Chapter 7
VIETNAM MEMORIAL
5:38 A.M.
Fox Mulder had seen a lot, inside the Bureau and outside of it. As someone who'd been on record multiple times over the past quarter of a century advocating not only that extraterrestrials existed, but that the government should be putting all its energy towards making contact before he'd had his own close encounter, he had never quite lost his sense of wonder at the paranormal. It may have got stagnant for long periods, but it was still there, waiting to emerge.
That said, he had to admit that his first encounter with Supergirl was something of a disappointment. He and Scully had shown up about twenty minutes before sunrise expecting that Supergirl would make the grand entrance that had been covered by so many TV cameras and shaky Iphones. It therefore came as something of a disappointment for the two of them to arrive, and find that Cat Grant and Supergirl were already there.
"If I didn't know you better, Mulder, I'd say you were expecting something grander," Scully said. "You're about to have a meeting an honest to God superhero, and you don't exactly seem thrilled."
"I just…" he trailed off.
"You wanted to her fly out of the sky, and make a perfect three point landing," Scully finished. "Mulder, this is supposed to be a secret rendezvous. A sonic boom would kind of attract unnecessary attention, don't you think?"
Mulder looked a little sheepish. "Well, maybe Wonder Woman won't let me down."
"Don't get ahead of yourself Mulder," Scully said. "One feminist superhero icon at a time."
Cat Grant turned around. "I hope you know what you're doing, Mulder," she told him. "It's not exactly a great idea to leave National City unguarded for very long."
Scully looked at Supergirl. "My partner's going to remain taciturn as ever," she said slowly. "But I'd like to say upfront, it's a privilege that you took time out of your busy schedule to meet with us."
"Trust me when I say, the honor's mine," Supergirl said. "You were trying to protect this planet from alien invasion before I was even sent here. And from what I understand, you didn't have even a hundredth of the resources that are available now."
"How do you know about us?" Mulder asked.
"When Miss Grant began pursuing the story, she made contact with Alex Danvers, someone who has a job that similar to the one you once had," Supergirl said.
"It's really her you owe the gratitude to," Cat told her. "Without her work, we wouldn't have the files, which means you wouldn't have them now."
"You've read the files," Mulder addressed himself to Supergirl. "What do you know about the invasion we tried to stop?"
He's not wasting any time. "Nothing that would help you," Supergirl said apologetically. "I know of alien shape shifters, I know about alien viruses, I know about aliens with toxic blood. I don't know of any that spent the 20th century trying to conquer the Earth. And the idea that there's any kind of shadow government clearing a path for them is complete news to me."
"That part I didn't expect you to know about," Mulder said, surprisingly. "Everything I've heard about the last few years is built on the fear of aliens taking over." He paused. "And to be upfront, I'm not sure how much I could help you there. The Syndicate – which was in charge of it was slaughter in 1999 – and the last person who I know for certain was in connection with it, presumably died in 2002. I have no doubt they're still out there, but they've probably taken a new form."
Cat Grant looked at him. "I went through most of the files. You really never had any names for any of the conspirators?"
Scully answered this time. "They seemed to delight in being nameless. The one who was are biggest threat – we just called him the Smoking Man. Even when we got a name for him, we're not even sure it was real."
"Wait a minute, you had one?" Supergirl said.
This time Cat answered. "They found one in '99. C.G.B. Spender. Wife of Cassandra, who was murdered at El Rico, father of Jeffrey, an FBI agent who was assassinated supposedly by his own father three days later." She looked at them. "I've been trying to dig up information on him using your father's name. I keep coming up with almost nothing."
"Almost nothing is more than I ever got," Mulder asked. "What do you know?'
"He worked with the State Department during the height of the Red Scare," Cat told him. "There are travel vouchers of him going to Hawaii in 1953 to interview a man with severe radiation burns. We have travel records of him making flights to Tunisia starting in the 1960s and lasting almost til the end of the 20TH century. Most of them had to do with the collection of the reserves of the smallpox virus, which I know is somehow tied to your work. There are connections to him and your father up until 1973, which according to your own files is when your sister was abducted."
Scully gave a smile. "That's a hell of a lot of work, considering we're positive C.G.B. Spender wasn't even his real name."
"Well, don't get too thrilled," Cat told them. "There's no record of him after the inferno at El Rico. Until you told me about seeing him in 2002, I assumed he'd died there."
"That's a good term: assumed dead," Mulder said. "Funny story. In June of 1997, he was shot in my apartment, supposedly he lost so much blood that there was no way he could've survived. Yet he showed up in the FBI offices in May of 1998. I'm positive he orchestrated the X-Files being shut down then. Then in the spring of 2000, he was supposedly dying of brain cancer, breathing through a hole in his neck. That should've been enough to kill him right then, but he got thrown down a flight of stairs. Kind of interesting that we managed to find him alive in a mesa in New Mexico two years later."
It said a lot for the state of the world that Cat seemed a little more shocked as to what they were suggesting. "Did they kill him then?"
"I saw two black helicopters blow that place to smithereens," Mulder said grimly. "No living thing could've survived it. But then, you'd say the same thing about a seventy-five year old with terminal cancer being thrown down a flight of stairs.
Supergirl had seen some pretty remarkable back from the dead stories the last couple of years. This, however, was bordering on incredulity. She decided to let this go for now, and concentrate on something she could handle. "What about the bounty hunters or Jeremiah Smith? Do you think they could be lying in wait?"
"The last time I saw either of them was around the time of Mulder's abduction," Scully told her. "I killed one before he could tell me anything. And I last saw Smith disappearing on to a spaceship. After I left the X-Files, it seemed that they'd taken on a different form, but I'm not necessarily convinced that was ever really them."
Cat considered this for a moment. "How were they different?"
"They had great physical strength." Scully paused, then spoke reluctantly to Supergirl. "Kind of the way you'd be if you weren't on our side. I saw one of them hit a man so hard, they knocked his head off."
"Why the hell didn't you come out with this earlier?" Cat demanded.
"For one thing, it didn't match any of the aliens that we'd spent seven years chasing." Mulder told her "And for another, when you cut them, shot them, they bled. They just didn't die when you killed them. The man I was tried for killing, he was one of these so-called alien replacements."
Supergirl was stunned at this. There'd been some information like this in the X-Files, but as it had happened after Mulder and Scully were out of the Bureau, she'd never been sure how seriously to take it. "I thought you didn't kill him."
"Oh I did kill him." Mulder told them. "He just got better. But I've done my research. There's nothing concrete demonstrating that these aliens bare any resemblance to Kryptonians. They can't run like you, they can't jump like you, they sure as hell can't fly. I honestly was inclined to believe they were part of a government conspiracy. Just not one connected to aliens. Or at least any alien we went after."
"So they're just what, some modern version of the Terminator," Cat asked.
"The government spent much of the Cold War trying to find a way to design a superior soldier, " Mulder told them. "We investigated a couple of those cases early in our time on the X-Files. I always felt that they were part of this level of the conspiracy. Scully would've argued we were chasing that for a while. Our military experiment on human beings using the science of Axis powers. This may have been one of the end results."
Kara thought for a moment of that monster she'd battled with Clark just a few weeks ago. It had seemed to be the work of some kind of genetic project to combat aliens. Was it possible… "What do you think about Cadmus?" she asked Mulder.
"I think if it is a force trying to take on the 'alien menace', Supergirl wasn't quite sure how to deal with the fact that he actually did air quotes over the last two words, "whoever's behind is being really bold, considering that whatever conspiracies against aliens have spent at least seventy years in the shadows."
"Do you think it could be your shadow government?" Cat Grant had clearly caught on.
"Not for a second," Mulder responded instantly. "You don't spend a lifetime as the puppetmasters and then come out on stage for a bow because of a PR battle."
"Maybe you do. You just pretend you're a different puppet."
Scully had never made these kinds of metaphors before. "What are you talking about?" Supergirl asked.
"Michael Kristchgau told you everything that you believed in was a lie," Scully said. "That everything involving aliens was part of a cover up for a buildup of the military industrial complex. And you were pretty sold on it for nearly a year."
"Yes, but it was bullshit," Mulder told her. "He even admitted as much to you before he was murdered."
"What if it was only a half-truth?" Scully told him. "What if they were both true?"
Cat Grant suddenly picked up on what they were getting at. "Operation Paper Clip. The leper camps in Virginia. Your own abduction. You're saying that was the cover story."
"Our own government has been experimenting on us since the Cold War," Mulder said. "They just didn't tell us the truth on where they were getting the textbooks for the experiments."
"Cadmus is a part of this," Supergirl told them, almost to herself.
"Even if this is true, we still need proof," Scully told them.
Cat looked at them. "I might have an idea where you can start. I looked at the file the first time you and Scully were kicked out of the FBI," she said. "You said you found a mountain of files at the Strughold Mining Company."
"Don't get your hopes up," Mulder told her. "A few months afterwards, Scully went back down there. All of the vaults had been sealed with concrete. Clearly, they moved on them the second we visited."
"Maybe, but the Strughold Corporation still exists," She pulled out her phone. "The head of the business, Conrad, was clearly the kind of person your Syndicate would've done dealings with. There were rumors that he built his fortune off Jewish fleeing Austria just prior to the invasion. And he had vast holdings in Tunisia."
"Is it too much to hope for that he was immolated somewhere in 1999?" Mulder asked.
"No such luck. He died in his sleep in 2004." Cat told them grimly. "But his nephew Franz runs the corporation now. And it looks like evil runs in the family. The Planet did a series linking him to the coup in the Ukraine a couple of years back."
"That doesn't necessarily hold true that he's part of it," Mulder said. "The Syndicate may have been many things, but the one thing they would never do is help Russia with anything."
"New generation, new way of thinking, Mulder," Scully reminded him. "Besides that would fit the side of the conspiracy we'd been looking into now."
Cat Grant turned to Supergirl. "I realize I may be being presumptuous with your time, but…"
"Where exactly are the headquarters?" Supergirl asked.
"Munich."
Supergirl looked around. "Be careful." Mulder told her. "I don't know if these people would have kryptonite in their vaults, but I'm damn sure they know of ways to kill aliens that we haven't even thought of yet."
"Thank you for trusting me."
"Didn't say I did yet." Supergirl must have raised an eyebrow in a very Scully like way, because he followed that with: "But you're winning me over."
Supergirl nodded, and was gone in a flash.
"Is it all right to have a bucket list after you've been dead already?" Mulder asked, after the wind died down. "Because I'm pretty sure seeing that was on it."
Cat Grant shook her head. "And I thought I had a strange life." She gathered herself. "That's the first part of our agreement. You ready for me to live up to the second?"
Mulder and Scully exchanged that silent telepathy they had mastered over a decade at the FBI and beyond. "They'd be willing to meet with us?" Scully said first. "We're not going to need some kind of code word clearance?"
"They probably won't let you see the big board," Cat admitted. "But I know a couple of the people who work there, and considering that I had to get their assistance to get a look at your files in the first place, I'd say they'd be willing to meet with you."
Mulder looked at her. "I've had some top-heavy informants in my time. And they were assassinated trying to help me. And that may have been a kinder fate than what eventually happened to the third."
Cat raised an eyebrow of her own. "Are you telling me this is my last chance to take the blue pill? Because I have a pretty good idea just how deep the rabbit hole is."
"Trust me, Catherine, you don't," Scully told her. "But I don't expect you to walk away, either."
"I'm just making sure you're fairly warned," Mulder told her.
"Thank you? Now, will you come with me to my plane? There's a lot to go through before we get to National City."
DEO WAR ROOM
Alex Danvers walked in. "I just talked with Supergirl," she said. "Cat Grant finally managed to get Mulder and Scully to accept our help. "
"How long did it take?" Winn asked.
"Three separate meetings."
Winn shook his head. "It only took her two to land the Emperor of Japan," he said. "She really believes they're worth."
"You've seen what was in those files, Agent Schott, " Hank/Jonn reminded him. "You honestly saying that's not a bigger deal?"
"Oh, I have no doubt we need their help," Winn said. "But when I talked to James, he said they might not want to take it. And given everything they went through back then, I'm actually a little stunned the Grant Treatment worked so easily."
"Based on what she was told, Mulder and Scully think we have more to worry about then they do." Alex said. "And given the amount of headaches we went through just the past few months, they may have a point."
"You're probably right," Jonn agreed. "The government was barely okay with our field of our operations when we were keeping the Earth safe from invasion. We start poking to see where the bodies are buried, we're going to get hit from more angles then when they found out that I wasn't the real Hank Henshaw."
"Maybe they've already started," Winn told them. "Ever since Cadmus came on line, I'm beginning to think they at least share a couple of people with this Syndicate that the X-Files spent so much time trying to nail down."
Alex walked over to the keyboard. "Cat and Supergirl are apparently thinking along the same lines," she told him. "You got anything that might be able to back it up?"
"I've been doing tech analysis on that blast we got from them two days ago," Winn told them. "Most of its using technology that's been on the Dark Web for awhile. But there's an older code running through it. It took me a few hours to isolate it, but we've seen it before." He paused. "It's NSA."
This was a big deal. The NSA had been one of the DEO's biggest bureaucratic nightmares, usually when it came to fighting over budgets, but most of it had stayed at that level. "You're sure about that?" Jonn asked.
"Really wish I wasn't." Winn told them. "Now the NSA comes up more than a few times in the X-Files proper, but the last time it shows up may be the most relevant. In early 2002, when Scully was out of the Bureau and Mulder was in hiding, the NSA reached out to Scully. The pertinent part is the NSA had been running a covert surveillance programs on many of its citizens a full decade before the Patriot Act gave them license to do so. "
Alex and Jonn were well aware of this, and had been royally angry about it, but had never been in a position to put up much of an argument, considering that a lot of the early tech for much of the DEO had come from this kind of technology. It would've been a case of the pot calling the kettle green.
"The files give any more detail than that," Jonn asked.
"There's one source who's not reliable, and one who was," Winn told him. "Which is shorthand for saying one killed the other. You should also know that this is one of those files that Mulder's replacements seem to have gone out of their way to gut."
This came as something of a shock. They'd known that the last year of the X-Files existence, it had been run by two other agents: John Doggett, who had been called in to head the manhunt for Mulder, and Monica Reyes, a colleague of Doggett's who was, as far as they could see, the only agent who had volunteered to the X-Files. Much of their work seemed connected less to the alien invasion Mulder and Scully had spent seven years tracking, and to something that Doggett referred to as the 'supersoldier' program. They had assumed that Doggett, who had no experience with the paranormal before, was just using this as a euphemism for anything he considered alien. This was the first sign that there might have been something more underhanded than that.
"You maybe Skinner did something to the file before we got to it?" Winn asked.
"Was there something in the case that might have affected his agents?" Alex asked.
"Just something about their meeting when they had to do with – Scully's son," Winn frowned. "Think he was trying to cover for Mulder and Scully having an affair?"
"That would only make sense if they were still in the Bureau," Jonn said thoughtfully. "Mulder was fired a month before Scully gave birth."
"There might be another reason," Alex said thoughtfully. "After Scully was abducted, the experiments performed on her gave her cancer, and left her barren. Now, there's no record of this in the official X-Files, but William Mulder's birth certificate was issued in May of 2001."
There were implications here that were really dark even for an agency that had to deal with alien invasions. "You think Scully's pregnancy had some kind of paranormal implications herself?" Jonn said.
"Maybe," Winn said reluctantly. "She didn't disclose until after Mulder was found dead. And there are a couple of files around 2001 that seem to deal with things are kind of frightening. There's a Duffy Haskell who came to see Scully and Doggett in January of 2001, claiming his wife was a multiple abductee, that she was given cancer from experiments, that she was rendered infertile, yet gave birth. To something that would be more familiar to Mr. Spock than Dr. Spock. "
"Has that file been gutted?" A nasty suspicion was starting to form in Alex's head.
"With one blank that I can fill in," Winn said. "A week before Scully gave birth, Doggett was called in to investigate the murder of a Dr. Frederick Parenti. Parenti was Haskell's obstetrician. A couple of days after this, Scully gave birth to William. In Macon, Georgia. In the middle of what could be charitably called a ghost town. I don't think it's because all the maternity suites in DC were booked."
There were files of aliens and humans having children together in the DEO, of course. It had been going for awhile, mostly between those species of aliens who were compatible with human biology. (Alex had never had this conversation with Kara, and hoped like hell she'd never have to.) But all of these matches had been made out of love. This was the first one that Alex had heard of sounded like a science experiment where the mother's feelings had never been in consideration. It sounded like Scully and Mulder had known this, and had gone out of their way to make sure that no one in the Bureau knew. Or maybe they hadn't known it, and had found out in ways that were more frightening for a new mother to contemplate.
"Is any of this relevant to what we're trying to find in connection with Cadmus?" she asked instead.
"I know that the DEO would never sanction anything like what seems to be hinted at here," Winn said honestly. "Cadmus – I'm beginning to think they might do anything to have an edge over what they consider an alien menace."
She considered this. "Until Mulder and Scully decide to tell us about their son, I think we owe them the decency not to dig into their personal lives any more than we already have. Supergirl's following up a lead that might be able to give us answers to one section of the conspiracy. We'll concentrate on that for now."
"Agreed," Jonn said. "The NSA angle is going to cause enough problems, and it's going to be difficult enough to get Mulder and Scully to trust us. They find out we've literally been going into their bedroom for information, they'll disappear again. Probably somewhere not even we can find them."
Winn actually looked relieved to hear this. "I'll start following up on that."
What nobody on the DEO could've known was, at that very moment, Scully and Mulder were gently beginning to reveal details of their personal lives that they had never even told their colleagues on the X-Files about.
Cat had assured them that she had no intention of telling anybody about their personal lives. "I've never been that kind of journalist," she reminded them. "Though I thought Bill Clinton's behavior was disgusting, I thought the way my colleagues handled Monicagate may have been a low point in my career. And this doesn't even come close to meeting the smell test."
"We appreciate your discretion," Scully said. "Frankly, I was our colleagues at the Bureau had had more. From the moment I starting working on the X-Files, I'm pretty sure there were pools being formed as to when we'd start sleeping together."
"The same pools started when I began working at the Planet," Cat said. "Which wouldn't bother me as much as the fact that half the people who bet in it were woman – and they were betting against me."
"I guess my gentlemanly behavior preceded me," Mulder said.
"How many of your Playboys kept getting sent in the Bureau mail?" Scully said with a raised eyebrow.
"The journalism in the magazine was top notch," Both women were silent. "Come on, Catherine, back me up here."
"I really don't care about who did what, and where, and with whom," Cat said slowly. "The only thing I really need to know is that did this at any time affect how your work went."
She knew she was going to be stepping on to a mine field here, but these questions had to be asked. Besides, Cat had a feeling that Mulder and Scully wanted to tell at least this part of the story.
"In February of 2000, Scully and I finally gave in to what we'd been fighting against for six and a half years," Mulder said slowly. "Part of it was brought out of grief. My mother had just committed suicide, and not long after I concluded that Samantha was dead."
This was the only file that Cat Grant had read that she distrusted the veracity of. Mulder had been vulnerable in the days leading up to that file, and his conclusion had all the hallmarks of a hallucination. Even considering how bizarre they were, that Mulder had just been willing to give up on a thirty year quest based on 'children in starlight' was hard for her to accept. She decided not to argue it though, because she knew she was going to be ripping off the scabs of a lot of old wounds.
"In July of that year, after Mulder was abducted," Scully took a deep breath. "I found out I was pregnant. You've read the files, I think you know just how impossible that was."
"How did you deal with it?" Cat asked.
"I didn't," Scully admitted. "I threw all of my energy into the manhunt for Mulder. I only told Skinner about it. I didn't even tell the man who got assigned to the X-Files as a result."
"That would be John Doggett," Cat told her. "Have you managed to keep track of him over the years?"
"Unfortunately, no." Mulder said. "The last either of us saw of him was at my trial. He and Monica Reyes – you know about her as well" Cat nodded, "agreed to testify on my behalf. As a result, the X-Files were shut down, and they were reassigned. We haven't seen them since."
Cat had managed to have some luck tracking them down, but before she went any further she had a feeling Scully and Mulder needed to tell this part of their story.
"About a month into my second trimester, Doggett and I received work from an a man who claimed to be the husband of an alien abductee – a Duffy Haskell." Scully's eyes looked far away. "Her story was a mirror of mine, including the fact that she had been rendered infertile and had a baby. Except when she gave birth, the baby looked like an alien."
"Hadn't you heard stories like that before?" Cat asked.
"The man who supervised her pregnancy was a Dr. Parenti," Scully took a deep breath. "Parenti was my obstetrician. I tried not to panic, even after I was put through a series of deceptions, that led me to believe something was wrong with my unborn child. Then I kept distracting myself." She looked at Cat. "You've read the files. You know what kind of distractions there were."
"When did it get to the point where you couldn't ignore it?"
"When someone started killing people connected with my baby. The first of those so-called alien replacements Mulder talked about." Scully said slowly. "And then people started saying my child was some kind of miracle."
"Every child is a miracle," Cat Grant told them. "I don't have a great relationship with my son, but he's still a miracle."
"Was your son ever described in terms more human than human?" Scully asked slowly. "Did they send the terminator to stop you from giving birth?"
Now was not the time for Cat to start making commentary that there might very well be some children out there who were alien born who'd been chased for the same reason. It wouldn't have helped, and she had a feeling that most of those stories had happened after Scully had given birth. "Which bring to my biggest question, Mulder, and you damn well better answer honestly," Cat asked instead. "After she gave birth, why did you disappear again?"
Mulder had the decency to look very uncomfortable. "There was a hit out on my life," he started slowly. "And Scully begged me to disappear."
"You've had hits out on your life before," Cat bore down. "And I have a feeling these files are just full of examples of you never listening to your partner even when she was right. Why did you listen when she was clearly wrong?"
There was a very long pause. "I begged her to come with me," Mulder finally said. "She was on maternity leave. Doggett and Reyes could handle the X-Files. I had no intention of leaving the woman I loved, and my son behind. I couldn't imagine how hard it had been to get by those months she thought I was dead. I thought this might kill her."
Scully's iron façade was breaking now. "I couldn't leave my mother alone," she said with tears in her eyes. "She'd been through so much because of me. Melissa was murdered, I'd had cancer, I couldn't take her grandson away from her, possibly never to be seen again. And I knew no matter how much I tried to explain, if I disappeared, she would never forgive me." Now was not the time to tell Cat Grant that had happened anyway.
Cat seemed to understand. "All right. Thank you for telling me."
Scully actually seemed a little surprised. "You don't want to know about our son?"
"Does it have something to do with what were about to work on?" Cat asked.
There was a much longer pause. "Maybe. Maybe not," Mulder said finally.
"Then the only question I have about him is, do you want me to try and find him?"
A different kind of look passed between the two partners – an equal mixture of hope and despair. "I gave him up for adoption more than fourteen years ago," Scully finally said. "And I made your sure that it was sealed and that there was no way to trace it back to me."
There was a lot buried here, but Cat was determined not to ask unless they gave direct answers. "Everything leaves a digital trail somewhere, Dana," she said deliberately. "Maybe you thought you had to protect your son, and that's why you did it. But I know one thing for certain. Even if you thought you couldn't protect him, I know that Supergirl can."
Now there was definite hope on both their faces. "She'd be willing to do that for virtual strangers?" Mulder asked.
"That's the kind of people she loves to help," Cat reminded them.
They both nodded. "All right. But not until this part of it is over," Scully said.
This part had a lot of implications, but Cat decided not to press it for now. "Which leaves us with one last issue. I did some looking for Doggett and Reyes before I got on the plane. Finally managed to get some results a few hours ago."
"They're not still with the Bureau, are they?" Mulder asked.
Cat shook her head. "John Doggett stuck it out until 2007. He transferred back to the New York field office in '06. Then he rejoined the NYPD."
Scully seemed a little surprised. "Thought he'd burned his bridges there."
"They need all the help they could get." Cat told them. "Right now, he's the Lieutenant Commander of the Major Case Task Force. They handle long-term investigations, mostly into drug cartels. He's on the track to become Commissioner if he lasts long enough."
"He was always more political then I was," Mulder said. "What about Monica?"
"She retired from the Bureau in 2010," Cat told them. "After that, she kind of disappeared off the map. Rumor is she took up working with this consultancy group called The Trust made up of ex law enforcement, but its been really hard locating her."
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE
Lillian Luthor didn't respond to summons, and she didn't take orders. No one ever told Luthors what to do.
But there were some people that you couldn't afford to alienate. And there was some people who represented interests that made even people of her station have qualms about disturbing.
So less than thirty-six hours after the Cadmus blast had come over the Internet, she had received a message on her private server – one that not even her son had known about. There wasn't a return address attached. Just a time and a location.
The Luthor family had always been one that knew where all the bodies were buried, including some of people that weren't dead yet. But in their dealings, they had run into a group of people who had known where the bodies were, because they arranged for that to happen before they were born. Lillian had outlived all of those men. The missive, however, had come from one of them.
So Lillian found herself in the position that she rarely did – going to a meeting place, and not knowing who she was going to encounter. It was not a sensation she was comfortable with, and it didn't make her feel much better to know that, on one of the busiest military bases in the country, she seemed to be in the one hangar that was deserted. She didn't believe in Keyser Soze, but she knew that someone with the Consortium's power had to have arranged this.
Then she saw she wasn't alone. In the shadows, she could see someone with a lit cigarette. She knew that some people were immortal, but even for him that was ridiculous.
The illusion only persisted for a moment. The figure was clearly female. Suddenly, Lillian knew who it was - and it didn't exactly fill her with reassurance.
"That's a filthy habit," she said slowly.
"Considering what your own vices are, you're in no position to judge."
"There were easier to ways to make contact," she said slowly.
"Come on, Lillian," Monica Reyes said. "Is that any way to talk to your cousin?"
