Erase: Chapter Forty-Two (42/50)
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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.
Chapter Forty-Two
Days without Chloe Sullivan: 92
He opened the double doors of the Watchtower stepped inside hesitantly, looking at every object as if it was completely foreign to him. There was something inside of this building that he was missing. A missing link.
Mia rushed into the room. “What happened? Did you find her? Did she help?”
“We found Lucy. She wasn’t much of a help.” Oliver said.
“Are you kidding me? So all of this has been for nothing?”
“Oh, it wasn’t for nothing”, Bart interrupted. “Turns out that she knows exactly where Chloe is- she just won’t say anything.”
“And you didn’t kick her ass?” Mia asked Oliver
“Oh trust me, I wanted to. But I can’t blame her. She says that we missed something, that she set this whole chain reaction for Clark to find her. Find the missing link, we find Chloe.”
“We’ll find it. I promise we will”, Bart told him.
He felt like a bit of a wimp now that he was retelling the story. He should have done more than just threaten her. He should have beaten her until she told the truth- it’s what would have been done to him if their roles had been reversed, he was sure of it.
He shouldn’t have left there without an answer, but he had to take the glimmer of hope that she gave him. All he had to do was guess right and hopefully not waste time.
Except he couldn’t think of what he was missing. If he guessed right and Lucy led him into a trap, Lois would be down a sister. Not that Lois was much of a factor in his life anymore anyway.
It felt like there was so much that he should have asked Lucy while he had here there, questions that were coming back to him the longer that he was back in the Watchtower. Was there a new time deadline? Did she know when in particular Chloe was going in to erase everything?
The plan was set up for Clark- it looked like the guy was supposed to be the only one who could figure out the puzzle. Too bad Clark wasn’t much of a factor anymore. Chloe asked Oliver to look after the guy in a goodbye video and he hadn’t done much of that.
It wasn’t like Clark had done much looking out himself anyway. Oliver just wished that he had the years with Chloe that Clark did, that he had more than just files to go on.
He went into the room with the pictures and stood there. What could he possibly be missing here?
He looked at the map that had been covered in tacks with places that they had eliminated in looking for Chloe and Lucy. For a split second, he wondered if Clark knew about her plan all along, if he knew the location and that was why he had been so stubborn in not looking.
If Clark didn’t know about the kryptonite weapons that had started this disaster in the first place, then there was no way that Chloe told him what she was planning.
Oliver was starting to ask himself why he bought Lucy’s crap story about Chloe’s happiness and betraying family. How could that be worth everything to her? He saw how Lex and Lionel used to go back and forth trying to destroy each other.
Vortigan was the closest thing that Oliver had to a father during his Brotherhood days, but it didn’t stop him from going after important people in his life. It didn’t stop Oliver from wanting to kill him for putting them in danger.
“Where do you think you should look?” Mia asked him
Nobody in the chain knew anything. Pete was clueless and so was Chloe’s Dad.
“I don’t know”, he said. “I’m still convinced that I’m not missing anything and that Lucy’s full of crap.”
“Maybe she’s not wrong”, Mia said slowly. Oliver and Bart both rose an eyebrow. “Sorry, it’s just that you’ve been so sleep-deprived for such a long time. Maybe there’s something that you just glossed over.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’m wishing that it would hit me in the face now. It’s not like Lucy gave me a new time frame to work with. I can’t exactly start from the beginning.”
“It’ll come to you, man.” Bart told him.
What if it doesn’t? What if it never did? What if he was just wasting his time and Lucy was just leading him on?
She said that there was a pattern, that Pete Ross’ location started it off. He looked at the connecting locations, trying to come up with a design or a pathway on there, but there was nothing here.
They were people Smallville that she grew up with. Family members and friends. Wait a second. Designs.
The Kryptonite weapons. There were kryptonite knives. Chloe wasn’t exactly a knife-thrower in her spare time. If they worked well, she would have needed help with them.
When she first met Dinah, Chloe said that she threw a knife at a closing elevator, and it nearly hit her right before the doors closed completely. If there was one thing that Oliver knew, it was designing weapons. It was the physics and weight of trick arrows and projecting how they would react.
It was a skill that he taught Mia and something that they all took pride in, honing their abilities. It was why Bart’s shoes could stand the amount of friction that they did and why all of AC’s technology was equipped to handle water during missions. They wouldn’t be able to do their jobs if the tiny details were screwed up.
If Chloe trusted Dinah with the design of the kryptonite weapons, then she might know something.
“Bart, have you heard from Canary recently?” he asked
“No, man. I’m sorry, I haven’t really heard from anyone since Roulette. We lost touch.”
Dinah was the only one that he hadn’t come across yet. He wondered if she was hiding on purpose.
But Canary wasn’t really from Chloe’s past. They both knew her the same amount of time and she more of a passing guest on Clark’s radar instead of a teammate. Boyscout never did take the team seriously.
Whoever it was needed to be someone big in Clark and Chloe’s life, but not so much on Oliver’s.
Chloe was nice to everyone, from the barista she visited seven times a day to her superiors, so that didn’t exactly help matters. Needed to be big with Clark in order for it to be blatantly obvious to him.
Seemed like the only thing that was important to Clark these days was playing house with Zod and getting into Lois’ pants.
But it wasn’t always Lois, was it?
***Flash***
“Was it?” He asked her. “Because it seemed like a pretty natural instinct to protect Clark. Now that lex is gone, you can’t tell me you’re not relieved.”
“Every fiber of my conscience wants to say that’s not true, but…”
“Then, you can’t tell Clark what I did. Lex just ripped the man’s heart out, Chloe. He’s going to need his friends around him right now more than ever.”
***End Flash***
He wished that he had access to someone who could just track down a person. To ask for a favor and hope that they wouldn’t say no.
***Flash***
He was in the middle of a meeting with the members of the board at the Star City office when his phone rang. He could have sworn that he put it on vibrate for the meeting, and apologized to everyone else in the room before looking at the screen. Incoming call from Chloe Sullivan.
Well, that was odd. He hadn’t heard from her in a month or two. “I’m so sorry”, he echoed his previous apology. “I need to take this.”
He stepped outside of the room and answered the call. He didn’t get the chance to greet her before she started talking. “Hey Oliver, it’s me. I know it’s been a while, but I really need to ask for a favor and I kind of don’t have time for you to say no. Please don’t be mad.”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“Really?” She sounded surprised
“Well, you didn’t really put me in a position to say no. So, what’s going on?”
“Okay, so long story short, I found my mom in one of Lex’s labs. Turns out that she has meteor abilities. Clark and I got her out, but we don’t really have any place to take her that’s safe.”
“Do you remember the pass-code to get into the Clock Tower?” He asked. “I’ll set up a secure area for her to stay- take her there in the meantime. I’ll call my security team in Metropolis and make sure that they keep an extra eye on the place.”
“I was hoping that you’d say that. She’s already there with Clark. I’m picking up some sandwiches, figured a good lunch would help with the shock.”
He smiled. “Of course they’re already there. Well, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll get a secure place set up here in Star City near the rest of the team so worst case scenario we can keep an eye on her, but I have to call my pilot so we can get over to Kansas. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. How are you doing with the whole ‘Mom with meteor abilities’ thing?”
She took a deep breath. “Still processing.”
“I’ll ask you again when I get here. Give you some more time. I’ve got to go.”
“Thank you, Oliver.”
“No problem. I’ll see you when I get there.”
***End Flash***
Chloe’s Mom wouldn’t be able to give him Chloe’s location because of the same crap excuse that Lucy gave him. Because betraying family is the worst thing. But he was going to try. All he needed was a personal item. Something that was important to Chloe and the last piece of the puzzle.
He searched around the Watchtower until he found the laptop that Lois didn’t send him. The personalized laptop that Chloe loved. He tucked it under his arm and looked around for a Smallville High yearbook before tucking that under his arm too and calling his pilot.
“Where are you going?” Mia asked
“Star City”, he answered.
“Dude, cancel the jet. I’ll take you right now”, Bart told him.
Oliver shook his head. “You can’t, because I need you and Mia to do something for me while I’m gone.”
“What do you need?” Bart asked
“I need you to try and go through Watchtower’s database and find Dinah’s location. I’ve bumped into everyone else in the team since this whole thing started, and I’m pretty sure that she helped Chloe design the kryptonite weapons in the first place. I have no idea if she knows where Chloe is, but we can’t leave any stones unturned. She had to track you all down for Roulette, and I bet that she didn’t stop tracking you guys after you left. And Mia, you need to get back to school. It’s noon on a Tuesday.”
“What are you doing in Star City?” Mia asked, ignoring the part about school.
“It’s one of the two”, he said, dialing Lucy’s number. “It has to be, it’s all that’s left. I just need Lucy to confirm and we’ll be good to go.”
“Who is it?” Mia asked. “Other than Dinah?”
Lucy picked up the phone as Oliver answered.
“Lana Lang.”