Chapter Three
"So that's your story," Quinton Lance asked after the stretch artist had left. Despite the fact that Lance was a good and as far Oliver knew a good detective it was a special kind of stupid that allowed him to be the detective assigned to this case. "A couple in hoods flew in and between the two of them took out 3 armed kidnappers, with bows and arrows? I mean, who are they? Why would they do that?
"I don't know. Find them and you can ask." Oliver replied with as much of the spoiled son and heir playboy that he could muster up, he was quite as smug as he would have been before the island, but he figured he pulled it off. Truth was he wanted to know himself.
"Yeah." Lance turned his attention to Tommy and picked up the stretch, Oliver had claimed that he didn't really see the woman and could only tell she was female by body type. "What about you? You see the hood guy and his girlfriend?" Oliver
"There was smoke, I saw Just movement. Everything was blurry. I was kind of out of it."
"Yeah." Lance said doubtfully "It's funny, isn't it? One day back and already somebody's gunning for you. Aren't you popular?"
"Were you able to identify the men?" Moira demanded pulling attention away from her son. Oliver knew why Lance was like this with him, and he understood it, but if Lance didn't want a Moira Queen bringing the entire fury of every lawyer the Queen fortune can buy he really need to back off a little.
"Scrubbed identities, untraceable weapons, these were pros." Lance's partner answered.
"Wait! Those men were injured, but they were still able to talk," Oliver demanded "What did they have to say?" despite the fact that Oliver would have killed them his saviors mercy did leave them with a chance to interrogate them, their interest in his father was puzzling, did someone on the list have something to do with this?
"The transport from to hospital was hit all three men were killed, we never had a chance to speak to them"
"Yeah. Well, they probably figured you'd pay a king's ransom to get your boy back or a Queen's ransom, as it were. After all, a parent would do anything to keep their child safe." Lance addressed the last directly at Oliver.
"I don't find your tone appropriate, Detective." Moira warned
Walter seeing the danger in his wife's warning stood "If Oliver can think of anything else, he'll be in touch." His words were an obvious dismissal "Thank you, gentlemen, for coming."
"Your luck never seems to run out, does it?" Lance added quietly ass a parting shot.
Luck? The man didn't have the slightest idea.
It took a laughably little amount of effort to lose his new babysitter but it did mean him had to do a little more running about to get his hands on everything that he needed. But wasn't even ten before he managed to get himself to his father's old Steal mill. The area was in better condition than it had been when he had last been in Starling.
Smoak and Fyre Entertainment Complex
Trying to run a company and save a city, and its hero, at the same time was not an easy path. Felicity completely understood now how it was that her Oliver had considered himself in separate parts, The Arrow, CEO Oliver Queen, Playboy Ollie. She always stopped herself from doing the same, Felicity Smoak was Felicity Smoak weather she was playing the part of the IT super-genius, the CEO, even the Grey Arrow.
Felicity knew she couldn't make things right if she made Oliver's mistake for herself.
Felicity had spent three decade's trying to find a way to go back and save Oliver. So many failed attempts, and more than one fortune lost along the way. It was a side job that she took with Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon that ended being the answer. The two had appointed themselves Felicity's keepers after Oliver's death and had brought her to work with them at STAR Labs.
It was a treatment for Alzheimer's that that had been the starting point for Felicity's project. Nanites ingested, most often in capsule form, would migrate and occupy the brain mapping and repairing neural pathways. Taking over the tasks, of the brain that stopped working. Felicity took the project and repurposed it.
The reason that her project had failed so many times is she simply couldn't create a consistent and stable power source big enough to get so much as a loaf of bread to make the trip back.
The Nanites solved her problems for the simple fact that that anyone of the microscopic robots could, with the data compression algorithm that she written carry a life time of memories. The project had a power source big enough to send hundreds of millions of them through. She felt bad about bad about having to steal the prototype Nanites from Caitlin and Cisco but once she gets the project to work then she never will have stolen them.
It took weeks for the Nanites to map and store her brain, and a couple more days to find a way to extract them safely without involving another person in the project. The past was far too powerful a weapon, adding another element to the equation. Felicity could not risk that, an unexpected side effect of the Nanites on a healthy brain was that Felicity's always wondrous mind was now even more so. Her memory as a result was perfect, she remembered everything.
From the first hash sight of light and the pain without understanding that she knew now was her birth until this very moment. She remembered everything in every detail, she could recall the not just the last meal that she had shared with her father, before he left her as a child, she also remembered the taste of it.
The exposure to her still developing brain enhanced the effectiveness of the Nanites, she processed information faster and understood concepts that she hadn't understood before.
With a good deal of work and a comparative smallish portion of her new fortune she had managed to even construct a device that temporally altered the Nanites programming so that could heal any wound when the device was activated and applied to the wound. The device wasn't perfect and so scaring was a factor, depending on the severity of the wound she had even managed to extract a number of the tiny bots. She was reworking the minuscule computers, with the hopes of mess production.
First for Oliver, and second as treatments for many illnesses and deceases, everything from Alzheimer's and Cancer to Lupus and Yellow fever. She wanted to as much good as she could.
But that was later, for now she had other things in mind.
By now Oliver should have found the message that she had left for him at the Foundry and would no doubt be trying to find all of the information available on Felicity Smoak, which she had supplied with the message she had left him where she knew that he would find it. She had also told him where he could found her.
"Tell me again why I'm leaving early?" Her tiny Executive Assistant asked as she placed another file in front of Felicity, effectively braking Felicity out of her thoughts.
It had taken her several months but she had managed track down Sara Lance's young friend. Sin, she had all but lived on the streets making finding her a complex task. Sara had a reason to protect the girl so her safety and happiness were among Felicity's priorities. Contriving a reason to give the girl a job was the hardest part of the whole thing.
"I have a meeting, who seems to have arrived." Felicity told the girl not looking at her or the file she had laid down in front of her "Mr. Queen if you will give me a moment, I just need to sign this," Felicity looked down at the file on her desk "What am I signing, Sin?"
"You're buying a commercial Bakery,"
"Then what did I sign before that?"
"Child care, five full price centers to fund the two low income centers in the glades,"
"I thought we were still working on names," there was a light of interest in Felicity's eyes
"Marketing chose 'Felicity House'," Felicity pulled a face and mouthed the words shaking her head as if to expel a bad taste, she didn't like the name.
"Are we still going with 'Smoak House' for the new Foods branch?"
"Yeah you signed that too."
"Ok Sin, anything else can wait. Go home." The young girl pulled a face, the young EA had it in her head that she couldn't leave until Felicity did. "I mean it Sin, go home."
Felicity Knew Oliver well enough to know there was really no way to tell how he was going to react to everything and she didn't want the younger girl around if things went badly.
