Chapter 8
KRENALOYNSK PROVINCE
11:13 PM
"Maybe I should have called Anatoly before we got here," Oliver said slowly.
"How's he doing?" Sara asked. "You said before you went back to Star City you went back here but you never told me why."
"I told myself I was trying to uphold a promise I made to a dying woman," Oliver said. "But like everything else I was lying to myself."
"About what?"
"The first four years I was missing I kept telling myself I would do anything to see my family again," Oliver told his former lover. "By that last year I was seizing on every opportunity I could to stay away. I've always been good at lying to myself."
"No argument here," Sara said. "What lie were you telling yourself this time?"
"That I could only come back to Star City when I could be a man worthy of my father's memory," Oliver told her. "But by that point I had done so many bad things that I thought I was utterly irredeemable. The longer I stayed away, the more horrific I became. I thought I was a monster by the time I came back. And I wanted to exorcise my demons by taking it out on people who I thought were worse than me. "
Nyssa shook her head. "Was it Felicity and Diggle who convinced you to change?"
"They convinced me to change my mission and my methods," Oliver said. "I didn't think I could change. And everything that has happened over the past four years, I'm still not convinced I've done more good than harm. I see Kara and Barry out there and they have a code and principles. I'm all right if the legacy of the Arrow is that I've been a symbol for good. People may think the Green Arrow is a symbol for good, but I'm not sure he can ever erase all the evil that Oliver Queen has done in both his lives."
"Is that what you did as the Hood?" Nyssa asked. "Was all that murder to channel your rage?"
"I've thought about that a long time," Oliver said. "I spent so much time trying to convince myself it was for a higher purpose. But…" Oliver trailed off. "I think your father wanted to be his heir because of what I had done in Star City. He thought that I was killing for that higher purpose. But honestly, part of me has always been capable of that kind of violence. That whenever I made a choice – to torture or to kill, to work for people like Waller or the Bratva, it wasn't a choice at all. It's in my nature and part of me will always be drawn to people like that. "
Sara looked stunned to hear this. She had done her share of horrible things as part of the League and she'd seen Oliver do some horrific things on the island and off. But what Oliver was talking about was somehow more frightening. "Is that why you spent so much time pushing people away?" she asked. "Because you don't think you're worthy of love?"
"Let's face it, Sara," Oliver said. "Most of the people I love meet a sorry end. And quite a few of the ones who've traveled with me on this path have listened to the lesser angels of their nature. Thea thinks that the reason she did some of the things she was is because she was her father's daughter. But she's my sister, too. It cuts both ways."
None of them had to mention Laurel.
"Perhaps I have a certain lack of experience but in the world you come from, do most women finding his grim, cheerless behavior attractive? Because speaking for myself, I find it tiresome."
Was Nyssa of all people trying to break the tension? It certainly worked for Sara. "Maybe that's why your marriage would have never worked out," Sara said in a similar dry tone.
"There were other factors," Nyssa replied. "Such as the fact that his self-flagellation often causes him to become from the matter at hand."
"You know, most men would be irked to know that his former wife and girlfriend were bonding over his so-called lesser traits," Oliver said slowly. "I prefer to console myself with the knowledge that both batted for the other team."
"You were the last man I ever slept with, Ollie," Sara said with a smile. "You might consider that, too."
"All right, all right, I'll focus," Oliver said. He turned to Nyssa. "How far out are we?"
"Based on what Felicity and Diggle have told us, the road runs out in about half a mile," Nyssa told them. "We'll have to go by foot the rest of the way and it will not be easy terrain."
"For us specifically or non-civilians?" Oliver knew that members of the League had more tolerance for this than average people and he'd climbed these mountains before.
"Satellite coverage is spotty at best," Felicity said into his ear. "I'll be able to track you by GPS, but you've got to remember, the Russians don't have the best track record of official maps and based on what we know, they'll have done everything in their power to make sure there's no record of what's going on. And I have to tell you, even on my bravest days as a hack-tivist, I would have thought twice trying to hack into Russian technology."
"Even now that we have government agencies on our side?" Sara asked.
"Lyla has enough on her plate trying to handle this alien invasion; she really doesn't want to start the Cold War up again," Diggle told them. "Winn Schott is going to try and help from the DAO side of it, but he really hopes you guys don't make it too much work." He hesitated. "By the way, Agent Scully knows where you are right now."
Oliver blinked. "What's her mood?"
"According to Cisco, she's been mumbling to herself for the last half-hour indistinctly," Felicity said. "One of the phrases she keeps saying is: 'They can take care of themselves. They won't need me to save them.'"
"She really doesn't know us that well, does she?" Sara said, deadpan.
"No, but she's been in this exact same situation with Mulder too often to know how badly these things end up going," Oliver told them honestly. "And she also knows us well enough to know that the only difference is I tend to hurt more people before the team has to rescue me."
"But usually you're not halfway across the planet."
"Not helping Felicity," Diggle said.
"Did you remind her Mulder promised us eight days and last I checked we still have five of them?" Oliver countered.
"I did," Felicity admitted. "She then told me to look at a map of the area you're going to be searching, reminded me how large a territory it was and just how hard it was going to be to search it above ground. Then she started muttering something about rats and tests and how Mulder never did explain how he managed to get back from Russia twenty years ago. If this is how I sound when I start to spiral, I'm beginning to understand what you have been going through trying to interpret me the last four years."
"I tend to find it endearing by now," Oliver told her honestly.
"How long did it take to get to that point?"
"We're wasting time," Nyssa interrupted. "If the situation is indeed as you say, then it is critical that we find what we're looking for as quickly as possible."
"She's right," Sara said reluctantly. "We'll check in as often as we can, but you're right that this won't be easy or pretty."
"Good luck, " Felicity said simply. "And do your best not to get yourself killed. Again."
"I'll try," Oliver said with a smile. "We'd better hurry. The last thing we want to do is get both of them angry at once."
"Oliver Queen," Nyssa said with a straight face. "You've faced soldiers enhanced with mirakuru, the League of Assassin, a sorcerer, and alien invaders. You're afraid of Felicity Smoak and this Scully? I know how formidable Felicity can be…"
"Trust me," Oliver said sincerely. "Considering everything she's faced and that she faced most of it when I was still a child, the last thing I want to do is be on Dana Scully's bad side."
STAR LABS
1:15 PM
"I'm a little insulted," Snart was saying to Stein and Jefferson. "You staged a prison break and you didn't even ask Mick and me to join in."
"We know you have your share of experiences with those, Leonard," Stein said solemnly. "But in all honesty, you'd have had far more entertainment breaking out of the most guarder Supermax then this. The prisoners showed no desire to escape, even as their jail burnt down around them."
"I take it that's why the science brigade is helping our Fed friends with all of those kiddie clones," Mick said solemnly.
After they'd managed to leave Canada, the DAO had taken the majority of the clones back to headquarters. The Mulders had asked for four of them, all but one of them male. Given the history behind the girls, no one was that shocked as to why.
A little more than an hour ago, Stein, Jefferson and the Mulders had returned to STAR Labs and if they were subdued by what they seen, Kara Danvers had been even scarier. Even though they knew the details of what they had seen, she hadn't spoken a word to anyone, not even Barry. Everyone was terrified of saying the wrong thing to her, even though none of them could think of what the right thing was.
Eventually she and Barry had disappeared – Snart and Rory assumed because she needed to work out her aggression based on whatever she'd seen and Allen was the only one among them who can take a punch from her and survive it.
"I'm still trying to get caught up on all this," Lisa asked. "These clones, how exactly do they tie into the aliens?"
"Not even the Mulders have a clear picture," Stein admitted. "But the girls, they all have Samantha Mulder's DNA."
Leonard and Mick had gotten that much from their talk with Scully, but it was still a shock to see physical proof. Lisa, who was still far behind, looked puzzled. "So these clones they're half Samantha Mulder and half…alien?"
"The girls. No one knows who the male clones came from." Jefferson said.
"So this project has been going on for what, forty, fifty years?" Lisa asked.
"Samantha Mulder was taken in 1973," Stein said. "They spent at least a decade treating her like their own personal science project. According to her brother, some of these clones were permitted to grow to adulthood and seemed to take on her personality. "
"Scully filled us in on that part," Leonard said. "If her brother's to be believed, and looking in this room, it's hard to doubt his word, he was in a room with half a dozen of them right before this Alien Bounty Hunter killed them all."
"I'm guessing this Bounty Hunter isn't nearly as photogenic as Dog," Lisa said.
"It was their chief alien nemesis when they were at the Bureau," Jefferson said. "Though to be clear, neither of them is entirely certain it was even the same one they were fighting. They seem to all look alike."
"Perhaps that's why they have no interest in making these so called drones in more than two models," Stein pondered. "Maybe individuality doesn't matter them."
"So these things were put together with these aliens personal chemistry set?" Mick asked.
"And if these files are right, the government's been providing the aliens with the test subjects," Leonard said grimly. "One of which is in the room with us right now."
Lisa blinked. "Wait a minute," She pulled up a file. "Are you telling me that Scully at one point might have been the mother to some of these things?"
Leonard looked at his sister. "I know she was one of their lab rats for three months. They left for dead, and then she ended up getting cancer. You're telling me that wasn't enough for them to do to her?"
"According to this file, due to the experiments that were done on Scully, she was rendered incapable of ever having a child," Lisa told them. "I don't know how she became pregnant and I don't think I'm ready to ask her yet."
"Lisa, I know you and I know when you say something without thinking. This wasn't one of those times," Leonard said sternly. "What are you getting at?"
"Ok, but this puts the cherry on the shit sundae," Lisa looked at this file. "According to Mulder, as part of the experiments done on Scully, one of the experiments done on her involved the extraction of her ovaries. And rather than throw them away, these creatures seemed to take them – as well as all the others they had extracted over the decades – and use them to manufacture at least some of the clones that he encountered."
"Did the aliens do this or humans?" Mick asked grimly.
"Even if it wasn't aliens, no one with an ounce of humanity could have done a thing like this," Stein said grimly.
"That's actually what I'm getting at," Lisa did something that Leonard and Mick weren't certain she was capable of doing. She started whispering. "While you guys have been quantum leaping around the timeline, you ever go anywhere near World War II?"
Stein lowered his voice in kind. "Around there, but not in the field of battle. And if this is about the Nazi experiments, Mulder already told us about them."
"Right war, wrong part of the world," Lisa handed them a file. "Have they gotten around to mentioning a Japanese unit called 731?"
LXLXLX
Mulder had spent the entire trip home, trying his hardest not to think of Harold Pillar and that last trip he'd made when he thought he'd learned his sister's true fate. Knowing that Pillar was a fraud didn't discount the fact that he had desperately wanted to believe him and to be honest, Samantha hadn't really been the reason.
When he'd been brought to the mass graves that Ed Truelove had left in Santa's Village sixteen years ago, where they'd unearthed the bodies of twenty-four children, he had told Scully that a part of him had hoped to find Samantha there. It was one of the most horrible things he'd ever admitted to himself but it had been an earworm that had been playing in his mind ever since he had found the paper hearts of John Lee Roche and learned that there were sixteen dead girls instead of the thirteen the monster had confessed to killing. He was reminded of the father he'd visited who'd been so grateful to learn that his daughter was dead and yet just as grateful his wife was no longer alive to learn it. Was it worse to know the truth of what happened to someone who'd been missing for decades or better to go on hoping even though you know better? For sixteen years, he'd convinced himself that the knowledge had freed him.
In reality, he had wanted to stop looking. The clones of Samantha Mulder – adult and children – had caused more torment to him than they had ever caused relief. If Samantha had really been the victim of a serial killer, or even some ridiculous idea of vanishing to starlight, then at the very least her suffering was over. But looking at those clones had reminded him that Samantha's actual fate had been far worse. Her childhood and adulthood had been nothing but subjugation to scientific horrors he didn't want to imagine, all as part of a conspiracy to colonize the planet. It was bad enough that he spent his life, knowing the horrors his father – whoever it really was – had inflicted on his family and the world for some kind of greater good. Every time he saw one of those clones, child or adult, it was a visible reminder of his family's legacy.
"How do you deal with it?" he asked Samantha. "How can you just handle looking at…them?"
"It's not their fault," Samantha told him. "They may not be human, but they didn't ask for this. They may be a symbol of our parents' crimes, but I don't blame them for it."
"Is that why you didn't want to…" He couldn't finish it."
"They didn't have a say in their creation, either," Samantha said gently. "The ones we encountered over the years, they had a purpose and they certainly had a sense of ethics that their creators didn't. As for them,' she gestured towards the clones, "that's been taken out of them. The only thing about them that's human is some of the DNA that was used to create them. Everything else is gone. I have no doubt that even if we'd just left them there unharmed, every single one of those creatures would have worked until they were incapable and then disposed of. Supergirl may have liberated many of them, but no one can save them."
"Inspiring speech to the contrary, I had a lot of doubts that we can win this," Mulder said slowly. "It has nothing to do with resources or numbers; it's the personal costs that are too high. Just before I was taken, I tried to convince Scully that the FBI was right about the X-Files being shut down, but for all the wrong reasons. Everyone was moving forward and Scully and I were still in the same place. Questions being answered, no real resolution, and just more and more deaths every year. "
"You know what the consequences are if we fail," Samantha reminded him.
"And what will the personal cost be?" Mulder said. "Oliver Queen's spent four years trying to save one city. His mother's dead, he keeps losing friends of his, and he sent his son away from him so he wouldn't be part of this life. Barry spent all his adult life trying to get his father out of prison. He wasn't free a year before he died because of his own actions. Kara's lost her foster father, Alex her real one and now she can't even talk to the spirit of her mother. And those are just the major heroes; I can't even begin to count all the friends and families of those who signed on to this quest."
"What's the alternative? We just surrender the planet to the colonists?"
"For what shall it profit man if they should save the world and lose their own souls?'"
"I thought you didn't believe in God," Samantha said with a small smile.
"The Devil can misquote Scripture for his own purpose, which is what I just did," Mulder's expression hadn't changed. "Every war that has ever been thought, both sides thought they were fighting for the right reasons. And it's the winners that always get to dictate what those reasons were. I'm sure at some point the Syndicate was certain that by surrendering the planet to save themselves, they were doing the right thing. They thought that right up until the moment they were all incinerated. When that smoking son of a bitch told me the reasons why he'd done everything, I did exactly what he wanted he did twenty-five years ago. I surrendered to save the ones I loved. Scully and I are alive only because of blind luck, not of my strong beliefs."
"But you won't give up, even now. That's why I followed you all those years ago. That's why I'd do it all over again.'"
Both of them had forgotten Scully was there.
"We were on the run for our lives with death sentences on our heads," Mulder reminded her.
"And you thought I've changed my mind because they're gone?" Scully countered. "I'm not going to lie, Mulder; I'm not entirely thrilled with either course of action you took in while you were in Canada yesterday. But I'm also not going to pretend I don't understand either one of them."
"What does that say about my ability to do the right thing under the worst of circumstances?" Mulder asked.
"Most people can't do the right thing under the best of circumstances. Unlike so many of our new friends you are only human." Scully pointed out. "And as we've both learned being an alien or a metahuman doesn't necessarily make you any better at judging morality. All you can do is what seems to be the right thing at the time. Our colleagues may be stronger or faster or can fly, but that doesn't mean they're smarter. The only thing that makes us any different than them is that we have far more experience making mistakes and hope that they manage to learn from them."
"And what do we learn from this one?" Mulder asked.
"That life is worth saving, even if the people who need the saving don't know how to save themselves," Scully said. "That sometimes the forces of darkness need to know that the forces of light can play by their rules, however twisted they may be. And also, if you ever try to do anything like that to Supergirl again, I'm gonna kick your ass."
A small smile crossed Mulder's face for the first time since they'd left Canada. "You always did scare me when you got angry," he said with a smile.
"If this gets any sappier, I'm going to puke."
"Come on, Mick. I think it's kind of sweet that a couple of old farts can still be hot for each other after all these years. Gives hope to the rest of us."
Most people would have been annoyed when a potentially romantic moment had been broken up. Mulder and Scully were just glad that no bees were involved. "You didn't come here just to make commentary," Scully said to Lisa and Mick.
"I've been going through the reading, trying to see if I can get caught up on some of this madness," Lisa told them. "I have to ask: did any of this make sense while it was happening to two of you or did you just keep going with it as it unfolded?"
"I acted like it did, but at least some of the time I was faking it," Scully shot Mulder the brow. "One of us had to look like they believed what was happened, and your job in the partnership was to doubt everything."
"It was never easy when I tried your side of it," Scully turned to Lisa. "What exactly are you talking about?"
"For now, let's just focus on what's in front of us," Leonard Snart had walked over with his friend and his sister. "And in this case, I mean literally. That girl essentially has her DNA." He pointed at Samantha. "It's not clear where they got the chemical material to get the father, but from what we understand there's evidence at one point, Scully was technically the mother to some of them."
Snart acknowledged that Mulder and Scully had winced at the word mother. "Forgive my lack of tact, but if I'm reading the files, your genetic material' he pointed at Scully' was used to make the end product of several of the male clones that he ended up finding."
"I wouldn't put in those base terms, but fundamentally you're right," Mulder acknowledged.
"That makes perfect sense," Mick said in his sarcastic way.
"But you still don't know what the source for the male clones is," Lisa surmised.
"That's why we brought them here, not that it's going to be a picnic getting it," Scully said. "Considering the toxin that runs through all of these clones, none of us know how to get a blood sample."
"You told me that one of the ways to treat exposure to this was through extreme cold," Snart raised his freeze ray. "And just how cold would you need it to be?"
RUSSIAN STEPPES
For more than three hours Oliver, Sara, Nyssa and the three members of the League that she had entrusted to come with them had made their trek based on the coordinates that Felicity had given them. The terrain was difficult, even for those trained to handle far worse, and there had been little discussion ever since they had started it on it.
Now, having gone nearly eight miles with no sign of any life, human, animal or otherwise, Oliver had just begun to wonder if they had been led down yet another blind alley when he saw a dot on the horizon.
After another five minutes, it was clear that there were several. He halted and told the group that they it was time to fade in the surroundings. They'd left two of their entourage back at the truck; Nyssa indicated to one of the remaining mercenaries to go back as quickly as possible and inform them that they'd found what they were looking for.
Sara looked at the map she'd been giving. "It's going to be hard based on the little information we have, but we seem to be roughly ten miles from Tunguska proper. Based on what we know from the file, the Russians had gulags in this area under the disguise of a mining camp."
"How certain are you of this?" Nyssa asked.
"Fox Mulder was good at many things, but he was never the best at geography," Oliver told them. "He was barely any better at long term planning. When he made his original trek here twenty years ago, he hired the worst possible person he could as a guide and translator."
"How untrustworthy was this man?" Nyssa asked.
"Well, by this time Mulder suspected him of being a Syndicate lackey who had killed his father and had been responsible for the death of Scully's sister," Oliver told them. "He had stolen the government's secrets and was selling them to the highest bidder after the Syndicate tried to kill him. He'd sworn in with a bunch of terrorists and then betrayed them just so he could run into Mulder and Scully again. Malcolm Merlyn was more constant with his loyalties."
"I'm surprised neither of them bothered to kill him," Nyssa said. "They were law enforcement, after all, and Krycek was a murderer. Even by the loose standards of your government, surely that merited a bullet from one of them."
"Honestly, going through the files I've never understood why Alex Krycek was allowed to live as long as he did," Oliver admitted. "In the seven years that he was on their radar, he was only willing to be loyal to anyone as long as it served his interests. The Syndicate, which was kill off the most minor flunkies for far smaller indiscretions, let him back into their good graces not longer after this for reasons that no one can comprehend. And now that he's fifteen years in his grave, they'll never know for sure. But from what I understand from the files, it has at least something to do with what happened here."
"Krycek had a connection to the Russian side of the conspiracy," Sara surmised. "How? I know the FBI has never had the best vetting procedures, but you'd think even they would be able to notice if a man in their employ had spent some time in the Soviet Union growing up."
"His story was that his parents were Cold War immigrants but since he lied about everything…." Oliver trailed off. "The one thing that Mulder is certain of is that after he and Krycek were captured by the Russians, Krycek was separated from them. And it became very clear that Krycek had some connection far deeper than just knowing the language. At this point, no one can be sure that he didn't manipulate this entire scenario so that he could end up back on his home country."
"Only so he could betray it again at his convenience?" Oliver nodded at Nyssa. "How old was this Krycek? Mulder's age?"
"Maybe a few years younger. Why?"
Nyssa had grown thoughtful. "When I was just a girl, my father had a meeting with a man in his sixties. Vassily Paskow. Kind man loved playing the bailiaka and chess. He was one of the deadliest assassins the KGB ever employed."
"Did the League ever employ him?" Sara asked.
"According to my father, when he was much younger the League had encountered Paskow in Afghanistan leading a troop movement. Five assassins tried to take him down. Paskow killed four of them without breaking a sweat. He told my father that he would just as kill him, but he'd thought he'd made his point clear. My father retreated."
"I'm surprised your father never sought vengeance," Oliver said.
"Paskow had killed to protect his man. My father respected that kind of loyalty." Nyssa told him. "On a mission in Odessa after the Cold War, my father paid him a visit. By then Vassily was retired, and bore him no ill will. They would every so often. And on one such trip, my father asked him almost causally if there was any part of his work that he regretted. Paskow told him that is the one time he was called out of retirement."
"For what cause?" Sara asked.
"A series of assassinations in America in the late nineties," Nyssa said. "They involved the murders of several scientists who were performing experiments involving viruses in Virginia and Florida. The final objective was the retrieval of a biological sample and destroying it in an oil field. He said he never would have done it except because the request came from a young man he had once mentored. The bastard son of a Soviet colonel who he gave him this training instead of a real family. Vassily did it not because he respected the man but because he knew what a monster he was. He thought his son deserved better. He didn't know that when it came to the lack of a moral compass, the son was worse than his father."
This sounded eerily familiar to Oliver. "Are you saying the son was Alex Krycek?"
"The only name the man gave me was Arntzen," Nyssa said. "But based on what you're telling me about the age and makeup of this Krycek and considering what his involvement was with Mulder, I find it very hard to believe it's a coincidence."
"And considering that a lot of what you just described actually happened around the same time as Mulder's trip here, it sounds very much like Paskow was talking about Krycek," Oliver said. "I assume Paskow's dead."
"He passed away six years ago," Nyssa confirmed. "Did Mulder or Scully know him?"
"We'll have to check with them," Oliver paused. "Assuming we ever get back to America."
"We may very well have to be careful," Sara had taken out her binoculars while this was going on and was focusing on the horizon. "I think we're on the right track."
Oliver did the same and saw very clear what she was looking at. There were a group of men in ragged clothes, being supervised – that was a kind word – by men on horseback. They carried rawhide whips and rode among several of the men, lashing out every so often.
"I knew the Russians were behind the times, but this strikes me as ridiculous even by their standards," Sara said.
"If anything, it looks like they've regressed in the past twenty years," Oliver said. "This is straight out of a bad Tolstoy novel."
Sara didn't answer. Her focus was on one of the men – brawny, tall and with a beard. At a time, all of that might have made him look distinguished, but it was clear that the time in this camp was starting to wear on him. Despite everything, there was still a look of pride in his face that the Cossacks hadn't been able to beat out of him yet.
They might be able to if he was there much longer.
"Oliver," Sara said carefully "when was the last time you saw Anatoly?"
Oliver chose his words carefully. "About three years ago. Diggle and I were trying to get Lyla out of a prison camp. I turned to him for help because he owed me."
"He was still in the Bratva then?" Sara asked slowly.
Oliver knew these weren't idle questions. "Is he there?"
"You think I'd forget the face of the man who helped rescue me from that island?" Sara asked rhetorically. "What I want to know is how he ended up here."
"The tests were done upon the undesirable," Nyssa reminded them. "Another term for that would be the criminals. It's hard to argue your friend wouldn't qualify."
"She's right," Oliver said reluctantly. "As to how, well, we're going to find out soon enough. One way or the other."
STAR LABS
Neither Mulder nor Scully had been wild about the approach that Leonard Snart had suggested to get the DNA sample, but neither could deny that it had been successful. The problem that they had been struggling over for the past three hours had been resolved in five minutes with no harm done to anyone, even the child.
Of course, now that they had the tissue sample, the question was what they did with it. Mulder might know who the child in that room would 'grow up' to be – or at least look like – but trying to find who the real 'Kurt Crawford' had been was going to be like searching for a straw colored needle in a hayfield.
It came as a shock to none of them, certainly not Mulder or Scully, that there was no record of Kurt Crawford. This had been the history of all the clones they had encountered in their lives; there was no reason to suspect that this would change here. As for the Kurt Crawford who they had found in Allentown back in 1997, the last known record of him was in March of that year, appearing on a security camera in the hospital that the crooked Dr. Scanlon had used to work for. None of them had surfaced since.
It was then Mulder realized that there was a big, honking shortcut that they could take that had occurred to none of them until now. He got on the phone with Alex Danvers, who given everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours was not inclined to be pleasant to him. Mulder knew that he hadn't lost an ally, but it might be awhile before she or her sister might consider him a friend.
Turns out I'm lousier at being a villain than I am at being a hero Mulder thought to himself. I'm not sure which of my fathers would be more ashamed of me right now.
"I know that I'm not exactly in a position to be asking for help right now," Mulder said slowly.
"I'm a professional, Mulder; despite everything that's happened, I'm going to be one," Alex said in what could charitably be considered a neutral tone.
"Good to know I haven't lost my gifts," Mulder said. "Even after fifteen years out of the Bureau, I still have the astonishing talent of making friends hate me."
"That's very extreme," Alex said in a slightly kinder tone. "There aren't a lot people I hate, and I certainly don't hate you. I'm disappointed in you right now, but I think that you're feeling the same way towards yourself."
"It's not my finest hour, and I've got a career chock full like situations like this," Mulder said sadly.
"Worse people than you have tried to use my sister as a tool for their own devious ends," Alex assured them. "And I know you well enough that I'm sure you weren't trying to deliberate use her."
"Yeah, but it brings back memories I don't like reliving," Mulder said. "Let me just say that you're not the first sibling of a co-worker that has legitimate reasons to dislike me."
Alex was a little curious. "I didn't think Melissa Scully ever disliked you."
"I'm talking about her big brother William," Mulder said sadly. "I left this out of the file, but around the time Scully's cancer was starting to metastasize, Bill comes back from the Navy to visit his mother. Needless to say, he wasn't thrilled to know that not only was his sister dying, but that she was spending her last days helping me on another futile quest."
"Was he there the last time Scully was on her deathbed?" Alex was asking a legitimate question.
"I could have held that over him, but by the time I actually met him things were worse," Mulder told him. "She was in what seemed very well to be in the final stages, and she'd collapsed in a Bureau meeting where she was still defending my work. Even then, she's still trying to take the blame for my killing a man. The last thing Bill said to me was that I was a sorry son of a bitch. 'I've already lost one sister to your question, and now I'm going to lose another.' I haven't talked to the man since then, and given everything that's happened in the interim, I'm pretty sure he'll wait until I'm in the ground again before he comes within fifty feet of me."
"Damn it, Mulder, why do you always have the ability to make people sympathize with you just when they should hate your guts?" Alex asked.
"It's news to me. As far as I know the only people who've ever felt that way are Scully or Skinner," Mulder said. "Most people hate my guts on first sight and nothing that happens ever takes away that first impression."
"I will grant you this wasn't a great move, but in neither case do I think you acted with malice of forethought or evil intent," Alex admitted. "You acted out of the best intentions when you tried to save all of those clones. And my sister had every right to be as mad as she got based on what she saw. But she chose to go in there despite your sister's advice, and she chose to go after those troops. In all honesty, given some of the things she's seen in the past year – and that's prior to us meeting your acquaintance – I've been shocked things like haven't happened before."
"Forgive my crudeness, but is she not allowed the luxury of emotion we mere mortals are?" Mulder asked.
"It's been drilled into her ever since we were kids," Alex told him. "I suspect her cousin had a similar learning curve growing up. She seemed to be doing fine the last year, but everybody has a breaking point. The difference is…"
"Most of us can't physically break buildings," Mulder finished.
"That is crude, but not inaccurate," Alex admitted. "I don't think our parents were ever as demanding as yours, but considering my sister's nature, they were very strict to make sure things like this didn't happen. Until she became Supergirl, I took up the charge, but I wasn't being honest about my reasons either."
"So, how do I work things out with her?" Mulder asked.
"You let her come to you. In the meantime, try to solve the problem in front of you without her." Alex told them. "Which is why you called in the first place."
"I don't know who the real Kurt Crawford was. Neither does Samantha," Mulder said. "But there might be some ways to narrow the field. "
"I'm listening."
"Samantha was the daughter of someone in the Syndicate. Considering that the Syndicate surrendered members of their families to the aliens in 1973, and since Samantha wasn't the only one subjected to these kinds of experiments for years, I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that the real Kurt Crawford was one of their children as well."
"That would narrow it down, if we knew who any of the members were," Alex reminded him. "According to your own files, you never had any names."
Mulder was thoughtful. "Then let's work backwards. You still have the files from the massacre at El Rico?"
"By all the photographic evidence, everyone there was burned beyond recognition."
"Except for the teeth. The dental records did tell us the names of the families of the victims. You look from your end; I'll go through another angle."
"What are you thinking?"
"We recently came into possession of some real estate in New York, remember?" Mulder said. "I don't care how much paperwork I have to go through; someone had the sign a lease once."
"You're going to have a lot of red tape to cut through."
Mulder smiled. "It's a good thing I'm friends with a woman who can cut through it with a chainsaw if she has too."
LXLXLX
Oliver, Sara and Nyssa had all been trained to an extent by the League of Assassins which meant that they were all skilled in moving through terrain with stealth and perfect silence. They were also all hypersensitive to when they were being followed.
And it had become clear that for the last ten minutes people as good as they were on their trail.
"Who are they?" Oliver asked.
"I have no intention of waiting until they choose to show themselves," Nyssa turned around.
"I don't know whose orders you follow," she said in a voice that brooked no argument. "But those who dare to interfere will have crossed the Heir to the Demon. Show yourselves and your deaths will be merciful and honorable."
There was a pause. "The League shows mercy to no one," a voice said quietly.
Oliver hadn't heard it in five years, but he recognized it instantly. A chill ran down his spine.
"And its leadership has not been honorable in a very long time. Certainly not now."
Nobody had so much as blinked. But suddenly there were half a dozen soldiers in front of them. And one of them was a woman. A woman that Oliver hadn't seen in five years.
Nyssa showed no reaction at all. "Why have you come here?"
"To do what you lack the wherewithal to do sister," Talia Al Ghul said in as even a tone. "To do what is necessary to restore balance."
She looked at Oliver. "Vengeance on the man who killed our father is simply a reward for our patience."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Oliver is confronting the ugliness that was in his soul without having to deal with Prometheus. To be clear, Adrian Chase isn't going to show up at all, but considering that Talia just did….
It's a Prison Break joke. You knew it had to come given the circumstances. No, the time travel won't happen in this chapter (or maybe this fanfic) but I'm leaving the bread crumbs of where to look later.
I never really bought into how the Samantha storyline ended in Closure. Here's my explanation as to why Mulder might have been willing to buy into it.
Scully quotes one of her last lines to Mulder in the series finale of The X-Files. That last scene worked even if you had problems with 'The Truth'
I try to fill in some of the blanks of Alex Krycek, who was around for seven seasons and never got a backstory. Paskow was an assassin called in to make several killings in 'Terma' by a 'Comrade Arntzen.' (And honestly, I wished The X-Files would have brought him back, considering he survived his mission.) Here is my explanation as to why he did it and to a history of Krycek. There's a certain logic to it, I think.
Anatoly! I know you don't want to see him in trouble, but one of the things we learned from our time in Russia is that all of the tests were done on the 'criminal'. The definition was loose, but its hard to argue that Anatoly wouldn't have qualified. Plus considering that they're in Russia anyway, I kind of figured this would be a better reunion than the one we got in the fifth season of Arrow.
Ah, the hated Bill Scully who we spent far too much time with. That said, when he confronted Mulder in Redux II, it's kind of hard to argue he didn't have a reason to be pissed.
Talia is here, and she's got an axe to grind. By the way, considering who Talia is and that I've gone into the Christopher Nolan side of this before, we may see another familiar face from The Dark Knight world in the next chapter. I think you can draw your own conclusion as to who.
Read and Review!
