Arrow--Vengeance Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1: Deathstroke

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  2: Rochev

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  3: Blood

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  4: Revenge

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Arrow: Vengeance

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783294848

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783295517

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: February 2016

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ARROW: VENGEANCE is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 DC Comics.

  ARROW and all related characters and elements © & ™ DC Comics and

  Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

  WB SHIELD: ™ & © WBEI. (s16)

  Cover imagery: Cover photograph © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  1

  THE PAST

  “Another disappointment.”

  Slade Wilson tossed the prisoner aside, the body landing limp and heavy on the freighter’s wet floor. Blood seeped like tears from the man’s eyes.

  The sign of a coward too weak to survive.

  Even in the large cabin the freighter was cold and wet, much like what they had endured on the island of Lian Yu. The deck was treacherously slick, but Slade rose and stalked toward one of the many pirates serving as his makeshift crew. The men had originally served another—a doctor by the name of Anthony Ivo—but Slade had gained their loyalty by offering a better bargain.

  Serve him or die.

  Fear didn’t often visit brutal men such as these, but they knew what Slade had become. Within just a few hours they had seen prisoner after prisoner die at his hand, and they were afraid.

  “Dispose of him!” Slade demanded. “And bring me another.”

  Obediently the pirate dragged away the lifeless body at Slade’s feet, replacing it with another soldier and forcing him to his knees. He then handed Slade a rolled-up canvas pouch. As Slade slowly unfurled the canvas, two of his newest captives, a man and a woman, looked on in horror. They had known the man Slade used to be, before the mirakuru had begun to twist his mind. That man had been good and just. Not like the monster standing before them now.

  The woman—Sara Lance—had fallen silent. She and Oliver Queen had devised a plan to use an antidote on Slade. It had been produced by Dr. Ivo to reverse the effects of the mirakuru serum, but their plan had failed miserably and now, without the cure, Slade couldn’t be stopped. He was too far gone.

  The male captive, however, hardened by years of torture on Lian Yu, wasn’t yet ready to give up. He still believed he could reach his friend.

  “Come on, Slade,” Oliver said evenly. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Ignoring him, Slade pulled a glass syringe from the pouch, its green liquid incandescent in the freighter’s shadows. This was it, the mirakuru, a serum thought to be lost since World War II. Those worthy enough to withstand its torture were rewarded with abilities beyond the imagination. Superhuman strength, heightened senses, an inherent ability for the body to heal itself. The Japanese called it their miracle, and Dr. Ivo had traveled halfway across the globe in search of it.

  It was responsible for driving Slade Wilson to the brink of madness.

  Finally he answered Oliver with cold, detached malice in his voice.

  “Of course I do, kid,” he said. “I’m advancing the cause of science.” Slade readied the syringe and glared at the terrified prisoner at his feet.

  “Please… no…” The man tried to crawl away, his voice rising until he was screaming for his life. “For god’s sake… No!” But it was futile. Slade snatched hold of the man’s arm and prepared to plunge the needle into his vein.

  “Wait!” Oliver cried out. “No, Slade, no—wait!” When Slade hesitated, he continued. “I know you blame me for Shado’s death.” He evoked the only name that still held sway over the monster. The mention of her name stopped Slade short. He looked up at Oliver, as if seeing him for the first time, his words like light piercing through a fog.

  “I blame myself,” Oliver said.

  “As he should.” There was another voice in the darkness—a familiar one. A voice only Slade could hear. “It’s his fault we aren’t together.” It was Shado, reaching out to him from beyond the grave. Though only a wraith, to Slade she was as real as flesh.

  “You said once that we were brothers,” Oliver said, “and right now I am begging you, brother to brother, just listen to me.”

  Slade wanted to listen. He remembered their friendship. Glimpses of a recent past, before the sorrow…

  “Don’t listen to him,” Shado said. “All his words are lies!”

  “I wouldn’t be alive right now if it wasn’t for you,” Oliver said.

  “I would be alive if it wasn’t for him,” Shado hissed.

  “Think about Shado,” Oliver said, the urgency increasing in his voice. “She cared for both of us. She wouldn’t want this. She’d only want us to escape Lian Yu. She’d want the nightmare to end!”

  Without dropping the syringe, Slade grabbed his head in agony. It was as if his sanity was being torn in two. Somewhere deep within him, in a place the mirakuru hadn’t yet transformed, he knew that Shado was dead. He had felt her delicate form, limp and heavy in his arms, her blood still warm where she had taken a bullet to the head. He had buried her with his own hands—yet there she was, standing in front of him, lovely as the first day he laid eyes on her. His beloved.

  Seeing her now seared his heart anew, his grief and sorrow fresh as the night it was born. The night Oliver betrayed her. The night Slade made his promise.

  “He’s right,” Shado said. “This needs to end.” Slade felt her close by his side, a siren’s song whispered in his ear. “You need to kill him.”

  He stared at the syringe of mirakuru, finally giving in to its powers, without reserve. It was time to end his grief and suffering. To avenge his beloved. Turning away from Oliver, Slade withdrew a mask from his pocket, a terrifying visage of orange and black he liked to wear when killing became
inevitable.

  “Do it,” Shado said eagerly.

  He pulled on the mask and drew his gun. The pirate who had been holding Oliver released him, dropping him to his knees. Oliver stared up. He had seen this mask before. He knew what it signified, what was to come. Desperate, Sara struggled unsuccessfully to free herself from her captor’s grip.

  “Slade!” she cried. “No!”

  Slade leveled his gun at Oliver’s head, taking aim.

  “Pull the trigger!” Shado urged.

  Oliver begged for mercy, still trying to reach him.

  “Slade!”

  Slade unleashed a wail of rage and anger, the last bit of humanity within him succumbing to the mirakuru’s power. He applied pressure to the trigger, ready to fire.

  KA-BOOM.

  Suddenly an explosion rocked the freighter, shockwaves from the impact throwing everyone to the deck. Slade kept his footing, but dropped the syringe. An ear-splitting screech filled the air as sheets of metal shredded like paper. A hole appeared in the wall of the cabin, and water rushed in through the breach. Quickly the weight of the ocean began to drag the vessel under, threatening to split it in two.

  A torpedo, Slade knew instantly. It has to be Anatoly… Oliver had to have given him instructions.

  The boat began to lurch as water cascaded through its interior, causing untold damage. Then it groaned and began to collapse in on itself. Support beams buckled overhead, sending metal debris raining down upon Slade and his captives. In the chaos, the crew scattered without purpose, and even Slade became disoriented.

  Using the confusion as a distraction, Oliver pushed upward and elbowed his captor hard in the gut, tossing him to the floor, then darted over to where his quiver was floating in the shin-deep water. He grabbed an arrow and rushed the man who was holding Sara, stabbing him in the chest, the sharp arrowhead penetrating flesh and bone and piercing the man directly through the heart. As he dropped to the ground, the winded pirate recovered from the blow and was reaching for a machine gun. Oliver shoved Sara behind a cargo cage.

  “Go go go go!”

  The thug unleashed a fusillade of gunfire, sparks flying and bullets ricocheting off the metal cage. One stray struck a lamp hanging nearby, setting off a shower of sparks that ignited an electrical fire, adding to the growing mayhem. The pirate exhausted his ammunition, tossed the gun aside, and fled across the tilting deck.

  Finally getting his bearings, Slade watched his minion flee.

  Coward, he thought. Then he saw it. Floating in the water a few yards away—the mirakuru, the syringe still intact. The leather pouch was nearby. He staggered toward it, the lurching ship knocking him off balance with each step.

  Oliver spotted it, too, and yelled to Sara.

  “Get off this ship!”

  “Not without you!” she shouted back, terror in her voice, but Oliver was already in motion. With the arrow still clutched in his hand as a weapon, he sprinted toward the syringe and, just in time, snatched it away from Slade’s grasp, sliding to a stop in the water. He scooped up the pouch, as well.

  No! Slade staggered as the ship lurched again, and reached out. “Give it to me,” he demanded. “Give me the mirakuru!”

  Without hesitation, Oliver threw the serum into the growing electrical fire, the vials exploding luminous green in the blaze.

  “No!” Slade bellowed, his blood boiling with rage. He launched himself at Oliver, overwhelming him with a flurry of strikes, driving him backward, away from Sara. Oliver did his best to parry the onslaught, but Slade overpowered him, landing a vicious kick to his chest and sending him sprawling into the cell door. He hit the ground with a grunt of pain.

  “Oliver!” Sara ran toward them, trying to intervene. Consumed with rage, Slade snatched her off the ground and threw her across the flooded deck, toward the breach in the hull. She reached out and screamed, just as she had done on the Queen’s Gambit two years before.

  “Ollie!”

  “Sara!” Oliver could only watch as she was sucked out to sea, her face locked in a terrified scream. Yet he had no time to process what had just happened as Slade Wilson stalked toward him. He had just enough time to scramble to his feet.

  “Poor Sara,” Slade said, taunting him. Mocking him. “How many times are you going to watch her die?”

  The words had their intended effect. Overcome with rage, Oliver charged, but Slade met him head on, the two clashing in the middle of the listing deck, water flooding in, fire blazing around them, metal groaning overhead. Though the freighter was going down fast, neither man cared. Each was out for blood.

  Oliver landed the first punch, but the force of the impact nearly knocked him off his feet. Slade, however, was unfazed. He stood, staring back at Oliver through that horrible mask of orange and black, awaiting his next attack. He was eerily calm.

  The adrenaline coursing through Oliver was no match for the mirakuru. Slade easily blocked a punch to his face, returning the blow with one of his own. The force of it stunned Oliver, causing him to drop his defenses for an instant. Slade took the opportunity to land a vicious flying knee to his adversary’s chest, followed by a quick left hook to the jaw, battering him down into the knee-deep water. Nevertheless, Oliver managed to rally and struggled to his feet as Slade began to circle him, the incoming flood cascading from overhead.

  “You can’t kill me,” he said as Oliver, still fighting to maintain his balance, reared back for another futile attack. Slade flicked him away, kicking his opponent’s leg out from under him. Then he grabbed him by the throat, lifting him into the air with one arm. Oliver clawed at the hand, desperate, his fingers tearing at the orange and black mask. He ripped it away, but Slade only responded by tightening his grip.

  The mask dropped to the watery floor.

  Gasping for breath, Oliver punched him across the face, then hammered his arm with his fist—one blow after another—trying to loosen his hold. Slade absorbed the punishment unfazed, the blows serving only to enrage him. He choked Oliver and forced him to his knees, then, letting loose a primal scream, punched him to the ground. Oliver landed heavily, face first in the water, wide-eyed and nose-to-nose with Slade’s mask.

  The omen of death.

  He tried to stand, but he was in too much pain. Slade circled, watching him struggle, savoring the moment. Then he reared back and kicked Oliver with all his mirakuru strength, sending him flying through the air so that he twisted in flight before landing with a heavy splash on the floor’s wet metal once again. Still, Oliver would not quit. Slade waited, watching as Oliver willed himself up off the floor, gathering himself together for one last strike.

  Prolonging the inevitable, Slade thought. Do you expect mercy? You didn’t show Shado any mercy when Ivo shot her. I am going to ruin you, Oliver Queen. If torture was what the kid wanted, he would gladly oblige.

  They both charged again, when suddenly the ship rolled. There was another explosion, set off by the electrical fire. The bow separated from the rest of the ship, finally snapping in two. Both men were thrown to the deck as the last of the support beams buckled, sending twisted metal falling from overhead. There was a searing white, then blackness.

  * * *

  Slade found himself on his back, crushed under the fallen debris, its weight pinning him to the floor. This section hadn’t yet flooded. As his vision returned, he spotted Oliver. Luck on his side yet again, he had been thrown out of the path of the falling wreckage.

  He watched as Oliver approached, arrow still in one hand and—in the other—a glass syringe, miraculously intact. Slade knew instantly what was inside. He strained against the weight of the beams, his fury growing.

  “What are you gonna do, kid?” he growled. “Stick me with a cure? It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll take away everything and everyone you love. Sara was only the first.”

  He knew where Oliver was vulnerable, his words stabbing like daggers.

  “She was only the first!”

  Oliver’s ho
ld on the cure loosened.

  “Your sister…”

  His grip on the arrow tightened.

  “Laurel…”

  And the killer in Oliver’s eyes emerged.

  “Your mother!”

  The last thing Slade saw was Oliver rearing back, raising the arrow high overhead and driving it down toward his eye.

  Then the world went black.

  2

  Slade Wilson had been left for dead before, on a submarine run aground deep within Lian Yu. Then, as now, he had felt the darkness surround him, warm and inviting, its silence a soothing balm to his pain. How easy it would be to simply let go and fade off into the infinite black.

  But he would not give in.

  Not with the mirakuru in his veins.

  Not with Shado in his heart.

  The first time Slade had fought death’s embrace, he had done so to save his beloved. This time, he would do it to avenge her.

  Oliver Queen will pay.

  As the serum in his blood continued to work, repairing his broken bones, Slade felt his consciousness returning, the world coming back in pieces.

  His body pinned by metal.

  His mouth and lungs, filled with salt.

  His right eye, racked with pain.

  Slade awoke to find himself still trapped beneath the fallen beams. To his horror, he realized he was underwater, his lungs straining for oxygen, the cabin completely flooded. He could see a pocket of air trapped a tauntingly short distance above.

  Then the debris on top of him began to shift. The water that threatened to drown him might also prove to be his salvation. Using his enhanced strength, he pushed against the mass of metal, straining, the water lending some of the rubble just enough buoyancy for him to free himself. With every push jolts of pain shot through his eye. He kicked up toward the pocket of air, emerging from the water, gasping for oxygen in large, greedy gulps.

  One thought consumed him.

  Where is Oliver? The rage within him returned. Reaching up, he grasped the arrow that still jutted from his eye, and snapped off the long shaft, leaving a short piece still embedded in his skull. There would be time enough for that later.

  He dove back underwater, looking for any sign of the traitor. There were bodies scattered amid the twisted and burnt rubble, and some went floating weightlessly upward. Many were pirates. Others, prisoners he’d tortured.