Chapter Text
There are things in life that you take for granted.
The fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, the warm sun on your back, the sound of the rain tapping at the window – they’re all things that seem mundane.
The truth is, I would give anything to be able to experience that freedom again. In the compound, the air is recycled and artificial, the light comes from fluorescent strips in the ceiling, and weather is a memory long forgotten by most.
“Felicity, there’s movement in sector seven.”
I shake myself from my reverie, quickly pulling up surveillance on the wall of screens in front of me.
“Scanning,” I confirm, nodding at my second-in-command, Cisco. “Hold and prepare retrieval protocols.”
Eyes glued to the footage, we watch the single heat signature crawl out from behind a dumpster. She was probably no older than twelve, her hair matted with dirt and blood.
I felt the sinking in my heart a moment before the whistle of the machine, the software I’d written flashing with the word Corrupted.
Beside me, Cisco swears violently before radioing in to S.I.
“Corrupted confirmed.” He glances at me, knowing that two operatives need to give the order before it can be executed.
“Confirmed,” I echo.
Before I can look away, a shot rings out, striking the girl in the head. I dry heave over a trashcan, trying to wipe the amalgam of blood and flesh and brains from my mind.
“Target sanitized,” a bored voice tells us, and I quickly change the screens as Cisco pats my back sympathetically.
“It doesn’t get any easier,” I tell him, wiping at my eyes in frustration.
He shrugs. “Good. That means you’re still human.”
<-----<<
It began slowly, with isolated reports of rabies outbreaks in various hospitals, a neighbor having a psychotic break. Little by little, the way a dam wall lets a few trickles through before it gives in, it started to spread, take hold.
The dam burst on May 11th, 2012. Where before there had been only a few hundred cases, thousands upon thousands took to the streets, bathing them in blood beneath an overcast sky. Some tried to flee, only to find the highways between towns blocked by the military. They died in a wave of gunfire and a swarm of Corrupted.
I hid in a storm shelter, alone, for a week. I was terrified of what lay on the outside – whether I would find mindless killers, or whether I was the only person left alive. Then, I heard the sirens, as a top-secret government group called A.R.G.U.S. combed through the wreckage, searching for survivors.
The day I was brought in, all I was told was how lucky I was. The cavalry was here; there was no reason to be afraid anymore.
I didn’t feel so lucky when they roughly sheared off my hair, leaving it uneven at barely shoulder-length, or when they stripped me of my clothing and tossed them into the biohazard disposal unit to be burned. I was forced to take a decontamination shower with five other strangers before being handed an ill-fitting beige uniform made of lightweight cotton.
I didn’t feel so lucky when the rationing system was explained, or when I was shown the dorms – two sets of triple bunks and one tiny dresser between them. I didn’t feel so lucky when I was assigned to the Technology Sentinel division, or TechSent, usually only tasked with finding others for A.R.G.U.S. to capture or destroy. It wasn’t lucky at all to have survived the initial outbreak – the greater plague, the silent killer, was the ruthless hand that now had control of all the puppet strings.
There’s a point, maybe six months into your new life in an underground bunker, where you wonder where you’re going with all this. Are the next fifty, sixty years of your existence going to be spent in these reinforced steel chambers, mindlessly following orders? Or will supplies run out, will water sources become contaminated, and then that’s the way it ends?
After two years, no major progress has been made. There is still neither cure nor inoculation. Things look bleak for the remnants of Starling City.
I’m starting to think that we don’t have anything left to lose.
<-----<<
When the people around you are dying without apparent cause, fear and anger become a deadly, two-headed viper. The public needed to assign blame, needed the hatred to mask the pain of grief. Naturally, once someone pointed the finger at Starling’s ‘first family’ of sorts, the others followed suit.
“I believe I may have been complicit… The sickness that has gripped this city may have originated from Queen Consolidated’s own Applied Sciences division. Please be assured, we have all our best scientists working on synthesizing a cure, and the company is donating all resources to the prevention of disease in the community…”
Moira Queen’s words are lost to the shouts of anger and indignation from the gathered crowd.
Oliver Queen stands at her side, his face dark like a storm. Once free to roam the city as he pleased, breaking the hearts of Starling’s eligible women wherever he went, the Queen name was cursed as soon as the rumors of the outbreak began to fly. His arm is wrapped around his younger sister, only her mop of brown curls visible.
Robert Queen is nowhere to be found, no doubt at his office trying to deal with the fallout.
Of course, that was before the man known only as the Atom stepped forward and claimed responsibility for the plague. It was too late to clear the Queen name – all four of them had perished in the second wave of illness.
The Atom claimed that he had built technology so small it could be absorbed into the bloodstream. His nanobots, as he called them, could then travel all the way to the brain. It could diagnose and cure illnesses, repair microscopic injuries to brain or nerve tissue, perform miracles beyond man’s wildest dreams.
Of course, nobody believed in robots too small to be seen, so this was his grand demonstration and sales pitch to the world’s billionaires. He programmed his tech to attack the brain, take control of the nervous system, and cause people to kill one another in fits of insanity. The tech spread through any contact with body fluids – mainly blood and saliva.
Thus, the Atom pitched his product. The higher the body count, the higher the interest. Our only hope is to prevent the technology from falling into, well, more wrong hands.
We’ve been tracking the movements of one of the Atom’s men for several weeks now – all our intel indicates that Cooper Seldon is likely to be the link between buyer and seller, so we just have to intercept the deal. Cisco, who heads up the Technology Sentinel department with me, is following Seldon’s progress through what was once the business district of Starling City.
“This is it,” Cisco says, his typing growing increasingly rapid. “Look – Digger Harkness, Chien Na Wei, Isabel Rochev, they’ve all sent proxies to this location. I count maybe two dozen heat signatures, all clean.”
“I’ll alert Harbinger,” I respond. “Pull up blueprints; we need all exits locked down.”
It’s almost too easy to intercept the feeds and run facial recognition on the prospective buyers, tap out quick messages to Harbinger’s team about the weaponry I can identify. This is the kind of work I signed up for with A.R.G.U.S. – taking down bad guys, pruning terrorism at the roots.
One of my cameras picks up an odd shadow, and I silently enhance the image. UnCorrupted, over six feet, face obscured: my suspicions are confirmed.
“Cisco, he’s there.”
Cisco peers at my screen and cringes. “We should alert Harbinger.”
“No! Wait,” I murmur. “Hold them back a sec. I want to see what he does.”
The shadow disappears from the shot, but I track him from camera to camera as he prowls, clearly mapping out his vantage points and exits.
“Felicity,” Cisco warns, tapping his headset.
“Just wait!”
Almost as if on cue, the shadow lifts a heavy compound bow and looses several arrows towards the gathered criminals. Several fall while others lift guns and shots ring out, but the archer is too swift, too clever.
I hear Cisco give Harbinger the go ahead and the building is stormed by A.R.G.U.S. agents in full tactical gear, but Seldon fights his way past and is almost clear of the exit before an arrow takes him down.
Amanda Waller - head of A.R.G.U.S. – blazes into the TechSent room, cursing into her comm.
“I want him eliminated,” she spits, dark eyes flashing. “Do you hear me, Harbinger? He does not leave this building alive.”
My eyes are glued to the screen, though, and I know it’s too late. The mysterious archer is long gone, his objective complete, and as much as Waller would have my head for it, I’m glad he escaped.
A.R.G.U.S. may be the controlling force in what’s left of Starling, but there are several small groups of survivors out there who have evaded both capture and illness. The vigilante is undoubtedly from one of these groups, and he shows up often on my radar, interfering with Waller’s operations and capturing Corrupted with non-lethal force. It infuriates her for two reasons: firstly, because she despises unpredictable third parties in this post-apocalyptic war, and secondly, because she deems anyone who doesn’t sanitize a Corrupted a sympathizer.
Rumors began to spread months ago that, although the infection couldn’t be cured, it could run its course in the human body and victims of the plague could recover. If these rumors have any weight to them, Waller could be held responsible for thousands of deaths and the civilians protected by A.R.G.U.S. could revolt. The Sanitation Initiative exists only because there is no cure for the infection, and any suggestion that this was unwarranted genocide is something Waller wants stamped out.
Me? I believe the archer is someone I’d want on my side. He could be a valuable asset, and we’ll never know until we get a chance to communicate without the overtures of gunfire.
However, I’m just a lowly TechSent employee. I don’t get to make the calls.
Waller curses again, and gives both Cisco and I venomous looks. “How did we not know he was there?” she demands.
We remain silent, and I’m grateful that I can trust Cisco not to give me up.
“Track him. He so much as breathes in our direction, I want to know about it.” Without another word, she storms out of the room, and Cisco lets out a relieved sigh.
“You’re going to get us killed, Smoak,” he groans, turning back to his screens. I ignore him, pulling up city maps and adding his last location info to my algorithm.
I’ve been secretly tracking the archer since the first time we spotted him, and I might just have gotten the final hint I need to find him.
It’s time to pay this vigilante a visit.
<-----<<
It’s long after lights-out when I slip out of the compound, easily disabling the security and ducking down a long steel tunnel. A.R.G.U.S. operates in the old subway network of Starling, now that the surface is no longer a safe place to inhabit. I stole some gear from S.I., allowing me to step out of the rabbit warren for the first time in two years.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m terrified. I know where each camera operates in each sector, but I’m still worried that one of the night crew will spot me. Corrupted activity is low in this area, but that doesn’t mean I can relax my guard. I’m grateful for the thick combat boots I’m wearing as I wade through the blood and filth that lines the streets.
After what feels like hours, I reach my destination – a shadowed alley behind an old nightclub where the cameras were destroyed by fire and never replaced. Of all the blind spots in the city, this seems the most likely according to my calculations of the archer’s travel times and sightings. The smell of death is less acrid here, as if someone who lives nearby has removed or buried the bodies of the Corrupted to limit the likelihood of disease.
“You are either very brave, or very stupid,” a heavily disguised voice growls at me from the shadows.
I spin around, searching the darkness for movement, but come up with nothing. “I’m looking for the archer. I’m alone and unarmed.”
“A dangerous state to be in these days,” the voice replies, and then I see him, on the roof, crouched over the old Verdant sign, his head bowed under his green hood.
“I work for A.R.G.U.S.-”
“I know who you are, Felicity Smoak,” he replies. “You don’t attempt to hack my systems and scrape by unnoticed.”
“Waller wants you dead. She doesn’t like players she can’t control.”
“And why are you here looking for me, Felicity?” He draws my name out and my skin turns to gooseflesh.
Steeling myself, I take a deep breath. “I want to help you.”
“Why should I trust you when your bosses want me eliminated?”
“I’m tired of living under Waller’s thumb. I’m tired of standing by as innocent people are murdered. There has to be another way, and it seems like you’re the only one out there looking for it.”
“I’ve worked alone this long.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have to anymore,” I retort.
I can’t see his face, but I imagine his expression is curious as he watches me for a long moment before giving me a short nod.
“I need all the data your medical team has on the infection. They have several Corrupted in captivity. I want to know how the symptoms manifest, if they get any more or less severe over time. Can you access that information?”
I bite my lip. “I know someone, but it won’t be easy.”
“Be careful,” he says, inclining his head. “If you are as willing to help me as you claim, it’ll be useful to have you on the inside.”
There’s a scuffling noise around the corner and in one fluid motion he drops with his back to me, his bow drawn. “Go. Meet me back here in three days with the intel.”
A Corrupted stumbles into view, eyes blank and hair matted with dirt. The archer fires a quick, buzzing arrow and the body drops with a soft thud.
“What are you waiting for?” he snarls, looking at me over his shoulder. Even in the dim light, I can see his eyes are an almost iridescent blue.
I turn and run, my heart pounding as I try to remember the way back. One false step and I’ll be making an appearance on TechSent cameras, but I’ve already been out in the open too long. For all I know, one of my roommates has noticed my empty bunk and raised the alarm.
By some miracle, I make it back to the compound and arm the door without further incident. I shed the stolen S.I. uniform and hide it in a broken ventilation unit, wrinkling my nose at the smell coming off the soles of the boots. Luckily for me, the maintenance crew got lazy in this corner of the compound.
Padding back to the dorms in my sock feet, the adrenaline begins to wear off and my heart returns to a normal pace. I relax too early, though, because I turn down the wrong corridor and barrel straight into a uniformed guard.
“Oh my God!” I exclaim. “You’re huge.”
“ID, please,” he grumbles, looking suspiciously like our collision roused him from a standing doze.
“Oh, yep, wait one sec…” I dig frantically through my pockets and for one terrifying moment think I’ve left it behind with the hidden S.I. gear – damn it, Felicity – before I tug it out and wave it in his face.
“Alright, Smoak, what are you doing in a restricted area after lights-out?”
“Night duty,” I lie blithely. “Just checking the security systems at Gate F and took a wrong turn.”
He frowns down at my TechSent ID again, then purses his lips as he hands it back to me. “Okay. Don’t come down here again without authorisation. This is the imprisonment sector. Have a nice…” His eyes fall on my very shoeless feet.
This is it, I tell myself, but the guard – his ID says Diggle – just blinks.
“Could be anything on the floors around here,” he mumbles, and blessedly turns away.
Unable to believe my luck, I sprint back to my dorm without even pausing, slipping in and diving into my bunk in perfect silence.