Chapter 5
Realistically speaking, Barry knew he shouldn't feel threatened, much less afraid. Over the past two years, he had faced off against metahumans, time travelers, speedsters from alternate dimensions, super-intelligent gorillas and an enhanced shark. Hell, he'd been in more danger when he'd gone up against Leonard Snart and Mick Rory. The Joker might be barely human, but he was still only human.
But he wasn't that shocked to find that he did still have a pit of fear growing in his stomach. How could you not when you were dealing with one of the most psychotic serial killers in history? In just a few short years, he had a body count that rivaled some tinpot dictators.
More to the point, it was the fact that no one knew anything about him. Every one knew who Catwoman and Two-Face had started out as by now. But more than six years after he had shown up on the scene, no one knew anything about the man behind the makeup. While he had been working as a CSI, Barry had been astounded that there was still no clue as to who the Joker really was. Everybody who he'd fought over the last two years had started out as somebody else. The Joker looked like he was violated the laws of science. No one knew how he'd been created, and he couldn't seem to be destroyed.
And there was something terrifying about him. It didn't look like clown makeup; it look like someone had painted his face with a brush, and not done a good job. The scars that formed that smile; there was something terrifying about them. There were so many conflicting stories; Barry's own theory was just that he'd done it to himself.
"You know, I was expecting more," Joker said. "After all the talk I heard from this town, I really thought you'd run in here and knock me into next week. Which would be nice because I have a dentist appointment on Thursday that I really wanted to get out of."
Barry found his voice. "How about we take it outside and I'll oblige you?"
"Now, now." The Joker opened his coat to reveal a vest strapped with grenades. "Let's not blow this out of proportion. "
"You know," Supergirl said just as firmly. "After hearing about some of your activities in Gotham, I really wondered how you never accidentally got shot in police custody."
Even the Joker seemed a little shocked to hear this. "Whoa. And I thought the Batman could be cold."
"He has a code that he operates by." Kara said. "Of course, you're not in Gotham right now. So we don't have to play by his rules."
Even a normal metahuman would have heard this coming from the Girl of Steel and been the tiniest bit terrified at that. Barry himself was a little unnerved to hear Kara say it, even though he had similar feelings.
Joker, however, seemed to take this as an invitation. "I was actually kind of hoping for this when I made this little excursion. That's the thing about Gotham; no one has much of a sense of humor. I think it's the humidity."
"You know what I happen to find hysterical?" Barry was now more or less in control. "You being somebody's errand boy. I mean, even if it was just to get our autographs."
"Well, I have been something of an independent contractor," Joker was taking this in stride. "But one thing I learned about ripping off mob bosses? Sometimes you get an offer you can't refuse. Not that I ever need much of a reason."
"So what did Amanda Waller offer you?" Kara asked. "Real identity of the Batman? Diplomatic immunity? Season's tickets for the Knights?"
"Don't knock that. Those can cost an arm and a leg." Joker walked a couple of steps closer to Caitlin. "And if you keep running your mouths, they should be heading in your direction any second."
"Caitlin?" Barry said softly. "How are you doing?"
"I'm actually wondering why you haven't pulled me out of this by now," Barry was impressed – and a little concerned – at Caitlin's level of calm.
"I'll tell you why," Joker was practically in Caitlin's face. "When I took this job on, the people who hired me they thought I would do it because I have the kind of mindset for their kind of operations. They're right, of course, but that's not the real reason. You see, ever since you two ended up on the radar of the criminal world, I've had this theory. This tingle. I'm willing to bet that it's not just your strength or your speed that got enhanced. It's your morals."
He fixed his gaze on Supergirl. "See I think the only thing stopping you from getting down in the dirt with us lowly mortals is because you're afraid of what'll happen if you do. The Bat has some kind of ethical code, but despite the yellow journalism, he is still a human being." He looked right at her. "You're not. I have a feeling that, if you wanted, with a flick of a finger, you could tear me in two. And because you can, every time you or that flying freak in Metropolis has to do something beneath him, you hold back."
"I don't need psychoanalysis from the insane," Kara said.
"Same with you, Bolt Boy," Joker hadn't turned his attention. "I think the reason you only pick on the superpowered is because you're afraid of what will happen if you were to, say, interfere in a high speed car chase, there'd be an accident, and you might not be fast enough."
Barry hadn't been in the room with the Joker for five minutes, and he already knew why this man was a monster.
"Oh, I know that look," Joker said. "I'm how we say, intimately familiar with it. That's the look of a hero trying very hard to keep himself from doing what we're all meant to do. What not even superpowers can stop you from being meant to do."
"Barry." Oliver's voice was in his ear, thank God. "Don't give in. This is what he wants you to do. Just concentrate on getting them out of there."
Joker couldn't hear Oliver but he could sense these things. "Whose voice is in your ear? Your father confessor? Strange, how just a couple of minutes ago, you were trying to save them. Now someone needs to save you."
"Supergirl?" Barry said softly.
"Now comes the gamble. How fast are you?" Joker asked. "Are you both fast enough to stop me from pulling the trigger on these bombs and simultaneously stop my loyal assistants from blowing these lovely women into unrecognizable bits?"
"I don't know," Supergirl said. "How about we find out?"
Almost at the same instant, the two heroes reacted. Barry ran for Caitlin and her mother; Kara went for the Joker.
Within seconds, the three of them were outside.
"You okay?" Barry asked.
"You know until now, I didn't think it wasn't possible for a woman to piss herself," Dr. Tannhauser actually sounded a little shaky.
"Supergirl? You got him?" Barry asked.
"I'm flying him to the city limits. Want to make sure nothing goes wrong." Kara said.
Barry looked at them. "I'm going back in to handle his flunkies."
Caitlin's mother looked at her. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"Why?"
In answer, her mother took out a mirror. And Caitlin understood why her mother had agreed to the research.
The tips of her hair had started to turn whitish-blonde.
Kara knew she should've been concerned. Usually, when she grabbed anybody, they at least tried to put up a fight against her iron grip. And you'd think one of the most notorious criminals of all time would've at least put up a struggle. Instead, the Joker had just gone limp.
Once she had landed, he met her glance and that smile looked at him. "She owes me twenty bucks."
"Who?"
"She honestly couldn't believe a superhero would fall for it." The Joker said. "Look on the bright side. The Bat would've too."
He eased his gripped on the grenades.
And they fell to the ground.
There was no explosion. But one of them opened, and a small stream of gas was emitted a red smoke.
The last thing Kara before she lost consciousness was that horrible laugh.
It took Barry less than two minutes to grab the three clowns with machine guns, and literally carry them to the Central City PD, essentially hogtied, and run back to check on Caitlin and her mother. Both still had worried looks on their faces.
"You two sure you're okay?" he asked.
"As okay as you can be when you've had the most psychotic human being in the country have you at knife-point," Caitlin said, a little too quickly.
Barry could tell there was something amiss, and his next question would've revealed that, when something occurred to him. "Felicity? Cisco? Has Supergirl reported in yet?"
"We've been trying to contact her for the past five minutes," Felicity said. "There's been radio silence ever since she grabbed the Joker."
"Crap." Barry said. "You got a fix on her last known location?"
"City limits," Cisco said. "Barry, she's going to be okay. There's no sign of any explosion."
"It's not that," Barry said. "You heard what he was saying while we there. He has a way of getting in people's heads."
"You really think he break Supergirl in less than three minutes?" Cisco said doubtfully.
"Some people have that power," Oliver said reluctantly. "Everything that I hear from Gotham the past few years, I'm amazed he's never died in police custody."
"Wait a minute. I got a fix on her location. Quarter of a mile from you." Felicity hesitated. "But she's not responding to her radio."
"I have to check on this," Barry said. "See if she hasn't done something terrible. Give me the exact location."
"It's in the industrial section."
"Be there in a bit."
3:15 PM
Barry was there less than a minute later. Supergirl was just standing near the building.
"What happened to the Joker?" Barry asked.
"He's in a safe place." There was something different in Kara's tone. Something a little…detached.
Barry paused. "You didn't… do anything to him?"
"Let's not talk about that clown," Kara said softly. "Not when there are so many other pleasant things to talk about."
Now her tone has just the slightest trace of…seduction, maybe...in it. Before Barry could react, Kara had rushed up to him.
In fact, by the time Barry did, they were at least a thousand feet above the ground.
"It's really hard to be a superhero," Now there was no mistaking the desire in her voice. "I mean, you can't tell anybody who you are, and when they find out, they can get really strange. Even with your friends, you can be very lonely. And no one else gets it."
Were it not for the location of this conversation, Barry would be in relative agreement with the topic. Well, that and the timing of it. "Supergirl, you okay?"
"That's why I was soooo glad to meet you a few months ago," Adding to the weirdness, it almost sounded like Supergirl was…drunk? "Most of the people I meet with powers are trying to kill me. But I don't have to explain that to you. Cause you get me. You get our whollle situation, right?"
Something was clearly wrong with Kara, and Barry could tell it. The problem was, he was still not entirely sure he was high enough up so that if she let him go, he could slow his fall enough. So he'd play this out a little longer. Yeah, that's why he was still listening. Right. "I know things are kind of tricky in our situation."
"See? You get it." And she squeezed him. Not tightly. "Right?"
Barry Allen was the Fastest Man Alive. He was, however, also a man. And when a man is hugged by a very beautiful woman, certain biological reactions do take over.
Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your perspective – Barry had not turned off his radio. "Um, Barry, I hate to tell you this, but I don't think the Girl of Steel is quite herself," Cisco said uncomfortably.
"What was your first clue?" Scully said flatly. "That she seems to want to join the Mile High club while not being in a plane?"
That did register with Barry. "Um, Kara, I have a girlfriend." Why did he go to that instead of all the other things he could say?
"Come on," Kara said slyly. "We raced the last time we met. Don't you want to test how things would go…slowly?"
Okay, this had officially gotten too weird even for his hormones. "Kara. What exactly happened when you were with the Joker?"
Boy was that the wrong approach to take. "Why are you so interested in business? Don't any of you other heroes want to have fun sometime?"
And now the head that should have been doing the thinking from the start was now back in control. "Seriously Kara. What happened to you?"
"Why doesn't anybody like me for me?" The lust was gone, and now Kara sounded pissed which frankly was a worse alternative at this point. Because she let Barry go.
Barry now had the focus his speed on making sure he didn't break every bone in his body when he hit the ground. Sure, he could recover from that, but he was beginning to think that might not be the most ideal scenario right now. He aimed himself for the tallest building and managed to run down it just long enough to slow himself down.
"Um, Barry, maybe you should've let her down a little more gently," Mulder said awkwardly.
"Flowers and chocolate weren't exactly an option!" In his embarrassment, Barry was now pretty pissed himself.
"I'm just saying, incoming!"
Barry had enough to time react as Kara ran into him, and not affectionately this time.
"You men are all the same!" Supergirl shouted. "Doesn't matter if you know people with superpowers or if you have superpowers, none of you know how to treat a woman!"
Barry didn't have any time to react to this because he'd just been thrown into a warehouse.
STAR LABS
"What the hell got into Supergirl?" Cisco shouted.
"Best guess, red kryptonite," Oliver said. "According to her, it has a habit of lowering her inhibitions and good sense a little."
"A little?" Mulder said. "How the hell did the Joker maximize it to make it seem like she's going through super-menopause?"
"That's an excellent question," Cisco said. "One that will have to wait until can we figure out how to calm her down."
"Um." Felicity said. "There does seem to be one way. Unfortunately, she's not going to like it."
Mulder gestured towards the video of the warehouse district – which Supergirl seemed determined to use Barry to wipe it up with. "I don't think the alternatives are much better. Get on the phone with the DAO right now."
Barry knew enough about Supergirl to know that she had been exposed to kryptonite in some way. And apparently when it came to this variation, what didn't kill her made her really pissed off.
Much as he wasn't sure that his speed and metabolism could stand up to her powers, he knew just as well that the rest of the human race had no chance against her when she was in this condition. So it was up to take the hit until someone could come up with a solution. And unfortunately, he could think of only one really way to get her attention and keep Central City safe.
"Hey Girl of Steel," he shouted. "You want me? Come and get me!"
And then he took off. Please don't let her be faster than I am he thought to himself.
"All right, boys and girls," Joker said gleefully. "Don't forget to smile for the cameras."
Barry was running as fast as he ever had, but Supergirl was still right behind him. He was not thrilled about the reason she hadn't caught him yet.
While determined to outrun her, Barry was also determined not to hurt people or cause destruction. In her current condition, Supergirl didn't seem concerned about doing either. She seemed to have some kind of bet with herself to go through what she could just as easily go around. Their one grace seemed to be that the warehouse district was mostly uninhabited so almost no one was going to hurt. He had to get her as far away from the city as possible. Of course, then came the problem of how to stop her from this rampage. Right now, he didn't have any idea how exactly he was going to do that.
"Barry!" Cisco shouted. "We have an idea how to stop this. We need you to go to the following coordinates right now."
Barry wasn't sure he recognized them. "And what do I do when I get there?"
"Come to a complete stop." Cisco paused. "And hope this works."
"Hope?" Barry said, exasperated and a little scared.
"Hey, none of us have any experience with trying to stop a charging alien before," Cisco said. "So we're going to leave that to the expert."
Barry had no words so he just kept going. He got to the projected coordinates – which happened to be in the middle of nowhere – and stopped. "Now what?" he shouted.
As an answer to his question, approximately five seconds later another bolt came from the opposite direction. "Mr. Allen, you might want to step back," Hank Henshaw/Martian Manhunter said.
Barry needed no second bidding. Just before he started going, he saw Supergirl charging at him.
"One one-thousand, two one-thousand," Before he reached three, Jonn opened a box.
The second Supergirl approached it, she stopped in her track. Jonn held what could only be kryptonite in front of Supergirl for nearly a minute before she collapsed in a heap.
Hank exhaled. Barry wasn't entirely comforted by the fact he hadn't been sure it would work, either
"Sorry we have to meet again like this, Mr. Allen," Hank said after he put the box away.
"What the hell got into her?" Barry asked.
"Red kryptonite. On Kryptonians, it has the effect of lowering their inhibitions and releasing their darkest emotions. The only way to counteract is the green variety."
"I guess that's what they mean about the cure being worse than the disease," Barry said. "What do we do now?"
"Seeing as you're the one with the superspeed, get her back to STAR Labs and wait for her to regain consciousness," Hank said.
Barry looked at him. "Isn't the DEO more qualified to deal with this?"
"We're going to need her to stay out of sight for awhile," Hank was clearly concerned. "And you and your colleagues in Central City need to be prepared. "
"For what?"
"You're about to get a shit ton of bad press."
CENTRAL CITY
7:01 PM
"And with the damage to Central City alone estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars, we find ourselves wondering: 'These are our saviors?'
(Click)
"The answer to aliens coming to destroy our planet is now aliens coming to destroy our planet?"
(Click)
"We have always known that those who were costumes and masks were dubious allies at best. Now we must question not only these vigilantes, but those who would choose to ally with them?"
"Eight hundred channels, and there's still nothing on," Mulder said as he turned the TV off.
"You're the one who wanted to see how bad the coverage was," Oliver told him. "I could've told you upfront just how bad it was going to be."
It seemed that everybody who'd had a working cell phone had trained the fight and chase between the Flash and Supergirl four hours earlier. Fifteen minutes after it had ended, it had gone viral. Half an hour after that, every talking head across the country had been on television, the Internet and every communication in between condemning not only the heroes, but all of the good works they had done, and what they might do going forward. In the blink of an eye, almost all the good will that Mulder had managed to generate for his task force had gone up in smoke.
"Look, we can take the media tearing us apart," Felicity said. "For the last four years, everybody and his uncle have been alternate condemning and praising the Arrow and everything we stand for."
"You think I'm concerned about being burned in effigy by the media?" Mulder asked. "Scully and I spent seven years being condemned by just about everybody in the corridors in power. Hell, we spent six months touring fields of fertilizer because I was stupid enough to raise our work to the attention of the AG. This is a new band, but it's the same song."
"Then what is the problem?" Cisco asked.
"That we're in the middle of a shitstorm, and we still can't see how the pieces fit together," Mulder told them. "I don't know what the Syndicate was trying to do with this technology for the first place, or why they'd go from relative subtlety to get what they needed at Henderson Labs going to eleven when it came to eliminating a loose end. They've killed to clean up their messes before; they've never tried so hard to be caught at what they're doing at it."
Indeed, none of them could figure out any part of what had happened at Magenta. Team Arrow and Team Flash had come across their share of assassins who were bad at their jobs. But the Joker, while he was often over the top, always managed to be effective. Not only had he not killed Caitlin or her mother, when they had gone back to check the materials at the lab, he hadn't even destroyed the evidence. Amanda Waller would never have hired, much less tolerated, someone who couldn't get the job done, which begged the question why the Syndicate would use the Joker in the first place.
Cisco and Scully reentered the lab. "How are our patients?" Barry asked.
"Kara's still unconscious," Scully told them. "According to Alex, that's to be expected. She's going to be out for at least six or even more hours before she's back to normal…relatively speaking."
Barry wasn't sure whether he was more embarrassed for Kara or for himself about what had happened. "And Caitlin?" he asked Cisco.
"Physically, there's no evidence of any signs of, well, Frost-bite for lack of a better word," Cisco said. "Psychologically, she's a mess. Not just from the death threat or what happened to her, but from the possibility that was another goal of the Syndicate all along."
"Use her mother to get to her?" Oliver asked.
"It's a tried and true method; I can't imagine the new leadership wouldn't think of it," Mulder said.
"It's an old game because it works," Oliver said. "Have we made any progress at all on what this research was for in the first place? What was it about Dr. Tannhauser and Ianelli's research that the Syndicate wanted to get their hands on it?"
Mulder looked at Scully. "Did you verify what she told you?" he asked.
"I've been going over the material. It's her. And it looks like she's made a lot of progress over the years," Scully said grimly.
"Care to share with the rest of the class?" Felicity asked.
"When Dr. Tannhauser told Caitlin that the researcher was a Dr. Lisa Ianelli, it rang a bell," Mulder said. "I was really hoping it wouldn't."
"She was in an X-File," Oliver said.
"One of the hardest ones to fathom," Mulder told them. "A few months after we dealt with Leonard Betts, we were called in to investigate a murder in Boston," Mulder told them. "The suspect, Jason Nichols, was accused of pushing a competitor for a fellowship in front of a bus."
"So what brought you into his case?" Barry asked.
"His alibi," Scully said. "He claimed an old man had been yelling at him that his competitor would be run over by a bus at exactly 11:46 PM. Which was exactly when it happened."
They told them the rest of the details of one of their more convoluted cases. How the security guard who had detained that old men had been found dead completely frozen. How Jason Nichols had been studying a new field - cryobiology – with his girlfriend Lisa Ianelli. How they'd found a body flash-frozen the same way – and tried to resuscitate him, only for him to spontaneously combust in front of their eyes.
"Sounds like a typical Tuesday for us," Barry said.
"Well, this is where it gets odd," Scully said. "Mulder theorizes that all of these crimes were being committed by a time traveler, coming from the future to try and change the past. He said the old man was Jason Nichols from the future."
"Have you visited us the past two years?" Cisco asked. "Though if it did happen twenty years ago, I can see why it would've been a little freaky."
"Senior Nichols had a conversation with Ianelli," Mulder said. "He told her that nearly twenty years later, she would have a conversation with Dr. Yonechi, the man who'd just died. Through him, and the discovery of tachyons, and the use of the compound she was developing, they would develop a way to travel through time, only for a few seconds and only at a temperature of absolute zero. That would lead the ability to make time travel a reality. Immediately afterward, he stabs her with the compound that she would perfect in the future."
"So this Jason Nichols was traveling through time to stop this from happening," Barry said. "But if he succeeded, the compound would never be created, which meant he never be able to travel to the past to stop it from being created."
"Did your head just explode?" Felicity asked.
"How did he plan to do this? And why was he trying to stop it from happening in the first place?" Oliver asked in his usual pragmatic approach.
"We never found out," Mulder admitted. "Using Dr. Ianelli's research, we were able to save her life. But Jason panicked and ran back to the lab where he found… well, himself trying to destroy his research. I got there a couple of minutes later, only to see both men erupt in flames. They only found one body. Jason Nichols."
"Mulder's theories can be implausible, but I was usually willing to give him the benefit of the doubt," Scully told them. "This time, I didn't believe a word of it. Even nearly twenty years after the fact, even after everything I've seen in the past few months, it's still hard to accept that it was even plausible. But Ianelli apparently never tried to put the genie back in the bottle."
"You think that's what she's been working on all this time," Barry said. "Even after everything that happened to her."
""You're the only one among us who's actually traveled through time," Mulder reminded him. "Not to drag up old bones, but isn't that why you went back in time in the first place?"
There it was. "I did intend to save her life," Barry began.
"But you chose not too, despite the consequences." Mulder paused. 'Although multi-dimensionality suggests infinite outcomes in an infinite number of universes, each universe can produce only one outcome.'"
"Who said that?" Cisco said. "Einstein? Hawking?"
"Me." Scully said sheepishly. "It was my senior thesis. I was very narrow-minded when I was twenty-three."
"Maybe." Mulder said. "Or maybe something's are inevitable. Lisa Ianelli had every reason in the world not to go any further in her research. Hell, the Ghost of her future boyfriend told her as much. Yet all signs are, she went ahead and did it anyway."
"Just eight hours you told us the future wasn't written in stone," Diggle reminded him.
"That was a philosophical construct," Scully said. "You didn't say anything about time travel."
Oliver clearly wanted to change the subject. "All right. Let's say Lisa Ianelli was researching this compound and that Henderson Labs was helping her with it. It still begs the question, what does the Syndicate want with it?"
"The research may have been being used for the purpose of time travel," Cisco reminded them. "That doesn't mean there might have been side effects that the Syndicate could find useful in other ways. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that, and I am one."
"Well, they now have the information they need about the formula," Barry said. "The next step would be to get the material for the compound." He looked at Mulder and Scully. "When you were investigating the murders twenty years ago, the compound was only theoretical. But that was then."
"And the clock has been ticking all the while," Mulder said. He looked at Cisco. "We need to talk to Dr. Tannhauser. Find out exactly what she was helping Ianelli research and what she was using. See if there's any chance the Syndicate would have access to it."
"And if they do?" Oliver asked.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," Mulder admitted.
7:49 P.M.
"I've seen a lot of potential in research before," Dr. Tannhauser told them. "I have to know what to follow up on and what to dismiss. Ever since my daughter told me…about what she saw, I've been following several trails trying to see if there was something that might lead to answers."
"And Dr. Ianelli's research had the most potential," Barry asked.
"Even after several exchanges, she was maddeningly vague about the potential uses," Caitlin's mother said slowly. "And frankly given what you're telling me, I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it."
"You can't accept the idea of time travel?" Cisco found that hard to believe.
Dr. Tannhauser waved that off. "The theoretical constructs were available long before Einstein published his theory. No, what I can't understand how this compound could be used to work with it. Even Ianelli admitted that it was still in the testing stages, and it had yet to be done successfully in a laboratory setting."
Mulder wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried. "So the compound exists?"
"It exists, but it doesn't work. The cryobiology either instantly kills the subject or immediately after being revived, they die of incineration. Ianelli believed that part of the problem was with the thickening agent. She'd been through eight different prototypes in the last three years and none of them had been successful." Dr. Tannhauser paused. "She didn't know that was the main reason I was interested in the first place."
"That's the part you were interested in." Caitlin had joined the group. "Somehow, you were going to use the chemical to affect what might be happening to me."
Her mother didn't deny it. "By using a warming bath, Ianelli said she had been to use it in order to return the subject to complete health with no ill effects."
"She left out the part that the only time this method was used successfully was on her," Mulder told them. "And I'm willing bet that she didn't mention that she had been injected with the final version of the compound."
Caitlin actually paled. "She's been using the genetic residue from her own blood to try and design a retrograde version of it."
"She definitely left that part out of our communications," Her mother was doing a better job of hiding, but it was clear she was as blind-sighted as her daughter by this revelation. "I knew she was operating outside the mainstream, but this is borderline mad scientist territory."
"Unfortunately, that also explains why the Syndicate's involved," Mulder said. "Ianelli pretty much fits the profile of the original scientists on the project. Only they'd be smart enough to test the chemicals on unwitting subjects."
"For all we know, maybe that's what they're providing," Cisco said flatly.
Mulder shook his head. "What the hell happened to her? She knew what was involved better than anybody."
"Maybe she just couldn't stop herself," Caitlin turned to her mother. "How did you communicate with Ianelli?"
"We've never spoken face to face, only through email and texts," Carla said. "Her lab notes said she was last working out of Tokyo, but I don't even know what part of the city."
Mulder thought for a second. "Maybe she was trying to find a connection to something that hadn't happened yet."
This puzzled the three greater minds in the room. But before they could begin to put forth a question, there was a buzz on one of the intercoms.
"What is it, Felicity?" Cisco said.
"Um, we have a couple of visitors. And I'm not sure which of them is more pissed."
For a moment, Mulder had worried that some element of the Syndicate – human or alien – had decided to pay them a visit. Then he got a look at the security feed and saw who was there.
And he promptly wished it was the Syndicate.
Standing outside the entrance were two women currently going through a contest to see who was more pissed off: Alex Danvers and Catherine Grant.
"At least neither of them has superpowers," Cisco said.
"Have you met these women?" Mulder asked.
