Adam replied. "I know but you are taking the time to try so thanks." Roy explained. "Your welcome." Roy picked up his hoodie and followed Emma, Canary silently followed behind. Adam resumed his tinkering with the DNA helix strand.
AN: please let me know what you think. I apologise about the science speak I'm hoping its accurate and it'll make sense later on I hope lol. So next chapter will be action packed in theory with more Mutant X skills.