I never really know how to nickname Oliver; Oli, Olli, Ollie? I went with Ollie, and i'll try to keep consistancy with it. Apologies if it changes spelling.
Thank you for all the really sweet comments.
Chapter Two; Guidance
"Canary, online." Dinah was the last to join tonight, with the exception of Clark. "What are we actually doing anyway? I didn't get told anything." she complained. Chloe moved from the still unopened boxes she was trying to multitask with and returned to her computer chair. She promised herself that she would settle in as quickly as possible. Of course, Clark had to dash off as soon as they arrived, and then she had been kept busy by Isis and Lois's phone calls unable to do anything more with her stuff than make up her bed. So there they sat; boxes scattered around the floor. Tonight, she was working from her laptop, with a computer screen up for a visual of each member. Clark's was still black.
"Relax Canary. We don't know either." Victor replied. They boys so far were waiting outside a warehouse on its neighbouring rooftop as the meeting point was arranged.
"Watchtower, you wanna voice any answers?" Dinah asked, her voice airy, her breathing noisy due to her running pace. Chloe could follow her with the red dot on the city map she had up. She wasn't far from the boys.
"Don't know myself. Boy Scout just told me to set up the meet." Chloe confessed. Clark had blurred in later that same day, told her he had important information and to set a meet at x point at x time, before she could ask more he was gone again. Leaving her scowling at the swinging door.
"Well, I think it's fair to say we're either dealing with green rocks, or this is going to be huge. Especially if Clark needs us for it." True enough, Clark still did prefer solo work, and if he didn't need help, he wouldn't ask for it. "Canary, how far away are you?" Ollie continued, pacing along the edge of the building to scan the ground below.
"She's rounding the corner now." Chloe answered for her, watching the distance between markers on her map decrease.
"'Sup Arrow, you miss me?" Dinah teased. Chloe watched the screens as the guy's heads rose and all of there screens focussed on Dinah's chest. Chloe rolled her eyes. Sometimes, the video cam in the glasses proved to be great… other times, she wanted to clip all the boys around there heads for staring at Dinah's ass, or chest.
Chloe coughed purposefully and Dinah just laughed.
"Let them stare if they want. I'll take it as a compliment." She laughed again and twirled around for them.
"Nice of you to make an appearance Boy Scout." Ollie spoke, his head lifting from Dinah's beautiful rack to the solid wall that was Clark Kent. Bart tossed Clark an earpiece he had 'forgotten' to take earlier. He had also continually forgotten to take 3 seconds for a GPS fit. But Chloe let it slide, figuring if someone was able to take down Clark, they would be clever enough to disable a GPS chip as well, so ultimately it would be useless. She had no visual for Clark either, since he couldn't work the heat vision with sunglasses, and claimed anything else would just get in his way. Again she let it slide on the same principle as the GPS.
"33.1 is back up." he stated. All business. No chit-chat. Just jump straight in. Chloe sat ram rod straight. There was no way, she had been monitoring the old facilities. There was no activity. No shipments made to build a new one either.
"No. That can't be true. I've been following all Luthor activity and facilities for months now. There have been no shipments, no signatures." Chloe argued and to be extra sure, she pulled up the old files and folders checking shipping movement.
"It's not a Luthor." Clark revealed.
"So who exactly are we dealing with?" Victor questioned. Chloe was right there behind him, if this was not Luthor work, there was another new player with the same motives as Luthor's, and everyone knew they never ended well.
"I don't know any names. Tess just told me someone had been siphoning money from an old un-used Luthor account and it had been used to buy building supplies sent to this address. I did a quick scout around this afternoon, but-"
"Woah. You got this from Mercy?"
"And you believed her?" Ac continued, agreeing with Oliver's implication. Tess was not known for honesty.
"We're heading straight for a trap." Victor agreed.
"No. I checked the areas. There's something happening here, but it was cleared out. It seemed someone used this simply as a collection point. The facility is else where, but I didn't have time to search the entire building. There's an underground as well but I didn't have time-"
Noise erupted from Victor and Ac about traps and stupidity. Chloe ended it quickly.
"The information is correct." she confirmed. "The bank account hasn't just been siphoned, it's been swept clean. An anti-virus bomb has been attached as well for anyone who tried to access it again."
There was silence for a few seconds which Oliver had no problem with breaking.
"You hacked into a secret Luthor account just now?" Not only had she found said account, but to hack it, avoid bugs, and then find the trigger for said virus bugs. That would take a normal hacker a good couple of hours at best. His tone was sceptical for a good reason. Chloe ignored the implication, she knew she still had Brainiac pieces left over, and she knew how that worried the team, but really she hadn't met a down side of that yet.
"The money has gone to another account, but it's not registered anymore and clearly shut down. It's been severely closed off as well, there's no way of finding out who opened it. Or closed it." The sound of keys clacking on the laptop filled the next few seconds and Chloe continued. "This is serious high level, I can't undo this. All I have are past transaction records. Everything has been sent to this warehouse address. It seemed they used this as a collection point and then shipped them elsewhere. Trail runs cold after that."
"So we need to go in and find something." Clark summarised nodding. His voice may have been confident and in charge, but there was an underside that said he was clearly worried about Chloe's Brainiac skills still. Bart started to speak again, but Chloe foresaw and cut him off.
"I'm not saying it's not a trap. Tess could have still set this up."
"I doubt it. Mercy may have the power to find someone of that skill, but to go to all these extremes without any real aim is not her style." Oliver was right. Tess had no real reason for doing this, she knew about their alter ego's, and although she could not be trusted, she had no reason for doing this.
"Even so, stay sharp and don't let your guard down. Whoever is doing this knows what they're doing, and knows how to deal with meteor powers. Understood?"
A round of confirmations came back and the red dots moved toward the warehouse. Chloe pulled up different maps, heat signatures and building plans of the area. A warehouse wasn't really the right word for this place, it was a lot bigger and covered a lot of ground, yet still its location was in an industrial area and while surrounded by normal warehouses, no-one would really know the difference.
"There are construction tunnels in place and the right wing seems to be blocked off, which seems to be your best bet to find anything." she instructed, looking at the different maps.
Ollie turned on the voice distorter, just in case they were being listened to, and code names were strictly in place as they each decided on different directions. Clark and Bart went to super speed and took the left side of the building as it forked. Dinah and Victor carried on straight following Chloe's guidance to search all rooms and meet back up with Ac and Ollie who took the right corridor at a slower pace, on guard at all times. 20 minutes of guidance later and watching 3 different places at the same time, finally brought them all to the deepest part of the right corridor.
"Arrow to Watchtower. We need any layout of an underground system, there's an elevator shaft." Chloe spun to yet another computer screen, her laptop unable to run another system without crashing. Key tapping later and she was furrowing her brow, her voice panicked.
"I can't guide you. There isn't any record of an underground. Whoever has been using this must have made it themselves." She flipped through more documents. "Or, they deleted it from systems. It wouldn't be too much trouble for them considering what they can already do."
"Any heat signatures?" Bart asked. They all knew what he was asking; were they any people alive…or dead?
Chloe pulled up the satellite feed and switched it to heat seeking. There was a mass of red and orange where they stood, the same place as there GPS's confirmed, but otherwise no new heat.
"Not that I can tell."
"Any other entrance? I don't particularly like the idea of jumping into the unknown blind."
"Sorry Cyborg, I can't see anything else."
Clark was first to go, followed by Oliver.
"Shit!" she heard someone swear. The video feed cut out from each person as each passed below down the ropes. At least she had audio she thought to calm her nerves.
"Oh, God, that's rotten!" Dinah's voice came through with a buzz of feedback.
"Watchtower to Boy Scout. I don't have video, what's happening?" a crackling buzz hummed violently down the line. "Arrow?" she tried again. No, nothing. "Canary, Aqua, Cyborg, Impulse?" Her nerves were on end. The feed cracked again, alive and most definitely kicking. The only comfort she had was that the red gps chips were still moving. They were alive… or their bodies were being dragged away. She shook out her head, casting out such thoughts and tried again, calling out to each member. Again, no voices returned to her. She turned her head back to the heat signatures. She counted them. All 6: warm and hopefully alive.
"This is Watchtower, if anyone can hear this, please respond. I have no video or audio." she pleaded to the headset, hoping on some level that it was only their connection to her cut off, and not severed both ways. A fierce breathe cut into her hearing and she sighed in relief, but it was short lived. A deep voice that did not belong to any of her heroes replied.
"Miss Sullivan. You are messing with things you do not understand. Luckily I wish to change that. You're meddling fingers won't be able to reach anyone when you're lying 6 feet under. You should feel honoured I chose to deal with you first. But make no mistake; your friends will each get their turn. Every. Last. One." A heavy breath followed. "Goodbye Miss Sullivan." A cold black vibration crossed all communications and all her systems in watchtower shut down. The lights all shut off, sound cut out and she was immersed in a deafening blackness. Only her laptop remained alight. Someone was in the building, someone was hacking into it. That explained why only her laptop was still working. It wasn't plugged into anything.
Acting solely on instinct she snatched her laptop and ran for the doors. She cursed her bad habit of kicking her heels off when she was relaxed and sprinted down the stairs in her bare feet. Her breath was burning in her lungs as she reached the cold concrete of the outside. She instantly went to her car, tugging on the handle only to realise her keys were still inside watchtower. She hissed and pleaded for it to open. She swished her head around at the noise of the door closing behind her that she had just rushed through and knew she couldn't waste any more time. Laptop tucked under her arm she hit the ground again, slapping her bare feet against broken glass and twigs all which showed no sympathy, cutting and bleeding her soles. She hissed at the pain but kept on and rounded the corner from watchtower just in time to feel the air shake and push outwards.
The sound of her breathing was eliminated entirely by the explosion that pushed her to the ground. Metal flew from the same direction and she wrapped her hands over her head till she only heard the roar of fire. Slowly she lifted her head to see a burning metal frame where her car had stood only seconds before. Her heart was kicking violently in her chest. Run, it screamed. She picked herself back up again, and pushed to her feet. Not a second after she took her first step but another explosion took birth and she slammed again to the floor. Glass rained down, shattered from her haven. Fire spilled from watchtowers windows and she could do nothing but watch in shock. To her, it was Jimmy, all over again, she watched as it destroyed her special piece of him. Tears rolled unmercifully down her cheeks and she furiously wiped at them. She threw off the headset that remained silent and ran.
She ran, no looking back, down dirty back alleys and frozen pavement, lit only by the streetlights and the dull moon. Finally she reached the back alley of the Isis foundation. She hadn't planned on going there, but she had found herself heading that way and figured it was the only place she could feel safe. As soon as she reached the back door, she punched in the security code for deliveries and rushed inside. Her brain finally kicked back into a thinking gear. Someone had to have known she was at Watchtower, but if they had been following her previous patterns they would have thought she was at her old apartment, like she usually was for operations this late. So they must be tracking her. Maybe she was bugged. She locked the door behind her, barricading it with a spare table and started tossing off her clothes. The laptop wouldn't be bugged, not with the spyware she had, and besides it never left her person, so that only left a tracker to be on her clothes. Chloe threw her clothes in the sink of water and put herself through a shower, just in case. After she was wrapped in some spare clothing she kept at Isis she took the old clothes outside and burnt them in the alley, to make for sure that the tracker signal would be dead. She didn't even mourn the loss of her favourite blouse. Instead she locked herself back inside and taped and bandaged her feet and her shoulder where glass, or maybe metal, had cut her. It wasn't deep, but it needed disinfecting; not a process she enjoyed at all.
Keeping her head she avoided all previous communication links to the team. However much she wanted to check in, she knew it would be tagged by whomever it was that wanted them dead. That voice… it chilled her blood, it was deep and gravelly, scratching at her head, haunting her thoughts. He knew who she was, where she was, and what she was doing. She wouldn't put it past this guy to know who each of her team was as well. She tucked her injured feet under her and wrapped a blanket over her shoulders. It was tearing her apart that she couldn't check on them. But she knew if she contacted them, it would only be putting them back in more danger. Her eyes stayed on the door, never leaving for a second. Her body was still on alert. The adrenaline settling down and causing her to shake viciously, yet it was ready to kick back up at any given moment. She even had a plan, she could assume there were no bombs in here, but if they came she would need to defend herself. She could lock herself in her office but that really wouldn't be effective if he had a gun, she'd be a trapped rat. She'd need a weapon.
She stood to her shaky legs, grabbing the coffee table as she threatened to fall and ducked into her office to retrieve the gun she kept at the back of her filing cabinet. She had learnt that dealing with the meteor infected could be dangerous from an early stage of the operation and had to have something. Just in case. She froze on her journey as she heard the door kick down. She screamed but before she could reach the filing cabinet, two strong muscular and cold arms wrapped around her own and pulled her to an equally hard chest.