Chapter 10
It took Mulder nearly ten minutes to overcome the fugue state he went into. He kept muttering to himself that not even Scully could understand, aside from the phrase: "This is not happening." At one point, Mulder actually mentioned to say: "At least Schwarzenegger isn't playing me," which caused more confusion when Wells asked why the Prime Minister of Austria would be acting. Mulder was incoherent for another five minutes.
Scully finally realized that there was a time issue here and got back to business. "I assume that Caitlin and the rest have briefed you on what seems to be unfolding now?" she asked.
Wells looked at her. "They're vague on the details which is understandable because you seem to be just as vague on most of them. Mainly because the original Syndicate was wiped out in February of 1999."
"By those same rebels," Kara told him. "The agency I work with has been trying to track them for the last few months, but we keep coming up dry."
"Just to be clear, how long have you been Supergirl in this world?" Wells asked.
"A little more than a year," Kara asked.
"And your cousin? How long has he been active in this world?"
Kara assumed Wells was trying to get his bearings. "Since 2011. Is there a major deviation in your universe on that end?"
"That's about the same time he showed up in my world. But as you can imagine, neither he nor you have the greatest fanbase there."
"We have our detractors in this world, too," Kara told him. "The major difference is, your universe has a much more obvious reason to be distrustful."
At that Mulder finally seemed to emerge from the brown study he was in. "What's the alien presence like in your universe?"
"Not good." Wells admitted. "In all fairness, you and your colleagues were responsible for a lot more of that pressure. The world united to fight a common foe, but in order to maintain security a lot of civil liberties were sacrificed in its name. Even Dales himself wondered near the end of his life if we'd overcorrected as a planet."
"We do seem to have a habit of doing that," Cat Grant acknowledged.
"Aliens were regarded with suspicion ever since the invasion was thwarted. Then about ten years, they began to resurface in clusters everywhere. None of them were even the same species that the Colonists were, but that didn't quell the rage." Well sighed. "It was in part because of this anger that the metahumans on my world began uniting and managed to recruit many of the aliens on my planets. War was never quite declared, but there have been many, many skirmishes."
Mulder thought of something. "What side am I on in your universe?" he asked reluctantly.
"No one's quite sure," Wells admitted. "Part of the reason you were promoted to your current position was because of your previous career. You'd been a hawk in the previous battles, so Washington figured you'd be their best fighter against it. And you were pretty hostile towards much of the paranormal events in the first years. You were very suspicious when Superman and Supergirl showed up. But in the next few months, when they were proving themselves as heroes, you kept taking a more nuanced approach."
"And I'm guessing nuance plays about as well in your world as it does in ours," Oliver said tiredly.
"You've been losing popularity among the public for the last three years. The only reason you haven't been forced out is because you have so many chits with previous administrations. You won't resign and no one has the balls to fire you. But many of the voices from the first war are either dead or retiring. The gossip is, they're going to wait until they're gone and then force you out."
Scully smiled at this. "Good to know that no matter what universe or what job you hold, you're as stubborn as ever."
"And it looks like I'm still on the right side," Mulder finally stood up. "Well, let's concentrate on the crisis in this universe. I'm assuming that you've gotten a glimpse of some of the players in this new Syndicate?"
"I have. And I do recognize some of the names. The one in particular that should worry you the most is Lillian Luthor."
"We already know that much," Kara told him. "What's she doing behind the scenes on your earth?"
"She's on center stage in my universe," Wells told them. "Right now, she's the frontrunner to become the next President."
"No one ever accused a Luthor of lacking ambition," Alex said. "And among the moves she's going to make is to cache Mulder."
"She won't say it directly on Firing Line, but she has referred to you several times as a 'good public servant." Wells admitted.
"Which is universal for: 'You should be put out to pasture'," Cat said reluctantly. "God knows, I've used that phrase myself more than once."
"Well, considering what you just told us, then we do have a first step," Caitlin said. "Try and focus on creating a vaccine."
"Good luck with that," Mulder told them. "From what little I know from the Syndicate on this Earth, it took twenty-five years and an alien genome just to get a weak vaccine. Any records we might have of what they did went up in flames as El Rico in 1999. And anything the new Syndicate has now, they are not going to share."
"There might be another way," Scully said quietly.
Mulder hesitated for a moment.
"What is it?" Barry asked.
"We'll deal with it later. Right now, we've got to deal with our present disaster," Mulder reminded them.
Everybody in the room knew that there was something critical that Mulder and Scully knew that they didn't want to share, at least not yet. But considering how much information they'd withheld from the world and each other, nobody was yet prepared to call them on it.
"I'd almost forgotten where we were," Cisco admitted.
"We any closer to figuring out why they want Lisa Ianelli dead so badly?" Scully asked.
"Well, we have finished going through the files," Felicity finally told them. "We also did some looking into what Yonechi was working on for Luthorcorp. He was going over research involving cryobiology and its effect on viruses in the bloodstream, which already set off warning bells. Then we got a look where some of the sample materials came from, and that set off a four-alarm fire."
Mulder and Scully simultaneously had sinking feelings in their stomachs. "I'm going to go out on a limb," Scully said slowly. "Dallas."
"Give the woman a Kewpie," Felicity told them.
"I didn't see anything about that in the files," Barry said.
"That's because they weren't working on them at the time," Cat Grant spoke up. "I think you'd better tell us what the hell happened in Dallas in the summer of '98."
So Mulder and Scully did. How after the X-Files has been closed down they had been reassigned to counterterrorism. How during a bomb threat a federal building had blown up and the government tried to hang it on them. How Mulder had encountered a man named Kurzweil who had worked with his father. (Wells had blinked at that name.) How they had begun an investigation into the cover-up that linked to the discovery of a body infected with the virus which led them to field filled with corn and bees. How Scully had gotten stung and infected with the virus, which had led Mulder to Antarctica, an underground lair and a spaceship.
"And even after all that, it still took her two years to admit that aliens were real," Mulder finished up.
Of all the things they'd just heard, that was what everybody had the hardest time dealing with. "In my profession, a certain amount of healthy skepticism is required," Cat said slowly. "Yours, however, borders on being ludicrous."
"I was passed out!" Scully shouted defensively.
"I'm kind of amazed you stuck with her after that," Diggle said, shaking his head. "If I'd been in Mulder's shoes, I probably would've kicked you to the curb."
"I had to drag you kicking and screaming on everything that's happened the past two years," Oliver said amazedly.
"If I saw a flying saucer roughly the size of the Pentagon emerged from an ice floe, I think I'd be willing to acknowledge that aliens might exist," Diggle pointed out. "I certainly would've been willing to back up another witness in front of a review panel."
"Congratulations Mulder, you finally have found your target audience," Scully said reluctantly.
"There are three metahumans, several people who deal with superpowered people on a daily basis, and an actual alien," Mulder reminded her. "Frankly, the work was already half done when I came in."
"Leaving all of that aside, I'm guessing we now think that Ianelli's research bears some connection to whatever the old Syndicate was working on," Oliver asked. "I realize I'm beating a dead horse, but are you sure this old man was telling you the truth about everything?"
"The whole truth? No," Mulder admitted. "The bit about the aliens and the vaccine? I'm pretty sure of that, considering he was willing to give his life for me to get it."
"Again, stupid question, but given how many of your colleagues came back from the dead…" Alex trailed off.
"We never saw him again, before or after El Rico," Mulder told her. "He was a traitor. You know what happens to them."
"So what we seem to be saying is that the new Syndicate is trying to pick up where the predecessors left off," Kara told them. "They're trying to work on how to deal with the alien virus, including the possibility that the virus could and has mutated."
"You'd think that after working on it for a quarter of a century, they'd have been prepared for that kind of scenario," Cisco asked.
"The previous version was so locked on to their original program they would rather surrender than tolerate any deviations,:" Mulder pointed out. "Need I remind you that's how they met their end in the first place?"
"It's good to know that somebody's benefitting from their mistakes," Kara told them. "It's just our misfortune that it's the bad guys."
"Maybe not," Wells said slowly. "That man you mentioned, Kurzweil. He existed in my universe too."
"Which side was he on?" Oliver asked.
"He was involved with the Syndicate here too," Wells told him. "And as you'd imagine he's been dead awhile in my universe, though apparently of natural causes. Before he died, however, he wrote what is considered the definitive history of everything he saw related to the Conspiracy, the revelations afterwards and the story of the entire war."
"I'm not wild about reading the alien version of Mein Kampf to learn the truth, but it would certainly be fitting if it gives a way out." Barry said thoughtfully. "How long would it take you get a copy from your universe?"
"Compared to some of the other trips I've had to make, a walk in the park," Wells told them. "It hasn't been digitized, though. Kurzweil went to his grave demanding that the publishers never allow that."
"Why doesn't that shock me?" Mulder told them. "In our universe, the Syndicate couldn't even conceive that so many of the computers they did much of their work on would one day be available in every living room. For men who were trying to create the future, they sure as hell didn't want to live in it."
"Based on what he wrote, they weren't that different here, either," Wells pointed out. "But you were able to do something about that. One of your earliest order was to guarantee that the book never be out of print. You also made sure that all the royalties when to the victims and families of everybody who had been involved in the experiments."
"That doesn't shock me either," Scully said thoughtfully. "Given how Mulder worked – and the level of guilt he must've felt consider his father's got to be a main character in it – the last thing he'd want is anybody making any money of it."
"He'd probably want it in every motel in America along with the Gideon Bible," Cat Grant said.
"There are rumors you actually considered something like that, but you didn't want to have to force it on people," Wells told them. "The world had already lived through it. They didn't need a reminder looking in the face whenever they traveled."
"Enough patting me on the back," Mulder said. "Before we waste the trip is there information on how to make a vaccine?"
"Everything short of where to get the materials," Wells told them. "Of course, I imagine that'll be the hardest part."
"We'll worry about that," Mulder said. "Consider this a request from the government."
"Couldn't we just get the vaccine?" Caitlin asked. "I mean, your universe already dosed everybody with it."
"That would make things too easy, Snow," Wells told them. "After the original dose, the CDC pretty much locked down every remaining dose and sample and put it under the highest level of security imaginable. No one wants to even consider what happens if our old friends come back again. UN Resolution 1121 forbade any government from even accessing it without a full vote of the Security Council. You were one of the original signers."
"Well, I'm pretty sure that not even I could imagine that I would ever need it," Mulder said resignedly. "Man this is getting hard for me to get a handle on."
"I have to ask, does your Mulder have a position on alternate universes and access to them?" Barry put forth.
"'We have always considered the possibility of infinite universes, and now we know they are a reality. Nevertheless, it is my reluctant opinion that we must maintain a position of neutrality when it comes to either aiding or taking aid from any such universe. I do not reach this judgment lightly. But when we consider just how much effort it took to defeat a threat within ours, we can not risk expanding our involvement within one, must less an infinite number.'" Wells paused. "Your statement before a joint session of Congress in 2013, right around the time it became a reality of visiting other universes. Several governments had already signed off on it; you confirmed the United States position."
"That does sound like him," Scully admitted.
"Wait a minute." Mulder said abruptly. "That's your universe's positions – and you've clearly violated it multiple times. "
Wells looked away. "There were extenuating circumstances. I was trying to make sure Zoon didn't wreak havoc here that he did in my world."
"Nevertheless, that makes you a criminal," Mulder smiled. "I knew I liked you."
Wells actually looked like he was going to blush for a minute. "In any case, we need to get a copy of this book. Mr. Allen, I know its short notice but would you mind accompanying me?"
"Not a problem." Barry said immediately.
There was certain disarray after that part. "Uh, Barry, you sure now is the best time to…"
"Not a problem, Cisco," Barry repeated with probably more force than was necessary.
"There were times when I didn't want to deal with my problems," Mulder said in a whisper. "But I'm not sure even I would be willing to go to a different universe so I wouldn't have to talk about them with anybody."
"Only because you didn't have the option," Scully said only half in jest.
"Maybe we should lock them in a supply closet for a couple of hours and see if they can resolve it," Mulder said.
"A, it took us seven years to get there; B, where would we find one that could hold either of them?" Scully pointed out.
"Oh to be young, gifted and superpowered," Mulder sighed and turned to Felicity who had a similar look of frustration on her face. This was clearly a much bigger problem, so he decided to focus on an easier one like saving mankind.
"We know the Syndicate has to be working on some variation on the vaccine," he said slowly. "How they're going to do it is a whole different question."
"What about all the work the Syndicate did? Is that just gone?" Cat asked.
"I honestly don't know," Mulder said. "Most of the research facilities were burned up by the Resistance just before the final act at El Rico. And according to an unreliable source, the Resistance also took the genome that the Syndicate was using to try and make the vaccine in 1999. "
"But the new edition has to have something. You can't experiment on people if you don't something to experiment with, right?" Cisco pointed out.
And Mulder froze. "They do. If they're willing to go deep enough."
Oliver got it. "Marita Covarrubias. She was exposed to the virus and was given the vaccine. Unless you were just bluffing Merlyn."
"He wasn't," Scully replied. "After everything her old bosses put her through, you think she'd willing subject herself to the same experiments?"
"She changed employers, not careers," Cat Grant reminded them. "If she's as smart as you say she is, maybe she's holding it as a bargaining chip."
Suddenly everybody on Team Arrow froze and started looking at each other. Mulder recognized it – it was the same kind of look he had shared with Scully so many times over the decade.
Kara clearly recognized it too. "What do you know?"
"You're right. It is a bargaining chip for whoever has it," Oliver said slowly. "And who did we just send back to his bosses knowing the full story and who always looks out for his own advantage?"
Mulder looked at them. "All those years of being a loose cannon you'd think I'd do a better job of noticing when I've loaded one and pointed it."
"So what do we do?" Barry asked.
Mulder looked at them. "Not a thing."
OUTSKIRTS OF CENTRAL CITY
3:04 A.M.
"You have a lot of nerve calling for this meeting," Marita Covarrubias said as she got out of her car. "Considering that you failed in your objective."
"That's an interesting argument to make," Malcolm Merlyn said. "Considering you were maddeningly vague on why we needed Ianelli in the first place."
"We need her work to complete the project. That's all you need to know right now." Covarrubias said.
"I don't know what your exact duties were under the old regime," Merlyn said slowly. "I'm guessing it was to keep details of the mission obscure even to those carrying out your dirty work."
"I managed to get a place higher up as a result," Marita countered.
"'I thought so little, they rewarded me. By making me the ruler of the Queen's Navy'," Malcolm recited. "Did your friends on the Syndicate love Pinafore?"
"Why are we here, Malcolm?" Marita asked.
"It says a lot about where I rank on the totem pole that I was able to more information about the conspiracy from a sworn enemy that those I've allied with," Malcolm said bluntly.
Marita sighed. "So you finally met Fox Mulder?"
"I finally understand why your colleagues were so afraid of him all these years," Malcolm replied. "He will tell the truth to anybody, even the last person on Earth he should trust."
"He's also willing to believe whatever he's told," Marita said.
"You should know. You were the one feeding him intel for years. When everything started to go wrong, were you selling out the Syndicate or him?"
"I was trying to do what I thought was the right thing." Marita said bitterly. "You know what it ended up costing me."
"From what I can see, you ended up on top," Malcolm pointed out. "Your bosses have literally been regulated to the ash-heap of history, and now you're calling the shots." He paused. "For now."
"If you're worried about what's coming next, Malcolm, don't be. You're like the rest of us. You're a survivor."
"Thing is, as a man who had power before, survival alone no longer interests me. I learn from my mistakes. Unlike you."
Marita realized what was coming, but like so many who had dealt with The Magician, that realization came a second too late. She felt a pinch on the back of her neck.
"I'd like to tell you it's not personal, Marita," Malcolm said as she slipped into blackness, "but we both know that would be a lie."
STAR LABS
4:07 A.M.
Everyone was looking at Mulder as if they didn't know him, but it was Scully who put what they were all thinking into words. "Mulder, are you out of your mind?"
"Nope," Mulder said. "I'm actually thinking clearer than I have in awhile."
"Then maybe you could elucidate to the rest of us," Joe said.
"A name you'll find rather frequently in the files is Alex Krycek," Mulder said calmly. "I spent seven years dealing with him. The man was a cockroach with only one goal. His own survival. He would make any alliance he could and then betray it moments later just to gain an edge. The FBI, the Syndicate, the Russians, he would ally with them and then break with then to try and get control. And even knowing he was completely untrustworthy, nobody was willing to put him down. He survived longer than almost all of them because of it. Remind you of anyone?"
"Give him a better haircut and basically that is Malcolm Merlyn," Scully reminded them.
"He wants to stay alive more than anything. Lest we forget, that's why I wanted to talk to him in the first place," Mulder reminded him. "I didn't have any power to negotiate with him. But I had information that he didn't. And now that he has it, it will be only a matter of time before he turns on the Syndicate and tries to negotiate better terms with the other side."
They all took this in. "Man, am I glad you were never on the Star City PD." Oliver said finally. "You would have been able to nail down the Hood within two weeks."
"What makes you think I didn't try?" Mulder didn't give Oliver a chance to react. "And he's not going to reach out to me. He thinks that because he tried to kill me yesterday, I'm going to hold a grudge."
"You aren't?" Kara said, a little flabbergasted.
"The man had an entire shadow government trying to kill him for more than a decade," Cat Gram reminded them. "He had a death sentence hanging over his head, and he agreed to work for that same government again. I have a feeling he got used to it long before any of you did."
"It gets to be annoying after awhile," Scully said casually. "At some point, you just get used to it."
Oliver got it, too. "No, he's going to dance with the people who know him, even though they should trust him the least. And I think we all know who he'll reach out to first." He looked around. "Where the hell's Thea?"
Mulder heaved a sigh. "Why do I have to be the one to remind the heroes to keep on an eye on their sister?"
FXFXFX
"I'm still having trouble getting my head around this part," Iris told Thea, as they looked at the newspaper from the future.
"Which part: that it changed at all or that your names no longer on the byline?" Thea asked.
"Both, honestly" Iris admitted. "I am trying really hard not to think about what that might mean. My life has been in danger so many times the past two years that it's actually getting to be old hat. This just seems more definitive."
"Okay, first of all just because your name isn't there doesn't mean you're dead," Thea pointed out. "There are a lot of potential explanations, some good, some not so comforting."
"Second of all?" Iris asked.
"The fact this article is here at all is a symbol that the future is not written in stone," Thea reminded her. "And if anyone's capable of changing it, it's your boyfriend, especially with all the help he's gotten."
Iris considered this, started to say something, and then paused. "Something's changed about Barry in the last day or so. He seems different, somehow, and it has nothing to do with the possibility of an invasion." She looked at Thea. "And every time I bring it up with him or any of the other heroes, they get all quiet around me."
"Oh, that's never fun," Thea said. "They want to think they're protecting you, but they're not. Of course the last time someone was keeping a major secret from me, I was being told that I was a psychotic killer."
"Last time everyone was hiding Barry was The Flash," Iris told her.
"Better or worse?"
"In our world, I really can't tell anymore."
And at that moment Thea's cell rang. She took it out, and then froze. "Unknown Caller" it said. She knew these calls never ended well, but she had a sinking feeling that this particular caller wasn't unknown. Indeed, she was so sure that she answered: "I have nothing to say to you."
"Then just listen," her father said. "You have every reason to hate me and no reason at all to trust me. Indeed, given my track record you wouldn't believe me if I said the sky was blue. But I need you to believe me here."
The part of her that still wanted to love her father wouldn't let her hang up. "And?"
"I chose the wrong side."
"What else is new?" Thea couldn't help but say.
"You're on the right one."
That was a different approach. Malcolm usually used this time to justify his actions. To outright admit that he was in error was something he hadn't done since…ever. "What do you want?"
"Thea, I don't have a lot of time. There is a window where your friends may be able to get what I have and it is closing rapidly. So if there's any part of you that ever loved me, I need you to do something right now."
Malcolm's voice sounded normal. But Thea had known him long enough to know that just the slightest bit of desperation was in it. "What is it?"
"I need you to give a message to your brother."
And that, more than anything, convinced Thea that Malcolm was being honest. If there was one constant in their relationship with her father over the last four years, it was that he only went to her brother when all other options had been exhausted. "What do you need me to tell him?"
FXFXFX
Nobody seemed that shocked when Thea and Iris came to the main group five minutes later with Malcolm's message.
After the directness of his conversation with her, he had gone back to being maddeningly vague in the details. It didn't matter because everybody had known before Malcolm had acted what his move was going to be, but Mulder in particular was getting frustrating in everybody talking in obscure terms.
"I have possession of something that will be of great value to you, inside and out. I need your brother to come and pick it up in the place of my greatest triumph in one hour. He has to come alone. Any of his usual theatricality will be noticed, which is the one thing that can't happen right now. Don't stall. Any longer and they'll have started the search."
Thea stopped the recording she had made on a device Felicity had given her last year for occasions just like this. "He clearly wants you to go to the Glades. What's there?"
"Marita Covarrubias." Mulder told her. "And he's less interested in what she'll tell us than what she's got."
"Which is?" Iris asked.
"The vaccine." Scully said. "In fact, based on what we know, she's one of just a handful of people who have been infected with virus and given the vaccine to treat it. For those desperate enough, it might be the key to winning this war."
"The new Syndicate has to know that," Barry pointed out.
"Why would they?" Oliver countered. "Almost everybody who knew about is dead. And given the level of distrust that the current players have, I'm willing to bet anything I used to have that Covarrubias has left that particular detail out of her resume."
"No bet," Kara told them. "If Lillian Luthor knew, Marita would be under a microscope at Cadmus being cut up for parts."
"Please tell me we're not going to retrieve her just so we can do the same thing," Thea told them.
That was indeed the question. Mulder didn't think that was what his new group of allies would be cold enough to do. Then again, when all of this had started, Scully had been going to tell them that of the handful of people who'd been infected with the virus and given the vaccine, two of them were working with them right now. Mulder had tried to hold her off, partly because the two of them had been experimented on enough to fill a dozen lifetimes, but because he genuinely didn't know if they would have to make that kind of sacrifice in order to win this war. Besides, they still didn't know whether that was still the plan of attack for the Colonists.
"I think right now it is in all of our interests that we get to Marita while she's still alive," Mulder said slowly.
"You don't really think she'll talk to us?" Oliver asked.
"If there's one thing that woman was great at, it was playing both sides against the middle," Scully told them. "Maybe that's what Krycek saw in her."
"He was willing to sell her out, too. For that rat-bastard that probably was the ultimate act of love," Mulder said.
"We don't have time to go down memory lane," Oliver said. :"As of right now, we have exactly fifty-five minutes to come up with a plan and execute it."
"That's your department." Everybody shot Mulder a dirty look including Scully. "Hey, I have a bad history with this kind of thing. Every time I tried to manage something like this, the best case scenario ended with at least one person dead and usually me or Scully being severely injured. You're the ones with experience – and lest we forget, superpowers. I told you what Malcolm was going to do, and he lived down to expectations. You want to actually have a chance at this thing working? This is one occasion I'm going to delegate."
It was really hard to argue with that logic. "Don't blame us if something goes wrong," Kara said.
"Don't worry." Felicity said grimly. "It will anyway."
