Work Text:
“You have a ten minute window.” Maseo's voice crackled in his ear as Oliver carefully set the metal grating to the side and peered down into his father's – no his mother's – darkened office.
God, she'd hardly changed a thing.
“Go now,” hissed his partner.
Oliver sighed and uncoiled his body into the open air, hanging fifteen feet over the darkness before he fell, dropping to a gentle crouch in front of that old wood desk. He used to hide under that desk as a kid, waiting to surprise his father, waiting for the promised lunch or ball game. Invariably, he gave himself away – an errant foot or poorly suppressed giggle – and his father would pull him into a hug –
The infiltration game was getting easier, but this mission was torture. It seemed the only thing his mother had changed was additional pictures of Robert Queen on the surfaces already clustered with tokens of the boy he used to be or the man he'd sworn to honor. He'd never felt more lost than he did standing at this helm of his father's corporate empire.
“Are you in position?”
A clench of his jaw and a second sign helped to bury the maelstrom of memories. Oliver let the calm of his training cloak him as he touched his ear piece. “Yeah.”
Maseo intoned, “The company computers are protected by biometric encryption. Look for a fingerprint reader.”
He couldn't resist quirking his eyebrow at this. “Okay,” Oliver protested, “why wouldn't they take me out of the directory?”
He could almost hear Maseo rolling his eyes. “Why would they? You're dead.”
Party-boy Oliver smirked up at him from within his father's embrace and a dull picture frame. Yeah, that boy was long dead. Leaning forward and pressing his thumb to the touch pad, he truly couldn't name the emotions that swirled within his breast as the program activated and file directories unfurled across the screen. “Yeah,” he conceded, “I'm in.”
“The crawl is programed to seek out all of Kane's network traffic,” reminded Maseo.
Oliver fought his resentment at Maseo's narration of the mission brief, his resentment as the files streamed through the wires, bringing him closer and closer to the time he'd be forced to leave Starling City. “... and it's running...” he breathed, the words bitter as they crossed his tongue.
“The program should take 90 seconds.”
A blip brought Oliver's own file directory to the foreground. He muted his end as he muttered, “What's that?” and opened a flagged folder with his father's name.
For_Oliver
For_Thea
His pulse increased at the date of the video files, mere days before they'd left on the Gambit. His father had known, had suspected, had feared that he was in danger. Could this have to do with the wrongs he'd confessed to? With the book he'd bequeathed in the middle of the East China Sea? Acting quickly before Maseo could know he was off-line, Oliver swiped a memory stick from a drawer and began his own file recovery mission.
The ARGUS device was speedy, as advertised, and he tucked it into his pocket, willing the second transfer to complete before -
“Oliver, you have to go.”
- That.
He touched his comms set and insisted, “I'm not done.”
The chime of the elevator echoed down the empty glass hallway. A synchronized rustling and muted steps made him quirk his head and flex his left hand in preparation for a fight, even as his right hand waited to tug out the flash drive.
“You have to go. Someone's coming.”
He and Maseo needed to have a serious talk about stating the obvious. If he got out of here without alerting everyone to his return and triggering a chain of events leading to the death of his sister and the release of the Omega into terrorist hands, of course.
He'd have to kill them.
He'd leave no trace.
It would be –
The click-clack of quality heels was unmistakable to a man raised by Moira Queen. They had a woman with them.
Seriously, fuck his life.
And then the file was done and he was moving for the shadows of the conference room before every part of his brain caught up with his thoughts.
He really was getting better at this infiltration stuff.
...01101111 01101100 01101001 01100011 01101001 01110100 01111001...
Felicity Smoak let the security guards go in first because she wasn't stupid, but she followed the digital security from her tablet by the elevators, which was the only way in or out the executive suite. The biometric login had deactivated seconds ago, so the hacker was as good as caught, thanks to the silent alarm she'd coded into all defunct accounts.
Her code; her catch; her promotion after only a month with the company. Felicity smiled as she pressed her back to the cool marble walls.
“All clear, sweetie.” The older guard holstered his gun as he rounded the corner and flashed her a patronizing smile. “Getting a little bored working the night shift?”
The trail of his gaze along her exposed legs seemed to imply his enthusiasm at keeping her entertained, and she thinned her lips in response before glancing at the younger but earnest guard beyond.
“That's impossible.” She was emphatic, bludgeoning the bemused watchman with her incontrovertible proof. “The CEO's system was accessed four point three minutes ago with a dead user account.” She gestured with her tablet and pushed through the first set of doors, maneuvering to avoid contact with the first guard. “The biometric encryption would require a sophisticated algorithm with a physical uplink, and secondary inputs confirm that this terminal was directly interfaced.”
Mr. Lookie-Loo just blinked, uncomprehending, then crossed his arms with a shrug towards his partner.
“He must still be here!” Felicity bottom-lined, turning in the center of the darkened office.
Okay, so the rooms did look empty, but technology didn't lie. Not to her.
“Who should still be here?” asked Mr. Probably-Newer-to-the-Company-than-Herself.
Her lilac nails flashed across the glowing screen as she rounded the desk, looking for signs of any physical disturbance. “Oliver Queen,” she crowed, as his user profile filled her screen.
Then she sighed, “Oh.”
Mr. Jerk-Face cackled, “Yeah, right, Legs. Oliver Queen just dropped in after two and a half years to play video games on his mom's company computer in the middle of the night.”
His partner looked confused. “Didn't he die on that boat?” Maybe this one was less new and more just dumb.
“Sure did,” answered Smirky. “At least we know how he got out, what with being a ghost.” Jerk-Face turned back to Felicity. “We all done in here now, sugar?”
She weighed her options carefully: if she pressed her point, explained what the evidence clearly showed, these two would clearly pat her on the head – and possibly the ass – as they escorted her back to her cubicle.
Felicity smiled tightly. “Yep. All done.” She bumped the side of her glasses and worked to infuse her voice with sincerity. “Thanks so much. I'll just, um, deactivate the alert on this system.” She blinked earnestly.
The guards began to settle their weight as if they would stay.
“It should only take about fifteen minutes to run the required diagnostics,” Felicity fibbed, worrying her bottom lip, but flipping her ponytail nonchalantly.
“Right, well, we'd better get back to our rounds, then.” The two finally moved off towards the elevator.
Felicity held her breath until the elevator doors slid shut.
She sank gratefully into the leather chair and flexed her fingers as she pulled up the access logs. Her gaze drifted to the corporate I.D. photo of Oliver Queen.
“You're cute.” She tilted her head, considering the framed photo of the same man with his father... “When you're not trying to be a dude-bro. It's too bad you're, you know, dead. Which is obviously a lot worse for you, than it is for me, and a bigger deal than any frat-boy mentality, but...” She trailed off as time codes glimmered on the main monitor. The rest of the world, pictures of cute, dead guys and all, faded away as the root code flooded the screen. The clatter of keys and her own babble became white-noise as she chased the alien program working its way through her system.
...01101111 01101100 01101001 01100011 01101001 01110100 01111001...
“Our crawl is programed to erase all traces of itself,” Maseo insisted. “No one should be able to reverse engineer it in time.”
The girl with the glasses bent over his mother's computer, muttering to herself as Oliver drew near.
“Oh no you don't, Oliver,” she protested.
He halted before realizing she was talking to the machine. He fought back a second smile, even as it began to dawn on him that she might be doing the impossible.
“You were here. Your fingerprints are all over me, but I've got you; I've got you.”
Oliver rounded the glass wall, and positioned himself behind her. The code on the screen beyond the blonde was inscrutable, yet she seemed too excited.
Maseo confirmed his fears. “Prepare to eliminate the variable, Oliver.”
It wasn't right. This girl was doing her job and doing it well. Oliver couldn't argue with Maseo without her hearing, but he couldn't 'eliminate' this girl. He'd have to knock her out, take her back to ARGUS, ruin her life...
“NO!” The girl pushed back from the desk in disgust, slamming her hands on its surface. “Oliver Queen, you sneaky bastard! Whoever you are, you suck.” She spun on her heels as he ducked low in the shadows, her passion concealing him better than any training. She'd crossed to the windows overlooking the Starling City skyline. When she finally returned to the desk, she looked exhausted.
Then the corner of her pink lips quirked upward as she tapped one manicured nail against the picture frame.
“Okay, you win the round, Oliver. But I'll figure you out someday,” she promised.
For the third time that night, a smile stretched across Oliver's lips as he watched the blonde girl in the pencil skirt pick up her tablet and become aware of her surroundings again. She sighed with mild exasperation and chided, “I really need to learn to stop talking to myself.”
She left him in the shadows. He waited a minute before bounding up, off the desk, and back into the air duct.