Chapter 7 – Speedy & the White Canary

Part 1

Thea slowly and painfully pulled off the last pieces of her red leather outfit and stared at her reflection in the mirror of her bath in the loft she had been sharing, off and on, with Oliver for the last two years. She remembered the horror she had felt the first time she had seen her brother without a shirt after his return from the island. His body had been covered by masses of scars and she had barely been able to imagine what he must have experienced during those five missing years.

But now, seeing the scars littering her own body, she was starting to understand. In the eighteen months since she had taken up Roy's mantle, she had been hit by bullets four times, by arrows three times, and had sustained six deep gouges from swords, knives, and other bladed weapons. Turning slightly, she examined the worst scar – a barely healed burn that extended from her right shoulder down halfway across her back that she had received while rescuing a small girl from a burning building – it made the sixteen stitches Laurel had had to use to close up the wound on her left hip tonight seem almost trivial. Her twenty-second birthday was still three months away, but already her days of wearing strapless or backless gowns were behind her. If things kept up like this, she couldn't imagine what her body would look like in another five or ten years, assuming she survived that long.

She looked longingly for a moment at the room's deep bathtub. Her body ached all over and she wanted nothing more than to climb in and let the tub's jets massage her muscles for an hour. However soaking the fresh stitches probably wasn't a good idea. Hopefully, they would at least be okay for a couple of minutes in a hot shower if she covered them. With only a slight limp from the painful laceration on her hip, she moved over to the large cabinet she had added when she had had the loft remodeled before she had first moved in. In the early days, it had been filled with a plethora of cosmetics. But slowly over time those items had mostly been replaced with medicinal supplies until the remaining cosmetics occupied only one small corner of a single shelf. A final glance in the mirror before she bent to gather something to keep the stitches from getting wet reminded her she should at least be thankful that so far her assorted scars hadn't extended to her face or neck or hands.

Pulling plastic-backed gauze and waterproof tape from the cabinet, Thea moved back over by the sink where the light was the best. Gingerly, she ran her finger along the fresh stitches. Being generous, Laurel's handiwork could, at best, be considered serviceable. The bleeding was stopped, but the resulting scar was going to be nasty and it hurt like hell. The meditation techniques she had learned from her father and Oliver and others had barely been enough to keep her from screaming while Laurel had sewed her up. It was too bad Felicity was gone on some special secret mission, as she had the deftest touch with needle and thread.

After being in on Oliver's big secret for almost two years, Thea found it hard to believe the stories of how squeamish Felicity had been in the early days of Team Arrow. Like with everything else, once Felicity had decided medic was a role that needed to be filled and she was the most logical one to do it, the tech girl had thrown her full efforts into becoming the best one possible. She had studied everything she could find online about performing emergency triage and then she had taken a series of EMT classes through a local vocational school. Of course, being the tech geek she was, Felicity had proceeded to distill her knowledge into a phone app they could use in the field in an emergency. After sharing the app with Team Flash and with a few additions from Doctor Snow, EmMed had gone on to become the bestselling medical app for both iOS and android. EmMed and other apps Felicity and Cisco had created subsidized the operations of Team Arrow and Team Flash through the not infrequent financial crises they seemed to experience.

With Felicity unavailable, her second choice for a medic would have been Digg. While Felicity aced him in overall expertise, he more than made up for it with a better bedside manner. With John, you simply felt safe and in good hands.

However like with several others, Digg was no longer part of Team Arrow and sometimes it almost felt like the secret underground lair had a revolving door at its entrance. Some, like Sara, had died. Others, like Roy, had known it was time to move on. And some, like Digg, simply vanished. Three months earlier the tall African-American had disappeared without a word. They had searched for weeks without success. Lyla also had no clue. Even Amanda Waller from A.R.G.U.S. hadn't been able to help. Felicity had every networked cam in the country running facial recognition software, but in three months there hadn't been a single hit. It was like Digg had vanished off the face of the planet. It most likely meant an old enemy had taken him unawares and he was now buried in some unmarked grave. Thea had only known him as an almost faceless bodyguard until she had gotten sucked into Team Arrow, yet he had ultimately become perhaps her best friend on the team. Somehow, even though Digg wasn't British, he seemed to share a similar stoicism to Walter's.

Thea shook her head to clear it. Every time she was hurt her mood seemed to swing to a dark, maudlin, fatalistic place. And she simply knew what the next stop on that journey was going to be – Sara. With the bandage in place, she moved quickly over to the shower stall and cranked the water temperature up high. Perhaps, if it was almost painfully hot, it would distract her from her biggest regret, her personal ongoing nightmare. But already the restored memory of that night was running through her mind's eye for the millionth time.

After learning what she had done to Sara from Oliver while they had been in the secret prison on the island, Thea had spent weeks working with a hypnotherapist to retrieve the memories that had been blocked by the Vitura drug daddy-dearest had given her. However after reliving - over and over – the memory of the startled and then horrified expression on Sara's face as she fired arrow after arrow into her chest, Thea frequently wished she had left the memory buried.

Curiously, her situation seemed remarkably similar to Oliver's situation with Slade and Shado, a story which she had learned from her brother after he had finally revealed his secret nocturnal alter-ego. Even though the mad Doctor Ivo had shot Shado, Oliver blamed himself for choosing Sara and causing Shado's death. Similarly, Thea had had no knowledge or control over what she had done to Sara, but she still felt responsible. And Oliver hadn't actually pulled the trigger of the gun that had killed Shado, but she had definitely been the one who had fired the arrows that had resulted in Sara's death.

More than anything, being the cause of Sara's death was what had driven her to join Team Arrow in search of redemption. But redemption was turning out to be an elusive mistress. She had helped stop countless petty criminals and even a few master level ones, but she didn't feel even one iota closer to atoning for what she had done to Sara. She was starting to suspect nothing short of her own death would ever relieve the endless ache she felt inside. Sometimes she wished Nyssa had killed her when she had revealed to her the true story behind Sara's death.

The water turned cold before Thea realized she had been huddled on the floor in the corner of the shower crying for long minutes. Thoughts of Sara's death always seemed to do that to her. With an effort and an annoying shot of pain from her injured hip, she levered herself back to her feet and turned the freezing jets off. A glance through bleary eyes showed the temporary bandage was still in place and it wasn't stained bright red, so she probably hadn't reopened the wound.

Shivering, she had just stepped from the shower and pulled a towel from the rack to dry her short brown hair when someone began pounding on the bathroom door. Quickly, she wrapped the towel about her body and grabbed the knife from the counter where it lay next to her bow and other gear. Anywhere else she would have gone for her sword, but in the tight quarters of the bathroom, the knife made more sense.

"Speedy! Are you okay? I've been knocking at your bedroom door for several minutes."

Thea relaxed slightly on realizing it was Oliver. She lowered the knife back to the countertop.

"Yeah, Oliver, I'm fine," she called, as she glanced in the mirror and took in her puffy eyes and red blotchy skin. Yeah, right, she was so definitely not fine. But Oliver had his own demons and they both mostly pretended they were okay when in front of each other.

"Cisco has a new lead. We need to follow it up before the trail goes cold."

Before Felicity had disappeared in support of whatever project she was working, she had temporarily recruited Cisco to cover tech support. And with Digg gone and Laurel headed home to prep for a complex court case in the morning, that only left Thea to provide field backup for Oliver.

She thought longingly of just climbing into bed and sleeping for at least the next twelve hours, but that was going to have to wait a little longer. Then she glanced at the pile of discarded red leather in the corner. It was going to require some serious work before she would be able to wear it again. And that was the third outfit she had destroyed in as many months. She was just glad she had one more spare set in the secret compartment in the back of her closet. How was it that Oliver's green leathers seemed to hold up so much better than hers?

"Give me five minutes and I'll meet you down in the garage," Thea called out towards the closed door even as she began to move towards her walk-in closet.

Part 2

Thea braked her bike to a stop next to Oliver's.

The augmented display in her glasses indicated the weather-beaten old factory in the next block was their target. Quickly, now that they were within sight of it, a ghostly green overlay of the building's internal configuration appeared. A couple of seconds later, red dots that indicated human-sized heat sources were added to the image. Eight people were within the factory. Four were clustered in one room towards the back while the other four were scattered around and obviously on sentry duty.

"Are you ready for this?" asked Oliver over the audio link.

Thea slowly nodded, as her hand went up to the quiver and double checked the location of the special arrows they had stopped back at the lair to retrieve. Normally, she carried twelve regular arrows, three arrows with explosive tips, and three arrows equipped with restraining webs. Tonight, six of the regular arrows had been replaced with the special chemical injector version. She didn't use them often and needed to remember to correct for their different weight and balance.

Normally, the injector arrows were only filled with a fast acting tranquilizer to knockout opponents before they could raise an alarm. However tonight they were filled with the anti-Mirakuru agent.

Thea shivered at the thought of going up against multiple enhanced men. Until tonight, she hadn't thought they were all that tough. The only time she had encountered one before had been on the train platform on the night Slade had tried to take the city. And Malcolm had taken that one down with what had seemed like relative ease. But that was before she truly grasped her father's fighting skills.

However, earlier tonight, when she had received the injury to her hip, she had had to deal with a Mirakuru-user first hand. It had been a close thing. If she and Ollie hadn't been working as a team, she wasn't certain if either of them would have survived. And now they were about to enter a building with at least four and possibly up to eight of the enhanced men.

Oliver had been surprised when they had encountered the one earlier. It had been the first he had seen or heard of since taking down Slade over two and a half years earlier. He had thought with the drug flushed from Slade's body and those of all his men, that that would be the end of it. But apparently, some other source for the drug had survived and now someone was back in the business of creating enhanced warriors.

Quickly, Thea followed suit after Oliver shut down his bike's engine and switched to electric mode to glide silently forward. It only took a minute to find a hidden location to stash the bikes.

Thea removed her helmet, pulled up her hood, and then redonned her glasses. In her earliest days with the team, she had worn a mask like Oliver, but for the last six months she had been wearing the augmented reality glasses Felicity and Cisco had put together, which were just as effective in hiding her face while providing so much more. At first, Oliver had resisted claiming they impacted his aim, but eventually even he had succumbed. In a building properly seeded with nano-sensors, the glasses allowed you to see opponents hiding around corners or to see through solid walls. The advantages definitely outweighed any slight loss in accuracy.

"Are the sensors in place?" asked Oliver through his audio link.

"I have ninety percent coverage of the building's interior," stated Cisco. "The remaining ten percent should be saturated in the next three minutes."

The nano-sensors were the size of dust motes. When there was time, nowadays they used a small drone to dump a bagful of the devices into a building's ventilation intake.

"I have coverage of the meeting in the back room, if you are able to accept the feed before moving inside," added Cisco.

Oliver sent an affirmative and a three-dimensional image began to form in their glasses. It had a ghostly aspect since Thea's glasses remained semi-transparent so she could still see her surroundings. If she adjusted her glasses to be opaque, it would feel like she was right in the room with them, but that was a dangerous thing to do when they were out in the field. And over time she had gotten used to this display mode.

Quickly, Thea tapped the fingers of her left hand together in the pattern that activated the gesture control feature built into her gloves. Slowly, she swung her view of the room around to take it in from all angles. A woman was seated behind a desk with three men standing on the opposite side. But before she focused on the people, Thea studied the room itself for possible entry points and, more importantly, emergency exit locations. Before she entered that room, she wanted to feel like she had lived there for a week so she could act without thinking if things got hairy.

"Have you run facial recognition on the woman, Cisco?" asked Oliver, obviously completing his survey of the room faster than Thea.

"Running it now," replied Cisco. After what felt like a long pause, but which probably wasn't more than ten seconds, he continued. "Interpol's facial database identifies her as a Jessica Ivo."

The name didn't mean anything to Thea, but from Oliver's reaction it obviously did to him.

"Who is she?" Thea asked quietly.

"She's . . . she's Doctor Ivo's wife. He was back on the island. He killed Shado and I, ultimately, killed him. He must have somehow gotten a sample of the Mirakuru to her before that."

Oliver had told her a little about those events on the island, but it had been shortly after she had learned his big secret and at this point, well more than a year later, that conversation was more than a little vague. But it was enough to explain how these people might have access to the dangerous drug.

"Anything on the three men?" asked Oliver.

Thea rotated her view of the room and studied the three men. Two were obviously bodyguards and the nano-sensors highlighted the handguns they were carrying. The third man, standing in the center and wearing an expensive suit, had to be their boss. She wondered if any of these were also using the Mirakuru. She pulled her view back until she could see all four occupants and then did the gesture which switched her view to thermal imaging. The woman was showing a body temperature of 104.5 while the men were all in the range between 98 and 99 degrees. She remembered Oliver saying the Mirakuru made the user's body run hot, so she surmised the men were not on the drug.

"The men on the left and right are employees of a local bodyguard firm," began Cisco. "The man in the center is proving to be more of a challenge."

Oliver and Thea tried to wait patiently while Cisco worked. Thea switched her display back to the overview of the factory and then zoomed in on the position of each of the outlying guards. All of these men had elevated body temperatures similar to the woman, indicating they probably worked for her.

"Damn," said Cisco quietly. "Other than a name, Steve Trevor, all files related to the man in the center have been restricted by A.R.G.U.S. I wish Felicity was here. It is going to take me some time, perhaps hours, to break through their firewalls and acquire any further information."

"Any idea if this guy works for A.R.G.U.S. and they are trying to acquire the secret of the Mirakuru, or if he is a bad guy they are pursuing?" asked Oliver.

"Sorry, I don't know anything besides the name at the moment," replied Cisco.

"Okay," said Oliver in reply to Cisco. Then turning more in Thea's direction, he continued. "I have no idea why Jessica Ivo is in Starling, but I don't want the city to be overrun by the Mirakuru freaks again. We'll take her and her men down with the special arrows. If we can manage to capture this Trevor guy at the same time, we'll hand him over to Waller and she can deal with him. But Trevor is definitely a lower priority.

"Let's try and take these guys out one at a time," continued Oliver, turning to the specifics of the mission. "Find yourself a high position somewhere near the first one and I'll draw him out into the open so you can take the shot."

Thea nodded. She knew he was trying to protect her and this time she wasn't going to object. Getting close to the first one earlier in the evening had been scary enough and her injury might slow her that tiniest amount that might mean the difference between winning and dying in an encounter with these enhanced men.

After unslinging her bow from where it was still attached to the handlebar of her bike, Thea attached the wire from the spool at her belt to one of the arrows and then shot it at the edge of the roof far above. A long row of windows extended just below the roofline and that was the obvious entry point for her, if Oliver wanted her up on the high ground. A quick jerk convinced her the arrow was well seated and she activated the small, powerful motor in the spool. In less than five seconds, she had been hoisted up to the level of the windows and had levered the nearest one open. In another five seconds she was using the spool to lower herself down along the inner side of the perimeter wall. Landing lightly on top of a tall pile of wooden crates, she pushed the button on the side of the spool that released the end of the wire from the arrow and then retracted the thin cable back into the device.

Studying the images in her augmented reality glasses, Thea quickly decided none of the men in the factory had noticed her arrival. Turning her attention to the nearest man she studied his position and the surrounding area. If she moved twenty feet to her left and the guard moved ten feet to his right, she would have a clear shot without either of them entering the line of sight of any of the other three sentries. Like she was diagramming a play in a football game, she used her glove interface to sketch out her plan in her display for Oliver's benefit.

"Got it," she heard Oliver faintly whisper through her earpiece. "I'll be in position in thirty seconds."

As she moved into position, and keeping one eye on the first guard, Thea focused most of her attention on planning the moves necessary to take out the next guard. It had taken awhile after joining Team Arrow before she realized she was better at, or at least more interested in tactics than Oliver. He tended to just go charging in and depended on his speed, strength, and fighting skills to win the day. But given her smaller body she was never going to match Oliver for speed or strength and only on really good days did her fighting skills match his. Therefore for her, planning and tactics were always an important factor.

And slowly, over time, Oliver had handed over the planning to her when they needed to work as a team in the field in the same way he had handed over tech aspects to Felicity even though he wasn't the complete neophyte with computers and electronics he sometimes pretended.

"I'm in position and making my move in five," whispered Oliver, breaking her near reverie.

Thea quickly pulled one of the special injector arrows, threaded it into her bow. After a silent count to five, she pulled back on the compound bow.

The target was invisible from her position, standing behind a row of crates. But via the augmented reality glasses and the nano-sensors, Thea could see him as clearly as if he was standing out in the open. She saw his head jerk around as he reacted to whatever Oliver had done to attract his attention. Then the man began moving forward in exactly the direction she needed to get her shot. The arrow was already in the air while he was still hidden from view and struck him cleanly in the neck when he was a mere six inches clear of the final obstruction.

The man reflexively jerked the arrow free, but it was already too late; the counter-agent was already in his system. Oliver rushed forward and delivered a knockout blow before the man could cry out.

"Good shooting," whispered Oliver.

Thea was already moving to the next position and only responded by sketching how she needed the next guard to move to line up the next shot.

Part 3

The same strategy worked on the next two sentries. They were just getting into position to take out the last man when Cisco shouted so loudly into the earpiece that Thea jumped.

"You must have tripped some alarm. You are about to be hit by massive reinforcements."

Those words were barely out of his mouth when with a loud bang the factory doors on the south side of the building shattered and two trucks that looked like oversized armored cars roared through the opening. Before Thea had a chance to change the view in her glasses herself, Cisco overlaid a view looking down on the expansive floor as at least a dozen men erupted from the back of each vehicle.

Thea was still up high, getting in position to take out what they thought was the last guard. She didn't have a direct view of the area where the trucks had stopped, but she knew Oliver had to be in their line of sight. Immediately, she spun and ran to where she could give covering fire, already wishing she had more than just the three remaining injector arrows. Even if she successfully deployed them and Oliver used all six of his that still would leave fifteen of the enhanced men standing. After the way they had struggled to take down the single man earlier, no way could the pair of them hope to take down fifteen. They were going to have to focus on simply getting clear and make another attempt later when they were better prepared.

By the time Thea reached the end of the stack of crates to where she could see directly down, the men were madly charging at Oliver's location. Without hesitating, she leapt off the thirty foot tall stack. While in mid-air she used her three remaining injector arrows. Then attaching the spool of wire to a regular arrow, she shot it into a nearby support column. Her booted feet were within inches of the floor when the arrow caught and sent her swinging in a long flat arc. She fired an explosive arrow into each of the trucks' engine blocks as a distraction before she reached the end of her arc. Hitting the button that released and retracted the cable, she landed on her feet ten feet to Oliver's right.

The closest six men, the three she had hit and three others Oliver must have hit, were down and out of the fight, but the others were coming on fast.

"Speedy, what the hell? You should have gotten away while you had the chance," exclaimed Oliver.

"And, what, leave you to face them alone? Not likely," she retorted, even as she used two of the binding arrows to trip up two more of the men.

She was down to six arrows and then she would have to break out her sword. And against the man they had fought earlier, sword blows to the limbs or thrusts through the torso had been effectively useless. Even these guys wouldn't be able to shake off a beheading, but she hadn't outright killed anyone since Sara. She didn't want to start now, but against these enhanced men, it might be that or end up dead. And she didn't want to die.

"Aim for the eyes," shouted Oliver even as he continued to shoot. "It won't kill them, but it should put them out of action for a while."

Remembering Slade Wilson's eyepatch, Thea quickly did as Oliver suggested until she was down to just one regular arrow and one explosive arrow. She would need the one regular arrow if she was going to use her cable to get out of there, although with some of the opponents circling around behind them, that line of retreat might already be gone. A quick glance showed Oliver was down to his last two arrows as well as he shifted his bow to his right hand to block the first man to get within arm's reach.

Thea slung her bow across her back while simultaneously pulling her sword. The katana seemed to sing as it cleared the scabbard, but with ten men still on their feet in front of them, she knew their situation was hopeless. But she wasn't going to give up without a fight.

She and Oliver swung around until they were fighting back to back to protect each other. At least for the moment, the opponents were only coming at her with an assortment of knifes and clubs and her longer sword gave her a slight advantage. But for everyone she managed to force back, two more seemed to spring forward to take their place. She knew she would be overwhelmed in less than a minute.

"What the fuck?" exclaimed an almost forgotten Cisco through her earpiece at the very moment a large section of the overhead windows exploded inward.

Thea couldn't stop herself from glancing up. The lighting was poor and without her augmented glasses she would have seen nothing but a large shadow. But the nano-sensors still drifting around the factory fed a clear image to her glasses and for a moment it was so stunning, she almost forgot all the scary men in front of her. A giant winged beast unlike anything she had ever imagined was plunging straight down at her. The vision was so startling, she instinctively ducked, which just happened to save her from the club one of the men had swung at the spot where her head had just been.

The beast landed barely eight feet in front of Thea with a thud that reverberated like a small earthquake. At least four of the opponents were crushed under its bulk and then it raised its forepaws and sent men flying through the air to crash into and through crates that exploded and crashed down like miniature avalanches.

Then, as two women she hadn't even noticed vaulted from the creature's back, it swept its massive wings and lifted into the air long enough to climb over Thea and Oliver before settling down on top of the men attacking from the other side.

The two new women, armed with bows and fighting staffs, surged forward and drove the remaining men in front of Thea back long enough for her to start to catch her breath.

Even as the giant creature behind her continued to inflict significant mayhem on the opponents on that side, another winged creature dropped into view. However when Thea looked up, she discovered this one was much smaller – human-sized. A closer looked through her enhanced glasses revealed it to be a girl with wings who was armed with a mace covered with wicked looking spikes on the ball-end. She was slamming the weapon into bodies of the men, which sent them flying.

The destruction was fast and horrible with most of the credit going to the giant winged creature. Now that she had a moment, Thea made several gestures with her control gloves. Instantly, estimates of a twenty foot body length and sixty foot wingspan appeared in her display along with a tentative identification of sphinx. Sphinx?

With that as a starting point, it was easy to see it had a body of a lion and the wings of an eagle and the oversized head of a girl. Perhaps it was a sphinx, thought Thea. But sphinxes weren't real and how could one possibly be here now? And why was it helping them?

From what Oliver had told her, men on Mirakuru weren't coherent once they lost themselves in the bloodlust. But the few that were still on their feet must have had enough sense to realize their situation was now hopeless and they quickly beat a retreat. Twenty-three seconds after the giant sphinx made its miraculous appearance the fight was over.

Part 4

"Fah, push the bodies into a pile over in that corner and then keep an eye on them. These men have remarkable recuperative powers and even if they look dead they might come back around and want to continue the fight," said a man Thea had even noticed before. The sphinx used the sharp claws on its forepaws to snag the bodies and toss them into the indicated corner of the factory.

"Cisco, where's Jessica Ivo?" asked Oliver while he panted to recover his breath.

"Gone. She was heading out a back exit before the trucks with the reinforcements even arrived. The men in the room left with her. A few of the nano-sensors were swept out with her, but they only managed to catch a glimpse of her climbing into the back of a limousine before they got too far from the rest of the swarm and I lost contact."

The tiny, tiny nano-sensors had equally tiny transmitters with a range that was best measured in inches rather than feet. They were all networked together and passed data from one to the next until it reached the master control node up at the top of the building's ventilation shaft. It meant when some of them got more than a few feet from their nearest neighbors, like when they clung to the clothing of a departing person, they quickly were out of range and effectively lost. And because of their tiny size they had a very limited endurance. Forty-eight minutes after their activation they would all be as dead as the dust motes they emulated.

"I'm Rip Hunter," said the man who had been speaking with the giant sphinx. "Felicity has been helping me with a project and I thought it was time I returned the favor."

Thea turned and took a better look at the man. He seemed way overdressed for the situation in a suit and tie. Then the unusual cut and fabric of the suit registered. It looked like something that belonged in a movie set back in the Victorian era, which made her think of the man's vaguely English accent.

Oliver had stepped up beside Thea. He was just starting to extend his right hand when abruptly his hand froze in mid-motion.

"Sara?" Oliver suddenly whispered and Thea could see his eyes had swept passed the man and on to the two women.

Even as Oliver suddenly rushed forward, Thea turned her gaze on the pair. One was wearing the robes of the League and even though she hadn't seen her for at least a year and a half, she quickly recognized Nyssa.

Then Thea's gaze turned towards the other woman, who was dressed entirely in white. Oliver had swept her into his arms and Thea didn't have a clear view of her face. She saw a sudden frown on Nyssa's face at the exact same moment Oliver turned enough so that she saw the other woman's face.

It was Sara. Sara Lance. How was that possible? Sara had been dead for over two years.

But there was no mistaking that face – the blonde hair, the blue eyes, and the prominent dimple on the chin. Thea had known her for over ten years and Sara had even worked for her at the club on a near daily basis for several months. It was definitely her.

And yet there was something odd about her, too, a weird vacancy to the eyes as though she wasn't all there. And Oliver must have noticed it, too, as he pulled back and held her at arm's length.

"Sara, are you okay?"

Sara looked at him blankly and seemed to be making an effort to extract herself from his grip. "Who are you?"

Oliver's hands seemed frozen in place. Then his gaze turned from Sara to Nyssa. His eyebrow raised in a silent question.

"I had to use the Lazarus Pit to bring her back," stated Nyssa quietly. "And it has left her . . . changed."

Thea remembered her own experience with the Lazarus Pit. It had been unlike anything else she had ever known and she had only been on the cusp of death and not all the way on the other side. What had it done to Sara?

At first, once she truly understood that Sara was alive, it was like some giant weight had been lifted off of Thea's soul. She hadn't killed the other girl or at least she was no longer dead, which had seemed like the same thing. But if Sara had come back changed, then it was still her fault.

With sudden tears filling her eyes, Thea slowly stepped forward. "Sara, I'm so, so sorry."

Part 5

Ever since she had come back, they had been rushing around from ancient Egypt to World War II New Orleans and then to modern day Metropolis. But with all her old memories gone, it had felt to Sara like she had been moving through an eternal fog. Nothing seemed quite real. The last thing, the only thing that seemed real was her time in Hell and that was something she really wanted to forget.

But now the fog seemed to lift a little. She had just heard a voice she was certain she knew.

A petite girl dressed in red leather was approaching her. She was wearing heavy glasses that hid a good deal of her face, but even with them blocking her view, Sara could tell she was crying.

Then the girl pulled off her glasses and Sara could see her eyes. Even though they were filled with tears, Sara knew those eyes. And suddenly, at least a few of her memories jolted into place.

"You killed me. YOU FUCKING KILLED ME!" Sara screamed and seemingly of its own volition her fighting staff was up and out and descending towards the other girl.

The other girl, her name was Thea Sara suddenly remembered, just stared at the staff with an expression that said she thought she deserved whatever was coming. And that expression almost made Sara falter. But the girl had killed her and it was because of her actions that Sara had spent an eternity in Hell.

At the last possible second, bare inches before the blow would land, a hard hand wielding a bow blocked it. Sara's eyes looked up and flashed with anger.

"Oliver, she killed me," Sara whispered in a tone that was deep, hard and menacing.

"I know, but she had been drugged. She didn't know what she was doing," Oliver said softly.

"Drugged?" Sara echoed. And looking at Thea, she simply knew it was true. Thea had been her friend. She knew the girl would never hurt her or anyone else of her own volition.

"It was Malcolm Merlyn, her father," said another voice.

Sara looked across and saw it was Nyssa. Ever since coming awake in the liquid-filled pool, she had been with the other girl. It had been hours and hours, yet she hadn't even recognized her.

"Nyssa?" Sara whispered and saw a giant smile sprout on the other girl's face.

Nyssa ran forward and pulled Sara into a tight embrace. "You're back. You're really back," she whispered.

After a few seconds, Sara pulled back until she could look into the other girl's face and take in her beautiful eyes, her pert little nose, and her luscious lips. She remembered those lips and the thousands of times they had kissed in the past. Quickly, she leaned in until her lips touched Nyssa's. The resulting kiss was almost enough to make her forget her time in Hell. Almost.

The kiss may have lasted for minutes or maybe only seconds, but eventually it had to end. As Sara pulled back, her eyes flicked to Oliver.

"So, I'm dead for like two minutes and you go and marry my girl."

Sara saw Oliver actually blush.

"It was necessary as part of the plan to defeat Ra's al Ghul," Oliver choked out lamely.

"Yeah, I'm sure," replied Sara trying to maintain a sarcastic tone, but knowing she was failing miserably.

Sara turned back to Nyssa who still had her arms wrapped tightly about her. "So, who's the better kisser, Oliver or me?"

"Do you even have to ask?" said Nyssa with another grin before she leaned forward to continue the kiss that had begun earlier.

As they continued to kiss, Sara heard Hunter begin to speak again in the background.

"As I was saying, I'm Rip Hunter. You obviously already know Sara and Nyssa. My other companions are Kendra Saunders and Fah."

Sara finally broke the kiss, knowing there would be time for kissing, and more, later. She turned back to the others to see Thea take the hand that had been rubbing at her eyes and move it to her ear.

With a grin and then a laugh, Thea turned to Hunter. "Our friend Cisco likes to give everyone code names. He thinks Kendra's should be Hawkgirl and Fah's should be The Sphinx."

More of Sara's memories returned. There had been a Hispanic kid named Cisco who had worked for S.T.A.R. Labs. She had only met him once, when they had been battling Slade at a S.T.A.R. Labs storage facility, but she suspected it was the same person.

Oliver was rolling his eyes, as though annoyed at this bit of harmless fun, when a sudden sense of dread rolled across Sara.

"Demons are coming," Sara whispered. She saw a disappointed look in Nyssa's eyes like she had expected this aspect of Sara to disappear when her memories returned. But Sara's memories of Hell felt just as real as ever. Whatever had happened to her when she had been brought back via the Lazarus Pits was something she knew she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life. She could now detect demons, whether anyone else believed her or not.

"Demons are coming!"

End of Chapter 7

Author's Note – Since this part of the story is set in the second half of 2016, I thought I would throw in some tech things that will probably start being available between now and then. It sounds like 2016 will potentially see the start of an avalanche of virtual reality goggles and augmented reality glasses. The augmented reality glasses Thea and Oliver are wearing in this chapter are an extrapolation of things a company named Magic Leap is working on. Google them. In five years, these VR and AR devices could change how we interact with the Internet and the rest of the world as much as smartphones have done in the last ten. The nano-sensors are based on the DARPA Smart Dust project.