Erase: Chapter Thirty-Three (33/?)
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Summary: After Chloe is found siphoning money from Oliver's company in order to purchase Kryptonite weapons, she realizes that she losing her sense of humanity. She decides that the only way to escape from who she is becoming is to erase her memories and start over. Oliver has 4 months to stop her before it's too late.
Spoilers: Up to Conspiracy, and then I write my own way.
POV: First chapter is Chloe-centric, and then Ollie-centric for the rest of the journey
Days without Chloe Sullivan: 82
Oliver was in the middle of Kenya, making his way over to what he supposed was General Sam Lane’s camp by the border. He was driving along the rough path in the small van that he had stolen directly after landing. He glanced at the GPS on his phone and made a turn.
He heard shooting in the distance. He smiled to himself- he was almost there, and now all he had to do was talk to the General. The man couldn’t run, not anymore. And since Sam Lane was a family man, he probably knew exactly where his niece was.
But Chloe’s own father hadn’t heard from her, and although the General was loyal to family, he was loyal to his country first. He must have been incredibly busy, running some sort of secret operation here in Kenya.
Oliver shook his head at the thought of failure. He drove in the direction of the shooting, thinking only of the possibilities when his phone started beeping. He glanced at it- the GPS system was rerouting itself. Wherever the shooting was coming from, it wasn’t in the direction of the camp he found at the Watchtower.
Sam Lane was probably on the move, which meant that Oliver was just that much closer to finding him. He got closer to the camp, and abandoned the van when the camp was in plain sight, dragging a duffel bag with him. He hid behind a large tent and took a look around at his surroundings.
That was when he saw them- the African child soldiers that were surrounded in the place. They were armed with guns. These were just kids- what on Earth was the General thinking, using innocent children like this? What was the man’s end game?
An order was shouted, and he heard the familiar shooting. Target practice- that was what this was. Oliver unzipped his duffel bag and loaded a gun, just in case one of the leaders attacked him. He glanced at the GPS again- he was 20 miles away from where he should be.
He kept an eye on the people in front of the tent and turned his head to see what was behind him, spotting a little ledge from above and a hill following it. He had his bow, quiver, and another gun in the bag.
He was about to move around the tent to check out more of this camp when he suddenly saw an armed child in front of him. “What are you doing here?”
It was a harsh, ordering voice speaking Swahili. Okay. “Hi, I’m a traveler. I got lost”, he answered innocently.
But the kid spotted the gun next to him and loaded his machine gun, aiming it at Oliver. “I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”
Oliver reacted in a split-second, grabbing the gun and aiming it at him. But he didn’t shoot. He couldn’t- his gun was loaded with bullets, not tranquilizers. This kid probably had a family out there looking for him.
He remembered saving a kid in Star City a year ago who looked identical to the boy in front of him now. He couldn’t be older than 8 or 9. Oliver couldn’t shoot him, not when this kid had his whole life ahead of him. The kid was threatened, that was all.
But there were trick arrows in his bag, and those weren’t designed to kill. The bag was right behind him- if he could just reach for it.
“I told you, I got lost”, he said slowly as he reached a hand behind him and started to feel out the quiver. There were too many clothes here, too many bottles of water.
Oliver looked behind the kid and saw a small crowd heading towards him. They spotted that the kid wasn’t falling in with the rest of them. They were coming to investigate, and they would all kill him on the spot.
Finally, he felt the quiver. He grabbed the first arrow he could grab his hands on, and stabbed the kid in the arm with it, backing away quickly with his gun, phone, and bag as he waited for the effect.
The kid started shooting his gun all over the place in terror until his body was covered over with ice. Oliver let out a sigh- he would be defrosted in a couple of hours with a little bit of pain in his arm and a headache. The kid would be fine.
But there was a chance that Oliver wouldn’t be. He suddenly found himself surrounded by armed African children. And they didn’t seem to care that he looked like a lost American. This wasn’t Sam Lane’s camp. Shit.
He back-flipped on top of the ledge and started running blindly, not caring about the shooting behind him. He wondered just how far his Kevlar vest would take him, before he remembered that he wasn’t covered in the material. A shot to the head would kill him, and a shot to the arm would render him incapable of Green Arrow activity.
They followed him to the car, and the worst part was that he couldn’t fight back. He wasn’t going to hurt innocent children. They weren’t at fault here- they were corrupted somehow.
He opened the door to get inside, and a group of kids started shooting at him as they got closer and closer to the car. They were starting to punch instead of shoot, and they had good aim with their fists.
“I’m not going to hurt you”, he started saying over and over in Swahili. Maybe there was something wrong with his accent or dialect- they weren’t listening to him. The numbers kept growing and growing, and he wasn’t going to die here in some weird camp in the middle of Kenya.
He fought back, with just enough aggression to get into the car safely. He started the car, and looked around the mirrors. They were everywhere- he couldn’t move the car in any direction without severely injuring or killing anyone.
And then he heard the loud gun-fires. His head automatically shot up at the noise in front of him, his eyes widening when he saw the tanks. He had to get out of here.
He switched the car into reverse and sped in the opposite direction, his eyes filling with tears.
“Oh my god”, he repeated to himself in horror as he saw the path of dead children behind him. “Oh my god.”
He heard Chloe’s voice in his head. “This is murder.”
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to!” he screamed at the bodies as he continued to drive away from the scene
He got a good distance away from the camp when the tanks finally backed off. He grabbed his bag and started walking. He was breathing heavily as he saw the image of those children being destroyed because of him.
He fell to his knees, and held his head in his hands. He had been doing this for 82 days, but nobody had ever died because of him. His mission hadn’t put anybody in jeopardy, just himself.
He shook his head, the tears falling freely now. They were just kids, all of them. He could have helped them somehow.
There was a sudden rush of wind, and an arm on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”
He looked up, and saw the sympathetic face of Bart Allen. Oliver gave him a confused look. “What are you doing here?”
He held out a hand. “Let’s go. They’ll be back.”
“Bart, what…?”
“Later”, he interrupted. “Come on.”
He grabbed the hand, and Bart pulled him to his feet. There was a rush of wind, a flash of red, and suddenly, they were gone.