Chapter 11

DAO HEADQUARTERS

"I'm honestly surprised didn't occur to any of us sooner," Winn said to Alex. "The Syndicate got everything they have from the alien crash in Roswell; there's a certain logic that the Russians would have something similar from Tunguska."

"That crash was nearly forty years earlier. It's hard to believe the Russians would have been able to utilize the same level of technology that the Americans did," Alex countered.

"Don't be certain. I never did figure out how Zworykin managed to invent television in the 1920s."

Alex turned to Jonn. "Any chance this we have anything in the files here, public or private?"

"You asking if I know anything about this crash?" Jonn said with a raised eyebrow that would have done Scully proud.

"You're our expert alien; I figured you might know somebody who knew somebody," Alex said with a shrug.

Jonn gave it some thought. "About thirty years ago, give or take, I met a resident of an alien from Vega galaxy. Relative newcomer to the planet; had been their less than fifty years. He said that his original craft had followed a faint signal that had originated just outside of what was Odessa. But by the time he landed, the signal had stopped. "

"They could have taken a part from a craft, sent parts of it all over the Soviet Union."

"Well, they didn't take it far," Winn told them. "I just redirected a signal from our friends at JPL. Based on the coordinates Felicity sent me, there's definitely some kind of field around it. And from what I can tell, it's emanating from below the surface of the Earth,"

"What does the atlas say is supposed to be there?" Alex asked.

"Coal mine and refinery. Which is remarkable, as according to the geography there isn't any coal within a hundred miles of this area." Winn said. "Pretty sure we've found the prison and the UFO it's on top of."

"You don't sound as exuberant as you usually do when you've cracked these things," Jonn asked.

"That's because I've run some preliminary calculations on the size of this place. Based on the energy reading of the field and the preliminary perimeter, there's at least a hundred and fifty square miles to explore." Winn said grimly.

"That's nearly the size of the Pentagon," Alex said slowly.

"And based on what Mulder and Scully have told us about some of the secrets they saw in their secret military bases, I can't even begin to fathom what might be waiting for them in Mother Russia."

1:55 AM

Sara blinked. "Winn's sure of his numbers?"

"Felicity's in the middle of verifying them now," Diggle said over her earpiece. "She says he might be off by five or six miles, but not much more."

"Oh, this can't be good." Mulder said from Star Labs.

"I'm not sure I want to know what's panicking you now," Kara said.

"I'm just thinking about Antarctica and that spaceship that I didn't rescue Scully from."

"I told you. I was unconscious!" Everybody at Star Labs looked at Scully. "Yes, it was an alien craft where the government was going to experiment on me. Are you happy now?"

"You couldn't have said that in front of the review board. The point is," said Mulder before Scully's look fired an actual dagger at him, "while I was in no condition to due an official measurement of it, that ship basically tore up a field of glaciers when it launched. If this is anywhere near as big, they could be hiding your friend anywhere and unless this model has a 'YOU ARE HERE' somewhere, it could be hours before you find him."

Kara raised an eyebrow of her own. "Hello? Alien? Super-strength can knock through walls, fly if she has too?"

"I can also cover a fair amount of ground if I need too," Barry pointed out.

"Fair point," Mulder conceded. "Just to be clear, we're planning a prison break. From what I understand, two of you are going to be able to fit in the truck. Have you drawn straws to decide who goes in first?"

"Right now, the plan is for Sara and Nyssa to go in," Oliver told them. "Infiltration of areas like these is essential parts of League training."

"And you're fine with this?" Scully asked.

"You mean am I wild about being held in reserve in case things go haywire? Not particularly. I get the logic but I'm not happy." Oliver shook his head. "This is how everyone else on Team Arrow gets when I go off on my own."

"On your own, with the military, as part of full-fledged assault, basically every time you go out into the field, " Felicity said in a surprisingly cheerful tone. "Never been much for schadenfraude before, but I kind of get it a little."

"Makes you feel any better, I'm pretty certain both of us feel the same way," Barry said, nodding at Kara.

"Which is why we're going to be spending the next several hours doing reconnaissance on the perimeter," Kara patted Oliver gently on the shoulder. "Does that make you feel better?"

"You know, you don't have to sound so conde…Felicity told you take that exact tone, didn't she?" Oliver finished resignedly.

"'Don't worry, Oliver, this is going to be simple. Nothing can possibly go wrong."

"You don't have to rub it in," Oliver said warningly.

"I don't need backup for this." Diggle added.

"In and out, no problem," Felicity added.

"I really do get it."

"Honestly, I don't need any help at all."

"Your point couldn't be any clearer," Oliver said in his growly tone.

"There's no need to tell any of the higher-ups," Everybody stopped short. "What? I had to spend seven years pulling Mulder out of jackpot situations and I didn't have any superpowers. I can't have some fun after twenty-three years?"

"I get the logic Scully. Just maybe not the right idea to openly taunt a man who spent his first year in civilization killing people who pissed him off."

"Pretty sure she was referring to you with that last one." Everyone in Russia looked at Oliver. "I have a sense of humor too."

"It's very deeply hidden." Felicity told him, still cheerful. "Kara, Barry, please tell me that when you showed up, you brought some tech with you."

Kara reached into her pocket. "In this particular case, the DAO had something before STAR Labs did. Alex is getting the tech over to Cisco and Caitlin as we speak but for now, I think one should be enough." She handed a miniature camera to Sara.

"According to Winn, once you activate this, this thing can pick up everything on almost every wavelength in a quarter mile radius," Kara told the two women. "Once it's on, an image we'll be projected back to STAR Labs. Hopefully, it'll be enough to guide the two of you through the place once you're in."

"That's the good news. What's the other side?"

Kara looked at Oliver. "She's always this cheerful?" pointing at Nyssa.

"She's like us. She's a realist." Oliver told them. "And until fairly recently, the League's didn't exactly have the best attitude towards technology in general. "

"Forgive me for being doubtful, but according to all of your experts, there's some kind of field preventing all of you from even seeing this place. Am I being pessimistic by suggesting that same field might work underground as well?"

There was a pause as everybody realized this was a valid point. "It's possible, but it's unlikely," Felicity answered slowly. "The whole point of this dampening field is to make it impossible for this area to be spotted from outsiders. It would defeat the purpose for the people who work there to be unable to use their own technology to spot intruders."

"Is it possible the Russians could be that far ahead of us already?" Barry asked carefully. "I mean, even before I heard of what was the Syndicate was doing, there was a pretty high level of paranoia among the higher-ups back here. Do you think they might do that because of distrust among the people who work here?" He looked at Oliver. "Or am I overcomplicating this too much?"

"In most cases, even I'd say you were. Considering what Mulder and Scully have told us, I'm not sure we can rule it out," Oliver admitted.

"Paranoia helped us a lot when we were on the X-Files," Mulder acknowledged. "But I also know that if you get too paranoid, you get too paralyzed to make a move at all. I think for now Sara and Nyssa have to infiltrate the prison. Whatever happens next, well, that's what the reserve team is there for. And right now, I think the strategy that Snart has suggested is probably the one we're going to have to go with."

"The FBI believes in your way of thinking." Mick said gruffly. "I don't know whether to be proud or scared shitless."

"It's a bit unnerving to me too," Snart acknowledged. "So for now, let's focus on what we can control. Do you have any idea what the situation is on the perimeter?"

"Not comforting." Sara admitted. "Kara did a quick sweep half an hour ago. According to her, there are five armed guards every hundred yards, which tracks out to 40 just covering the walls."

"What are they armed with?" Leonard asked.

"The pride of the Soviet Union," Kara said grimly. "All of them are carrying AK-47s. Not a problem for me or Barry, but it'll put a dent in Sara and Nyssa. All of this, by the way, is on the exterior."

"Any ideas about how many are inside?" Mulder asked.

"Impossible to get a clear idea. I don't know how many prisoners they're keeping in there and how many of them are guards. X-ray vision only takes you so far."

"That's visuals. What about audio?' Oliver asked. "I'm not entirely sure how your super-hearing works, but anything you might be able to focus on that could give us a hint?"

Kara shook her head. "I might be able to isolate a conversation if I knew who to listen for, but in all honesty we'd be better of with a decent bugging system."

Nyssa thought for a second. "If you heard someone saying a name or a place could you filter that out?"

Kara looked at Nyssa. "It's listening to dozens of conversations at once, and that's only if they're talking about that."

"Try and listen for my sister's name. Talia Al Ghul." Nyssa said thoughtfully. "She disappeared after challenging us. It's logical to presume that she'd retreat here. Even if she didn't, she'd have notified whoever worked here of your presence."

Kara looked back at Oliver and Sara. "Knowing her family, she has to at least be considering this as an option," Sara agreed. "It's worth a try."

Kara nodded and concentrated as hard as she could. In practice, it turned out to be easier than she thought. For a citadel as large as this, there weren't nearly as many conversations going on as would have been likely. The prisoners were kept in individual cells and there were only a handful of conversations going on between the guards. This shouldn't have been surprising; given the location and the personalities involved, fraternizing probably wasn't at the top of anybody's list of priorities.

Eventually she managed to tune into a conversation that was very promising:

"This place is invisible, both to the naked eye and all forms of surveillance. How could they possibly find it?"

"My sister is many things, but she is not a fool. She did not bring Queen and that degenerate here on a whim. "

"There only four people in the entire government who even know this place exists. The only person in the League knew about it never told a soul. "

"These people are far too clever for their own good. We can't afford to take the chance that there is even the smallest bread crumb for them to find."

There was a very deliberate pause. "I'm going to be as respectful as I possibly can be. This area has been the center of our operations for over seventy years. I've already doubled security, as per your request. But that is as far as I am willing to go. "

"You knew what I represent."

"I know what your name represents and what you have been able to bring to the operation the past few years. I also know that you had a chance to deal with this problem yourself a few hours ago, and instead you chose to retreat. People have been put in unmarked graves for far less of an indiscretion."

There was a long pause. When Talia resumed speaking, she was far more measured in her words. "You also know what I'm capable of."

"Which is why you're still drawing breath right now. You're convinced this is a problem. Prove what you're capable of."

Click.

"Someone talked to Talia like that?" Nyssa sounded suitably impressed after hearing what Kara had heard. . "Well, we know she isn't in the prison itself. Otherwise whoever she was speaking to wouldn't be drawing breath himself."

"You think this was a conversation between equals or she was actually taking orders from him?" Sara asked.

"Anyone else I'd assume this was a conversation between a lackey and a superior. Based on what you told me about her, I'm just not sure," Kara admitted.

"Well, if she's not nearby now she will be by the time we get there," Nyssa said. "And she will kill anyone who gets in her way."

Sara looked at Nyssa. "You probably don't want to hear this, but you might want to consider sitting this one out."

Nyssa looked into her lover's eyes. "I appreciate your concern, Sara, but I will not let you face the wrath of this prison unimpeded."

"I'd be willing to go in your place." Oliver looked at her with compassion himself. "You've already lost your father because of us. I don't want you to lose your sister as well."

"She's trying to destroy the world and she's already sided with the enemy. No matter how this turns out, I will lose her anyway." There was something frightening about how casual Nyssa's tone was.

"I've already lost my sister. Oliver nearly lost his. Trust us; this isn't a blow you easily recover from."

"I saw your sister when she believed you were lost forever. I do understand the pain." The look of compassion and empathy on Nyssa's face was something that would have been foreign to Oliver even a year ago.

"There is no way to get around the fact that my sister has lost her way. I do not know if she thinks she is truly following my father's legacy or whether she truly believes this is the only way forward. Now from what I have heard from your colleagues, redemption is not impossible. And I will not pretend that part of me does not hope that it is."

Nyssa faced Kara and Barry. "If she appears and you can extricate her cleanly from this, I won't stand in your way. I understand you have prisons that can hold people far stronger and cleverer than her. But you do have to understand, an Al Ghul caged is as dangerous as any metahuman or alien you have dealt with."

"Both of us have dealt with some superpowered individuals who are very clever themselves, but I see your point," Kara said. "That said I have an idea for where we could put her that might suit your needs."

It didn't take long. Nyssa considered this. She turned to Oliver. "Would you be willing to go along with this?"

"I won't deny there are risks involved, but it's hard to deny that it would be the hardest place for anyone to escape from. Even your sister."

Nyssa looked at Kara. "And you'd be fine with the conditions I'd set?"

"We've been making deals with devils right and left already. This is a comparatively small one."

"Then we'd better get prepared." Oliver looked at the horizon. "Time's getting short."

"Isn't it always?" Felicity asked snarkily.

5:32 AM

STAR LABS

"Is he always this jumpy before an operation?" Snart asked Scully.

"I don't know. By the time I got involved, he usually needed to be bailed out of holding," Scully said pointedly.

Mulder continued to pace around the room. By Cisco's count, he had circled the length of the lab at least three times in twenty minutes.

"It's not the pacing that bothers me so much as the cleanup," Caitlin said calmly. "Does he normally eat this many seeds when he gets nervous?"

"It used to be just one package over the course of a stakeout," Scully said, looking at the scattered shells all over the floor. "I grant you this is a healthier habit than the ones that some of our adversaries engaged in, but still…"

Finally Mulder acknowledged what was being said. "Okay, it's official. I actually feel worse than being out in the field risking my life. Just how many ulcers did I end up giving you all those years we were working together?"

"Hey, I'm the one who put bee pollen in my yogurt," Scully seemed more amused by this. "Skinner, you probably took ten years off his life before the nanobots got in his bloodstream."

"I've been hanging out with the brain trust too long. Is she joking or not?" Mick asked.

"January 1999." Mulder said without slowing his pace. "We're still not sure if there's a way to get them out."

Now Cisco and Caitlin exchanged a glance. "We might be able to help with that when we get some free time," Cisco said.

"The Syndicate's planning to go on vacation in the near future?" Snart asked rhetorically. He finally looked at Mulder. "Look, much as I hate to admit it, Lance and Allen are more than capable of taking care of themselves in this situation. And you already know what the rest of the group is able to do. So would you stop wearing a rut in the cement and tell us what's really bothering you?"

"I've been in that prison and I know what these people are capable of," Mulder didn't even break stride.

"You were just a stooge for the Feds. They're superheroes. What's your real problem?" Mick said in his typical blunt tone.

Even Snart winced slightly hearing his old friend put in such plain language. But it had the effect that none of them had managed because Mulder finally stopped pacing.

"I spent so much time and energy on my quest at the expense of all else." Mulder said slowly. "I kept Scully out of far too many situations when I actually could have used her help. At the time, I had way too many excuses for my own good. In the early days, I didn't trust her. Later on, she didn't believe in me. After awhile, it was because I wanted to keep her safe." He sighed. "Last time I tried that, I ended up being an alien experiment until they threw me away."

"So why did you do it?" Scully asked. "There had to come a point where you knew better."

"There was a part of me – a very stupid part, I should add – that had be convinced that as long as I was on this quest alone, no one else could get hurt on my quest." Mulder held up a hand. "I don't pretend that there was any logic to that – people were dying right and left just for talking to me – but no matter how many times I ended up being kidnapped or in a hospital bed because of my colossal stupidity, at least I was keeping the people I loved safe."

"You know, I think there's a term for that," Cisco said lightly. "I think it's called the Oliver Queen Mania."

Snart shook his head. "No, you're wrong. It's the Barry Allen delusion."

"Are you saying I was a superhero?" Mulder said slightly.

"Actually I think they were saying you were crazy," Scully said fondly. "This in itself isn't news. The Bureau had diagnosed you as such as far back as '93, I think. And you know, given the way you just through yourself into so many life-threatening situations, maybe part of your delusion was that you were invulnerable."

"All right, then why did I do it?" Mulder asked.

"Because you thought it was your job and yours alone to save the world," Stein, who had been quiet until now, spoke up. "It's understandable, given what you knew and how few people we're willing to take you seriously. And like so many of the people I've met in the past few years, you feel that saving the world is something that you alone can affect. The fact that you are older and that there are people who are better suited to the actual fight these days doesn't change the fact that you are unwilling to relinquish it to younger people who might be as qualified to handle it intellectually and are certainly better suited to it physically."

Mulder looked at him. "About seventeen years ago, give or take, the Smoking Man was chopping my brain open in some hole in the DOD."

"Do we even want to know why?" Cisco asked.

"Did they ever need a reason to physically hurt me? Anywho, I'm in the middle of circling the drain, and I start having these very potent hallucination where that bastard offers to take me to 'witness protection' where I get to live a nice, normal life. Cookie-cutter neighborhood, my favorite foods are in the refrigerator, Samantha's even got an apartment a few blocks away. I get married, I have kids, and everything's nice and lovely." Mulder was speaking far too casually. "The most important person in my life isn't there, but I'm overlooking that."

"How big a hole did they chop in your head?" Cisco muttered.

"I had to rescue him. I still don't know how he managed to survive it," Scully told them. "Then again, he was nearly dead when I left him, so maybe he didn't notice."

"I was offered a normal life. In return, the entire world was destroyed. "Mulder told them. "I guess some near-death experiences don't wear off. "

"I saw that particular movie, Agent Mulder," Stein said. "And while I generally am an admirer of Scorcese's work and I appreciate what you've done for the world as a whole, I have to tell you if you really believed that to be the case, you've got a far bigger ego than you've indicated to this point."

The younger people in the room seemed baffled at this. Snart, oddly enough, got the reference. "People who have that kind of complex, Mulder, they either end up heads of cults or are the kind of villains that most of the people in this room have spent the last few years fighting. Based on what you've told us, that man spent his entire life thinking along those lines."

Scully was about to defend her partner when she found Mulder nodding. "He told me as much on more than one occasion," he admitted. "Ironic, considering everyone on my side basically thought he was the devil incarnate."

"Which actually makes the devil look bad in comparison," Scully agreed.

Mulder walked towards the control panel. This time he looked at Cisco and Caitlin. "How do the two of you handle it? I know it's not an entirely fair comparison for either of you, but you did spend much of the first year with Barry miles away from the action, helpless to do anything if something went wrong."

It was a pretty reasonable question. "It's never a lot of fun," Cisco admitted. "We have trust in Barry and we know what he's capable of, but there have been far too many occasions when things do go wrong and we have to have faith that he's going to get through it."

Caitlin nodded in agreement. "That's why we spend so much time in the lab. Anything we can do to make Barry's job the slightest bit easier makes us feel a little bit safer. We're as much family to him as Joe is, and I can't believe it was any easier for him to deal with this going forward."

"You talk to Felicity about this?" Cisco asked. "She's been dealing with this kind of thing longer and with far more stress. I mean, the worst of Star City have made a habit of targeting her even before she and Oliver were an item."

"I'll bring it up when she and the rest of the team are back in this time zone." Mulder took a deep breath. "And since I'm fairly certain that none of them will do that until everybody is safe and secure, that means we've got to get this mission off the ground."

"Well, then you might as well get your earpiece in," Caitlin told them. "Nyssa and Sara are approaching the perimeter."

Mulder reached for his earpiece, and then paused. "Did you go through all of this just to distract me?" he asked.

There was another one of those exchanges of glances by everybody except he and Scully, only this time both of them could detect amusement in it.

"What? Mere lab techs and criminals distract the master profiler?" Leonard said with his usual snark. "You think far too much of us."

"Just, maybe hold off on the seeds until we're done," Caitlin said. "Cleaning service is going to be pissed enough at us when they come this week."

Now Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance. "Star Lab outsources this kind of thing?" Scully said in disbelief.

"There are some stains that only certain companies can handle," was all Cisco said slyly.

5:47 AM

Neither Sara nor Nyssa could see Mikhail as the truck waited at the entrance, but both would have been proud of him. As the guards searched his vehicle, he remained perfectly stoic as if he didn't have two women hiding in what appeared to be two sacks of potatoes near the bottom of the frontload.

Everything counted on the idea that the guards of this prison would want to give the illusion of being thorough rather than actually being thorough. The guards were going to search the bed of the truck – that would have been inevitable even without the security increase. The question was how far down they were willing to go. Everyone knew that even the most zealous guard wasn't going to be meticulous enough to search every single bag of goods – it wasn't just time-consuming, they were also going to have to do as much work putting it all back and there wasn't a lowly paid security man in the world who was willing to put that much effort into his work, no matter how devoted he was to his cause.

The question was how far would these guards go to say they had been thorough? Sara knew there was a way around this. She convinced Mikhail to load the oldest and therefore the most odorous of the vegetables on the top of the pile. There was nothing like sensory overload to overwhelm one's sense of duty. This would add a supreme level of discomfort to an already uncomfortable situation, but anyone devoted to the League was used to far worse conditions on a 'normal' mission.

The guard spent a little more than three minutes – which, if his superiors had been in a condition to hear it, was still two minutes longer than these kinds of searches usually took – before his sense of smell overcame his sense of duty. He waved Mikhail and the truck through.

"But once you get inside, you'll still be on the very edge of the interior," Mikhail had explained to them. "And there's no way you can get past whatever guards they'll have without being seen."

"Let us worry about that," Sara had told them.

Now five minutes after they had managed to get inside the perimeter, she and Nyssa had to do just that. "Seems like old times," she said to her former lover.

What was almost a fond smile crossed Nyssa's face. "Let's hope your friends were right about the Russian's not having the technology dampened," she said slowly. "Otherwise, this could become unpleasant very quickly."

"It will become unpleasant," Sara corrected, as she took out the camera. "The only question is how long we can keep it from becoming so."

"If it be not now, it will come. The readiness is all." Sara seemed a little surprised to hear Nyssa quote Hamlet. "My father was fond of that line."

"Well, let's hope we have a better fate than the Great Dane." She tapped her earpiece. "Cisco, we're in."

STAR LABS

"Copy that." Cisco began tapping on the panel. A frown appeared on his face.

"Don't tell me things have gone balls up before we even started," Mulder said.

"Hang on, hang on." What seemed to be an eon but was barely a minute passed before the screen began to show a read of the prison. "And we are rolling. Snart, Mick, take a look."

The two former convicts took a long look at what they were saying. "I guess we were wrong. They do make things bigger in Russia," Mick said bluntly.

"How much of the place are we looking at?" Snart asked Cisco.

"Camera has a range of about half a mile at a time, and we all know it could be as much as a hundred times bigger minimum, "Cisco said grimly.

"I knew Russia was a big country, but this is ridiculous," Mick said.

"The plan may be going off the rails a bit early," Snart conceded. "We'll just have to guide them through bit by bit. Put me through."

"Lance, we already knew this place was big, and unfortunately the news gets worse from here." Snart said to his teammate. "According to Ramone and Smoak, given the number of satellites they have to bounce the signal off for us to read it, every time you move outside the camera's range there's going to be an average of a forty-five second delay when it loads to Star Labs."

"That's the other reason I wanted you doing this, Snart," Sara said. "You'll give to us straight."

"What can you tell us about guard placement right now?" Nyssa asked.

"There are three men coming in at three o'clock," Snart asked. "While I know the two of you have no problem handling them, we might want to hold off the brutality until the last minute. I suggest you head due north. There seems to be a concentration of electricity in that direction."

"Could be a security room," Sara said.

"Could be a cafeteria. No point wasting any more time."

The two headed in that direction. "Where are we on security cameras?"

"If there's something there, I'm having trouble hacking it," Cisco told them.

"I can guess why." Sara pointed. "I've seen these kinds of things before. They look like they might have been new right around the time the Berlin Wall came down."

"Are they old school or just cheap?" Snart asked.

"Could be either one." Mulder acknowledged. "I'm guessing hacking these from here is going to be pretty much impossible."

"No, but there might be an advantage to this," Snart said. "You got any rocks in your pockets, Lance?"

"Always."

Sara didn't need much more guidance than that; she threw a perfect strike at the Camcorder. "Bad news is we can't do this with every one. Too many of them start going dead, even the dumbest guards going to figure this is more than a technical malfunction."

They kept going straight ahead and found what they were looking for. Two guards were standing by what certainly seemed to be a security office. "We get rid of the guards, they will notice," Sara told Snart. "And considering that had something just above Super 8 for security, I'm guessing there are going to be a bunch more people inside."

"We've been spoiled by technology, my friend," Snart said to Mick. "What approach would you take?"

Mick actually gave this some thought. "We can't have something happen inside yet," he said slowly. "So we need something big enough that would cause every guard to leave their post, but not focus their attention on the interior."

"I figured that much out," Mulder began snidely before Snart held up a hand.

"The reserve team." Mick said slowly. "We need them to create a diversion, but not one big enough so they know who's causing it."

Mulder and Scully were the only ones who seemed surprised that Mick had come up with such an obvious but clever idea. "Are we talking man made or alien arranged?" Mulder asked.

"Don't matter, as long as it gives off enough of a bang."

Cisco nodded. "Oliver, if you happen to have any of those incendiary devices that we designed for you once upon a time, I think now is the perfect time to put one to good use."

6:11 AM

JUST OUTSIDE PRISON PERIMETER

"This detonation cap is big enough that when it goes off, it'll cause enough destruction within three hundred feet," Oliver told Kara. "Theoretically, if I used one of those we could blow a hole in one of the walls, but since you're here, I figure we wouldn't bother with wasting it on that."

"Which would be fine, except," Barry indicated the area, "there isn't much else around here to blow up."

"We don't need to actually assault the camp yet, just the appearance that it's actually happening," Oliver reminded them. He handed the device to Kara. "Do a quick aerial reconnaissance. Find a location where you think it will attract the most attention. There's a time delay of sixty seconds, I think you can manage to get to a safe distance before the earth-shattering kaboom."

Both Kara and Barry fixed Oliver with a strange look. "Hey, I watched Warner Bros. cartoons when I was growing up same as you two," he said defensively.

"Yes, but neither of us grew up with people who could have developed devices from the ACME corporation," Barry said with a small smile.

"Well, I'd better take the iludium PU-246 Explosive Space Modulator to where it can do the most good," Kara said with a similar smile.

"As someone who helped design this, I'm a little offended that you would compare something I painstaking designed to a stick of dynamite," Cisco said cheerfully. "Especially one that always went off way too soon."

"Well, as another great hero of mine would say: 'Meep Meep'," Kara took off just as the last word finished.

STAR LABS

"Is there some place for you to hide?" Snart asked. "Looks like another patrol's coming in your direction.

"The people who designed this place had zero imagination," Sara told them grimly. "It's based entire slabs of concrete with gaps you could fit a model train through. The guys who did guard duty to stop James Bond would have no trouble finding us."

"Sounds like basic Russian architecture," Mulder muttered to himself. "All the imagination went into the prison."

"Get some distance away from the room," Snart decided. "We'd better hope that they come through with that distraction fast."

Less than ten seconds later, that's exactly what happened.

Kara had set off the detonation cap in a small grove of about twenty yards away from the perimeter. The only things it had actually blown up were two trees and a couple of bushes, but the sound of the explosion was big enough and there was enough space around that it could be heard for more than a mile. Oliver and Barry, who were about two hundred yards from where Kara had placed, had their ears ringing nearly twenty seconds later.

Understandably, this caused almost half of the battalion outside and a good number of guards inside the prison to head outside to make sure that the forces of darkness that Talia had assured them were on their way, had not already set up camp. Among the ones who departed were the ones watching the door that Sara and Nyssa were looking at.

"Well, now that we're inside, now what do we do?" Nyssa asked.

"We find Anatoly," Sara said. "How's your Cyrillic?"

"Better than yours," Nyssa said as she started looking through the file folders that were filling the place.

Sara in the meantime was looking over all of the monitors, looking for a familiar face. After what seemed to be an eternity, she managed to find it. "He's going to be glad to see us," she said.

"In more ways than one," Nyssa had managed to find a specific file. "Those tests that Mulder and my sister have been talking about? He's scheduled for one in less than an hour. "

"Then I guess I know where we have to go," Sara said.

"I'm about to make one of those cold-blooded remarks your sister found so off-putting," Nyssa said carefully. "Do you think it makes more sense to grab him and the other subjects now or wait until they take them to the testing site?"

"You did hear what they've been putting Anatoly and the others through," Sara reminded them gently.

"Indeed. I'm also aware that, according to your own records, before that happened the test subjects were administered a vaccine." Nyssa reminded her. "I'm relatively certain we're going to need both to win this war you and my former husband are currently fighting."

As always Nyssa was bluntly making an obvious point. "The papers you have, they happen to give a location as to where the tests will be performed?" Nyssa nodded. "In that case, we're going to do the one thing I never like giving the order to do, but is often necessary."

"You want us to split up?" Nyssa said.

"You find the testing site and a dose of the vaccine; I'll work on liberating Anatoly," Sara agreed.

"The security's going to be tighter there than it was here," Nyssa reminded her.

Sara gave her a small smile. "In that case, it should almost be a fair fight for you."

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

"That last explosion wasn't a coincidence. We may very well have been infiltrated. We should begin liquidation."

"This is Russia's problem, not ours."

"Need I remind you that we finally reached détente after half a century?" Amanda Waller said indignantly.

"That was our predecessors' decision. Not ours. Need I remind you that the man they made the deal with is dead at the hands of Oliver Queen?"

"We had an arrangement with his daughter."

"His daughter is responsible in no small way for the problem we are currently facing. Need I remind you she's not her father?"

"You're going to lecture us about the sins of our family, Lillian? Keep in mind you're on thin ice yourself."

"She had a chance to resolve this issue earlier, and instead she chose to retreat," Lillian Luthor said calmly. "She wants the responsibility we hold, she has to prove she's worthy of it."

"They've managed to accomplish much more than us in Russia," Diana Fowley reminded Waller. "Need I remind you they're still ahead of us in many ways?"

Waller considered this. "If we're not going to destroy the work, we need to at least send some support. Even if we are to lay this on Al Ghul, we have to give the appearance of assistance."

There were nods of agreement at this. "What's the closest unit?"

"I have a man who can be there within the hour. He's not a metahuman, but he's clever enough that he can put him something of a fight. There's the added bonus that Queen and his colleagues have been operating on the assumptions he's been dead for the last year."

"Since he's already died, I assume he's expendable."

"In all honesty, I wouldn't mind if he ended up as collateral damage. " Amanda took out her phone. "Then again, he always expected that life was like a bullet to the brain."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

For those playing the home game:

Yes, I'm talking about Mulder's rescue of Scully in the first X-Files movie, where Scully was somehow held prisoner and rescued from a UFO, saw it rise out of the ice and still didn't believe in aliens for another two years. (This was a major sticking point for many fans from that point on.)

What will happen when Nyssa and Talia face off? I'm warning you now, it will happen, but maybe not in this story. And I may be foreshadowing what happens next.

Sunflower seeds! Mulder's pride and joy for his entire run on the series. Apparently he's gotten a little more excessive over the years.

They never did tell us what happened to the nanites in Skinner's bloodstream after Krycek died. Were they just sitting there for the rest of the series? I may have this come up later on.

'Amor Fati', the seventh season premiere of The X-Files. Duchovny and Chris Carter had the dream sequence of the episode modeled on The Last Temptation of Christ. It was pretty heavy handed then, and both Stein and Snart acknowledge as much. (Stein's old enough to remember the film.)

Shakespeare and Looney Tunes. Two of the great accomplishments of art. I challenge anyone to think otherwise.

Yep, the virus and the vaccine are still here. That's what coming up.

I think we all know who the mystery man Waller's sending out is. Waste not, want not was always her motto.

Read and Review. The end of this story is coming sooner than you think!