Down on the factory floor, the dozen-or-so thugs stared wildly into the shadows. There were at least three assailants, they knew...but where did they go?
One man heard a noise behind him. He whirled around just in time to see the guy standing right behind him drop like a rock. A shadow breezed by in front of him, and he immediately lunged. He received a sharp jab to the ribs for his effort. Stars burst in his vision as a stiff arm clouted him on the back of his head. The darkness around him deepened, and he couldn't feel anything anymore.
Those with submachine guns gripped them tightly and fired at anything that moved. One man anxiously scanned the shadows among the machinery, ready to fire at the first live thing he saw. The soft beep of a cell phone cost him several bullets at absolutely nothing, and he had only recovered his composure when one of the intruders emerged and yanked the gun out of his hands. Immediately, the thug raised his fists. "You wanna fight?" he challenged gruffly, "Let's fight!"
The hooded figure just stood there. The thug took the first swing. His assailant dodged the blow and struck for himself. The blow landed squarely on the thug's face. Wincing, the thug threw another punch. Hands encircled his wrist, and the burly man felt himself jerked off balance as his arm twisted almost out of its socket, and he flew headfirst into the cement floor.
Roy looked up as Diggle knocked another man unconscious. The dark-skinned bodyguard nodded toward the downed thug at Roy's feet. "Good job," he said.
Roy was still panting. "Thanks," he gasped. They both turned to take on more thugs.
High among the rafters, Izzy was enjoying picking off the thugs one by one with arrows aimed to zing from apparently nowhere. She aimed toward the edges of the steel girders, which blunted the tip as well as changed the trajectory of the arrow, allowing it to drop onto unsuspecting men and cause adequate pain without too much damage, as well as confusing them as to her true location. She was concentrating so hard at aiming so as to hit from a seemingly random direction without giving away her true location that she failed to notice the knife-wielding thug who had discovered her by accident.
Izzy heard Roy shout, "Look out behind you!" and the clatter of bullets he shot echoed around her heels and she turned.
The glinting switchblade dropped from the man's hand, but Izzy sprang at him anyway; she knew it was always smarter to engage an enemy on solid footing first, and then move toward the more dangerous, rather than risk the opponent trapping you in a perilous position and gaining the upper hand.
Izzy drove her fist hard into the man's gut. He covered her face with his hand, and his fingers dug into her temples. Izzy fought the urge to peel it away with her hands and focused on damaging the body attached to the hand. She used what she could see between his fingers to aim as she planted one foot and swung the other, catching him between the legs. Instantly, he released her, and she clouted him across the head as he collapsed.
The commotion attracted the attention of his armed buddies on the catwalk below, and Izzy had to leap onto the fallen body before her to avoid the spray of bullets. She knew that she didn't stand a chance unless she could disarm the men. With a sigh, she waited until one of the men complained of a jammed gun and then sprang over the railing, aiming for the weapons.
In the midst of her tussle with the two men, Izzy's earbud popped.
"Hello? Can you hear me?" Felicity's voice rang through her head. Izzy used the backward momentum of one thug wrapping his arm around her neck and pulling to hoist her boot into the other man's face before gravity took over and she used her captor's weight against him, flinging him over her shoulder and into his partner. She leaned heavily on the railing, panting hard.
"This had better be important!" she grunted, eyeing the two thugs making their way to her from the other side of the factory.
"It is," Felicity answered. "I just heard from Oliver; he's got Geraldine's location from Jeff."
Izzy decided not to stick around for the second fight, but lightly swung herself over the railing and dropped to the factory floor, leaving the other thugs to take the stairs and come after her.
"That fast, huh?" she asked Felicity.
Just then, the door of the office burst open and Oliver emerged, locked in combat with Jeff. The latter hurled the hooded man against the railing and immediately slipped his arm around Oliver's neck in a chokehold, taking care to bear down on Oliver's body so that the taller man couldn't push against him.
The trio on the floor could only watch helplessly. Oliver fought to say something.
"Door!" he rasped. "On your five! Door!"
"Our five?" Roy repeated. "What does that mean?"
Izzy was already turning, "It's a military direction." She saw a padlocked door at "five-o-clock", or just behind and to their right, in the front corner of the warehouse. She ran to it and pounded.
"Gerry?" she called, "Are you in there?"
"Help me!" came the shrill cry from inside.
Izzy's heart raced. She immediately seized the combination lock and began twisting the dial. Her hands shook so bad that she couldn't engage the tumblers. She swore as she had to reset the dial a third time.
Roy appeared at her side and took the lock from her hand. "I've got this," he said quickly, placing his ear almost directly on the mechanism.
A bullet pinged off the door over their heads. Jeff had a pistol! In an effort to get it out of his hand without endangering himself, Oliver had unwittingly endangered his friends.
"Hurry up!" Izzy nagged her brother.
"I'm hurrying!" Roy retorted. At last, the final tumbler slid into place. "Got it!" he crowed.
"Hoods!" Diggle warned, and they all covered their heads.
Izzy glanced back toward Oliver just as he dealt a final blow to Jerry's head, knocking him unconscious.
Roy slipped the lock off and Diggle threw open the door, letting Geraldine run out. She looked around at the three hooded figures, and watched a fourth join them. She froze, mildly terrified.
The fourth figure stepped forward. In a deep, hollow voice, he said, "Geraldine DuPries, we're here to bring you home."
Roy and Izzy sat together in her platform in the tree, watching Geraldine enter the front gate of her house. Gordon met his daughter in the courtyard, and the two embraced as if neither wanted to let the other go. Roy watched Izzy hug her knees to her chest in just the way Gerry hugged her father. Together, the DuPries walked toward the house, but Gordon hesitated a few paces as Gerry went inside. Izzy saw him take something out of his pocket, fiddle with it a moment, and walk inside. Seconds later, her cell phone beeped. She pulled it out and read the coded message.
She gasped.
"What is it?" Roy asked.
"Inside," Izzy said, her voice quivering. "Mr. DuPries wants me inside." She looked at her brother with wide eyes. "He said, Bring the other one, too."
"Other one?" Roy echoed. "Oliver? Or, wait... does he mean us?"
Izzy glanced toward the house. Gordon was standing at the second-story bay window, staring out across the grounds in exactly their direction. Could he really see them from there? He turned away.
"I guess so," she answered.
"Why?" Roy cried as he followed his sister out of the tree.
"I don't know," Izzy responded, "but there's only one way to find out."