Hive of Scum and Villainy

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

“So, why are you in Starling, Mr Wayne?” Felicity asked.

They were in her bed, thoroughly sated and to her surprise, she was no longer tired. Clearly her lethargy had been mood related and Bruce’s honesty was just the boost she needed.

She was lying half on him, their legs entwined and her head propped up on her hand. Her other hand was unconsciously combing through the smattering of hair on his chest.

“So the fun and games are over?” he asked.

“For now but if you’re a very good boy, I’ll make sure you’re properly rewarded.”

“You’re on,” he said with a salacious wink, which made her heart skip a beat. “I took down a criminal a few weeks ago, called Scarecrow. His plan isn’t really important but he was manufacturing a truth drug, which he got dosed with. Unfortunately the drug wasn’t perfected and could cause brain damage. Before the police got there, I questioned him, since I suspected he wasn’t working alone. He seemed to have taken too much though, and he began to ramble. It’s a truth drug but according to my contact in Gotham PD, high doses can also have a hallucinatory effect.”

“You believe what he told you was real though?”

“I believed that there was at least some truth to his words.”

So what did he say?”

“That he was working for a group that called themselves HIVE, that they have something massive planned, and he gave me the names he knew. I can't be sure, but I got the impression that only those at the very top, know everyone else involved. The underlings seem to be working on small parts of the overall plan in cells, only having contact with each other, and the person who hired them. He also said that I have no idea how powerful they are, or the length they’ll go to. Two days later, he was killed under suspicious circumstances.”

“Suspicious how?”

“Thanks to being dosed with his own drug, he was unstable, so was being kept in a padded cell at Arkham Asylum. Someone switched the cameras off, unlocked his cell and injected him with enough insulin to kill him.”

“Okay, that is suspicious.”

“I came to Starling following Pete Aitkinson, the only name he gave me who wasn’t dead.”

“The mobster?”

“Yeah, as soon as the people in his cell began to die, he was fearful enough to turn himself into the FBI and betray the Mob, in return for protection.”

“So what did he tell you?”

“The only new name he gave me, was Malcolm Merlyn.”

“So who did they get their orders from once Merlyn died?”

“He didn’t know. The only lead he gave me, was that he collected a consignment of chemicals from a Queen Consolidated warehouse, the one I got the laptops from.”

“Isn’t it a little sloppy to be leaving laptops lying around?”

“Yeah. My guess would be that Merlyn or his people were using the when he was killed. If someone else did know, they might have thought the place was destroyed in the quake, or that Merlyn put the computers somewhere safe, or maybe in the wake of the investigation into Merlyn and QC, they were too scared to go check.”

“There’s always the possibility that Moira Queen was involved,” Felicity suggested. “She was rather indisposed behind bars, fighting for her life.”