The unknown operatives moved with exceptional speed. After extracting their target, they demolished the room entirely, leaving not a single clue at the scene.
Oliver reviewed the footage twice but came up empty. The operatives had revealed too little—there simply wasn't enough to work with.
When Barry Allen woke up later, he used his forensic expertise to examine the crime scene personally. The result? Nothing. The weapons and explosives used were all black market items. Tracing them would require global police information sharing—an obviously impossible prerequisite.
The S.T.A.R. Labs team tried everything, cycling through various technologies, but ultimately had to give up.
The ones who'd intercepted Bivolo were, naturally, operatives working for Miss Thea Queen. She'd watched Oliver and Barry's fight like it was dinner theater, and inspiration had struck—Bivolo's ability had potential value. She'd immediately ordered her Central City assets to grab him.
While Oliver and Barry were collecting evidence, Thea left a duplicate to protect Moira and traveled to Central City herself, arriving at an underground facility.
Deathstroke's reputation in the underworld was formidable. With her massive financial backing, he'd already controlled numerous industries. After Thea gained her divine status, the entire underworld became practically defenseless against her.
The underworld's purpose wasn't advancing civilization—it existed for trade. Intelligence trading, weapons trading, mercenary contracts—these were the underworld's lifeblood. Every transaction took place under Thea's watchful eye.
Government officials, Middle Eastern royalty, African warlords—every day brought countless deals that couldn't bear the light of day, all conducted in shadowy corners.
*Heaven offers opportunities—refusing them invites calamity.* With detailed intelligence on every transaction, Thea naturally wouldn't be polite to these people. Leveraging her omniscient information advantage, Deathstroke had personally intervened, employing terrifyingly effective methods to nearly unify the underworld.
Finding someone like Bivolo—a small-timer who'd gained some power and only knew how to rob banks—really wasn't difficult at all.
Thea arrived at a villa district in Central City's outskirts. The owner was a city councilman whose family history supposedly traced back to the Mayflower. Unfortunately, the master was stubborn, clinging to tradition with an iron grip. Terms like "old fogey" and "old bastard" could all describe this particular homeowner.
Everyone in Central City gave this cantankerous hard-ass a wide berth. To outsiders and to the "master" himself, this was still his residence. In reality, everyone in the sprawling estate—from the butler to the groundskeepers—had been bought off. Aside from the few rooms the master frequented, the rest of the buildings had been converted into bases for Deathstroke's operations.
The unfortunate Bivolo was currently imprisoned in the basement here.
Thea studied the middle-aged man, then glanced at the dossier her subordinates had prepared. Sure enough, "Bivolo" was an alias. His real name was Roy G. Bivolo—which, at a glance, Thea almost misread as another, far more sinister acronym...
She didn't dwell on the name issue. This guy had committed multiple crimes and barely qualified as a B-list villain. In the future, he'd earn the nickname "Rainbow Raider." If Thea hadn't intervened today, he would've continued his games with the Flash. Now that seemed unlikely.
She examined the man with the ominous name more carefully. The sedatives were still working—the target's eyes were tightly closed, his wrists bound in chains hanging from a beam in the basement.
If this were an ordinary kidnapping victim, even while unconscious, their subconscious would signal distress—an involuntary frown, perhaps, or fingers trembling with tension.
None of these signs appeared in the middle-aged man. He was thoroughly unconscious.
He felt no concern for his predicament. Not because he had an iron will or firm convictions, but because this man lacked the emotion of fear entirely. His perceptual functions were completely filled with another emotion: rage. In Thea's vision, his body brimmed with deep crimson emotional spectrum energy. Red—the color of anger.
Truly remarkable, Thea thought to herself, uncertain whether his luck was good or hers was.
Mastering all seven colors of the Emotional Spectrum had always been her goal. So far, she'd only acquired fear and compassion.
The seven emotional lights: red rage, orange greed, yellow fear, green willpower, blue hope, indigo compassion, and violet love.
Green willpower, positioned at the center, was the most balanced and easiest to control. From green as the centerpoint, the left side represented negative emotions and the right side positive ones—at least according to universal values.
The farther from green, the more extreme the emotion—whether red rage or violet love.
Thea had always been hesitant about engaging with these two extremes. She strongly disliked going to extremes.
Now this minor character had given her a chance to contact the emotional spectrum outside the traditional ring constructs. Unlike the complete emotional essence contained in a ring, an individual's anger had limits.
If Thea faced anger itself directly, she'd definitely be affected. But facing a metahuman while possessing divine status—a god confronting a human—the chance of mental imbalance dropped to near zero.
"Come then. Let me see your mental world." Thea's finger traced lightly through the air, carving a mysterious rune onto the middle-aged man's forehead. The basement chains rattled loudly from spiritual winds bleeding into the physical realm. The man's expression turned contemplative as scene after scene, like slides, was projected throughout the room.
A childhood spent dropping out of school, a youth spent stealing cars and running with gangs—these life experiences were meaningless. Thea skipped the first thirty years entirely, focusing on the more recent events.
The middle-aged man's face went deathly pale as she read his memories with near-brutal directness.
Thea continued flipping through his recollections, gradually piecing together this man's life story.
He'd loved painting but had become colorblind after an accident involving head trauma. Only dark pigments registered in his brain. Among all colors, he favored red exclusively.
In his desperate circumstances, he'd had a strange encounter.
The Particle Accelerator explosion's aftershocks had struck him. His memories immediately after were extremely hazy—he vaguely recalled spilling a can of red paint into his eyes just before losing consciousness.
His subsequent memories were even more chaotic. Thea had to search online to fill in the gaps. After waking, the emotional spectrum's impact had been too severe—he'd babbled incoherently and, after several examinations, had been committed to a psychiatric facility. He'd only recently regained enough lucidity to be released.
The guy had nerves of steel. His first action after getting out? Robbing a bank. Then he'd brazenly hit a convenience store, somehow managing to send the Flash into a rage during his morning jog. That was his entire first day of freedom.
What a rich and colorful life, Thea thought sarcastically, reviewing the complete timeline like watching a movie in reverse. She replayed the moment he'd gained his abilities several times over.