Chapter 12
7:01 AM
"Why do they always split up?"
"To cover more ground, Ramone," Snart reminded him. "It's not the job of the people running the operation to make our lives easier. Need I remind you the consequences for them if they fail are far greater than ours?"
"Thank you for that." For once Cisco was speaking to his nemesis with something resembling sincerity. "Nyssa, do you copy?"
"For your sake, I'll pretend I didn't hear that last little exchange." Nyssa's attitude was actually less ferocious than usual; she was focused on where she was going. "And ask you to simply do your job."
"The area in question is roughly two hundred yards ahead of you," Cisco said. "And either the Russians are undermanned or they're taking the security of this particular part of operation in a very lackadaisical fashion. I'm only counting four guards."
"Could be they don't think they have to guard it that carefully," Mulder said slowly. "I've been on the receiving end of this, remember? You get infected with it…" He trailed off.
"Considering what I'm about to do, I think you'd better tell me what I'm in for," Nyssa said.
"Option one, you become a host for it and you're basically rendered inert. Option two, it takes control of you and basically makes you its slave." Mulder said grimly. "Maybe that's the real reason there are so few guards. In case something goes wrong, the Russians don't want to have to replace too many soldiers."
Nyssa uttered a swear word in an obscure dialect. "Should I turn around and find Sara?"
For an Al Ghul to consider retreat was a big deal. Everyone looked towards Mulder. "Nyssa, you don't know me and you have no reason to trust me. 999 times out of a thousand, I would give the order to pull back."
"And the thousandth time?" Nyssa asked.
"I'd be the one on the mission," Mulder admitted. "This is a real opportunity, I grant you. But I know what this virus does. I know how strong you and your family are. I also know that in this particular case, that's irrelevant. This thing is the great equalizer. And I seriously doubt that if you get infected, the Russians will dare waste a vaccine on you."
"I wouldn't if I were them," Nyssa acknowledged. "But right now the only people who have access to this are the Syndicate. If I were to take it from the Russians, it would stop the tests here. People's lives would be saved."
"They would." Mulder paused. "For awhile. I know these people better than anyone here. They have redundancies for their redundancies." He shook his head. "I'm well aware this is war; the problem is its trench warfare. Lots of lives will be lost, there will be minimal gain and it won't last for very long."
"Since when did you become the pessimist in this relationship?" Scully asked.
Mulder looked at Scully. "I'm trying realism for a change. I thought it might turn you on."
"I've actually never been less attracted to you in this moment," Scully said dryly.
"Is anyone else getting the image of seeing their parents flirt?" Mick asked.
"Yeah, and it's even less attractive than I thought," Caitlin admitted. "Could the two of you decide whether we send Nyssa into certain death or just likely death?"
Mulder looked at Scully. "One foot in front of the other," he finally said. "Take out the guards and then see what they're actually holding the virus in."
"That should be easy. While you were spending time dithering I finished taking them down," Nyssa said.
Mulder looked at Scully. "This is exactly what it was like every time I ditched you, wasn't it?"
"Except usually you're the one who got your ass kicked," Scully reminded him.
Sara was not incredibly surprised to find that the prisoners themselves were not heavily guarded. Why should they be? Given the level of the tests and the labors that they underwent, they were probably far too weak to escape and even if they were somehow to manage to that, where would they go? The terrain was flat with nothing for miles and they'd met the civilian populace. Most of them would no doubt be terrified to even move the bodies of prisoners who tried to escape.
She had gotten a glimpse of Anatoly for a few seconds and she had barely recognized him. It wasn't just the passage of time – eight years would do a number on a normal human being, much less someone who had undergone what she and Oliver knew he had - but Anatoly somehow looked even worse. Oliver had told her that he'd had a meeting with his old comrade two years ago and he'd appeared to be a great shape. The Anatoly she'd seen somehow looked even worse than the man who had barely escaped the experiments with the mirakuru seven years ago. Even then, he'd had a level of muscle and a gleam in his eye. From hundreds of yards away, she could almost count his ribs.
More than that, he looked something she had never seen in the time she'd known him – defeated. Anatoly had known they were facing doom even as he begun to pilot the submarine that would lead the three of them to safety, but he'd been cheerful about even as he did so. The idea that he was facing certain death almost seemed to cheer him up. Looking at Anatoly then, she saw a man who looked like he would welcome death if it came. Given what she had heard about the tests, she wasn't surprised but it still had hurt to see that look on the face of a man she had called a friend.
Now that she was at his door – and there had been a guard on this entire floor, assuming there had been any to begin with – she was a little unsure of what she would see on the other side. The lock was fairly heavy – by the standards of the Soviet Union just prior to glasnost. For a member of the League of Assassins, it took her all of six seconds to pick.
It took her only two seconds to get used the lighting in the cell. It took her nearly half a minute to accept the man she was seeing now as Anatoly. She had expected him to look worse close up than from a distance, but she had to actually get within five feet of him to ensure herself that he was in fact still breathing. She had been wrong thinking that Anatoly would welcome death if it came; it looked like he didn't remember what it was like to be alive.
He managed to roll his head towards her. He didn't look surprised to see her at all. "So my angel, it is you who have come to claim me," he said in a barely audible Russian. "I did not dare think I would make it this far."
"Where?" she found herself saying.
"The Great Beyond," Anatoly said this with complete indifference. "After everything I had done in my life, I was certain that the flames awaited me. But even they do, I will know a friendly face."
Of course he thought she was a ghost. The last time Oliver had talked with his friend he had every reason to assume that Sara Lance was dead. "This will come as a shock to you, but I'm alive."
Anatoly didn't blink, only gave something that in his former days would have been mistaken for a laugh. "So I am still asleep. Are you here as a symbol of my better moments or a reminder of my impending end?"
This was too much for her. Forgetting the condition her friend was in; she closed the distance and slapped him in the face.
"I realize that this is the time I have to be warm and compassionate to a man in your condition," Sara said in the voice that was the leader of the Legends, "but I've spent too much time and energy just getting into this prison to have to waste time babying you along now. It's taken me six years but I seem to be getting nowhere because I have to save your ass again. I don't have the time to waste telling you you're not dreaming."
When Anatoly laughed this time, it sounded a bit closer to the one she'd once known. "Not only are you here, you've clearly spent too much of the last few years in the companionship of Oliver. How did he happen to find me?"
"This won't make you feel better at all, but Oliver didn't even know you were missing," she admitted. "Neither did anyone else."
"I have no doubt that was by design. In the months I have been here, I have noticed only one thing about all the men that are in this prison." Anatoly said grimly. "None would be noticed if they were to disappear from the face of the Earth. Which makes sense, because that seems to be the reason why we are here in the first place."
"My friends and I have just become painfully aware of that," Sara told him. "Are you in any condition to get to your feet?"
"I'm not even sure I could crawl on my own power. But you are a Canary." Anatoly said. "Can you find the power to fly?"
"I can't go that far, but I might be able to make it easier for you to run," Sara judged the walls. "How thick is the concrete?"
"Thin enough that you can pick through it with a knife; thick enough that it would take you a decade to do so. Hats off to Russian engineering." Anatoly was slowly sounding like he was coming back to life. "Even Oliver on his best day would not be able to break through them."
"He's not going to have to," Sara got on her earpiece. "Guys, I've reached Anatoly's cell. I think we're at the point where we stop pretending we're not here."
"I couldn't agree more," Snart said. "Do you intend to attack from within or should our friends begin the assault from without as well?"
"We might as well prove we're a team," Sara said. "Tell them to let me know the second they're in position."
It took Barry and Kara less than ten seconds to get where they needed to be. "There's no need to do this precisely, except I'm pretty sure there's no way this prison can take it," Felicity said. "And you know the shock effect might cause them to all run away screaming."
"We can only hope," Oliver said. "Since I'm the one without powers, would anyone mind if I gave the count?"
"I think we can safely say it would be an honor," Barry told them.
"Anatoly, you might want to hold your ears," Sara said.
"On three," Oliver counted. "One…two…three!"
Sara gave her cry.
Barry ran through one of the walls.
So did Kara.
The effect was impressive. Indeed, the sound of three separate walls shattering nearly distracted Nyssa from what she was doing.
"Not to hurry you, but you've basically run out of time," Cisco had warned her about what was going to happen, but that had done little to distract Nyssa from her concentration.
"Doesn't matter. It's here."
Mulder took over his com. "How big a rock is it?"
Nyssa looked up at the ceiling…which was pretty much all rock. "Sizable. And according to your researching, breaking into will cause the virus to come out?"
"Assuming it doesn't come out on its own, which it has been known to do," Mulder told her. "I'm guessing that what they have is bigger than a breadbox?"
"Try a grain silo," Nyssa said. She looked around. "There are quite a few Haz-mat suits around. Would they provide adequate protection?"
Scully spoke up. "The best designed ones in America were penetrated by the black cancer when a scientist attempted to take a core sample. I have a feeling that the people who brought us Chernobyl have inferior gear."
"You're assuming they want to protect the wearers more than the virus," Mulder said. "I know it goes against your family credo to retreat, but consider this an order: get the hell out of there."
"I do this protesting in the strongest possible terms," Nyssa said in a deadpan that would have done Mulder himself proud. She turned to leave.
And found she wasn't alone.
"Hello, sugarplum," Deadshot said.
7:21 AM
To say the Russians were aware that their impenetrable sanctuary had been violated in the strongest possible terms was an understatement. What was a surprise – though in truth Oliver would not have been much shocked by it – was how little any of these Russians who had spent their lives devoted to protecting this self-same citadel seemed willing to give them in order to protect it.
Indeed, it was actually a question as to who was making an effort to vacate this prison faster: the men who had been kept in chains for years, perhaps decades or the men who had guarded it. Actually, Sara took that back: the prisoners, having spent years in chains and as test subject clearly had less strength and ability to flee. The guards were clearly acting as if the loudspeaker was saying the Russian equivalent of: "Feel free to run for your lives."
Almost simultaneously the same thought went through the heads of every one of the heroes who were leading the rescue attempt. Why weren't any of the guards making even a token effort to fight to defend a project that had been central to the Russian syndicate for so long? Why were they instead making such an effort to get as far away as possible?
A variation of the same thought occurred in everyone's head in Russia and on the other side of the globe. It couldn't have been simpler: Oh shit.
Mulder spoke as calmly as he possibly could. "Cisco, Felicity, start doing as hard as a scan as a possibly you can of the area."
"What are they looking for?" Mick asked.
"Whatever the equivalent of the self-destruct button is for this prison," Cisco said grimly. "I've got a gut feeling that somebody just pressed it."
"Barry, Kara, start getting as many people away from the building as far as you can as fast as you can," Oliver ordered.
"What about the rest of the team?" Barry ordered.
"Much as I really hate to say this, you're going to have to save us for last," Oliver said grimly.
"Please tell me your comm malfunctioned, "Felicity immediately responded.
"It's your tech, Felicity, you know very well it didn't," Sara reminded her.
"I know, I just really hate it when Oliver is so damn heroic for reasons I don't understand," Felicity told her. "And considering how smart I am, you're going to have to do a real good job explaining why you are refusing to get the hell out of Dodge apart from the fact you're being ludicrously stubborn!"
"Ray, you said the force when this thing crashed was what: 2000 atom bombs?" Oliver said over his com. "And back then, this was practically isolated. How much damage do you think it will do when it erupts this time?"
Ray didn't hesitate. "Krakatau, San Francisco earthquake and The Reckoning, all rolled into one times at least a thousand."
"And that's before you take into account what happens if this virus gets airborne," Oliver told them. "We don't find a way to stop this; the only bright side this might be that Russia will no longer being an existential threat to the world. Because there probably won't be a Russia anymore. "
There was a long pause. "I'm getting on the line with Alex and Lila," Felicity said finally. "I'm going to be generous, Oliver and hope you can solve this particular problem in 20 minutes. Because the second I hang up, I think you know what happens next."
Oliver could see the scenarios in his head. He could see ARGUS and the DAO scrambling flights to head towards to Russia. They would have to 'resolve' this crisis. Doing so would involve violating Russian airspace and dropping as many bombs as they could on this location. The best case scenario would be that World War III would begin about an hour later. The apocalypse that Mulder and Scully were doing everything in their power to prevent could end up beginning right now. Technically, it would stop the invasion but the fact that Earth would have reduced to a cinder would come as no consolation.
"Cisco, is there anything you can tell us that might tell us where to go?" Oliver asked.
"Oh, we've got a pretty good idea."
STAR LABS
"Please tell me all these bright lights and sirens are just to congratulate us for a job well done," Mulder said.
"There's a massive energy spike approximate a mile from the perimeter," Cisco said solemnly. "I think Russia has decided they've gotten as much use as they possibly can from their experiment."
"I hate to tell you that is the best case scenario," Scully said slowly.
Mulder turned to Scully. "All these years I thought that the world would have to end for you to admit I was right," he said sadly. "I hoped it would never actually come to that."
"Would you mind sharing with the rest of the class?" Mick's normal bluntness showed the sign of an edge. He was nervous.
"They were right about a ship being under this prison," Snart had reasoned it out. "And unless I'm wrong, that same ship is about to launch."
"Agent Mulder, what happened when the ship in Antarctica took off?" Stein asked.
"I always assumed it went back to where it came from," Mulder said slowly. "The thing is, when it took off, the only people who were around where members of the Syndicate. If this ship is as big as the one there when it takes off, the destruction it will leave in its wake will kill every sign of life within ten miles. Scully and I were the only survivors and I'm still not sure how we got out alive."
"What happens if they blow it up?" Snart demanded.
"You're assuming they can with conventional arms," Scully told them. "They might be able to shoot it down, but that will only make things infinitely worse."
"Is there a way to stop this thing from the inside?" Stein asked.
"You're asking the wrong people," Mulder admitted. "For all of years tracking aliens and chasing UFOs, the only time either of us was in one was when we were taken. And neither of us was in a position to do much observing. Certainly not me."
"No. You're not. But we might be."
Everybody looked at Cisco. He and Caitlin had that shared looked of understanding that Mulder and Scully had mastered over a far longer period of time.
"Kara," Caitlin said calmly. "We need you to get back to Star Labs right now."
"I need you to consider the source when I tell you both that the two of you are out of your fucking minds!" Mulder shouted.
"That place could blow any minute and you want to go to Ground Zero," Scully was in complete agreement with her partner.
"If this is a ship, that means it has an operating system," Cisco was speaking so calmly you'd think even he believed what he was saying. "If it has an operating system that means someone with training could turn it off."
"And where did you get your masters in alien spaceships?" Snart wasn't quite sure he bought this.
Exactly two seconds later, Kara showed up.
"We don't," Caitlin said calmly. "But we have one hell of a resident adviser."
"If you're looking for me to say 'This is so crazy it just might work', I have no intention of doing so," Mulder told them indignantly.
Scully knew how insane an idea had to me for Mulder to reject it. That being said…"I don't like this any more than you do, but we have almost no time and even fewer options."
Mulder looked at Cisco and Caitlin. "You're going to do this no matter what we say, "he said wearily.
"When you work on Team Flash, you get used to not asking for anyone's permission," Caitlin told them.
"I didn't think this situation could get any crazier," Mulder said, shaking his head.
"One more thing. I'm going to need to borrow your cell phone." Cisco told him.
"I stand corrected."
RUSSIA
"Cisco and Caitlin," Oliver said to himself.
"May I remind the two of them are infinitely more qualified for this job than either of us," Barry pointed out.
Barry had just come back after his most recent trip to tell him what they had planned.
"The powers they have, you think that'll help them take care of themselves when they have to?" Oliver asked.
"I'm not wild about what will happen to Caitlin if things should go wrong, but the end of the world scenario has to trump personal well being." Barry looked Oliver dead in the face. "I'd think you of all people would acknowledge that."
Oliver acknowledged the point. "I'll get a little further away from the perimeter, but I'm not getting out of her until literally the last minute. Besides, unless we stop this thing there's a very good chance even you might not be able to get us far enough way."
"Always the voice of optimism," Barry reminded them. "Kara, how long until you and Cisco arrive?"
"We're about a minute out," Kara said into her comm.
"I hate to add to our problems, even though that is how things usually end up going right about the time we start dealing with these situations," Sara said slowly, "but Nyssa isn't answering her com. And considering the last communication she had with Mulder was to haul ass…"
She didn't have to finish the sentence. "Do you need either of us?" Oliver asked.
"Hold back for now," Sara said. "Let's hope this is a problem that only one of us needs to handle."
7:25 AM
"To quote Keanu Reeves in basically everything, whoa," Cisco said.
Cisco and Caitlin had given Kara the exact coordinates for where the greatest radiation of power was. As far as anybody could figure, it was practically at the center of the prison.
Under nearly three hundred feet of earth.
Supergirl had put them down five feet away, then burrowed as far as she could to the bottom of the coordinates. When she came back, she didn't even pause before picking Caitlin and Cisco up and bringing them back exactly where she had finished digging.
They had found what they were looking for.
"All right Kara," Caitlin said, as if they were in the interior of alien spaceships about to take off every day – which very soon might actually happen. "You're the resident alien. What are we looking for?"
"I'm trying to figure that out," Kara admitted. "It's not like there's a Blue Book for spaceships."
"I'd suggest splitting up, but we might get lost," Cisco said.
He wasn't kidding. By Cisco's interior math, the area that they were currently in was roughly the side of the Empire State Building laid on its side. And almost every inch of it was covered with some kind of writing. For all they knew, they all might be variations of the Colonist version of 'HONK IF YOU LOVE ANDROMEDA', but given what they had learned about these writings before; it might just as easily the entire Book of Psalms in Navajo. Anything was possible.
Until recently that had always been a good thing in Cisco Ramone's mind.
"Please tell me there is something here that you can work with," Caitlin almost sounded like she was pleading with Supergirl.
"I'm doing the best I can," Kara said. "I'm fluent in several alien languages but it's not like this was ever one of them."
"Well, not to put a rush on a superhero, but I think we have fifteen minutes before this ship launches." Cisco hesitated. "Under the heading of 'no stupid questions', if we can shut it off there any chance you might be powerful enough to, I don't know, push it down?"
"I don't think me, my cousin and whatever's left of the Kryptonians would have enough power to deflect this thing," Kara's eyes hadn't moved from the walls. "And for the record, just what would you have us do with it if we could?"
"Throw it into the sun?" Even Caitlin looked at Cisco oddly at that one. "If these aren't desperate times, I don't what would be."
"Let's call that Plan B."
Sara had made it to the room where the core sample was being kept. In hindsight, considering what was clearly under their feet, spending time trying to liberate a mere sample of this virus had been a historic waste of time and energy, one which Nyssa was now paying the price for. She hoped that Nyssa had merely been stopped by another platoon of soldiers, though why they would be protecting their property when everyone else was fleeing was somewhat beyond here right now.
Five feet before she arrived, she got her answer. Nyssa, who never looked unprepared for anything, was standing stock still. And there wasn't an army, but someone only nominally better for them.
"I was wondering when the cavalry would show up," Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot said. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure of meeting."
"Your reputation precedes you," Sara said. "Kind of same way typhoid and the Black Death did."
Deadshot tut-tutted. "Canary, I want to be here far less than you do. I don't like being on Russia under the best of circumstances, and these ain't them by a long shot. But" he pointed to the flashing collar around his neck, "When that bitch decides she needs you, I don't exactly have a choice in the matter."
"I've tried to inform that if he stays much longer, it will have the same result," Nyssa said. "Are all of your enemies this thick?"
"Hey I know who your father was," Deadshot didn't seem insulted by Nyssa's remark, which was a little disturbing. "It's easy to act all high and mighty when you don't have any fear of dying. Rest of us don't have that option."
"Why did Waller send you?" Sara decided to cut to the chase. "I'm guessing it wasn't to stop us."
"She never gave me and the squad enough credit, but in this case you're right," Deadshot actually sighed. He clearly wasn't any happier about this scenario than they were. "Your ex, Queen, I'm guessing he's around."
"What makes you think I'm not here on my own?"
"Because we all know Waller wouldn't bother to send me for anything less than a vigilante."
None of them had ever given Deadshot enough credit for his cleverness, even when it was masked by his desire to survive. "Why do you want to see him?" Sara asked.
"I could live the rest of my life – which is probably measured in minutes – without ever seeing his hood again," Deadshot admitted. "But I know he worked for Waller too, and got out clean. That certainly means he's smarter than her. And if he is, maybe he can figure out this little mess the three of us are going to be facing."
Yet another sign of the impending apocalypse. Sara decided to refrain from the commentary and just acknowledge. "What do you need him to do?"
"Come up with a way that all three of us walk out of here alive," Deadshot was even more honest than usual.
"What does Waller want you to do?" Sara asked.
Deadshot gestured towards the ceiling. "There is something in that rock. Something alive. Waller's instructions were very clear. I was to shoot into this rock and collect what came out."
"And I'm guessing she was maddeningly vague on the details," Sara said.
"No, that part she was clear on." Deadshot countered. "I was to find someone – everybody's bad luck it was your ex – shoot the rock and just 'infect them.' Then I was to get out of here with the 'sample' and report back to an extraction point."
"I'm guessing she didn't tell you that once that thing gets loose, it's just as likely to infect you as her," Sara said.
"That part I filled him in on," Nyssa said.
"Which does make me less inclined to do it. Problem is, if I don't do it or I don't report to her," Deadshot's eyes indicated his collar, "well, in her words, I'm not useful for her any more. I realize that I've put you in a bad spot, but I think even you'd agree its worse for me."
Damn this Syndicate. Now she was feeling sympathy for a soulless assassin. "Ollie, did you get all this?"
"I'm not sure what I hate about these people more," Oliver said into her comm. "What they are planning to do or that the way they're doing is making us have to ally with people who would try to kill us in any other scenario."
"I really thought that was a typical Wednesday for you," Sara said dryly.
"Tick-tock," Deadshot said. "Does he have an answer?"
"Oh I have one," Oliver said. "It's only a minor improvement of what you're planning to do, but it is the best possibility that all three of you get out of there."
"You have a way to get us out in one piece?"
"I said I could get you out," Oliver corrected. "The one piece part that will take a lot of luck – which as you all know, we don't tend to have a lot of."
"I know what I say about life being a bullet in the brain," Deadshot told them. "I'd prefer not to take the bullet yet."
"Remember you said that. "
7:30 AM
"Good news is I think I've found out what part of it means," Kara said. "Unfortunately, it's that part over there."
"You mean the one that keeps changing?" Cisco said. "I may not have this ship's equivalent of Rosetta stone, but I recognize a countdown in any language."
"That's actually the slightly better news," Kara said. "Right below it, there's another counter. Only I'm pretty sure that one's going in the opposite direction. I may not be a scientist, but I'm pretty sure that part is measuring acceleration. So whatever amounts to the control panel, I'm pretty sure the readouts here."
"I guess under the sliding scale we have that qualifies as decent news," Caitlin said. "Could you maybe guestimate how much time we have before one or the other runs out?"
"Math is a universal language, and based on the symbols I'm seeing we've got eight minutes before that timer runs down." Kara said.
"So no pressure," Cisco said. "Where are you on finding the off switch for this control panel?"
"You're assuming there's one here," Kara was concentrating as hard as Cisco and Caitlin did on these kinds of problems. "For all we know, this is the same type of craft that brought me and my cousin here. Both of them were launched remotely with not so much as a GPS in them."
"Did either of them have these kinds of counters?" Caitlin asked.
"No. Which is why I think there might be the equivalent of an 'abort' switch somewhere," Kara said. "Of course 'abort' in Kryptonian might very well be 'ignite' in colonist."
"To Serve Man might actually not be a cookbook," Cisco muttered to himself. "Is there any word here you do recognize?"
"Actually there is," Kara said suddenly. "Because it's in Navajo."
"I want to go on the record by saying that even by your standards, this is a horrible idea," Sara told Oliver.
"I'm not wild about it either," Deadshot said. "Mainly because it depends that you'll live up to your end of the bargain if this goes exactly as you plan."
"I keep my word," Oliver said. "We all know that Waller almost never does the same."
Sara looked at Nyssa. "All of this basically hinges on your agreement. You have far more to lose than the rest of us."
"And I said I agreed to it. We have no time to blather on." Nyssa looked at Sara. "I only ask that if he betrays me, you honor your debt."
"You don't have to ask that." Sara knew they were out of time. "Barry, are you ready?"
"For the record I think this is a horrible idea too, but yes," Barry told them.
"You heard them. It's time you lived up to your name." Nyssa all but ordered Deadshot.
"All right. Don't say I didn't warn you." Deadshot took out his gun.
And fired at the ceiling.
The second he heard the shot ring out, the Flash was on the move. Barry Allen had outraced so many things over the past two years that were more powerful and bigger than him; never once had he even contemplated that he would be trying to outrace an alien virus. Like everything else he had raced against in the past two years, he gainfully accepted the challenge.
Even though he knew how vital the stakes were, the scientist in him was aware that this might be a chance they would not get again for awhile. Whenever he moved at his fastest, the world around him always slowed down so that he could observe everything in a second by second basis. Barry thought that this might be there best chance to just see how this part of their enemy moved and worked. He'd have to be fast to save everybody's lives, but the scientist in him knew he also had to observe every picoseconds of this. He hadn't told Oliver or Sara this part of it, but he knew that this was the part where both sides of his life had to operate at peak efficiency.
Barry was in the room within less than six seconds of the shot being fired. By the time he got there he began to observe everything in – well, flashes. And a couple of things became clear instantly.
Usually everything slowed down the moment he was moving at top speed, and that was the case for every human being in the room. It practically seemed like Nyssa, Sara and Deadshot were standing still. The virus, however, that was moving almost at the same speed he was.
This was his first observation of the 'black cancer', as it was called here, in action; he'd seen the aftereffects on Kara, but never anyone infected. He remembered wondering at the time just how someone as strong and fast as Supergirl could still be infected by something like this. He knew how viruses worked on Earth, and he knew that nothing infected its patience as quickly as the virus seemed too. He hadn't been unable to wrap his mind around it.
Now he could.
The others were moving – at the speed of a human to be sure, but none of them had any intention of just sitting around and letting this thing infect them. Compared him, they were standing still. Compared to the virus, they were barely moving at all. Indeed, one of the black worms – and that was what it looked like, a worm – was on Nyssa leg and moving faster than any 'earth' worm could possibly move. This might very well be part of the plan, but that didn't mean he had to go along with it.
Barry finished running towards the three of them and like lightning got them out of there. The second he did, he yelled: "Oliver!"
He'd taken them towards the last location where Oliver had said he'd meet them.
"Okay," Deadshot said, a little numbly. "That's a new one for me."
"Are you guys okay?" Oliver said, as he ran towards them.
Sara and Deadshot looked at their clothes. "I think so," she told them.
"How long does this shit take to take effect?" Deadshot demanded.
"The fact that you're actually able to ask the question is a good sign," Oliver told them.
"I'm not sure," Nyssa said slowly.
Barry looked at Nyssa.
"You were faster than it," Nyssa collapsed to the ground.
"Damn it!" Barry shouted. He knelt over her, pretty certain what he was going to see before he saw it.
The whites of her eyes were starting to cloud over.
Deadshot turned to Oliver. "If you were ever going to be the Hood, I'd understand," he said to Oliver.
"I expected something like this to happen; doesn't mean I'm happy about it," Oliver said. "How long before you're supposed to be at the extraction point?"
"Half an hour," Deadshot told them.
Oliver looked at Barry. "He kept his word. Take him to where we promised."
Barry nodded grimly.
Deadshot looked stunned; he clearly had never expected Oliver to actually keep his word. "Seriously?"
"If we don't solve this issue in less than ten minutes, worrying about what we doing with you, it's going to be a very moot point," Sara said grimly.
Barry nodded. In an instant, the three of them were gone.
"So now, it's all in the hands of our resident alien," Sara said slowly. "Level with me Ollie; how fucked are we?"
"Look at this way," Oliver said with a small smile. "How many times in the past eight years have the two of us been assumed dead or actually dead?"
"I've lost count," Sara admitted.
"We've been on borrowed time for awhile," Oliver said. "If it happens, at least we know that the world actually did have to end to kill either of us."
Sara looked on Oliver. "You know when I agreed to go on your yacht that night; I thought it would be an adventure. I should have known to be careful what I wish for."
"You and me, both," Oliver said softly.
Sara walked up to him. "One more for the road?"
"Won't your girlfriend be mad?" Oliver joked.
"We don't have to tell her. Or yours."
"No, she'll kill both of us if she found out," Oliver said.
"Apocalypses do get the hormones going," Sara said.
Oliver considered it. "What the hell."
The two of them walked into each other's arms and kissed.
7:35 AM
"All right," Kara said slowly. "It's kind of messy, but I think I know what I have to do to shut it off."
"Well, don't keep us in suspense because we don't have the time," Cisco demanded.
"I know what three of these buttons seem to say. That one says 'launch', that one says 'power', and that one over there, 'cancel'.
"We've got maybe three minutes before something horrible happens. Why are you hesitating?" Cisco demanded.
"Because cancel has a very broad meaning," Kara reminded them. "It could mean that it will shut down everything that's happening. It could also mean that it means 'self-destruct' and this whole place blows sky-high, which I'm pretty sure we were trying to avoid."
"Well, considering we know what 'launch' means and I don't think any of us have a good idea as to what power could mean, we're pretty much out of choices," Caitlin said.
"Remind me of that when the place blows up," Kara told them.
"Hey, you're the one most likely to survive," Cisco said. "Look, I know the grand tradition is to wait until the counter gets to 'one', but I don't think any of us have been in favor of tradition."
"Never was my style." Kara looked at her friends. "Be ready to vibe out of here. One…two…three."
She pressed the 'cancel' button. For a very long moment, it seemed like nothing was going to happen. Then came a series of noises. Cisco dared looked at what he had considered the countdown. The figures had stopped changing.
"Mr. Ramone," Stein said into their earpiece. "The monitor at STAR Labs shows that the power signs around your area are beginning to decrease. I think whatever the three of you did worked."
Everybody exhaled. "Well much as I've always wanted to visit Russia, I don't particularly care for their treatment of scientists," Caitlin told them. "Kara can you finish up here on your own?"
"Not a problem. What are you two going to do?"
Cisco reached into his pocket "Give Mulder his cell phone back."
Caitlin took his hand and the two of them vibed out of there.
Kara shook her head. "Every day another surprise."
"All these years and still nothing has changed."
Sara and Oliver were stepping apart. "I realize you were getting some fresh air, but you could have warned us."
"Of all my sins, I think being a Peeping Tom would be the least of them, Oliver," Anatoly had regained enough of his strength so that he was walking upright now. "I suppose this is the time to thank you for saving my life yet again."
"Frankly we're amazed that you didn't take the first trip out of here, given the circumstances," Sara pointed out. "It would have been disappointing for all our efforts that you lived only another fifteen minutes after saving you."
Anatoly nodded. "Frankly, I wasn't entirely certain where to go until the Canary and I finished our conversation. What are you and Oliver doing here?"
"We'd ask you the same question, but we know enough to make an educated guess," Oliver said. "Somehow in the last couple of years, you finally managed to attract the wrong kind of attention. Perhaps you thought you would be fortunate enough to land in a Russian prison, but somehow you ended up in the hands of men who have committed crimes far worse and for far longer than you ever did."
Typically, Anatoly was not surprised to hear this. "And how long have you known of it?"
"Oliver's known about it a couple of months. I've only known about it a matter of days," Sara told him. "Of course, we use the word 'known' in a very loose context. This is something all of us know only the broad strokes of and almost no detail. Anything you can do to tell us about how this happened can only help us."
"I'm not exactly in the ideal condition for conversation," Anatoly said. "And even if I were, having this close to my former prison is hardly the place for it."
"Indeed," Oliver agreed. "Now that it's pretty clear the prison isn't going to explode immediately, I imagine the guards are going to be returning. And no offense, Anatoly, but I've spent too much time in Russia already."
"I could use a change of scenery myself," Anatoly acknowledged. "The girl who flies, is she responsible for our trip home?"
Anatoly had clearly been more observant then he'd let on. "Right now, she's keeping a promise we made to the villagers and making sure that they're gone before the inevitable retribution is dealt out," Sara told him.
"You're not going to destroy this place?" Anatoly seemed surprised.
"Much as I'd like to unleash the full power of the Hood on this whole area, I think we all know how dangerous that would be," Oliver told them. "And even assuming that we could do that, it would only postpone the plans the people behind this plan have in motion. This was an epic battle, but it was still only a battle. Right now, we have to find a way to win the war, and that means living to fight another day."
Now Anatoly seemed shocked. "You really have changed Oliver Queen. And I must admit I'm impressed."
"Then I'm going to have to ask you to take a leap of faith even more dangerous than getting on the sub in Lian Yu," Oliver told Anatoly. "Sara and I are working with a team, some of them you've met before, some of them you've at least heard of. But right now, the ostensible leaders of this team are two FBI agents in America. And they need to know your story."
"You think they can comprehend what happened here?"
"Twenty years ago, one of them not only survived these tests but managed to escape this very camp. If anything, you would have to prove yourself worthy to him," Sara told Anatoly.
Anatoly was impressed now. "So he knows what's been going on here."
"He's been trying to warn the world longer than some in our circle have been alive," Oliver told him. "The problem is, just as with so many crises, no one was willing to listen until it was almost too late."
Anatoly looked at his friends. "If I were to return to the states, I don't suppose there's anything he can do about my history."
"No more than he can do about mine," Oliver admitted. "He and his partner have been willing to provide cover to people in your position."
"That's still more than I would hope for," Anatoly acknowledged. "If you would forgive me I would prefer to travel home in an airplane rather than…other means."
"That's reasonable," Sara said. "There's an extraction point about three miles from here. A couple of government agencies will have travel waiting for us and an armed escort."
Anatoly nodded. "Tell me the truth. Just what are we facing?"
"Nothing that big." Oliver said. "Just the end of the world."
Anatoly took that in. "And you and your friends are the only people who can stop it."
"It's a bigger circle than before, but basically yes."
Anatoly nodded. "Oliver, make sure the flight were on has vodka on it. I have a feeling I'm going to need it."
"Been there, done that," Sara told him.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Well, this was the climax of this story. Next comes the denouement. One, two more chapters and we're through (with this story, anyway)
I thought it was cute watching the fifty-ish Mulder and Scully banter in the revival. Other people might not find it as endearing.
I'm guessing that the best prison in the world couldn't stand up to the efforts of metahumans and aliens. And let's be honest, Soviet era prisons wouldn't stand a chance.
The rock and exposure to the 'black cancer' was the climax of Tunguska (one of the most memorable shots in the entire series) This is how I see the Russians keeping it.
Deadshot is a mercenary before he joined the Suicide Squad. He'd sell Waller out in a heartbeat. (Remind X-Files fans of anyone?) There will be consequences but I'll get to them in the next chapter.
They never did tell us just what happened to the alien ship after it took off in Antarctica (yet another major problem with Fight the Future) I'm trying to point out what consequences might have happened in the real world.
Mulder and Scully know about Cisco and Caitlin's powers by now, to be sure, but they still haven't seen Cisco's in action. That should be fun in the next chapter.
Can Barry move faster than the black oil? Given how rapidly it seemed to act when it was let loose, I'm honestly not sure. This was my attempt to answer the question.
Kara can read Kryptonian but we don't know what the alien language for the colonists ever was. (The closest we ever got to seeing it the seventh season premiere and by that point the narrative thread was completely gone.) I'm going to assume that there are common tongues to a lot of alien languages out there (and if there aren't, any Martian who wants to visit and correct me is more than welcome to do so)
No Sara and Oliver will not be renewing their romance, those of you who ship them. Too much has happened and they are committed to other people. This was the classic 'world's ending scenario'. Of course, there are going to be a lot of them going forward.
How did Anatoly end up in the prison and what does he know about the conspiracy? I'll start dealing with that next.
Thank you for being patient. Real life in a very serious way interfered or I'd have posted last week. Read and review!
