The ships were loaded.
The vaccine vials were packed into a protective crate, with multiple backups prepared just in case.
The Hulk-strength syringes were sterilized and ready to use - Clint had even modified two into arrows that would fit his bow.
The Wellspring was removed from its case aboard the helicarrier and stowed in cold storage aboard the lead Quinjet.
The team was ready.
Steve had ordered everyone who could to take a four-hour power nap before they departed and, for once, nearly everybody had listened. Now, as Mulder looked around the hangar, he could see Steve checking his shield, Tony running diagnostics on his latest suit, Natasha limbering up with yoga moves, and Scully manipulating a ball of healing energy between her hands which were partially covered by the gloves Tony had developed for her. The team looked determined, resolute, and - honestly - scared. Mulder was grateful for that. If they were scared, it meant they understood what they were going up against.
For his part, Mulder felt underprepared. He had no specialist equipment, just his S.H.I.E.L.D. issued firearms which he had already checked at least five times. He wouldn't be with the Avengers team - something he hated even though he understood it - instead, he would be part of a perimeter of highly trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with orders to kill if the Hulk broke containment while infected with Purity. Mulder knew as well as anyone that no regulation weapon would take down the Hulk, that wasn't even the plan, but he had agreed to be part of the team simply because it gave him permission to be on the ground close to Scully instead of back at the helicarrier.
Feeling a tap on his shoulder, Mulder turned to find the Gunmen and Skinner standing behind him.
"We wanted to wish you good luck," Byers said. The Gunmen would remain on board for the duration of the mission, part of a top S.H.I.E.L.D. Intelligence team that would track events from the sky and lead the response if things went south.
"I think we're going to need it," Mulder admitted.
A whistle from the other side of the hangar caught his attention and Mulder turned to see Steve looking at him and tapping his wrist. It was time. Behind Steve, Nat was boarding the lead Quinjet but Scully was hanging around at the base of the ramp, clearly waiting for him.
"Gotta go," he murmured to the guys, shaking Skinner's hand and accepting a hug from Frohike - not that the other man gave him much of a choice in the matter. He walked over to meet Scully nodding at Steve as he went.
"Wrap it up quick," Steve told him as he turned to board the jet, but his voice was warm and understanding.
"We'll get through this, right?" Mulder asked Scully.
"We've got through worse," she agreed, although he could feel the fear underlying her words. The two stood in silence for a moment until Scully took a deep breath. "See you on the other side," she half-whispered, turning and vanishing into the jet before he could reply. Suddenly bereft, Mulder stood, frozen in place until the ramp began to rise and almost knocked him over. Blinking to clear his thoughts, he backed away from the now slowly rotating jet and off the platform before it could begin to rise up, carrying the jet to the flight deck.
"Mulder!"
He turned to see one of the other intelligence officers waving him over to one of the other Quinjets. Seven of the jets were preparing to depart and Mulder half-jogged over to the one he had been assigned to, climbing up the ramp and taking his seat. As he strapped into the flight seat between two other agents, all he could think about was how he had received a warmer send-off from Frohike than from his own partner.
Aboard the lead Quinjet, Scully was sitting stewing in her own thoughts while the rest of the team bustled around her. Given the location of the helicarrier and the speed of the jet, it would take an estimated 75 minutes to reach the agreed coordinates in Antarctica, more than enough time to brood herself into a darker place than she knew she should be in.
Nat dropped into the seat opposite and stared at her.
"Talk it out," she said, her tone accepting no rebuttals. "I need you with me on this, not distracted by whatever is going on in your head."
Scully huffed a half-laugh and met her eyes.
"I barely even said goodbye to Mulder," she told Nat, "I just didn't know what to say, and I could see the look of pain in his eyes. What if one of us doesn't come back?"
"I've never known you to think that way before a mission."
"I've never had this much at stake. It's wonderful that Mulder came back, but it's made going out on missions so much harder emotionally than I ever anticipated. I don't know how to process this fear."
"Process it the same way we always do. Examine it. Accept it. Then go out there and get the job done."
"And do it again and again and again. You saw Mulder's medical report Nat, you know what that means."
"I do. It means you two might finally get a shot at a happy ending. But today, today we fight and we save the world again."
"How many times are we gonna do this?"
Natasha looked her dead in the eye.
"As many times as it takes."
"So this is it huh?"
"Yep."
The team stood around the perspex box that now held the alien fetus they had recovered from the house in Milford, each one staring at the otherworldly object with expressions ranging from disgust to curiosity to outright fear. Scully, for her part, felt something akin to nostalgia looking at its strange, hunched shape. The last time she had laid eyes on the little creature she had still been new to the X-Files, still yet-to-be abducted, still innocent to most of what was truly going on in the world. She found herself wondering if she would return to that state of ignorance now if offered the chance but quickly dismissed the idea. The last few decades had proven that ignorance was no guarantee of safety and at least now she felt that she was doing some good in the world by trying to change it for the better. Still, looking into the hollow eyes of the fetus, she couldn't help but feel jealous of the person she had once been, the Dana Scully who still had friends and went on dates and whose body hadn't yet been ravaged by cancer and alien DNA. Looking up at the faces of the team, she dismissed the feelings instantly.
"Do you think it felt anything?" Bruce asked quietly, not looking away from the alien.
"Who cares?" Clint replied, "it's here to destroy us."
"No," Scully told him, "this one was an innocent. We can't allow the crimes of its species to color our perspectives on it. Imagine if someone was to treat a human baby that way."
"While I think it's great that we're getting philosophical here, the temperature here is doing nothing for my anatomy so can we please get on with this?" Tony piped up.
Scully looked around them. They were standing on a flat area of ground that formed part of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, about 100 miles from the research base of the same name where Scully remembered recovering from her only other trip this far south. She vaguely recalled being rescued by the team Mulder had somehow convinced to commandeer an LC-130 and fly him and a pair of Sno-Cats to the Pole of Inaccessibility (Pol) before he trekked out alone to find her. The team had arrived in the backup Sno-Cat not long after they had made it to the surface, driven them back to the Pol, and airlifted them to McMurdo General Hospital. At the time she had vowed never to set foot on the frozen continent again, and yet here she was.
Almost at the horizon, a ring of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents surrounded them, standing at such a distance that they appeared as little more than equally spaced black dots. She knew that one of those spots was Mulder but she had no idea which one. That was probably a good thing. Knowing where he was might tempt her to keep looking in that direction and losing focus was something she couldn't afford to do.
"Are we ready?" Steve asked the team. One by one they all confirmed that they were. Bruce was last to confirm. He looked nervous, the way he always did before a guaranteed Code Green, but magnified. Scully stepped forward, holding a small portable heat source. She lifted the Wellspring carefully from the perspex case and placed it down on top of the device. Within seconds, she saw droplets of water beginning to run down the outside of the cylindrical container. It was beginning to thaw.
For a long time, nothing seemed to happen. The team watched as the droplets of water became small rivulets but there was no sound beyond that of the frozen winds blowing through the tundra. Then, Scully became aware of a faint vibration beneath her feet.
"Does anyone else feel that?" she asked, but there was no need, all the others were now looking down at their feet too, trying to sense where the sensation was coming from. Instinctively, Tony and Thor took off, ready to swoop down and grab their teammates if the need arose and Scully looked around to the ring of dots surrounding them, seeing that they were all moving around now, clearly able to feel the same thing she was.
"The Wellspring!" Steve called. Scully looked up and saw that the eyes of the fetus were now oozing a continuous stream of black oil. The oil coalesced at the bottom of the container then began crawling up and over its lip in what appeared to be a trail of black worms, all following in a straight line that was aimed directly at Bruce. Bruce stood his ground. Scully saw him take a deep breath, then she watched as his features began to grow and distort, changing him from Bruce Banner to The Hulk.
"Code Green," she heard Tony announce into the comm system as if anyone wasn't able to visually detect the change.
As she watched, the line of black oil worms reached the Hulk's foot and began to climb their way up, dissolving into his skin and sliding up his legs.
As the vibration around her grew to an earthquake, Scully looked down again and had to stifle a scream. The ice beneath her was changing, growing steadily blacker. She leaped back and watched in horror as the blackness erupted like a tidal wave surrounding Bruce. It swallowed him, coating him entirely. He looked like an abomination.
"How will we know when it's all here?" Steve shouted.
"I don't know!" Scully shouted back as the Avengers team retreated in tandem, each of them watching in horror as the Hulk roared and fought against the alien invader that now permeated his very being. She looked down, the ice had returned to normal. "I think that might be all of it."
"Are you sure?" Steve called back.
"No."
She met his eyes across the frozen Antarctic wasteland and he nodded. Every member of the team now extracted a syringe filled with the Purity vaccine and, unwillingly, advanced on the Hulk.
Thanks to his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued magnification goggles, even from his distant vantage point, Mulder could see the shape of the Hulk outlined against the blinding white terrain. The shape raged and roared, trying to fight off an impossible enemy that was now a part of him. He watched as the Avengers took turns moving in toward him with syringes in hand. Steve had gone first, going for a direct approach with his shield held high but the Hulk had swatted him away in an instant. After Steve, Tony had tried dive-bombing in, then Thor had attempted to knock him out with his hammer but only succeeded in enraging him further. Clint's first attempt at using the syringe arrows had gone wide which left only Scully and Nat. The two women launched at the Hulk together from behind, each aiming at one of his shoulders and landing precisely. The Hulk roared, shaking violently from side to side trying to dislodge them. Scully had fallen first, thrown at least 50 feet onto her back and that had distracted Natasha for the split second that the Hulk needed to throw her off too. Before the Hulk had chance to recover his balance, Steve was sliding in low using his shield to protect him and aiming the syringe at the Hulk's leg but the Hulk spotted him and swung his leg out, sending the shield flying out like a frisbee and almost crushing Steve who had to scramble away to avoid the Hulk's heel connecting heavily with his skull.
"They're getting pummeled over there," one of the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents muttered into the open comm channel.
"Take aim but don't fire," another said, "we don't have orders to fire until it looks like he'll breach our perimeter."
Mulder raised his weapon and began tracking the Hulk, hating how the Avengers - Scully in particular - kept moving through his target line. How was he supposed to try and help bring down the Hulk without hitting one of them?
Tony was now laying down a line of fire to try and hold the Hulk in one place, Steve and Thor were working with him to create three sides of an imaginary box while Dana, Nat, and Clint took turns trying every imaginable way to reach the Hulk long enough to administer the vaccination before being hurled away.
"OK this boss fight is getting tedious," Tony announced over their comms, breaking off from firing, "it's obvious none of us can do this alone, we need a strategy. Talk to me."
"I wanna try something," Scully called back. "Steve, Tony, Thor, keep using your box strategy. Nat - I need your support. Clint - keep him contained in there."
Mulder watched as the team moved into position, Steve, Tony, and Thor working to once again create their three-sided invisible box and Clint firing arrows to hold the fourth and final line. Scully had crouched down in front of that final imaginary wall. Nat was crouched behind her with her hands on Scully's shoulders, steadying her. As Mulder watched, the air around Scully began to ripple. She was building a charge between her hands but it was a charge far bigger than Mulder had ever seen her handle before. Within seconds, it had grown to nearly three feet in diameter, a roiling, pulsing ball of pure energy.
"What is that?" one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents shouted down the comms.
"Don't fire!" Mulder shouted back, an edge of panic lacing his voice, "It's Scully!"
"Since when could she do that?!" someone else asked but they never received an answer. The energy ball had grown at least another foot in diameter and Scully had risen to her feet.
"Clint, retreat!" she screamed, "Tony, Steve, Thor - brace yourselves!"
With an almighty shriek, she pushed the ball forward with her palms, aiming it squarely at the Hulk who didn't have time to react. The energy ball hit him square in the chest and the air simply ignited. Mulder and the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were forced to lower their weapons to protect their eyes from the blinding flash. The boom knocked many of them off their feet as the shockwave hit them with enough force that Mulder felt as if a nuclear bomb had been detonated. When his eyes adjusted and he looked back to where the team had been standing, he could see no sign of any of them. Panicking, he began to run forward.