Chapter Text
When I landed, I had to squint. It was seriously bright, like middle-of-the-day levels of sunshine. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw I was in an alley. A smelly, dirty, dingy alley. I whipped out my tablet to get a sense of when I was, and waited for it to slowly connect to the nearest cell tower. It refused to cooperate. No big deal. After some quick adjustments, it was set to communicate with a much older network. And just like that, the date popped up: February 5, 2015. I took a deep breath. Things could get very complicated. But they weren’t going to, I decided. As of right now, finding Tommy was all that mattered.
The big rules of time travel were simple.-If possible, interact with no one from the time period, only other Travellers. If you can’t manage that, at least avoid those who are consequential to the timeline. And, above all else, avoid interacting with yourself or your family, past or future. This was hardly my first rodeo, as far as temporal travelling went. I was a Queen, after all.
I quickly scaled the nearby fire escape to get a lay of the land. I looked out over the cityscape: still in Star, or I guess at this time it was Starling, City. I would recognize my hometown anywhere. Specifically, I knew I was in the Glades. Not the best part of town, but the one I was the most familiar with. And the one that would be most helpful to me right now. A certain hero’s hide-out was currently under a nightclub in this very sector: the Green Arrow. Or just the Arrow. Man, I had got to keep up with the old terminology. Once I had my bearings, I made sure my mask and hood were properly in place before beginning to dart from one rooftop to the next, heading toward Verdant.
I had to admit that a small part of me was excited to see the old lair. I had heard a bunch of stories about it, but it’s not like anyone had taken any pictures to document it. Plus, it was the middle of the day, so no one would be down there. Perfect time to access the computers. They would obviously be the newest models, but that wasn’t saying much. They were still the only ones I was sure would have the programs and processing power I needed to start my search. Staying in the shadows and keeping my head on a swivel, I managed to make my way to Verdant. I had to laugh at the cheesy logo the club had, but it was surely rather “hip” for the times. Finding the back door with ease, I got my tablet near enough to it to run a quick unlocking program. My tablet came up with the code almost instantaneously. Man, this thing worked like a skeleton key around here. The lair’s current occupants would probably have a heart attack if they knew how easy it was for someone like me to sneak in. Not like there were a lot of Travellers running around. Hopefully.
I snuck down the stairs, and quickened my pace once I saw that the lair was unlit. No one was down here. I didn’t turn any lights on myself, but took careful note of how the desk chair was arranged and what programs the computers were currently running. It looked like a pretty complex algorithm cross-referencing dates and locations to determine the identity and where-abouts of a potential drug lord. Nothing about the case seemed familiar to me. Not like it matters , I reminded myself, you shouldn’t be leaving even the slightest hint to help the team solve this, or any, case . I opened up the security camera footage and put it on a loop, then put a pause to the search algorithm so that all the processing power would be put toward my query: a facial recognition scan. I grabbed the cable I needed to plug in my tablet, not wanting to deal with getting my tablet aligned with the lair’s network. I was glad that USB ports hadn’t changed in all this time. I sorted through the files on my tablet until I found what I needed.
I tapped my fingers around the JPEG to frame it the way I needed, and sighed. I let my fingers linger over his face. Oh Tommy, I’m so sorry . I was the one who was supposed to protect him, and I let him, and everyone else, down. It was my fault he had been brought to this time period in the first place. I promise I’ll find you and bring you back, and make sure that he pays for what he did . I uploaded Tommy’s photo into the mainframe and started running facial recognition in every CCTV camera in Starling. By my math, his kidnapper couldn’t have more than twelve hours on me. I jumped in the time portal almost instantaneously behind him, after all. That meant Tommy and that cursed speedster had to have gone through Starling at some point in the last twelve hours. And, considering the speedster chose where and when the portal led, it wouldn’t make sense for the speedster to have gone too far from the destination he chose.
There were a lot fewer CCTV cameras in this time, I started to realize, and almost none in the area of the Glades the portal had been in. Plus, the facial recognition software was old, the mainframe was slow, and he could’ve raced Tommy through with his speed meaning these cursed things wouldn’t catch him! I almost banged my fists on the table, but didn’t want to make a sound. After twenty minutes, it was clear the cameras hadn’t picked anything up in the last twelve hours in the Glades. I connected the search to my tablet, so I’d get pinged if it happened to find anything. I made sure everything was the way I had found it. Wouldn’t want my mom to see what I had been up to on her screens.