Arrow ~ We Fall ~ Part Three

***

"You're looking much less armored up."

Slade raised an eyebrow, not looking up from the gun he was examining. "The city's under siege, and my mask is the one that led a siege a few years ago," he explained simply. "Might be a good idea to sit this siege out."

"Touché," Malcolm nodded thoughtfully, leaning against the rail by him and checking over his own gear. "And then the year after that . . . "

Slade smirked. "I'm also not exactly subtle in my work, wizard."

Malcolm rolled his eyes, making Slade chuckle. "Well, I guess as long as I keep out of sight."

"You're good at that."

"Thanks. I think."

"You're w – "

Malcolm looked up from his bow, tilting his head when he saw Slade frown. "What?" he lowered his voice.

Slade's frown turned into a scowl, and he ever so slightly pointed behind them. Malcolm causally leaned against the railing, tilting his head to hear better, and picked up what was being discussed between Dig and Felicity. " – putting the hood back on?" Felicity was saying.

"Yeah," Dig admitted.

"I'm sure you will," Felicity assured him, making Slade and Malcolm exchange wary glances. "You know, once this whole Cayden thing is dealt with."

"I hope so," Dig sighed.

Malcolm turned back to Slade, seeing his scowl deepen. "I think we both agree on who we prefer to be wearing the hood," the assassin remarked as casually as he could.

"Damn right," Slade growled lowly, turning to look over at where William was sitting at the table. "But we need to keep William in mind, too."

"We will," Malcolm nodded, turning to Slade. "If there's one thing in common we have with Oliver, it's that we're both fathers. We'll get Oliver back to his son."

Slade nodded in agreement, clasping the hand Malcolm extended to him. "That we will."

"Hey, boys," Laurel called from the platform, making them look up. "You'll want to see this."

"Will," Lena called, pushing away from her computer. "Your dad's on TV."

William hurried up to stand with Alex as James reached over, turning up the sound on the screen. 

***

"A hacker, goes by the name Cayden James, has taken over the electronic infrastructure of Star City," Oliver began, looking out over the crowd of reporters in front of him. "In his hands, anything, that is connected to the Internet, can be used as a weapon. Now, sadly, this has already led to a number of casualties, including our police captain, Frank Pike, and Councilman Harold Grovner. But Mr. James has made his demands, but make no mistake – he is a terrorist, and Star City negotiate with terrorists, period. Instead, we are gonna focus on the safety and well-being of our citizens. In that spirit, the SCPD has set up safe houses throughout the city. These locations are entirely analog, and you will be safe there. I promise you, you will be safe there." He straightened to his full height and looked directly into the lens of the nearest camera. "Mr. James, Star City has survived far worse than you. We will band together, we will be united, and we will survive this." He turned back to the press and nodded politely. "Thank you very much."

He ignored questions being asked of him and turned to jog up the stairs to where Thea and Kara were waiting. Kara gave him a small smile and a thumbs up, which Oliver smiled back at.

***

As the footage shut off, Cayden snorted in amusement. "So predictable," he grinned, turning away from the screen. "Almost takes the fun out of it." He turned to Vincent and his second-in-command, nodding at them. "Time to proceed to the next phase."

Vincent looked at who would be his partner for the next phase, and both nodded, heading off to collect the gear they would need.

***

"Nice speech," James complimented as Oliver and Kara returned.

"Did it work?" Kara asked.

"Oh, you betcha," Winn nodded. "Safe zones are filling up, they're completely offline, and hack-cident free."

Kara's gaze slid past Winn to where William was still sitting away from them all. J'onn squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, then Querl cleared his throat. "Shall we move on to neutral news?"

"Neutral news?" Oliver repeated.

"Well, it hasn't actually turned up good yet, but it's not necessarily bad news yet, either," Querl nodded.

Oliver raised an eyebrow. "This is about Cayden James's son?"

"Yes," Querl nodded, turning to Felicity.

"Alena thinks that Cayden believes that you killed his son because of something that arrived in a package from Corto Maltese in May," Felicity explained. "Through a pretty cool sequence of hacks on the mail systems of several different countries – not that you need to know about it, but it was, like, really intense and really cool, and we all did it, and it was really hard – "

"There was a USB drive in that package," Lena smoothly interrupted, noting Oliver's impatient look. "We've got the serial number, and Alena's working on trying to find the computer in Corto Maltese that uploaded the information onto that drive that Cayden received, which is the information that made him think that you killed his son."

"Was that all understood?" Winn winced.

"100%," Oliver assured him.

"Awesome."

The four tech people wheeled back to their stations, and Mon-El and Imra walked up to the duo. "Is everything all right?" Imra asked quietly.

Kara sighed, looking over at William. "No," she admitted just as quietly, looking down at her feet.

Imra rubbed her back comfortingly as Oliver squeezed her hand.

***

The moment Dinah heard footsteps coming up the stairs, she turned her phone off and turned to leave. "Dinah!" Curtis called.

"Hey," Rene caught up to her quickly. "Hey, if you don't want to work with him, we won't. We do it by consensus, like we agreed."

Dinah looked up at Curtis, who nodded, then she sighed. "Hey, look, I – I acknowledge that Vince is a complicated variable, OK?"

"Well, let's break it down," Rene suggested, walking to her other side. "You know, pro/con style."

"All right," Dinah nodded, thinking. "Pro: he's really good, and he gets deep into his assignments. Con: on our last assignment, he got in deep. He can forget what side he's on."

"Pro: he's in with Cayden James and his crew, and his last intel worked," Rene added his part.

"If you didn't know Vincent, if you could remove this history with him, if, as a cop, he came to you with some intel, what would your gut tell you?" Curtis asked Dinah.