Technical Assistance

Chapter 64: Firewall Breach

As she walks into the interrogation room, Felicity can't help but think it looks a little bland. The walls are an off-white that looks like the pages of a book that have yellowed with age, and she can't help but think the trim color is ironic: a deep green, a shade somewhere between olive and emerald.

Arrow green.

The metal table in the middle, along with the two very-uncomfortable-looking metal chairs draw her attention next, and Felicity decides she might be a little wrong about this whole thing. She thought she could do this, keep it together through whatever Lance dished out at her, but evidence to the contrary is starting to pile up. Though she'd rather die than give up Oliver's identity, suddenly it looks like a very real possibility that she might be protecting him from prison. Which would be remarkably difficult because she's fairly certain they won't let her do tech work for the Arrow then.

"Have a seat, Miss Smoak," Lance growls from behind her, and she takes a moment to remember what he said in the car. He's going to lie, manipulate, yell, and intimidate to get her to crack. This is just the first of those techniques, and it's only going to get worse from here.

With that in mind, she decides a little defiance is in order. No doubt someone is watching from the other side of that one-way glass, and she's not going to let Lance lose his job over her, even if she's going to be a tough nut to crack. As she turns to him, Felicity responds, "Actually, I think I'd prefer to stand, if you don't mind." She points. "That chair doesn't particularly look comfortable, and I'm not sure I want to sit down at anything I could be handcuffed to later."

Detective Lance turns his head away from the glass and the camera in the corner, and it takes her a moment to realize the action isn't of the Lord-give-me-strength variety. Not the way his mouth is turning up ever so slightly at the corners. When he turns back to her, though, the scowl is firmly in place. "That wasn't a suggestion," he snaps. Maybe he can be a little more intimidating than she thought. "Sit down."

Felicity drops into the chair with a flourish, but Lance continues to stand, picking up the folder on top of the desk and making a show of looking through it. She supposes it's a technique to make her sweat, but she knows he's already learned the file by heart. "Tell me, Miss Smoak," he starts without looking up, "what do you know about hacking?"

Don't lie, she expressly remembers Lance saying when he was giving her advice, and Felicity takes him at his word. "I know it's unauthorized access of a computer with intent to tamper with it," she answers slowly. "I also know that it's illegal and a very nice way to earn jail time."

"You also know how to hack into a computer, don't you?" he asks with a harder tone to his voice. He holds up the file. "I have no idea what the hell any of this means, but our computer techs say you've been hacking computers for a long time, Miss Smoak." He slams the file down, and she jumps at the sound. "Our techs also say that code is as recognizable as handwriting, and we found yours in a secure server at Merlyn Global." Then Lance finally sits down across from her. "Mind telling me how that happened?"

"I write a lot of code for the IT Department at Queen Consolidated," Felicity decides to say after a long moment. Again, she's trying to be as honest as she can without directly lying to him. "I like my job in IT, but occasionally I've been asked to assist with some of our software and program applications in Software R&D." She shrugs, looking more flippant than she feels at the moment. "My coding is in a lot of computers that I've never touched before. Merlyn Global and QC work closely together, and they do a lot of beta testing for us."

Lance doesn't dig any deeper into that, and they both know it's because he's trying to help her out as much as he can. "So you've never been to Merlyn Global?" he tries this time, and she knows SCPD can get the security tapes any time they please.