A/N: Wow, thanks for all the responses to this story! Here's some action and suspense for you.
Contains mild-ish violence.
Do not try this at home, kids.
DETECTIVE LANCE
Felicity couldn't believe it, but she was bored. Bored enough to do filing.
Oliver had gone to an investor's lunch, trying to schmoose some people into investing into Queen Consolidated by plying them with good food and fine wine. The idea was to do business without realising you were doing business, hence why Felicity wasn't there as a visual reminder that Oliver was a CEO.
Felicity wasn't disappointed that she couldn't go, though Diggle did promise to bring her back some of the food, but after an hour alone in the office she had nothing left to do. All of her arrow work was on hold until one of the many criminals she was tracking made a move. All of her QC work was up to date, she had even made her way down to IT to offer her services, but they were for once not struggling without her. With nothing else to do she had resorted to tidying up her desk, Oliver's desk and then the entire office. This only left the filing.
After a few minutes of sorting she had a small pile of files that had to be given to an assortment of department heads. Usually that meant she would notify their assistants so they could come retrieve them, but she was bored and could use the walk. Gathering her phone and her files she left Oliver's office.
She started at the finance department directly under Oliver's office, swarming with people, and left the IT department until last hoping that a problem would have arisen by the time she got there.
The IT department was still running smoothly so Felicity was forced to return to her office. She figured she would just watch a movie on her computer until Oliver turned up. These lunches had a way of going for a lot longer than usual when the food and alcohol were being paid for by someone else.
Stepping out of the elevator on the top floor, now carrying a new pile of files which the departments had given her as she passed out her own, she collided with a firm chest.
Gasping she stepped back, clutching at the files as they nearly fell from her arms. She looked up at a pair of brown eyes.
"Sorry," the man chuckled, "I was in a bit of a hurry."
"Oh, um, can I help you with anything?" Felicity asked, adjusting her glasses. No one else was up here except for her and she figured he had come up to see Oliver and found her desk absent. He looked the corporate type in a suit with a briefcase. He probably thought she was a new intern rather than an executive assistant with the way she was handling herself. She was right.
"No, no," the man reassured, pushing the button for the elevator quickly. "I was just leaving a gift on my girlfriend's desk," he said gesturing to her desk.
A look of confusion passed over her face and the man noticed. He tensed and Felicity thought on her feet, her instincts telling her that something was wrong. "I didn't think Felicity had a boyfriend," she supplied.
"I'm trying to convince her," he winked, before stepping around her and into the elevator.
Once the doors closed in front of the man Felicity counted to three before running to her desk. Nothing had been touched as far as she could tell and there was no gift. Turning to her computers she pulled up the security feed of the office. At first the image on the screen seemed perfectly normal. Except she was watching it in real time and she couldn't see herself, the office was empty. She even waved her arms around to test it. Someone had hacked Queen Consolidated's security feed and replaced the video footage.
As someone who had spent the last year hacking her way into secure systems Felicity had had the foresight to install a secondary offline server with some pretty heavy security programs for Oliver's office. It meant that she could do arrow work without leaving a footprint on the QC servers. Accessing this server now she found untainted security footage of the office and wound it backwards trying to see what the man had been doing up there all alone.
He had walked the floor, breaking into Oliver's locked office - she had locked it before she left; she wasn't that irresponsible – and spent a long time under the table in the private boardroom. The camera didn't pick up what he was doing, Felicity had no idea what it was but hoped it wasn't some weird stalker-obsessive thing, and then he had walked out, running into her.
Felicity stood up from her computers and bit her lip indecisively. On one hand the guy had already left, probably made it out of the building already so calling security wouldn't do anything. On the other hand he had lied to her face, convincingly she admitted if only she hadn't have been the prop in the lie.
Well, either way she would be driven crazy if she didn't check under the table.
Slowly she made her way through Oliver's office and into the boardroom where the huge table took up the entire centre of the room. Crouching down she stole a look, expecting to see nothing or if anything a forgotten pen. She found she lost pens uncommonly fast as an EA.
Instead she found a detonation device, a timer counting down and a lot of plastic explosive attached to the underside of the table.
She reeled backwards, falling on her butt and scooting away until she hit the wall.
04:25 the timer had read.
Kicking off her heels she launched herself to her feet and sprinted through the office to her computer. Oliver's computer was closer but wasn't turned on. In a matter of keystrokes she had sounded the evacuation alarm for the entire building. Immediately an alarm sounded through the PA system. But she knew it wouldn't be enough time, not for the entire tower to get out and away.
Taking a deep breath Felicity took precious time to consider her options and hit the truth. For everyone to evacuate the building it would take more than four minutes. Closer to twenty in truth. She didn't know much about explosives but she could guess that the amount there was enough to make a very, very big explosion.
"Please let me live," she begged the ceiling before grabbing her phone, tablet and her toolset from her desk drawer. She may not be in IT anymore, but she had been working on computers since she was little and she always had the tools needed somewhere close by.
Dialling a number on her phone she ran back to the boardroom and crawled under the table until she was staring up at the explosive device.
03.18
"Ms Smoak, how can I help you?" Officer Lance asked as he answered his phone.
"There is a bomb at the Queen Consolidated building set to go off in just over three minutes. The building is being evacuated as we speak."
"Please tell me you are getting as far away as you can," Lance growled.
"Um, I can't tell you that."
"Dammit, Felicity. What do you need?"
She had already been searching on her tablet for information on the bomb, looking up the parts, serial numbers, anything she could. "I need to know how to disarm it."
02.41
"What can you see?"
Taking a quick picture with her phone she sent it to him. He asked a few specific questions and she answered as best she could. Lance was by no means an explosives expert, but they had a history of disarming things over the phone, and he definitely knew more than her.
01.29
"It looks like you've got the timer on a small amount of explosive," Lance said. "This small piece will be detonated and that will trigger the rest of the explosives to go off to create a bigger blast."
Felicity compared Lance's theory to pictures on the internet and her own device. She agreed with him. "Okay. So what do I do now?"
01.16
"I can't tell you how to disarm it. I don't know what I'm dealing with and there could be anti-tampering measures. The best I can offer is to remove the timer and the explosive attached, take it far away from the rest of it and hope the blast is small enough to avoid triggering the rest."
"I think I can do that."
"How much time is left?"
"Less than a minute."
Lance cursed. "Okay. I want you to very carefully…"
Trying not to shake Felicity followed Lance's instructions. She presumed that she did okay when she didn't explode.
"Alright, I've got it." She looked down at the small object sitting in her hand that could cause so much destruction.
00.13
"Now get rid of it!"
00.09
Rolling out from under the table Felicity ran into Oliver's office.
00.03
Throwing the device with all her might it sailed through the office doorway and out into the corridor as Felicity dived behind Oliver's desk.
Lance ducked instinctively as the top floor of the Queen Consolidated building exploded, the windows blowing out and a ball of fire evaporating into the air.
"Felicity!" he shouted into his phone, looking up from the pavement as the people around him screamed and ducked away from the falling glass. He didn't get an answer.
The next half hour went excruciatingly slow. Not even his badge would get him into the building until the bomb squad had cleared every floor in case there was another device.
Eventually two members of the bomb squad came downstairs and headed straight to the ambulances on site with a woman in their arms.
Lance ran over as she was loaded onto a stretcher and there, scratched, bruised and a little worse for wear was an alive Felicity Smoak.
"You scared me," he laughed in relief as she smiled at him in between the paramedics rushing around her.
"I scared me," she admitted.
Felicity refused to go to hospital as her injuries looked worse than they were. Most of the scratches on her arms and face were from the interior glass walls shattering and the bruises from where bits of wreckage had fallen on her. The worst was a minor burn on her leg from where a piece of smouldering debris had landed. She had no broken bones, no concussion and aside from smelling like smoke and being covered in ash, she had no complaints.
Felicity was left alone as more people with injuries emerged – some caused by the panic of a building-wide evacuation and some from the glass that had rained down on the street. Looking pleadingly at Lance he got the message and escorted her away from the ambulances and to somewhere quieter. The press were already arriving and with all the employees from QC milling around the street the whole area was becoming a gridlock.
"Are you sure you are alright?" Lance asked as he helped her limp over to a seat to the side of the building, shielded from view by the bomb squad's van. The second van had already left with the unarmed device, taking it to a secure location for it to be analysed then destroyed.
"I'd feel better if I had my own shoes," she said looking down at the large combat boots someone had found for her. With the boots and the spare jacket loaned from the police, both entirely too large for her, she looked like a kid playing dress up. That only made the whole event more trying for Lance.
"What were you thinking, Felicity?" he demanded. "You could have died!"
"There wasn't enough time to get out." She shrugged, "I figured I'd make my last few minutes count."
"You…I…that's…"
"Tell me you would not have done the same, Detective?"
"We both know the answer to that."
He looked into the determined eyes of this young woman who he always seemed to be underestimating. There really was no question to whether or not she would have evacuated with the rest. He sometimes forgot that this was a woman who knew her own mind, knew her own abilities and routinely put this to use in a less than legal way every night, but always to help others.
Lance sighed; Felicity Smoak had a way of sneaking up on you.
He sat down beside her on the bench and gently took her hand, careful of the scratches, communicating his understanding and support in the one simple gesture. They stayed like that until another police officer, this one on duty, came for Felicity's statement.
"I'll drive you home," Lance said when Felicity was no longer needed at the scene.
"That's not necessary," she said, "not that I don't appreciate the offer."
"Oh?"
"Oliver is probably around here somewhere and he is going to want to check on me, he can get pretty worried." She seemed to realise what she had just said. "Not that I'm anything special because Mr Queen would of course be worried about all his employees when his building explodes and just wondering where his assistant is so he can…get some assistance." She coughed awkwardly.
Lance wasn't going to comment on the rumours that he had heard about Mr Queen and his new assistant, most of which alluded to a different side of their working relationship. He knew the stories about Oliver Queen often had some truth to them, he just hoped that Felicity was smart enough to realise what kind of man he was.
The man himself appeared just then with shouts of the press following him. Oliver Queen looked like a man possessed, he was obviously searching for something and God help the people in his way.
Felicity noticed him as well and stood quickly, catching his eye. Lance watched as he ran over and swept Felicity up in his arms before she could say anything.
He watched on from the side, a little uncomfortably, as Oliver held onto Felicity. He was saying something to her, too soft for Lance to hear, but he could tell a lot by how he was holding her. He had one arm around her waist and the other cradling her head like he was afraid to put her down. He did though, eventually, but kept his hand on her cheek as he thoroughly looked her over cataloguing her injuries. Lance could understand his panic, Felicity was covered in bandages and her skirt and blouse were either burnt in places or ripped. Oliver's expression of relief dropped into one of anger as Felicity became nervous and started to babble about her injuries, telling him they were only superficial but breaching the subject of how she had willingly disarmed a bomb in the worst possible way. Even Lance had to cringe for the boy with Felicity's poor delivery. Oliver pulled her into another hug and Lance watched as Felicity visibly calmed down.
Tucking Felicity under his arm, supporting her as she limped, Oliver approached Lance.
"Thank you," Oliver said firmly.
"Ah, any time," he said, scratching his head uncomfortably. Lance had expected something flippant, a joke even, but not a serious Oliver Queen.
Felicity smiled a bright smile at him before Queen escorted her to his waiting car, helping her along while shielding her from the press.
Lance liked to think that he was a good judge of character, even if Queen received more of his ire than strictly necessary. But it was obvious that he cared for Ms Smoak, different than what an office relationship would entitle and much more than just a simple friendship. He had never caught the boy looking at his daughter like that.
Well, Lance thought stunned, Felicity Smoak must be the only person in the city who knew the kind of man Oliver Queen really was.
A/N: Another public service announcement. If it looks dangerous/suspicious/explosive don't touch it and call a professional. This chapter is what NOT to do and as I was writing it I'm thinking, wow, this is as stupid as going upstairs in a horror movie. In real life the rule of thumb is leave it to the experts and get out of there.
