Chapter 1
STAR LABS
"And the fun just keeps on coming," Cisco Ramone said. "First metahumans, then it turns out our boss is an evil time traveler, then we get visited from a villain from an alternate universe, and now were tasked with stopping a full on invasion."
"Not exactly what I thought I signed up for when I began my internship here," Caitlin Snow admitted.
"You ever hear of either of these agents before?" Wally West, aka Kid Flash asked.
"Actually, I have," Cisco said. "Indirectly. I was doing a stint up at Dartmouth, and I met this guy who was kind of the verge of fringe science. Dr. Charles Burks."
"What kind of science?"
"He'd arranged cameras to see things that didn't appear not only in normal lenses, but that scientifically didn't exist." Cisco said. "He showed me footage of spectral twins, photography that supposedly showed auras, videos of shadows of things that couldn't cast shadows. It sounded out there even for me, but he had the footage and the science to back I up."
"And he knew Mulder and Scully?" Caitlin asked.
"He said he'd consulted for them quite a few times over the years. Mulder was one of the few people who took his line of work seriously, and every so often he'd show up with something that would 'make his month' in his words." Cisco said. "But he hadn't had any contact with him since the spring of 2000."
"Right around the time Mulder was abducted, then died, then came back, and then was drummed out of the Bureau," Caitlin shook her head. "What does it say about the way our lives are that sounds normal for us?"
"Only the part that it was happening while we were still going through our adolescence at the time," Cisco turned to Wally. "You know, if you want to go back home, now may be your last chance."
Wally looked a little hurt. "You saying I haven't done a good job the last few months?"
"On the contrary, you've done fine," Caitlin said. "But if what we've read and seen in the files is true – and Felicity verified it, so there isn't much room for doubt – this is going to get bloody." She looked into the distance. "I've already lost the man I love twice because of this. Barry's lost his father. And I can't see any way forward without a lot of carnage."
"I've thought about it once or twice," Wally said. "For about three seconds."
"You're Kid Flash. You can do a lot in that long," Cisco said with a smile.
"My family's here. My friends are here. Besides, if this invasion really is coming, it's not like there's going to be a place even I can run to in order to get away.' Wally shook his head. "I'm staying."
Just then, there was a loud buzz. Everybody jumped. "What the hell was that?" Wally said.
"Wait a minute," Caitlin thought for a second. "It's the buzzer for the front door."
Wally looked at Cisco. "You have one of those?"
"Yeah. I just kind of forgot. Everybody we know just seems to walk right in here unannounced." Cisco said.
"Well, I guess like everything else, the government is the last to know." Caitlin was looking at the security feed.
Outside were Agents Mulder and Scully.
"Everybody keep calm," Cisco said. "Feds are here."
"We're sorry about the mess," Cisco told the FBI as they were walking into the main room ten minutes later.
"The two of us spent our entire first stint in the Bureau in a room with three file cabinets that didn't even have space for two desks," Mulder pointed out.
"But it had plenty of room for your video collection," Scully said slyly.
"Why do you think I held on to that VCR for so long?" Mulder reminded her. "In any case, since this is going to be our new headquarters – and boy, I'm still having trouble getting used to saying that word in this connotation – I figured it might make sense to see the place."
"We're grateful that you trust all of us," Caitlin said genuinely. "We just didn't expect you until the Flash got back."
"In all honesty, we wanted to meet with you first," Scully said.
Everybody exchanged the kinds of looks that Mulder and Scully had countless times over the years.
"We don't know how long this battle is going to take," Mulder said slowly. "But one thing we are sure of is that we're going to need brainpower as much as were going to need superheroes and metahumans. We're going to need minds like yours and Cisco just as much as we're going to need the Flash and Supergirl."
Both Caitlin and Cisco wondered if this was the time to tell them about the powers both of them had gained when the particle accelerator had gone critical two years ago. For the moment, they each made interior decision not too, not so much because they didn't trust Mulder and Scully yet, but because these were impressive compliments to be handed out by people who barely knew them.
"And as a sign of good faith going forward," Mulder reached into his coat pocket and took out a flash drive. "This is our complete record of the X-Files."
Cisco took it, nonplussed. "Well thank you, but I don't know what we can tell you about this that the rest of the government doesn't know about already. We don't know any more about this alien conspiracy than you do. Probably less."
Mulder's face cleared. "Oh, you misunderstood. In the nine years the X-Files were active, I'd say only twenty percent – maybe twenty five percent at the most - had any connection to alien life. The reason we want you to have access ahead of anyone else is because it's our belief that most of what's on those files pertains to what you and the Flash have been dealing with the last two years."
The penny dropped for Cisco and Caitlin add the exact time. "Wait a minute," Caitlin reacted first. "You're telling us that you spent most of your first stint at the Bureau investigating metahumans?"
"But I thought they've only been around since the particle accelerator explosion," Wally said.
"We've actually been trying to keep that part quiet," Scully admitted. "To be clear, a fair amount of our work did deal with certain things that only fit the description of the supernatural."
"You mean vampire, werewolves and witches?" Caitlin asked.
"And there were a fair amount of things that had to do with purely paranormal events," Mulder told them. "But based on the research that was available at the time, there's no other conclusion to draw that metahumans not only predate what happened here three years, but may have been around for decades, if not centuries, before this."
Cisco looked at the flash drive with renewed interest. "We're going to go through this with a fine tooth comb, but I have to ask, how sure are you of this?"
"That's where things are going to be difficult," Scully admitted. "You have to remember, the lion's share of our work was done more than twenty years ago. The material to cover the scientific research that your team has been doing simply didn't exist at the time."
"Basically, the files here are all we've got." Mulder hesitated. "And full disclosure: I'm not sure how much of what's there will be useful. In 1998, our offices were set on fire. Most of the work was damaged beyond repair. I spent months trying to put it back together and even then, a lot of its illegible."
"Old school. Respect." Cisco said. "Well, we've got a lot of software that can restore a lot of damaged images, so that much we can fix. The rest of it, we'll probably have to reorganize it.:"
"Oh go right ahead," Scully said. "Honestly, one of the biggest problems with our old system was that only Mulder knew where to find anything. Which obviously isn't going to be workable going forward."
"And actually that brings us, indirectly, to the other reason we wanted to talk to you before we met up with the rest of your team," Mulder said. "Felicity told us that a lot of the metahumans you've captured you held prisoner here."
"Hey, if you're going to get all up in our face about holding prisoners illegally," Wally started.
"On the contrary," Mulder said. "Not only do we think it's a great idea, we hope you'll be willing to help us with that part going forward. "
That gave them pause. "Not that we don't appreciate that your giving us this vote of confidence," Caitlin said. 'But I'm not a hundred percent sure how much we want to be keeping government prisoners."
Mulder and Scully exchanged a look of their own. "One of the first cases that I investigated when I was assigned to the X-Files was a series of murders that took place in Baltimore," Scully started. "There had been three murders, all of which took place in locked building, with no sign of entrance or egress. All three victims had been murdered and theirs livers had been extracted."
"Well, that's sort of a normal Tuesday for us, but I can see why it would have landed in your lap," Cisco said carefully. "This was when, 1992?"
"'93, actually." Mulder said. "We found what was an elongated fingerprint on one of the air conditioning vents in the room. After some tricky work, we were able to match to a series of five murders that had taken places thirty years earlier in the same area. Similar killings had taken place in 1933 and 1903."
"So what was your theory?" Caitlin said. "Your killer was some kind of metahuman who needed livers in order to survive?"
"He kills them, harvest their livers, and then goes into hibernation for thirty years," Cisco said.
Mulder looked at his watch. "Two minutes. They believed in two minutes what took me seven years to convince you of."
"What can I say, Mulder?" Scully said with a smile. "Every generation gets a little bit smarter."
"Well, the Bureau didn't regard this with any seriousness, even after another victim," Mulder continued. "The only thing that made this concrete was that, like so many serial killers, Eugene Tooms – that was the only name we ever had for him – took trophies before he killed his next victim. Which may have been the only reason I was able to save Scully before she became victim number 5."
"How long had you been working on the X-Files when that happened?" Caitlin asked.
"Less than a month." Scully said. "Sadly, not the last time I would be cornered by a monster."
"Wow," Wally said. "So there have been metahumans over a century before you got started on this?"
"Sure seems that way," Cisco said. "Only thing that's missing a cool nickname." He paused. "Toom-i- nator.' Nope, too forced. 'Liver Let Die.' No, too Weird Al.. I guess you weren't paid to come up with names."
"Honestly, 'Toom-i-nator's not bad," Mulder paused. "But important as that is, it actually wasn't the point I was driving towards."
"Tooms was held in a sanitarium in Druitt Hill for attacking me," Scully told them. "When Mulder and I tried to tell the D.A. about the true nature of his crimes, he said he was only going to stick with what he could prove."
"Wait," Caitlin told them. "Didn't they subject him to a medical exam when they took him in?"
"And they were absent from the file when we tried to reclaim it," Mulder said. "It gets better. Eight months later under the care of Dr. Aaron Monte, Eugene Tooms was pronounced 'rehabilitated'. He petitioned the board for his release. When I spelled out the exact nature of what Tooms was and his crimes, they looked at me like I was the one who should be in a padded cell."
"To be fair, a lot of agents at the Bureau thought the same thing at the time," Scully said. "They called you 'Spooky' for a reason."
"Could you go back a step?" Cisco asked. "This liver-eating, psychotic, murdering metahuman was released from an asylum eight months after attack an FBI agent?"
"That's a greater punishment than a lot of the subjects of our files got," Mulder said cheerfully. "I spent the next two weeks tracking him. But the bastard was clever. He actually framed me for assaulting him. I was kept off the case long enough for Tooms to claim his last victim. I took no pleasure that it was none other than Dr. Monte."
"Did you have to kill him?" Wally asked.
Scully nodded. "Crushed him with an escalator."
"The point is, we found out very early in our career that the justice system we swore an oath too had no place for most of the creature we ended up chasing," Mulder told them. "And until we can build one that works, we need a stopgap. Your holding facilities are probably our best bet."
Cisco looked at Caitlin. "You do know that the integrity of this place has been violated more than a few times over the years?" he said as delicately as he could.
"The last thing we want to build here is the paranormal equivalent of Guantanamo Bay," Mulder said. "And let's be honest. By their very nature, the creatures we pursued for the best decade are by their very nature difficult to catch, much less hold. But we have to try or this whole thing is futile."
"All right," Caitlin said. "We'll do our best." She looked at Cisco.
"And since you've been very open with us, there's something you need to see."
Scully looked at the paper carefully. "You know, there could be a logical explanation for this."
"That's what I love about you, Scully," Mulder said in a detached voice. "The Four Horseman could be riding down Fifth Avenue, and you'd still think they were really realistic LARPers."
"To be fair, we had the same reaction the first time we saw this," Caitlin admitted.
"Granted that was in part because it was being kept by a time traveler from the future that had been impersonating our boss for the last several years, but that's a story for another day," Cisco said in one breath.
"I guess you have some stories to tell too," Mulder lowered his eyes to the date. "Well, at least we finally know when the bastards are coming."
Mulder, as was his fashion, was taking the paper that now showed that an alien invasion was headed to Earth roughly three years from now, better than most of the others. "How certain is this?" he finally asked.
"We don't know," Caitlin said. "Ever since we discovered this room about a year ago, it said something about The Flash disappearing in the midst of a crisis. The day after you and Scully went public…"
'Extra, extra," Cisco said. "But we don't have to tell you that correlation doesn't naturally equal causation."
"No, but it's kind of hard not to think otherwise when you tell us that," Mulder reminded them. "I'd apologize, but somehow I don't think Hallmark makes a card for this."
"There goes my partner, trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders," Scully said.
"Kind of sounds like someone else we know," Wally said.
"If what you're telling us is correct – and given everything we've already seen, we're inclined to believe you – then this plan for aliens to, you know, take over the world, has been going on for decades, if not longer," Cisco pointed to the newspaper. "This is not your fault. This has been in the works for a very long time. You don't owe anyone an apology The world owes you one. For not listening to you sooner."
"I just hope it's not too late," Mulder said.
"According to this, we've got a little more than three years." Caitlin pointed to the date. "Every battle we've had to fight against metahumans since we got started, we've had to fly by the seat of our pants. Same with Team Arrow, and though I don't know them yet, I'm pretty sure Supergirl and her team have had the same problems. For the first time in…"
She looked at Cisco. "Ever," he said, "we have a hard and fast schedule. Worst case scenario, we put together a fighting force so we can take down the aliens and this new syndicate on an even keel. Best case scenario, this paper goes back to what it was before."
"The optimism of youth," Mulder said. "I'd forgotten what that was like."
"Well, then I guess the only thing left is that we need to meet the man himself," Scully said.
"Yeah, about that," Wally said. "Felicity said you'd figured out who the Arrow was and that Supergirl had revealed her true identity to you. No offense, but do you already know who he is?"
Mulder didn't answer directly. "I understand why you and your friends wear costumes and masks," he began. "There have been more than a few occasions when I think Scully's life and mine would've been easier if we'd been able to keep our true identities secret."
"You never knew the real names of your first two informants," Scully reminded him. "It didn't stop either of them from being killed."
Mulder nodded. "Neither Oliver nor Kara told me the identity of the Flash," he said softly. "Kara trusted me with her identity after our first mission together. I knew who Oliver was, but given the timing of what happened in Star City, you wouldn't have to be an ace profiler to know who he was after a few months. I have a suspicion of who the Flash really is – a very strong one, in fact – but unless he confirms it himself, I'm not going to force you to do so."
"You know, you're screwing up my perceptions of how the Feds are supposed to act," Wally said admiringly.
"That's because I never really trusted them even when I signed on," Mulder said surprisingly. "I know who the Bureau was named for, and I still think it's a disgrace that we have to work in a building named for such a monster."
"Just out of curiosity, you think Hoover was involved in your conspiracy at any level?" Cisco asked.
Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance. "The stuff with an alien invasion, I'm really not sure," Mulder finally said. "The part where we hire Nazi to perform experiments so every American can be cataloged and recorded, I can see that fast bastard leading the charge if he thought it would help beat the Red Menace."
"Hard as it may to believe, when Mulder and I joined the Bureau, it was actually considered fairly liberal," Scully said. "We now seem to have overcorrected way too far."
"The FBI was infiltrated by the conspiracy long before we joined, and I have no doubt it still is," Mulder said. "We trust the DEO to an extent, even though they had no idea about what was going on in their house. No single agency is going to be able to stop this conspiracy, even if they all work together. That's the reason we're building this team to begin with. Scully and I still provisionally have to report to the Bureau. We'll provide whatever cover we can and our friends in the media will keep things transparent. That said, we need to know what you want us to put into our reports and what you want us to leave out."
"Then I think it's time you officially checked in with the Central City PD," Caitlin told them.
Mulder had spent a lifetime keeping a poker face. "To meet our first official contacts with law enforcement?" he asked.
Wally shook his head. "To meet my family."
WEST RESIDENCE
Joe West had been overjoyed when his son in all but blood had been located and was finally home. The circumstances were not ideal (though given the way their lives had been the past two years, when were they ever?) but he'd wished that there was a little more time than forty eight hours before they had to go hurtling towards the next crisis.
Everything that had happened since Barry had become The Flash had been difficult to accept at first, but it was hard to escape of the evidence of your own eyes. So when Mulder and Scully had been interviewed by Catherine Grant six weeks earlier and told them that aliens were planning to colonize the Earth and there were people in the government who were willing to conspire with them, it had taken a couple of beats to accept it, but both he and Iris were willing to buy in.
In truth, Joe was far more inclined to believe in government conspiracies then his children would've thought. He knew too well the government's shady history when it came to people who weren't white. He knew about the coup in Wilmington and Tuskegee syphilis experiments. He knew how the FBI had wiretapped Martin Luther King and much of the civil rights movement. And that was before he had learned about ARGUS and the conspiracies Oliver and the crew in Star City were involved in. Though he didn't know it at the time, he had a similar distrust of many of the government's ethics that Fox Mulder did. It was just a little bizarre to learn that there were certain aspects of that government that were willing to sell out the entire human race.
When Felicity had reached out to STAR Labs a few weeks earlier about their first encounter with the newly minted X-Files, Joe had been a little surprised that Oliver Queen, of all people, was willing to trust the federal government, albeit such a fringe version. Iris had shown him some of the information that Catco had revealed to the public, and it had been eye-opening – especially the reports about how crime had actually gone up in every city that heroes like Barry and Oliver had been protecting. In truth, he'd been a little surprised the average crime rate hadn't gone up more; it seemed every week Central City was under the threat of metahuman trying to destroy the place.
But Oliver and his team had seen the evidence with their own eyes, and they knew just how bad things could get unless something was done and done quickly. Oliver had asked STAR Labs to quietly start chasing down some of their old adversaries on the off chance the Syndicate had been making a recruitment pitch.
"I have to tell you this kind of thing the evil Harrison Wells would've gotten in on had he known about," Cisco had told them.
"How sure are you that he's been erased from the timeline?" Felicity asked.
"Not sure at all," Cisco admitted. "I mean, we think he's gone, but we don't know the rules about time travel. " He hesitated. "Do you want us to reach out to our epoch-traveling friends?"
"Not yet," Oliver had told them. "I think we'll need them at some point, but more likely for their ability to fight than the Waverider. Besides, I'm not sure how our new friends from the Bureau are going to deal with the idea of a time machine."
Caitlin had been surprised. "They didn't deal with it on the X-Files?"
"If they did, it was purely as a theoretical construct," Felicity said. "We didn't tell them about what you guys tried to do last year yet; they've been handling aliens and metahumans so far, but we're not sure if they'll be able to deal with some of the bigger problems. Start by showing them the paper and see how they handle it."
Now Joe was getting a formal briefing. "How they'd handle it?"
"Their major focus seemed to be whether this was some kind of Ghost of Christmas Future scenario," Cisco told him.
"You mean something that will be or just might be," Joe shook his head. "Their minds really are open."
"His is. She's really hoping this is some kind of advanced version of Photoshop," Cisco shook his head. "Then again, given what it says, I can't say I blame her."
"They've known aliens were planning to invade for years, if not decades," Iris said.
"And it's one thing to know it, it's another to have a visual aid," Caitlin reminded them. "Much less one with a due date."
"They want to start dealing with this fast, pun not intended," Cisco said.
"Bottom line it for me," Joe said. "Can we trust them?"
"You're asking two people who worked for four years for Harrison Wells without knowing who he actually was, let alone even suspected Jay Garrick wasn't who he said he was," Cisco reminded them. "For really smart people, we've been really easy to fool."
"That said, Oliver and Supergirl trust them, and their BS detectors are a lot better than ours," Caitlin countered. "And that's before you get to the fact Cat Grant trusted them in the first place."
"It's your call, guys," Cisco said. "But they were willing to show a lot of their hand without me even having to vibe them."
Now they were about to show up at the West door. "Do they know my real identity?" Barry asked.
"They're not idiots," Iris said. "But given everything that's happened all ready, they've been very tightlipped. I can't say I blame them."
There was a knock at the door. "You ready, Barry?" Joe said.
"We're about to find out," Barry replied.
Joe opened the door, and there were Wally and Agents Mulder and Scully. "This is a bit awkward, but we need to come in now," Mulder said delicately.
Everybody was understandably suspicious. "What's the problem?"
"We're kind of famous at the moment," Mulder said. "And considering the two heads of a paranormal recruitment agency are in Central City, I don't want us to show up on somebody's smart phone before we have too."
They know, Barry thought to himself. It should have alarmed him given how careful he was at protecting his identity, but it didn't. Mainly because their first concern seemed to be his secrets rather than theirs. "Let them in," he said softly.
When they came in, Barry was blunt. "Do you know who I really am?"
Mulder didn't answer directly. "I'm so sorry about what happened to your father."
Barry eyes felt like they were going to mist. "Thank you."
"If it's any consolation, mine died in a very similar fashion."
Even given what he'd been told about them, this rankled Barry. "Your father had his heart ripped apart by an evil speedster?" he said with obvious bitterness.
"No. But he did die in my arms after an assassin killed him when I was just a few feet away, helpless to stop him."
That did have the aura of truth to it. "I'm sorry about that."
"Don't be." Now the bitterness was in Mulder's tone. "William Mulder was a member of the Syndicate was willing to sacrifice his own daughter to save the lives of him and his colleagues. He spent the rest of his life drinking and somehow blaming me for being the one left behind. He didn't deserve to be murdered, but he did deserve to be punished. Nothing like your father."
Even given Felicity and Kara's briefing, this was a hell of an opening line. Barry was used to dealing with these kinds of things; Joe and Iris were thunderstruck.
"I don't envy a lot of people, Barry, but in a way, I envy you. And it's not because you have a superpower. It's because growing up you had people that loved you. That must have sustained you through the darkness."
In a way, that was one of the nicest compliments Barry Allen had ever been made. And it had been done so nicely that he'd almost missed the subtle ID. Almost. "So you know who I am."
Mulder nodded. "I'll admit it took longer to figure out who you were then some of the other superheroes and vigilantes that are now popping up all over the world. Considering that Central City was ground zero for the rise in metahuman activity we see today, I had more than my share of suspicions over the last two years. Even then, I needed a really big hint."
"If you don't mind my asking, what gave it away?" Joe asked.
"When Harrison Wells confessed to the murder of your father," Mulder said. "I'd thought there was a strong possibility that the Flash was connected to law enforcement in some way. I thought he might be a police man, maybe ex-military." He looked at Iris. "On one of my more wild tangents, I actually thought your daughter might be the Flash."
Iris looked like she was blushing. "Seriously?" Wally said.
"You were getting a lot of stories with him," Scully told them. "I guess Mulder thought your description might have been, pardon my phrasing, a red herring."
"However, it didn't take much work to go from there to learn you had a job as a CSI," Mulder told them. "After that, the other connections all fell into place."
"So what are you going to do with this information?" Joe asked.
"Nothing," Mulder said flatly. "I may believe in transparency in almost everything, but how does the world benefit from knowing you're the Flash any more than knowing the real identities of the Arrow and Supergirl?"
"The problem is, there are people out there who already do," Scully then told them about the kill list they had found out about earlier. Almost everybody on Team Arrow was on it. And almost everybody on Team Flash.
Almost. "The powers that be don't know that I've been taking Barry's place the last few months?" Wally asked.
"Not yet. But they're not idiots." Mulder told them. "There's a lot you can accuse to the Syndicate members of being. Dumb isn't one of those things."
Joe now looked understandably pissed, as any father would knowing his children were in danger. "You got names of these bastards?"
"Names, yes. Current addresses, not so much." Scully told him. "And if there's one thing we've learned over their years, they're very good at hiding."
"They might even be doing in plain sight these days, " Mulder pointed out, looking at Barry. "Felicity and Supergirl told you some of the major players."
Barry nodded. "I don't know why I'm so shocked Amanda Waller back came from the dead. Seems a common theme these days. And I don't think any of us should be that surprised that the Luthors are neck deep in this."
"Two of the bigger players in this are former allies," Mulder told them. "And considering who the two we've confirmed have connections to Oliver Queen and Supergirl, I think we have to consider at least the possibility that there's a connection here."
There was a look of calculation in Barry's eyes that neither Joe nor Isis had seen since Zoom had killed his father. "How much do you know about the late Harrison Wells?" he asked.
"Cisco and Caitlin gave us the bare bones," Scully told them. "I have to see, even given everything we've seen over the years, it's a lot to take in."
"And that was after we saw aliens flying through the sky accepted as heroes," Mulder told them. "Obviously, we have a lot to deal with. Detective West, I'm going to be straight with you. Even if we didn't know who either of your sons were, we would've reached out to you anyway."
Joe took this in. "You mean like with Quentin Lance in Star City. I have more experience with metahumans than anybody on the force."
"We actually knew a couple of cops like you in our first stint in the Bureau," Scully said with a smile. "Not many. It's hard to find any law enforcement willing to keep an open mind to this kind of stuff."
"In order for this work, we're going to need connections with local law enforcement throughout the big cities where, for lack of a better term, spooky stuff is going on." Mulder said. "The DEOs pretty trust worthy on a federal level, but we're going to need boots on the ground on the local level."
"You talk this over with the Captain yet?" Joe asked.
"We were hoping you'd go with us," Scully said. "Nobody ever respected us the first time around, and while we do have a lot more credibility now, this is a hard pitch even in the world of Superman. The last thing we want to do is pull rank."
Barry and Iris looked at them. "It's not that we don't trust you, but we've been handed pitches like this before," Barry reminded them.
"So have we, over the years," Mulder told them "Why do you think our motto for so long was 'Trust No One?' You'd be idiots to buy all of this at once, even with proof."
Scully looked at them. "If we're being perfectly honest, Barry, we may need you more than we'll need The Flash."
Barry wasn't sure he'd heard right. "What?"
"Mulder's too modest to tell you this himself, but the reason he's so good on the X-Files was because he could see around corners of walls that weren't there," Scully said. "My mind expanded over the years, but even at my best I couldn't see things the way he can. The few people who were willing to help us either had their minds open wide enough or were willing to meet us halfway. Given what we've heard, you were one of those people well before you became the Flash."
"Felicity says you figured out who Oliver was with no help," Mulder added. "Don't underestimate that part of yourself. We're going to need brains as much as we're going to need superpowers."
Barry hadn't heard anybody tell him that in a very long time. More than anything else, this convinced me to put some trust in the agents who admitted they gave theirs rarely, if at all. "You know this is going to be tough," he said.
"'We choose to go to the moon in this dec-ade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,' Mulder said in a passing fair JFK impersonation. "That was impossible, but it got done."
"I'm not sure I follow," Wally said.
Scully had a wistful smile on her face. "He's telling you that no one gets there alone."
