Chapter 12

STAR LABS

3:45 P.M.

After everything that had happened in the last couple of days, no one was willing to play chicken with the possibility that their latest asset might disappear into the wind. So while Covarrubias was still in the process of recovery, she was moved into one of the holding cells that had housed so many metahumans over the past two years. No one thought she could escape on her own volition, but no one was prepared for her to just roll over and cooperate either.

When she finally regained consciousness an hour earlier and Mulder and Scully were still a couple of hours out, Oliver believed now would be the best time to begin questioning the prisoner.

"You sure that's the best idea?" Diggle said. "I mean, let's be honest: most of us don't know the right questions to ask."

"I know it's a risk," Oliver admitted. "But it's not like she can go anywhere right now. Besides, she was willing to work with the enemy when it was in her self-interest. This might be the best opportunity to convince her."

"Good luck with that," Cat Grant told them. "You heard what the late Mr. Merlyn told us last night. She wasn't willing to switch sides when they turned into a lab rat. I'm guessing that since that option's on the table and she knows it, she's not going to be easily swayed."

"According to these files, being infected with the black oil is far worse than any torture we could inflict on her," Cisco reminded them. "That kind of takes that card out of the hand, too."

"Well that eliminates both good cop and bad cop," Felicity said. "What are we left with?"

"Alien cop."

Everyone looked at Kara. "What? She's been willing to work with aliens before. Besides, maybe I can offer her something you can't."

Kara had refused to go any further on clarification. But considering that there was no way in hell the prisoner had any kryptonite, they decided it was the best chance they had.

So Kara went down there.

Marita was already on her feet. "I guess I'm not in a position to complain, but this does seem a little excessive for someone who spent the last several hours unconscious."

Kara looked at her. "If I had my way, there'd be a row of armed guards standing here."

"You're not good enough?" Marita asked. "Did he get away?"

"He's dead." Kara told them. "Along with fifty-seven innocent civilians of Star City and nearly six city blocks. Even for the enemies I fight on a regular basis that strikes me as excessive."

It was hard to tell because Covarrubias always seemed pale, but she did seem to blanch a little at that.

"Satisfy my curiosity," Kara asked. "When your old bosses were in charge, and they wanted to 'solve a problem', would they make sure there this was much collateral damage?"

"My old bosses were willing to let a group of schoolchildren be infected with an alien virus as a test," Marita told her. "I could tell you that after awhile you became numb to the carnage but you know that's a lie."

"Did you become numb when you saw all of those scorched bodies in Kazakhstan?" Kara asked. "Or did you find a way you could continue to manipulate the situation for your own personal gain?"

This time Marita looked away. "I paid for my transgression."

"You just don't seem to have learned from it. But what the hell. That seems to have been a constant for everybody who worked for the Syndicate. Past and present." Kara looked at her. "You don't seem to be particularly concerned about nearly dying or being in the hands of the 'enemy'.

"I'm used to it by now," Marita said.

Kara shook her head. "I've seen a lot in the last year – hell, in the last few weeks – but you and your ilk keep lowering the bar. One of your own handed you over to the enemy, and despite your decades of loyalty to the Project, they sent a drone not just to kill your abductor, but to make sure you didn't end up in the wrong hands. Now I personally know that a lot of those people have trust issues, but that's cold."

"I suppose this is your way of persuading me to help you," Marita told them.

"I don't have to persuade you. The drone should have already. Technically, right now you're in the safest place you can possibly be." Kara paused. "Just out of curiosity, how long will it be until they stop presuming you were killed by the drone?"

Marita didn't respond to this at all.

"Right now, you're presumed dead. How long will that be good enough for your colleagues? The Mayor can keep the military out of Star City, but he has compassion. He'll want to make sure everybody who was killed is acknowledged by the world. He wants to make a spectacle of this." Kara hesitated. "And considering how livid he is at what they did to his city, he might just go out in front of the cameras and tell them why. What do you think it'll take for him to say that they screwed up in their primary objective?"

A tiny drop of sweat fell down Marita's forehead. "You're bluffing."

"You know better than to say that." Kara tisked. "You also know him letting the Syndicate hunt you down in a measured response coming from him. He smashed a video monitor at people who said they were 'just following orders.' What do you think he'll do to someone who gives them?"

"Damn," Cisco said. "I thought she was the most even-tempered of us."

"She is," Alex told them. "Right now, she's only talking about letting her be tortured by a human being. Considering the company we're keeping…"

She didn't have to finish that sentence.

"And what makes you think you can protect me?" Marita asked.

"You've been betraying this planet for more than twenty years; we could care less about protecting you," Kara said in such a casual tone that the tenor of the message was almost completely lost. "Indeed, in a perfect world, we'd just follow through with whatever Malcolm Merlyn was planning when he took you prisoner in the first place."

Covarrubias' poker face was completely gone; she looked utterly terrified.

"But…you're a survivor. And we know you want to stay alive. Hell, you switched sides so many times in your first incarnation I don't think anybody knew which one you were on." Kara looked at her. "So we're not going to protect you. What we will do is make you an offer. And trust me when I tell you, it's the only one you will get. You can not negotiate better terms. If you reject it…well, let's just say you will not live long enough to regret it."

"What is it?" Marita was trying to be bold again.

"The same terms we were going to give Merlyn. He gets away, and we give the world proof that you died in the drone strike. We give you a new identity. I arrange that you get far enough away from here that the Syndicate will need to spend a lot of time and energy trying to find you, should they want to put in that effort. You spend the rest of your life staying under the radar. Given that not even Mulder and Scully knew you were alive until a few weeks ago, that shouldn't be too hard. Refuse the offer, and I drop you back exactly where we last found you. There will be a Catco camera to record this miraculous discovery. Somehow, and this may just be me, I don't think your colleagues will be delighted to see you."

"And what do I have to do in return?"

Kara looked at her as if she was an idiot. "You don't get to ask that. You have two choices: accept the offer or refuse it."

Now Marita was utterly bamboozled. "I have to make a choice without knowing what is it I'm choosing?"

Kara dropped even the pretense of being congenial. "You just don't get it. All the time, you've been working for the enemy you knew what you were doing and you still made the wrong choice. You made it on one basis: your own survival and the hell with the consequences to anybody else. This is the same thing. Life or death. Aside from that, what difference does it make what you actually have to do?"

Kara looked at her. "I realize this might be difficult, so I'll give you an hour to make your decision. Knowing your history, I don't think you'll need that long."

Cat Grant looked at Kara. "As someone who has seen the great, that was badass.

"Yeah," Felicity said in a confused tone. "But why didn't you tell her what we want her to do?"

"Because I have no idea what we should ask for," Kara confessed.

The reaction that followed was not exactly happy. "You want us to make a deal with her and we don't even know what she has to offer," Barry said. "Isn't that a little out there?"

"What our friend is too polite to say is: HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DAMN MIND?" Caitlin shouted.

"She's been on the inside for twenty years. It doesn't really matter what we ask for." Kara said calmly. "What matters is getting her to accept our terms."

"But…you gave her no choice," Even Oliver seemed a little puzzled by this.

"She tries to negotiate her way out of this; she'll walk away unharmed without giving us anything." Alex was the only who seemed to understand what her sister had done. "So the only way to get what we want is not to negotiate. It may be the only play she understands."

In the screwed-up world they'd all been inhabiting the last few years, this made a twisted sort of sense. This did, however, leave them with one tiny problem. "So what do we want from her?" Felicity asked again.

"How long until they get back?" Barry asked. No one had to ask who 'they' were.

"Thirty minutes." Cisco said.

"We better hope like hell one of them has a better answer than we do," Oliver said.

5:01 PM

Neither Mulder nor Scully needed to be briefed about the nature of the interrogation when they arrived. Everybody had been a little nervous that neither of them would agree to the terms Kara had said – Mulder in particular had every reason for Marita to refuse to offer just for the sake of fairness. Instead, both had shrugged and told the assembled heroes that they would handle the questioning of the prisoner from now on.

Mulder only had one question before going in. "You're sure she can't escape?"

"Not unless she has a superpower you haven't told us about," Cisco had told them.

"If she did, she'd have used it by now," Scully said.

Marita didn't seem any more unnerved to see her two – nemeses? Frenemies? – than she had been to see Kara a couple of hours. Mulder looked at her. "Have you decided?"

"I don't have a lot of options," Marita said.

"That isn't an answer." Scully reminded her.

Marita put her head in her hands. "I accept your terms."

Mulder nodded. "Is it safe?" he said in a very poor Laurence Olivier accent.

"You can't take anything seriously," Marita said.

"Just savoring the moment." Mulder told her. "But seriously. How close are they? And don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."

Marita didn't bother. "Not close at all."

"How long do they need?"

"The optimal estimate is at least five years. Far too long."

Scully looked at her. "Did you tell them?"

"I didn't have too. They already know."

"How paranoid are these guys?" Cisco asked. "They finally can get answers and they're still not going into detail."

"To be fair, we all know what they're talking about," Cat Grant said.

Which was true. "And the reason they're talking like Jack Webb?" Joe West asked.

"Force of habit." Kara said with a shrug. "Or maybe it's an inside joke."

"When they recruited you, how many of them knew what was running through your blood?" Mulder at least was starting to go into detail.

"I didn't volunteer the information. Not that it mattered. There were still files out there and people like Waller and Reyes knew how to access them." Marita told them.

"Do they know that it's in our blood?" Scully said bluntly.

"They know you do," Covarrubias indicated Scully. "They don't know for sure about Mulder, but it's heavily suspected. Don't thank me. A lot of the files from Russia still aren't accessible."

"I would never thank you," Mulder said coldly. "Do you think there is enough for us to synthesize a vaccine?"

This was the question they'd wanted the answer to. "When I was injected with it in '98, it took more than a day for the virus to be flushed," Marita said. "Recovery took far longer. It was three weeks before I regained consciousness. You saw the condition I was in at Fort Marlene. I wasn't anywhere near normal until six months after that."

Mulder looked at Scully. "It worked quicker on you," he told her. "You were fully conscious within hours. You needed a couple of weeks, but you were saying you didn't see anything to the Board of Inquiry in fine fettle."

This was more an old joke than a sticking point these days. "What did he tell you when he gave it to you?" Scully asked.

"If you didn't receive a dose of it in seventy-two hours, it was ineffective," Mulder told them.

"I think you're both missing the point," Marita said. "The best the Syndicate could ever do was to get the vaccine so that it worked after you were infected. They never got it to a point where it was a palliative."

"You're in a lab with some of the greatest scientific minds in the world," Scully reminded her. "Give them the right amount of material, they can do the rest."

"And you call us egotistical." Marita rolled her eyes. "But even assuming that's possible, do you really expect that if you extract enough biological material from me, you'll be able to get what you need?"

The two agents shared that look they had thousands of times before over the years. "You misunderstand us, Marita, not that I expected someone like you too." Mulder said slowly.

Marita seemed truly baffled. "What are you talking about?"

Scully paused. "We never intended to extract material from just you."

STAR LABS

9:11 pm

"I don't understand why we're still debating this."

"I'd forgotten how thick-headed you could be," Cat Grant looked at Scully. "And I thought you were supposed to be the more reasonable one."

The moment Mulder and Scully had made it clear that they were going to become donors for this new vaccine, the noise that had come from everybody who had been listening into their conversation had nearly deafened them. Four hours later, the din had barely settled and the two agents were no less firm in their resolve.

"Leaving aside all of the myriad problems we had with just doing this to Covarrubias – something, by the way, most of us are still not on board with," Caitlin reminded them, "you're a goddamn doctor. You of all people know how dangerous these kinds of tests can be."

"I'm very aware of this," Scully said sternly. "I nearly died from them. On two separate occasions."

"Then why the hell would you want to go through with them voluntarily?" Cisco shouted out.

"Because it's probably our best chance to create a vaccine," she reminded them. "With the biological material from three subjects, you would more than likely have sufficient antibodies to create a vaccine that would work."

"Might work," Felicity reminded them. "As someone who went through something very close to this just two years ago, there were no guarantees. And that's without considering just how lethal the tests would be. The first time we tried it, Roy nearly died from the side effects."

"And as I recall, STAR Labs was instrumental in that process," Mulder countered.

"At the time, we weren't aware what we're getting into," Cisco told them. "It was only because of how bad things were in Star City that we agreed to go along with it at all. If we'd know how it was going to be tested, I'm pretty sure I would've argued against it."

"I definitely would've," Caitlin added.

"Do I have to remind you that the situation is more desperate?" Mulder said. "Exponentially so, in fact. We don't know how much time we have."

"Which is why we shouldn't be doing it," Kara spoke up. "Now I'm aware I set up this situation in the first place. But if I'd know you were going to literally ask for Covarrubias' flesh and blood…"

"You'd have done it anyway, from what I understand," Scully told them.

"This isn't going to start with just taking a blood sample," Cat Grant said. "Doing this could take weeks, maybe months of tests, just to get enough of a sample in order for this to work. How the hell are you going to manage this crisis out of your hospital bed?"

"Good thing I have a doctor who'll check me out AMA," Mulder said.

It was getting rather infuriating that neither of them seemed to be taking this seriously enough.

"We're scientists, we're not butchers," Cisco pointed out. "I've done some experiments the last couple of years that I regret doing, but this is a line I'm not willing to cross."

"And you can bet your ass no one at the DEO would be willing to go along with either," Alex pointed out.

"We're adults, Alex," Mulder pointed out bull-headedly. "We're grateful for all the help you've given us, but we don't really need your permission or your blessing to go along with this."

"This isn't something that you can do by going into the right alley and looking for a clinic," Oliver reminded them.

"Need I remind you that I am a doctor," Scully told them. "My privileges got me into practically every hospital in the country before Mulder and I were all over the news. I don't think we'll have to knock on many doors before someone agrees to it."

"Oh, for God's sake. You don't even know if this will work!" Felicity finally exploded. "You two spent your entire careers at the Bureau trying to expose a conspiracy that was willing to use the entire human population as lab rats. Now you two are willing to do the same thing to yourselves, and you just want all of us to nod and go along with it?!"

Mulder looked at this group of heroes. "Leaving aside that we've been doing this longer than you, that we know more about this conspiracy than all of you, and that we are far more aware what we're up against, let's put that all aside." Mulder looked them. "You have been on the front lines against enemies at least as bad as the ones we faced with nothing but our wits. Some of you are smarter than us. And some of you are definitely stronger than us. Based on what you know, do you think this is a battle we can win?"

There it was, in as blunt a tone as they could ask. Oliver, who had been at this the longest, spoke for them. "None of this can answer this with any certainty," he admitted. "But you knew that going in. What's the point?"

"I don't agree with anything those old men were trying to do. But my father – my real father – believed that there was only way to save everybody," Mulder told them. "And that was to create a vaccine. Now I don't know if this is a war that can be won with manpower or superpower or any of the weapons that you and your friends have been using to defend your homes and this planet for the last few years. But these aliens have been planning this for millennia. They have a single strategy and from what I understand, it was working everywhere else they tried it."

Scully looked at them. "Now maybe the rest of you can find a way to fight back. But we have to prepare for the worst case scenario. And that means having the power to fight against the alien consciousness. As much as it pains me to say one of the few things we have in common with our prisoner is that we were infected and survived. And based on what we've seen before, I can assure you this is not something that you want anybody else to go through."

There wasn't much point arguing with that.

"I don't know if there any chance at this point of thwarting the invasion," Mulder told them. "Maybe there is some scenario we still haven't thought of. What I do know is that we have to prepare for the worst-case one. That means millions of people being infected with this thing. We have to have something that can treat it. Right now, we have exactly two advantages over the Syndicate. One is we know we have time. And the other is what we have in us."

Mulder walked over to Harrison Wells. "The Mulder in your universe was willing to put his own life at risk for the sake of your Earth. How can you possibly expect me to be in any different?"

Wells didn't even flinch. "They're right."

Barry flinched at this. "But you said that your universe…"

"Mr. Allen, I'm willing to admit there are many similarities between this universe and mine, but you visited it last year. You know just as well that there are nearly as many differences. Even if we had the vaccine that ended up saving my Earth, there's no guarantee that the material within would have the same effects on the people of this Earth. And how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to find out for sure?"

He looked at them all. "I realize this is not a fact that we wish to deal with. But this Earth is in a war. Right now, the enemy has all the advantages and all the materials and we all just witnessed how dirty they are willing to play to win. Now, I'm willing to do what I can to help, but the fact of the matter." Wells paused. "These two are the experts. In any universe. And your best bet is to do what they asked you to. You've been more than willing to sacrifice your own lives in order to save this world. How you can expect them not to do any differently?"

Mulder looked at them. "Isn't that what heroes are supposed to do?"

There was a long pause. "Mulder," Cat Grant finally said. "I knew you were brave before all this. I didn't realize you and Scully are really the bravest and boldest of us all." Then before he could answer this: "That being said, you start going all Tale of Two Cities on us I swear to God I will kick you in the balls."

"Believe me, he's never that eloquent," Scully said.

"You guys just don't like it when anyone else infringes on your territory, do you?" Mulder said.

"They just don't like people who can brood better than them," Felicity told them

"Serving the public since 1993," Mulder told them. "Not that we ever got credit for it before now."

This officially broke the tension.

"This is a terrible idea and it's going to involve a lot of pain," Cisco reminded them. "But you're right. It was still something we were going to have to do at some point, and you are our best source."

"Hey, we're among the Fastest Man Alive, The Girl of Steel and the inspiration of Star City," Mulder pointed out. "What the hell can we possibly contribute to this war utter than blood, sweat, toil and tears?"

"I don't think any of us expected that you would literally give three of the four," Caitlin told them. "As for the toil…"

"Better to leave that to the next generation," Scully said almost cheerfully.

"Scully, the two of us have toiled enough for all of their lifetimes," Mulder told them. "Is this how I expected to spend my retirement? Not exactly."

"Mulder, if you hadn't been sacked, you would've spent your nineties trying to find to find that aliens did build the pyramids," Scully pointed out. "I don't think you knew what the word 'vacation' meant."

Mulder smiled fondly. "I vaguely remember me rowing the two of us to a tropical island a few years back."

"You'd nearly gotten your head cut off a week earlier," Scully countered.

"Somehow, I don't think the two of them will mind be quarantined for medical tests for weeks at a time," Cisco said as the two agents bantered.

"Didn't you read those files?" Alex told them. "Half the time they finished up with a case, they had to spend a week in recovery. I have a feeling they spent more time in hospital beds then their own when they were at the Bureau."

"It's a good thing that my tax dollars were at least going to something useful," Joe said.

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

11:21 PM

Monica Reyes looked understandably pissed. "I don't normally approve of my predecessor's methods, but I think that even would agree that this goes well above the definition of 'overkill.'

"Merlyn had betrayed us," Amanda Waller said banally. "If either he or Covarrubias had talked…"

"So you blow up a neighborhood," Reyes told them. "This wasn't Beirut or Mogadishu. People are going to ask questions even before they consider where it happened. Was Deadshot out of the country? Or any of the other members of your squad? Even that Clown could've gotten done with more subtlety!"

Waller remained calm. "There was an issue of time."

"I am inclined to agree with my cousin," Lillian Luthor said. "We don't have nearly the control over the media that you did in the old days. Don't try to buy us off with more excuses, Waller. The press is already starting to call this worst attack on America since September 11th. And given everything that's happened around the world, we can't just use the national security argument anymore. How long do you think it'll be before some enterprising representative decides to make it a campaign issue? We can raise issues about the Mayor of Star City. If this goes national…"

"Do you at least have confirmation that Merlyn and Covarrubias are dead?" one of the Elders said.

Waller started to squirm. "We're having a little trouble identifying the bodies…"

"So that's a no," Reyes walked over to Waller. "If we didn't really need you right now, I'd have one of your own people take you out."

Waller regained some of her bluster. "You're not in a position to be questioning my methods. This was a problem that needed to be solved."

"And for all we know, you haven't," Lillian said. "What you have done is come this much closer to exposing us with absolutely nothing gained. No amount of information they could reveal was worth this."

Waller looked a little worried.

"Do we even know why he took her and not anyone else?"

"She had more information about the conspiracy then any of us," Reyes told them. "No doubt his plan was to use her as a bargaining chip. And given how often she was willing to trade information with Mulder and Scully in the past, I wouldn't count on her loyalty if she survived." Reyes looked at Waller. "A search and rescue might have been preferable to just destruction."

"I think we've gone just as far as we can with Mulder and Scully as an obstacle," Lillian Luthor said.

"Fine," Reyes said bluntly. "Send another missile. And hope that Supergirl isn't there to get in the way of it. They're not a problem that can be solved with bullets or bombs. We have to find another way."

"I think your previous boss is rubbing off on you," Waller said sternly. "We tried using his sister. He managed to use it to our advantage."

Reyes thought for a moment. "There may yet be a better approach. We've spent so much time trying to attack them as a unit when we all know the best way to go after them is to try and separate them."

The message was not received well. "Why would she help us now?" Lillian asked.

"She's always been loyal to the project even when it didn't suit her needs. That still hasn't changed."

"I must admit I find this approach dubious," Adrian Strughold said. "She's been a valuable asset but her devotion to Mulder has made her a liability."

"There was never any evidence that she betrayed her patron," Reyes reminded them. "Need I remind you that he arranged for her to continue working for us in secret all this time?"

"You might have waited too long to send her out," Waller said. "Mulder and Scully have been together for more than twenty years. You expect a thirty year old crush to still have power?"

"Not if that was the only weapon she had to offer." Reyes paused. "When the X-Files were reopened, I sent her stateside. And if she's done her job right, she might have the one thing we know we can hold over their heads."

CASPER, WYOMING

4:12 AM

"I've spent the last week observing the family. Plays little league, is on the chess club. Tends to favor his mother in looks. By all accounts, he's a perfectly normal boy." She paused. "Do you want me to lead an extraction team?"

"Have them on standby, but don't take action yet," Monica Reyes ordered. "Have you made contact with William?"

"I've been waiting your instructions," Diana Fowley assured her. "I have to tell you, given how he ended up with the people who raised him, there is no guarantee that Fox will want to bring his son back into this fight."

"You know better than any of us who sentimental he is," Reyes said. "He was willing to tear the life he'd built up just to see his sister again. Imagine what he'll do to see his son."

"Once I make contact, what do you want to me to do next?"

"Follow your instincts, Diana," Reyes said with just a hint of cruelty. "We both know how good you've always been with children."