Chapter 3
Barry didn't have as many reasons to loathe Malcolm Merlyn as Oliver Queen and the rest of Star City, but he had enough. He knew just how ruthless this man could be when it came to protecting the people he cared for and heaven help whoever got it his way – even if those same people were related to the people he cared for.
Malcolm knew Barry's true identity, which wasn't the main reason he didn't zoom in, grab him and put him in one of the cells at STAR Labs – where despite his nickname of The Magician and his time as Heir to the Demon, he didn't think Merlyn had a chance of escaping. What stopped him was wondering why he was in Central City in the first place, where there was just as many people who didn't care if he lived or died. Malcolm was arrogant, but he wasn't an idiot. A very nasty possibility came to Barry's head, one which was as unpleasant as it was plausible.
"Call Joe, but tell him not to get anyone else yet," he whispered.
"I would really like to have this guy's head on a pike…" Cisco trailed off. "Crap. You think he's involved in this conspiracy, don't you?"
"Felicity told me about his alliance with Damian Dahrk," Barry said. "Malcolm would do anything to stay alive. He sold out this planet once for a seat at the table; anyone want to bet he'd do it again?"
"Not for all the research that Queen Consolidated once had," Cisco agreed. "Do we try to grab him up now?"
Barry had considered this with great longing. "No, we're going to do exactly what Mulder and Scully advised us to."
He stealthily backed out to a different hiding place.
"I have to tell you, Barry, this is kind of against your principles," Caitlin told him.
"I know there's a very good chance this could backfire on us," Barry admitted. "But we all know how clever the son of a bitch is. Right now, the only advantage we have is that he doesn't know we know. If Malcolm really is working with this new Syndicate, our best chance of getting to them is finding out what he's doing here. Which means we have to find out what Betts knows and why Merlyn hired him in the first place."
"We know. We don't like it much, but we know." Cisco said reluctantly. "We'll wait til Merlyn leaves and then we'll start tracing him."
"Let me know the second he's out of range." Barry said.
"What about Betts? Are you going to grab him up?" Caitlin asked.
"Yeah. But not the way you think."
11:02 PM
Merlyn had been gone for more than ten minutes when Betts finally came out of the warehouse. He looked a little better than he did in his security badge, but he didn't look remotely healthy.
"You know you can't trust him."
Betts only looked slightly surprised to see him. "I suppose it would be a waste of time to deny that I knew who you were talking about," he said slowly.
"You knew I was there."
"My senses are good. I could hear another heart beat," Betts looked around. "You could at least come out and treat me with respect."
Barry came out – not wearing his costume. This was a risk, but he was willing to try it. "Are you with the police?" Betts asked.
"Yes, but I don't particularly want to arrest you." Barry walked up to him. "I've met my share of people like you over the past few years. I'm not perfect when it comes to these things, but I've seen stone cold killers. You don't strike me as the type."
"I fit the dictionary definition." Betts said.
"The second man you killed had Stage 3 lung cancer. He had maybe four months left. I won't pretend that what you did was painless or even ethical, but I can understand why you did it. But why'd you kill the first guard?"
Betts seemed genuinely sad, which was a true outlier for most of the metahumans he'd dealt with. "You have to understand. I've spent my entire life living under the radar. I didn't pick medicine just because it made my surviving easier; I wanted to help people and I devoted my life to it. And I want to believe I've done more good than bad. I really thought I could go the rest of my life without anybody knowing my secrets."
"So why come to Central City?" Barry asked.
"Everybody thinks metahumans are out saving the world or trying to end it. None of them believe he could be the guy adjusting your IV." Leonard told him. "I figured hiding in plain sight would be safe. Then a month ago, it all went to hell."
"You started getting sick," Barry guessed.
"I've been sick all my life," Leonard said. "The things I can do, it comes at a cost same with anybody else. You can't require what I have to survive and not have it hurt like hell. I thought after what happened in Pittsburgh that was it. But a few hours later, I woke up in the morgue just before they were about to cut me open. I spent the next decade as a transient, never staying anywhere too long. Then three years ago, things started getting worse."
"How?"
"My tissue started to rot." Betts said. "At first I thought it was just a new phase. Parts of me started falling off, but they kept re-growing so I pushed it to one side. About a year later, it started taking longer for them to come back."
Barry was making some connections. "How long does it take now?"
"Almost a week. Something's wrong with me, but I can't go to a doctor because when I was living normally, any minor scan would've registered me as a medical freak."
Barry was thinking of the slice of Betts' head riddled with cancer twenty years ago. He had seen some impossible things over the years, but not even he was sure he could picture what a CAT scan would reveal. Now he had a way in. "I work with people in STAR Labs. Their technology might be able to come up with a treatment, or at the very least find out what's wrong with you."
Leonard thought this through. "What's the catch?"
"You have to tell us why you're working for Malcolm Merlyn, and what you took from Henderson Labs."
"He finds out, he can make me suffer." Leonard said.
"You're suffering plenty now," Barry reminded him. "Besides, I've had more experience with this man than you have. As soon as you're no longer of any use to him, he'll kill you and make sure it sticks."
Leonard thought this through for a moment. "I don't know how much I can help you," he finally said.
"This is bigger than one robbery," Barry said. "Anything you can tell us will help."
Leonard thought some more, then started walking towards Barry. "Don't think because I'm helping you this'll work out," he said slowly.
"I know that not all our stories have happy endings," Barry said sincerely.
STAR LABS
4:11 pm
John Diggle looked at Barry with admiration. "You just persuaded him into coming with you," he said. "No superspeed, no hitting…"
"No arrows in the knee," Barry said pointedly.
"You do know you're basically giving medical treatment to a multiple murderer," Oliver reminded him.
"And there's Mr. Sunshine," Felicity said.
"In the traditional world of law enforcement," Detective West said to Oliver pointedly, "we make these kinds of deals all the time. You make a trade with a little fish to get a big fish. I'd think you of all people would consider Malcolm Merlyn the white goddamn whale."
The minute that Barry had learned that Malcolm Merlyn was involved in this, he knew that he was going to have to get Team Arrow involved, and not just because they were working hand-in-glove with Mulder and Scully. Merlyn had been the bête noire of Team Arrow almost since Oliver had come back from Lian Yu, and the chance to finally run him to ground was something they were going to need his help with. Barry suspected it was the fact that Merlyn was involved in this at all was what was causing Oliver's current sour mood, though honestly Barry was pretty sure by now that was his default setting.
"Much as I would like to be scouring the city right now looking for this bastard," Barry said, "who by the way I hate at least as much as you do…"
"Not possible," Felicity interjected.
"If Merlyn is involved in something much bigger – and I can't imagine any reason he'd resurface in a city where he's as much a persona non grata as Star City…"
"There's a shorter list of places he is safe," John added.
"…we have to grab him up. Which means we have to know why he's here, which means we have to know what Betts' knows." Barry raised an eyebrow. "Besides, I know your traditional approach. Trust me, it wouldn't work on him."
"Because he's not a typical metahuman? Barry, no disrespect but you and your team have misjudged people before," Oliver said carefully.
"And you haven't?"
Everybody whirled around. Mulder and Scully had been observing the tests that Cisco and Caitlin had been performing on Leonard Betts. No one had even noticed they were back in the room.
"I guess you learned a couple of tricks in STAR City," Joe said.
"I spent twelve years in the FBI. I guess dick-measuring contests are the same everywhere, even among superheroes," Mulder said bluntly.
Everybody starting looking away, though no one was sure whether it was the casual vulgarity or just how easily Mulder had called everybody out.
"Technically, Betts was in the X-Files long before you heard about him," Scully told him. "So, if we were in the mood, all it would take is one phone call and the three of us would be on a plane back to DC."
"But because of the congenial atmosphere between colleagues, who had worked together so peacefully before, there's no reason to make a federal case about this, is there?" Mulder said sweetly.
"I guess Mom and Dad are telling us to play nice," Diggle said.
A mutual look of pain crossed Mulder and Scully's faces so quickly that all most the casual observer wouldn't have noticed. However, everybody in the room was anything but casual observers.
"I know how important this is," Mulder said softly. His tone had changed subtly, but they all could pick it up. "But you need to understand. Right now, Scully and I have a window. How large it is and how long it stays open, we can't say with certainty. What we do know is that there's a clock on this operation and when it runs out…" He trailed off. He didn't have to say what happened. They'd all seen the paper.
"I'm the least qualified person in this room to give a lecture about teamwork," Mulder admitted. "The first time I was in the Bureau, I stepped on every single toe and broke every single branch that was offered to me. I don't know if there is a less qualified person to lead this operation than me, and trust me, I've met more than my share of unqualified leaders. So try, please, not to prove me wrong. Because if we don't live together, we're going to die alone."
There was a long pause. "Seriously? Did you just try to inspire by quoting Jack from Lost? "Felicity asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I'd just about exhausted my inspirational speech quota." Mulder sheepishly admitted.
"I'm just a little surprised you'd try to use on a man who'd actually spent two years on a deadly, mysterious island," Oliver said with a snicker.
"Well, from what I've heard, you spent that entire time there and you didn't learn that lesson," Mulder countered. "Thought it might stick if you actually heard it used in context."
By now, the hostile mood had pretty much dissolved. Scully was actually a little impressed. In all the years she'd known Mulder, he'd never been very good at defusing tense situations. Mostly because he'd helped intensify them in the first place. Maybe being around these superheroes was actually a good influence.
"In any case, Mulder and I came in here because Caitlin and Cisco have preliminary results on the test on Leonard Betts," she said calmly.
"What can you tell us?" Barry asked.
"You and Felicity would probably understand all the scientific jargon, but we'll try and simplify it as much as we can," Scully told them. "I could never understand how Leonard Betts was able to live a normal life with all of the cancers that his body with riddled with. Mulder's theories about broad evolutional changes at the time, cancer didn't seem to be the kind of that a person could live with for years and not have consequences. Well, as it turns out, there are limitations as to how long even a person like Betts can exist."
Barry got it first. "The cancers in him are starting to metastasize."
"That is the short answer," Mulder said. "Betts' biological makeup is remarkable, even in comparison with a lot of the metahuman data you have on file and the information we have on the X-Files. For years, if not decades, we've been hunting these people and never asking the right question: how can they survive in society with the mutations they have and not be noticed? Sadly, the usual answer is they have kill people to get the biological substance they need."
"I've taken a longer look at some of those files," Felicity admitted. "That does seem to be the main reason they end up on your radar in the first place."
Mulder nodded. "Whether its livers or fatty tissue, melatonin or even brain matter, most of the metahumans we encountered needed to kill to survive. The only reason they ended up on our radar is because the X-Files existed; I still don't know how many we could've missed before the case files were open or while they've been shut down."
"What's the question you haven't been asking?" Oliver asked.
Mulder didn't answer directly. "A little more than twenty years ago, Scully and I were going after this predator that was killing women across the country. All the women had what you might call a weight problem, and most of the victims dissolved after they were killed. He was taking their fatty tissue."
Even though seen worse, this was still a little disgusting. "Did you catch him?"
"The name he was using was Virgil Incanto. He eventually took credit for the murders of forty-seven women after we arrested him." Mulder said. "Six months after he was incarcerated, he was dead. From what Scully tells me, he basically wasted away when he could have access to what he needed to survive."
"The question is what happens when these murderers can't get what they need?" Scully said. "That is essentially the answer. And to an extent, that is what happening to Betts right now."
"What happened in Pennsylvania was basically an outlier," Mulder told them. "He has subsisted the same way he was then, tumors and cancerous growths. He claims until yesterday, he hadn't taken a human life since."
"Do you believe him?" Joe asked.
"I don't know," Mulder admitted. "Scully and I usually didn't get a chance to interrogate our particular set of monsters. By the time we caught up with them, it was usually because they were dead. And that's assuming we got an explanation at all."
Scully nodded. "And given the nature of how Betts' killed, it would be hard to determine if there were any killings that fit his pattern. That's part of the reason we're glad you're here, Felicity. Betts was willing to give us the hospitals he worked and the cities he lived. We were hoping you could do a search; see if you can verify his story."
"The Bureau's not equipped for that?" Barry said doubtfully.
Mulder shook his head. "The Bureau wasn't set up for it when we were there the first time; they've had no reason to upgrade since."
"I'll talk to Cisco; see what I can dig up." Felicity started to walk away.
"So what is happening to Betts?" Barry asked again.
"His entire immune system is starting to break down, "Scully said bluntly. "He's managed to live far beyond the natural lifespan of someone with even a fraction of the cancers that are running through his bloodstream, but it's finally starting to become too much for him. The rotting of his tissue, the extended length of time its taking him to regenerate, they're symptoms of that."
"Is that why he's working for Merlyn? Because he has nothing to lose?" Oliver asked.
Barry shook his head. "Merlyn offered him a cure."
Mulder nodded. "Betts says that Merlyn reached out to him a month ago. He doesn't know how the man found him; he's done his best to stay of the radar."
"Merlyn has always had a wide reach," Oliver said. "No reason it should've stopped now."
:"Merlyn knew about him and his condition. He said that he might be able to help him if…"
"… he did Merlyn a favor." Diggle said. "Let me guess, the first taste was free."
"Betts said he felt better for the first time in months. His tissue stopped rotting and it was easier for him to breathe. A week later, when the effect was wearing off, Merlyn came back and said he could have more... if he broke into Henderson Labs."
"This still seems way too elaborate, even if he is working with this Syndicate," Joe said. "I get why he might need someone like Betts to blur the security cameras, but hell, there's any number of ways to do that without using a metahuman."
"From what we understand, whatever they were trying to steal could only be accessed via thumbprint," Scully told them. "And it involved body temperature, so it had to be a real thumb. They had the print, but not the thumb."
"Um, that still doesn't make a lot of sense," Diggle pointed out.
"We just investigate the unexplained," Mulder said quietly. "Making sense of it has always been other people's department." He held up a hand. "I'm not being facetious. But since you know this guy…"
"That's all Betts' knows," Oliver said rhetorically.
"That's all he was told," Scully said. "How many times in your job does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?"
"Fair enough," Barry said. "So Betts agreed to this."
"Actually, the first time he told Merlyn to go to hell," Mulder admitted. 'Even after he was threatened with exposure." He paused. "Then Malcolm apparently showed him footage of the retirement home where his mother is currently living."
"There's the monster we've come to know," Oliver said. "And that probably is the proof that he's working with the Syndicate. Last we saw of him, Malcolm didn't have the resources to do that sort of the wide-spread evil on his own."
"I'm guessing this isn't the end of the favors Malcolm's going to demand," Barry said.
"You know him better than we do though," Mulder told them. "But we've known – I guess you call them people – who've used this kind of operation before. They'll drain Betts until he's no longer useful and then leave him by the side of the road to die."
"I'm assuming Betts has no way of contacting Merlyn," Diggle hypothesized.
"No." Mulder took a deep breath, as if he knew just how big a favor he was going to ask. "But we all know that you do."
"I realize you've been out of the loop of what's been happening in Star City so let me clarity," Oliver said brusquely. "My sister basically quit helping us protect the city because she saw just how close she was to becoming like Malcolm. I'm glad she's been more willing to get back in the fray, but she was not happy to hear that her father's back to his old tricks. Malcolm Merlyn has put my sister through even more pain and suffering than anyone should have to go through in a lifetime. And I have no intention of putting her back in that world again."
There were all kinds of arguments that Mulder could've used to persuade Oliver otherwise. Even Scully was a little surprised with the one that Mulder ended up taking. "She knows Malcolm's involved in this."
"Unfortunately," Diggle ventured.
"Where is she right now?"
Oliver looked at him sternly. "She's at Big Belly with Iris right now."
"Do you mind if I talk to her? Not about helping us," Mulder added hastily.
Now Oliver looked a little confused. "What about?"
"Having a bad father."
BELLY BURGER
5:47 PM
"So what is she like up close?" Iris asked.
"Honestly, I think you and I both have a couple of inches on her," Thea told her. "But given the way she handled Ollie, I don't want to test her in a fight."
Thea Queen had known the moment she heard her Malcolm Merlyn was involved in what was happening that she was going to come down to Central City. Much as she tried to wash her hands of the evil this man had done – and that was before she had known he was her real father – she wasn't surprised to find that their worlds kept colliding. It said something about well she knew him that the fact the man was now collaborating with alien colonists to take over the world didn't even cause her to shrug her shoulders. He'd been willing to sell out the human race just six months ago; the fact that he was willing to swear allegiance to a new group of conquerors hardly shocked her. Hell, maybe he felt more comfortable around them then the elite of Star City; it wasn't like he was much of a human being before.
It was that line of thinking more than anything that had led to her cling fast to Kara Danvers and Hank Henshaw, aliens that had thrown aside their dead worlds and were now protecting a planet that was, at best, wary of their true allegiances.
"She wouldn't tell you who her cousin is," Iris asked.
"It's not like we don't understand the importance of protecting a secret identity," Thea reminded her. "You've been keeping track of what's going on in Metropolis. I'm guessing you at least have some theories."
"Everybody has theories," Iris countered. "But given my inability to see what's under my nose, it's not like I'm the most qualified to guess."
Just then, Thea looked up and sighed. "Well, I knew it was only a matter of time, but I didn't think Ollie would send the feds to find me."
Iris looked up. "He must be here to try and talk you into trusting him."
"He told me my name was on a kill list and that he and Scully would do anything in their power to keep me safe. Trust isn't an issue," Thea assured him. "But I think I know what he's here to talk me into doing."
Iris was well aware of Thea's daddy issues; they were only slightly less complicated then her mommy issues. "Well, then I think despite your best intentions, you're going to end up doing it."
"What makes you so sure?"
"He persuaded Cat Grant about an alien invasion twenty years ago. All I'm saying." Iris pointed out.
"It took him seven years to persuade his partner," Thea countered. "All I'm saying."
Mulder say down with the coffee he had ordered at the counter. "We all know why I'm here and what this is about, so I can presume we can skip the small talk," he said.
"Have you met my brother? He doesn't believe in small talk," Thea said with a pointed eyebrow.
Mulder actually smiled at this. "You know I'm actually jealous of him. Not because of the whole hero thing, but because he actually gets to do the whole big brother thing. I never really got a chance, and I've spent most of my life paying for it."
Thea got this. "How's your sister doing?"
"It's a little disturbing to look at your life's work, and know that your baby sister is better than you," Mulder said with a sheepish grin.
"But you didn't come here to talk about your family," Iris said.
"No, actually that's exactly why I'm here," Mulder said surprisingly.
"Look, I understand what you told us." Thea said slowly. "I grant you your father was a horrible person, but compared to Malcolm…"
"…he was worse than Stalin."
That caused both women's jaws to drop.
"I didn't put this in the files." Mulder said slowly. "Partially because I have no confirmation of it." He hesitated. "But mainly because I'm afraid if it I put in there, it would be true. I don't know with any certainty that Bill Mulder was my real father. But I've spent the last sixteen years praying he is, and I never believed in God."
This didn't sound good. "Who do you think it is?" Iris asked
"I never knew his name."
Now Thea was confused. "Then what's worrying you?"
"I said I never knew his name. I didn't say I don't know who he was." Mulder swallowed. "The first couple of years Scully was assigned to the X-Files; she was shadowed by a man who smoked constantly. Maybe that was his superpower; even back then you couldn't smoke in government buildings. He was there looking over our shoulders. It was until the second year that we began to realize just how powerful he was, and how deeply he was connected to the conspiracy."
Thea had gone through the files and had known that for the lion's share of the people who worked for the Syndicate, Mulder and Scully had never known the names of any of the people they were fighting. All kinds of sobriquets filled them – Crew Cut Man, Well-Manicured Man, Grey-Haired Man. Thea knew who Mulder was talking about. "You called him Cancer Man."
"It was the most polite term I could use. Frankly, he gave cancer a bad name." Mulder said grimly. "He was one of the leaders of the Syndicate, though we never did find out the pecking order. My father worked with him when they were in the State Department. His family and mine were close…apparently."
This was news. "He actually had a family." Thea said.
"One of the names he used was C.G.B. Spender. His wife Cassandra was a frequent subject of these abductions and experiments. He basically," Mulder looked for a better word, then gave up "…traded her along with Samantha and the families of the Syndicate to the aliens in 1973."
This was news to Iris. "Why on earth?"
"They claim it was a sacrifice in order to save mankind," Mulder said sarcastically. "In actuality, they did it to save themselves. Their lives would be spared, and in exchange…"He didn't finish the sentence.
"Why aren't we dead?" Thea asked.
"The rebels. The so-called resistance. The day colonization was going to begin; they struck and burned the Syndicate alive." He paused. "Of course, he escaped. Crawled into the ground like the rat he was. But not before he shot his son, and took him prisoner. They experimented on him for years before he escaped."
Even given some of the monsters they'd faced, this was pretty evil. "Why do you think he might be your father?" Thea finally asked.
"He was close to my mother. She never acknowledged it though," Mulder admitted. "Hell, I actually had holes drilled in my head to try and stimulate my memory just to see if I could find out for sure. Big surprise, didn't work." He thought for a second. "Come to think of it, the other time I thought he'd admitted it, they were performing brain surgery on me then. Probably why I take any admissions with a grain of salt."
"I'm guessing those are stories for another day," Iris asked.
"And come to think of it, one more thing he and Malcolm have in common," Mulder said almost cheerfully. "The son of a bitch won't die. Lung cancer didn't take him, a bullet to the guts did nothing, his wheelchair was pushed down a flight of stairs, and he tormented me two years later. I saw him get blown to smithereens, and that may not have done the job. I'd say only he and the cockroaches will be left, but that's unfair to the cockroaches. From what I understand, they at least provide a useful purpose. All he ever does is survive."
"Cockroaches have a useful purpose?" Iris asked.
"A long story involving exploding shit and an entomologist named Bambi," Mulder lowered his voice. "Never ask Scully about it. The point is, and I do have one, we are more than the sum of our genetics. The man who thought he was my father – and he did take credit for it, that much I am sure of regardless of the truth – tried to make me believe that my quest was pointless and my battles were futile. The fact that he spent his career trying to make sure of that didn't matter to him. The man I thought was my father; however flawed he was, knew near the end that what he did was wrong and said that he was proud of me." Mulder actually misted. "That's why, despite everything, Scully named our son after him."
That was knowledge that Mulder hadn't even told Barry or Oliver yet. Thea knew this obviously meant along, particularly that they were still scouring the country for him. "That is a lot of baggage," she said slowly, "but I've done horrible things because of who my father is."
"Did you not just hear me?" Mulder said. "If your brother had truly been just the son of your parents, he would never have survived a week on Lian Yu, never mind the whole 'five years in hell' bit."" He paused. "Though don't tell him this, but not even he would have survived three months on an alien ship."
Iris raised an eyebrow. "From what I understand, neither did you."
"Touché. At some point, we have to leave all our parents' baggage behind and face who we are. There were a lot of times over the years when I really didn't like who I was either. And I would've traded the whole thing for a normal life." Mulder sighed. "But unfortunately, people like us don't get one."
"Heroes?"
"We may not all wear costumes or have the ability to fly. For some of us, it's nothing more than the relentless pursuit of the truth that keeps us going. Your brother would still be putting arrows through the one percent of Star City if Diggle and Felicity hadn't convinced him to be something better than that." Mulder paused. "And I know that you were a part of it too."
Thea looked at him. "You're very good at persuading people."
"Scully would vehemently disagree with that point. For a while." Mulder said.
'Malcolm's at least as smart as anyone you've gone up against. And if he's involved with this Syndicate, he knows about your involvement. He'll see any move you make a mile away."
"And this is why I really hate this job," Mulder sighed. "From what your brother tells me, you're his Achilles Heel. And just like either of my fathers, he's going to make a move to try and keep you safe."
"It's not a question of if, but when" Thea admitted. "You know there when times when I volunteered to be bait and my brother violently protested the idea. I respect that you're at least acknowledging how hard it is."
"I think personally I may have lost more people than you and your friends, and that's without counting the number of times Scully ended up getting taken in some way," Mulder admitted. "If there was another way to do this, we'd been doing it right now."
"Better to at least be prepared," Thea pointed out. "Usually he just kidnaps me off the street."
"That's happened to me more than once, too. Same with Felicity." Iris gave a smile. "We should start a club."
"Scully could chair it." Mulder said sadly. Then his voice grew thoughtful. "Of course, this time there is one critical difference."
"What are you thinking?" Thea asked.
"I was remembering that the Fastest Man alive isn't the only hero currently on our payroll," Mulder said.
A grin suddenly broke out on Iris' face. "You mean we're about to meet Supergirl?"
"Try not to look so thrilled that I might be in mortal danger," Thea said sarcastically.
"Girl, your brother's the Arrow. My boyfriend's the Flash. Mortal danger came with the territory before the alien invasion." Iris reminded her.
"I should probably make T-Shirts," Mulder deadpanned.
"It would make it easier for them to find us," Iris said.
Mulder shook his head. "This is what happens when I start working with superheroes. I guess being abducted really is wasted on the young."
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
"You do know you're not supposed to make these kinds of messes."
"This from the woman who pretty much left rubble and bodies in her wake," Malcolm Merlyn snapped at Amanda Waller. "Hell, I think you were actually proud of it."
"We don't have the time for petty squabbles."
"Really? That's all we seem to have time for."
"Enough." Lillian Luthor held up a hand. "Did he get what we needed?"
Malcolm nodded. "I've had my people going over the research. They have moved beyond the theoretical. From what I understand, you have access to everything on the list."
"I can't exactly walk into Luthorcorp and go in to the warehouses anymore," Lillian said.
"That never stopped you before," Marita Covarrubias told her. "Our diplomatic resources should be able to provide us what the corporate world can not. Once we have all the materials, how long do you think it will take to prepare the solution?"
Lillian gave a very un-Luthor sigh. "Having the means and the items doesn't guarantee it'll go quickly. Our predecessors worked on this for decades and were never able to come close. At most, we have two and a half years before the timetable becomes unworkable."
"Even with our new assets?"
"Preparation isn't the problem. Security is. "Lillian leaned forward. "The days when our predecessors could operate behind closed doors were gone long before they were…betrayed. And that was before this new exposure."
"That smoking bastard should've taken Mulder out when he had the chance," Merlyn said. "He was far too sentimental for his own good."
"Well, its moot now." Marita said. "Now, the thing that never would've happened if he'd taken him out will certainly happen now. Killing Mulder will only intensify our difficulties and it certainly won't solve the larger problem."
"So we find a way to neutralize his new team."
"And how exactly do we do that?" Waller asked. "I always thought Queen and his ilk were a problem, but they've got the manpower and the attention of the media now. "
"The media's always been fickle. And they don't trust aliens as a rule." Lillian said. We twist the reins enough; they'll jump."
"How exactly do you plan to do that?"
Malcolm Merlyn gave that smile that was simultaneously charming and terrifying. "The Magician never reveals his secrets."
