MAY 2017
LIAN YU
He leapt, flinging his body off the dock and out into empty space.
He didn’t think about missing. Didn’t consider that if he did, he would go under the boat, dragged along the bottom of it and chewed to pieces by the propeller that drove it forward at top speed toward the open sea.
His only thought was of his son.
He crashed into the railing, the hard metal ramming into his ribs in a burst of pain he ignored as he hauled himself up onto the top deck. Scrambling over the cabin he jumped down, slamming into Adrian Chase, the man behind the hell his life had been for the last several months. The man who tortured him, who kidnapped the people he loved, who took his son.
Oliver Queen fell on Adrian Chase like the vengeance of God.
The bow in his hands became a club and he bludgeoned Chase, shoving him toward the back of the speeding boat. Chase stumbled away, unable to fight against the sheer ferocity of Oliver’s rage. Oliver pressed him until he was hanging over the rail, pinning him there above the churning propeller.
“Where’s William?” Oliver bellowed at him. “Where’s William?”
Chase smirked through a bloody mouth.
Oliver’s fist rose, as far back as he could swing, then crashed into his enemy’s face like thunder.
“Where—”
He drove his fist into Chase’s sternum.
“Is—”
His fist smashed down again in the same spot. The ribs there buckled.
“William!”
He punched again, his fist a hammer to the same spot now gone soft under his blows.
“You really love that kid, dontcha?” Chase gasped.
A raw animal sound tore out of Oliver as he lifted the bleeding man and flung him away. Chase careened across the deck, crashing into the vessel’s control panel. As he slid down he grabbed the throttle, cutting the engine. The boat slowed immediately, causing Oliver to fall back, grabbing the rail for support.
He righted himself and found Chase sprawled on the deck, leaning against the side of the boat underneath the controls, gasping for air. His voice came in fits and starts.
“For an… absentee father, your… devotion is impressive.” He gulped for oxygen. “Here you are, worried about your kid… when everyone else you care about is on an island… about to get blown sky-high.”
“My friends, and my team, can take care of themselves,” Oliver growled. He began to pull an arrow from the quiver on his back. Chase licked his bloody lips and looked up, smiling.
“By using my plane to escape, right?”
* * *
“I can’t start the engine.”
John Diggle let the frustration edge into his voice. The C-130 sat behind him as he and Curtis Holt walked toward Felicity Smoak and Dinah Drake. Samantha Clayton, William’s mother, followed close behind them.
“John’s right,” Curtis said. “There’s definitely something wrong with the plane.”
“With the plane or with the pilot?” Dinah looked at Diggle. “No offense.”
“None taken,” he replied. “I’m no ace, but I know how to start a plane. Whatever this was, it’s not pilot error.”
Nyssa al Ghul and Slade Wilson moved up to join them.
“Either way,” Slade said, “we’re not going anywhere without Oliver, or his son.”
“Actually, we’re not going anywhere at all,” Nyssa said, holding up a mangled mechanical device. Torn wires hung off it, their frayed ends catching on one another. “I found this ten feet from the wing.”
“Please, don’t tell me that’s what I think it is,” Felicity said.
“Depends on if you think it’s an on-wing hydraulic system,” Curtis replied.
“Can we repair it?” Dinah asked.
“With what tools?” Thea Queen asked as she and Quentin Lance stepped up to join the group.
“So, we’re stuck here?” Lance snarled. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Diggle rubbed his forehead. “We have to tell Oliver.” He gave Felicity a hard look. “Now.”
Felicity put a comm in her ear and keyed it up.
* * *
“Oliver, do you copy?”
Felicity’s voice sounded in his ear. He kept his eyes pinned on Chase, but let go the nock of the arrow and reached to engage his comms.
“I’m here,” he answered.
“Chase sabotaged the plane. We can’t get off the island.”
“There’s an A.R.G.U.S. supply ship on the eastern shore—” Oliver turned, looking over at the island where his loved ones were.
“That’s on the other side of the island.”
“Slade knows where it is. Go. Now.”
“They’ll never make it in time.” Chase’s voice made Oliver spin to find him on his feet. The madman turned and opened the door that led into the cabin.
“Besides—” He leaned through the door. “—we’re not finished here.” He spun, revealing William Clayton trapped in his grip.
Oliver had the arrow out of the quiver and pulled across the bow before he even thought about it. He aimed it at Chase’s head, but his eyes were on his son’s frightened face.
“Don’t do that,” Chase said. “Even if you had a shot, you’ve already told me that you wouldn’t kill me.” He reached up, tousling William’s hair, tugging it hard enough to make him wince in pain. “Or have circumstances finally changed?”
The archer stared at Chase, holding his twelve-year-old son. The man was right. Oliver’s mind ran through all the angles, all the openings, all the options, calculating… calculating…
There was a dead man’s switch wired into Chase’s vital signs, linked to the explosives on the island. Anything short of a clean killing shot would be too tricky. It would run the risk of harming William. He had seen Chase move, fought him before, and he knew that even injured, even at this short distance, the man had the ability to put his son in the path of an arrow.
“If I die—” Chase smirked as the words left him. “—everyone you care about dies. Except your son. What if you don’t kill me? I kill him.”
“You sonofabitch.”
Rage and frustration pounded inside Oliver’s head, while fear for his son and his family pounded in his chest. His voice sounded strangled, even to his own ears.
“William or everyone else. You choose. Right now.” Chase rolled his head, looking casual, nonchalant, as he held Oliver’s child with an arm around his throat.
Oliver stood, bow drawn, frozen save for the shaking in his limbs.
Chase shrugged. “Either way it proves me right. Either way it’s exactly like I told you. Everyone around you, everything you touch, dies.”
Oliver’s eyes sighted down the still-nocked arrow and pointed at Chase, his mind racing. His son or his team. The innocent life—his own blood, who had done nothing to deserve the terror that rode plain on his face—or the family he had carved from the life he had chosen. Not just his team but his friends, the people he loved.
All the people who were his world.
He slowly lowered the bow.
Chase smiled.
The arrow was inches into his shin before he realized Oliver had fired it. The impact and the explosion of pain pitched Chase forward, tossing William out of his grip. The boy fell over into Oliver’s arms as his captor hit the deck, blood pumping out around the shaft.
“Are you okay?” Oliver scooped William up, keeping him from falling. He patted his son, checking him for injury. “Are you alright?” he asked, trying to keep the panicked worry out of his voice, and failing. “Did he hurt you? Are you alright?” William nodded and Oliver pulled him close, wrapping his arms around him.
He felt so small, frail.
Oliver swore in his heart that he would keep his son safe from that moment on.
“He’s gonna be fine.” Chase pushed himself up, sliding back to lean on the cabin door as he sat in a puddle of his own vital fluids.
Oliver pointed his finger. “Don’t you talk to him. Don’t even look at him!”
“You won,” Chase said. “Your son has his father back, and he learned exactly who his father was, just like you learned who your father was, right here on these very same waters.”
“What?” Oliver shook his head.
“William’s younger than you were, so he’s gonna be fine, y’know? And you have each other.”
“What are you saying?”
Chase continued on as if Oliver hadn’t spoken.
“Which is good.” He nodded emphatically. “Oliver, that’s good, because it’s gonna be lonely.” Chase reached around, his hand going to the small of his back. “Without Mom, and Felicity.”
The hand came out from behind his back.
Holding a large-caliber revolver.
He lifted it to his temple.
“No, Adrian!”
The gun kicked out of Chase’s hand as the bullet entered his skull. Oliver watched it happen, unable to move, holding William tightly against his chest, shielding him from the suicide.
The first explosion made him turn away from Chase’s slumped corpse, to look out over the island of Lian Yu. That explosion rose above the tree line like a rapidly blooming orange flower. More followed, creating a garden of destruction that raced from one end of the island to the other. He stared in horror.
William pulled back from the man he had been told was his father, watching the fires rage across the island.
The boat drifted on the water.