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They’re training when they get the alert.
One minute, Oliver’s pulling his shirt back on, the next, Felicity’s computers are turning themselves on and everyone in the lair is checking their phones for the team alerts Felicity set up not long ago.
It’s different, the way they gather to help one of their own. Helping the people of this city has become second nature to him, but some things, some people make him question who he is and what he’s really trying to protect after all this time.
Protecting his girl—their girl, however, is instinctual.
At Oliver’s insistence that they’re not taking their Arrow gear into his former company, no matter who’s infiltrated it, Diggle prepares their weapons: Dual Glock 17s for himself, some fletchettes for Roy, and an extra Glock from their drawer for Oliver.
He has some hope that it’s some small time thug who’s mad at Ray, but they can never be sure and he’ll have to work with what they have before the night reaches the city as their cover.
xx
When they arrive, Palmer Technologies is business as usual. Oliver gets them up to the floor because the downstairs receptionist, Pamela, has worked for QC since his parents started trying to groom him to take over the company many years ago. She’s always been easily susceptible to some good conversation about her children and a little charm.
The office, in contrast, is eerily quiet. The tapping keys of Felicity’s assistant’s computer is the only sound. No babbling at Felicity’s desk. No clicking heels against the floor. The quick keystrokes he’s come to find a comforting background noise in his everyday life.
He pulls a defensive hand off of the pistol in his jeans to approach Felicity’s assistant, Jerry, he thinks, with a smile, leaving Roy and Dig waiting tensely in the wings. “Good afternoon, Jerry.”
He tries to walk straight into Felicity’s office, but Jerry stops him. “Mr. Queen! It’s nice to see you. Do you have an appointment with Ms. Smoak?”
“I’m sure she can squeeze my…associates and I in. It won’t take long.”
“I’m afraid she and Mr. Palmer disappeared a few minutes ago. They were there one second, then I turned around to make coffee and they were gone. She didn’t leave me a note or anything so I’m not sure when they’ll be back in.”
The response gives him pause. Maybe the alert was an accident? No. She knows exactly what she’s doing with her technology. She wouldn’t turn on alarms ‘accidentally’. “I’ll go into her office and give her a call. Thank you, Jerry.”
Before the slightly panicked assistant can protest, Oliver pulls the door to his old office open, unsure what he’s about to find. Nothing looks particularly out of place. The desk is considerably immaculate in comparison to the state of disarray he used to keep it in. He looks at some of the tech files, code-named A.T.O.M. and decides to take them back to the Foundry. He’d rather Felicity be around later to yell at him about it than be gone.
The computer is flashing the same alert it was in the lair, only it displays a satellite view of the city with different colored dots blinking on and off. He recognizes the green as his own, the red as Roy’s, the black as John’s. Felicity’s says its in the room. He looks up and sees her phone in her purse near the desk, still buzzing from the alert and the calls they’ve been sending.
She couldn’t just disappear. Someone had to have kidnapped her. Someone could have killed her, a disappearance in a more physical sense. He’s not ready to face that possibility.
Then again, there was always—
Oliver squints, looking at the thin golden chain peeking out from under a stack of papers. The chain is strong for being so thin, holding up a fairly large golden pendant in the shape of an oval.
“Is that Felicity’s?” Diggle asks, seeming to have finally gotten tired of waiting outside and clearly ignoring Jerry’s worry about letting unauthorized individuals into his boss’s office.
“I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear it.” Felicity has worn a fair amount of jewelry over the years, but it’s usually just a few elegant, inexpensive pieces. This gold looks pricey and unlike anything else he’s seen grace her neckline.
“Maybe Ray gave it to her?” Roy seems to grimace at the idea, but he can’t rule it out. Palmer is anything but subtle.
“Maybe,” Oliver grunts, pocketing the jewelry. “We can’t rule anything out, but I don’t think we’re going to get much else hanging around her office. I’m going to call Barry.”
“Think it might be another meta-thingy?” Roy asks, at his heels as they walk out of Felicity’s office.
“We’re not calling whatever-they-are by that name,” Oliver grumbles. “But if they can use super speed and use weather as a weapon, they might be able to teleport or make people disappear.”
xx
When calling Barry yields no results other than making Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco worried, they spend most of the night on the streets.
They first check Felicity’s apartment using a key Diggle has for emergencies that Oliver is definitely not jealous of no matter what Roy calls the look on his face. Apparently beating the snot out of Roy to discourage these sort of remarks stopped working some time after they gave him his own costume and call sign.
The apartment, much like her office, feels disorienting and simply wrong without her presence in it.
Oliver’s getting riled up with anger by the time they arrive at Palmer’s apartment, breaking in through the window when his security system proves too complicated without their treasured hacker.
Palmer’s papers are about as helpful as the ones he took from Felicity’s office, except they’re covered in wires and smears of black oil. What Ray has been building in what little spare time he has as a CEO is a mystery to Oliver.
Due to the massive disappointment and seething anger on all fronts, Oliver is prepared to go back to the lair and possibly break most of the workout equipment available to him. He’s not a billionaire anymore and he’s currently living off of Malcolm Merlyn’s money because of Thea, but for a few short moments the satisfaction of snapping something in half seems like it might be worth it. Diggle eyes him with a look that shows he knows exactly what Oliver’s thinking and is prepared to reign it in.
“Oliver, beating something to a senseless pulp won’t help us find Felicity. We don’t know were she is but we can be prepared if or when she needs us.”
“Yeah, but it will make me feel a hell of a lot better.” He growls.
xx
“We still don’t have any reports of a metahuman in Starling City. I can still come help—“
“No, Barry. It’s fine. We’ll manage. I’ll let you know as soon as we find something.” Oliver sighs after telling Barry goodbye. It’s already been 2 days and even after searching the city and consulting with the STAR Labs team on and off, they’re no closer to finding Felicity.
The paperwork from her office is over his head in every way. She’s a genius and he barely got through high school, even with the bribes he knows his parents were dealing out like candy on Halloween.
What he does gather is that the necklace he’s been keeping close is not just a necklace. He had to Google what a multiverse is and the many theories about them to even begin to conceptualize what the files are talking about.
Felicity didn’t talk much about what being Ray’s VP and leading Applied Sciences entailed, but he wasn’t sure theoretical universe travel qualified as something she would be working on.
“No luck?” Diggle asks, organizing their ammunition for the fifth time that day. The anxiety of not knowing is stressful for all of them. While he and Roy have been aggressively taking their anger out on each other, Diggle has been pacing the basement when not pacifying his frustration by being with his wife and daughter.
“It just doesn’t make any sense, Dig. This research they’ve been doing doesn’t seem like something they’d get hurt over. It’s all ‘if’ and ‘possibly’, nothing concrete except for the prototypes.”
Diggle nods quietly before fixing his gaze at the device in Oliver’s hand. “Prototypes?”
Oliver furrows his brow until he realizes the implications. There was more than one prototype. “Who would only take two if they could have all of them?”
“Exactly. She wasn’t kidnapped. She chose to use the device. She and Ray.”
“What if it doesn’t work? Their research says that there’s a possibility that travel between universes could’ve killed her.” Now he’s pacing, gripping the pendant in his hands and rubbing it between his fingers.
“Then there had to have been a good reason that she left. She apparently knew the risks. She wrote that research herself, Oliver.”
“That doesn’t mean what she did wasn’t reckless. She could be dead, and we’d never know. We don’t know!”
“Oliver, you can criticize her choices all you want, but at the end of the day I see the way you’re clutching that damn thing like it’s your last lifeline.”
“I don’t care if it makes me a hypocrite. What I care about is getting Felicity back home.”
There’s a long pause. “And if you die in the process?”
“There won’t be a way for anyone else to follow me. It will end with us.”
“Oliver—“ Diggle doesn’t get to finish. Oliver throws the chain around his neck, hoping the default settings take him to Felicity.
xx
When he opens his eyes to a familiar melodic babbling in his ears, he hopes he’s made the right choice. (Though he might not argue if someone told him that her golden hair in the dimming lamplight was a holy premonition of heaven instead.)