Chapter 6
Now that she was looking this new soldier in the face, Kara found she was somewhat underwhelmed. Tobias Church had been a brick in his former life, and she could understand why she'd given Oliver and his team so much trouble before he'd been enhanced, but she'd been handling criminals this strong before she'd even agreed to work with the DEO. The part about him being a supersoldier was unnerving enough – it had certainly caused Mulder and Scully a lot of headaches – but she felt that, if she had to, she could do to him what he'd done to the Star City cops.
Really, what was worrying her the most what was would happen after. According to their own reports, these things had their heads pulled of their bodies, been shot in the chest point blank, run over by a train, and in one case utterly crushed by a trash compactor. Each time, they'd gotten back into the fight in a matter of hours. Supposedly, the only thing that could bring a permanent end to these creature was a metal ore called magnetite. But these deposits tended to occur mostly in nature, and so far the DEO had been unable to find any. This was, of course, assuming that Church now was a supersoldier and not some hybrid that Lena Luthor had worked on.
So Kara had decided that she wasn't going to go right at Church. She was going to do something she rarely did, and let the enemy lead the dance. The fact that Church appeared severely injured meant nothing; he'd been shot point blank in the chest three days and had still managed to run right through a couple of members of Oliver's team. So she decided to test Church rather than have him test her. She'd been the unstoppable force more often than not; now she'd be the immovable object.
Church did what he had done before the last few days, and went straight at his opponent.
"Should we be at all concerned that she isn't moving?" Lance asked.
Felicity actually looked a little hurt. "You have seen the footage from National City over the last few months, right?" she reminded him. "
"I know. It's just weird to see the Road Runner holding still." Lance admitted.
"Well, we all know how well any science worked for Wile E. Coyote," Mulder reminded them.
And indeed, when Church was within a foot of Kara, she did react.
"Please tell me this is actually happening," Diggle said in a whisper.
It was. Supergirl was holding Church's head in her hand while he tried to swing at her wildly.
"All the times this happened to me in gym class, I never thought I'd get to see it happen to the bully," Winn said.
Then it got more delightful. Supergirl flew up in the air about two feet. Gravity carried Church right into a trash can.
"Would laughing hysterically at our foe being considered rash?" Thea whispered.
"Easy does it," Mulder reminded her. "I have a feeling Church isn't really that stupid. He's just reacting the way so many criminals did when they first encountered Supergirl. Now I suspect his brains are about to kick in."
Church slowly got to his feet. And they did notice something that was more concerning. The wounds that Oliver had inflicted were still there, but they took up a lot less area. It was looking like Church wasn't going to need the help of all the King's horses after all.
"Fair enough," he said in a raspy voice. "Not gonna lie to you. Kinda deserved that trying to bulldoze the Girl of Steel. Thing is, though. You got vulnerabilities. You just admitted as much. One of them being, you can't resist putting a hurt on someone hurting someone else. "
And before Kara could react, Church grabbed Dinah by the throat. "Still owe you for that little scream. Try it again, I'm gonna pluck your head off like it's Thanksgiving."
Now Kara was in a difficult position. Even with her reflexes, there was no way she could react fast enough without Dinah getting mangled, and that was the best case scenario.
"If there's anyone with a way to make this easier, now's the time," Kara all but whispered.
"I think that's your cue, Spartan," Felicity said.
"Easier said than done," Diggle said.
"We're not asking you for a head shot, just something to distract him," Mulder pointed out.
Diggle was currently located in the ground floor window of a building next door. He'd been hoping to find a killshot, but given this might be one of those occasions where there was no such animal, he decided to try something a little more moderate.
"This is where I find out if practicing with Oliver pays off," he whispered.
He fired a perfect shot at Church's kneecap. It did it's job, Church loosened his grip a bit
Which gave Kara an opportunity to fly in, grab Church and soar a hundred feet in the air.
"I love when she does that," Winn said.
"It's already growing on me," Felicity admitted. "Of course, it is going to make getting a clear shot of her tricky, but as trade-offs go…"
"This does lead to an interesting problem," Kara said. "See, I could just let go, but I have a feeling you'd survive that without a problem. So maybe I'll just keep going up and see how long its takes for you to pass out."
"I got to admit, the old me would be really concerned right about now," Church said. "But even though I never joined the scouts, I gotta major lesson about being prepared."
He tapped his left thumb and forefinger together. And all of a sudden, Supergirl was not feeling like herself.
"My benefactor gave me a little booster shot before I came here," Church snarled. "Guessing from how your feeling, it's left you a little green around the gills."
"I'm not… feeling… great…" Kara said. "That's gonna… suck for you."
She loosened her grip on Church. "Hope that shot gave you wings." She did something she almost never did when she had a prisoner in her grasp, and released him. Almost instantly she could breathe again. "Look out below!" she shouted.
The warning was unnecessary. Supergirl had flown in such a direction that she was no longer in position over any of the people on her team but rather the building on the other side. That was the good news.
The bad news was she had not counted on the simple maxim 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall." This was literally true in the case of Church. The roof didn't stop his fall, and judging from the sounds she heard, neither did any of the floors below it.
"What the hell just went past me?" Spartan yelled out.
"I have a feeling it was Tobias Church," Oliver said.
"You hear about the Alien scenario over and over, you never expect it to play out," Curtis said quietly.
"Let's hope that the concrete stops his fall," Felicity said. "I think right now, it's in everybody's interest to get to the subbasement."
Ten minutes later, they were all there. Gravity had finally run out for Church around the broken down air conditioning.
They were all understandably concerned about why Kara had let go of Church in the first place. "You're certain that it was kryptonite that he turned on you," Oliver was asking.
Kara raised an eyebrow. "Hands up if you're vulnerable to an alien metal," she asked.
"Hey, you've already told us that there's alien technology behind Church's reinvention," Diggle reminded her. "Maybe they found another substance that does something nearly as bad with less obvious effects."
"Well, whatever it is, I'm still feeling the hangover," Kara admitted. "I'm hoping there's a way we can extract it from Church when we deal with him."
"You're operating on the assumption we have to," Dinah pointed out. "It's been half an hour and the guy hasn't so much as twitched."
"You did read the file on the supersoldiers?" Maggie Sawyer had shown up from the van where she and James had been watching. "One of them got shot point blank in the chest and lay still for five hours. Then she got up. These things play by their own set of rules."
"And Church was smart to begin with," Oliver reminded them. "He could very well just be playing possum."
"So what are we supposed to do? See who blinks first?" Diggle said. "We already know Church isn't human any more. He can wait us out. We can't stand guard forever."
"No, but we can set up a perimeter," Dinah reminded them. "Coordinate with the Bureau. Fall back if and when Church decides to rise."
"So we're just going to leave him here?" Diggle asked.
"What would you have us do? Arrest him?" Mulder said into his headpiece. "You guys saw first hand what he did to the officers who tried. I'm not going to recreate The Terminator anymore than we have to."
"They're right," Oliver said reluctantly. "Until we can figure out a permanent solution to taking Church off the board, typical law enforcement wouldn't work. And really John, you want this thing to be in ARGUS' headquarters?"
"They're better equipped to handle this situation than we are," John paused. "Of course, that was before Waller flipped. For all we know, she gave Lillian Luthor the details of just how to break through every system ARGUS has. So probably not the best idea to give either of them what they want."
"You know, we do know someone who has a system prepared for just such an occasion," Felicity reminded them. "And at some point, we are going to have to read our friends in on this."
"I assume you're talking about STAR Labs," Scully said.
"You know that Cisco could come up with a better nickname than 'supersoldier'" Diggle argued.
"Before we get them involved – and I've made it clear, they're next on the recruitment tour regardless," Mulder said. "We do actually already have an organization that deals with this."
"You comfortable having the DEO take jurisdiction here?" Winn asked.
"From a cold-blooded political standpoint it makes sense," Oliver admitted. "Sad to say, I think all of Star City wouldn't care what happened to Church as long as he wasn't killing people here."
"They've got a lot of other things to be concerned about," Lance agreed. "But we know you, Oliver. And frankly, none of us are going to be happy until we know Church is secure one way or another."
And at that very moment, Church began to pull himself out of the hole he had dug.
"I think we all knew that was coming," Diggle said.
"There's been something I've been meaning to try," Supergirl said.
"It's a little late for a written invitation," Oliver said, readying an arrow.
Before he finished the sentence, Supergirl started using her heat vision on his legs. It was something her personal code would never have let her do on a human, but it was now crystal clear that Church was anything but.
Sure enough, Church didn't let out a scream, but his legs started to melt – exactly what would happen if there was metal inside them. Within a minute, he had stopped moving – mainly because he didn't have legs anymore.
"The last time I did something like that, it was enough to permanently shut the man down," Kara said breathlessly. "I'm not entirely convinced it'll do the same this time. Winn, get Jonn on the horn right now. Tell him to send Alex and a unit to this location in Star City ASAP."
Oliver almost never took orders willingly. This time, he turned to John. "You and I need to get out of here right now. Mayor of Star City and his head of security can't be anywhere near this."
John never needed an argument to get Oliver out of anywhere.
"I assume a police presence would be recommended for this scenario," Dinah told them.
"Get officers on scene, but keep them at a distance. People are already panicked after what happened at the precinct. We'll have a full-fledged riot when they learned this guy survived a fall from a hundred feet." Oliver told them.
"You're taking a big chance that some passing pedestrian hasn't already put this on Youtube," Maggie told them.
"I've seen what Church can do close up. Optics are the last thing on my mind right now." Oliver said.
"They may not be on the Arrow's mind, but they have to be on Mayor Queen's," Thea reminded him.
"They didn't cover this when I binge-watched The West Wing."
2:33 A.M.
"We really do have to stop meeting like this," Maggie said.
Alex shrugged. "You're the one who decided to join the federal government," she reminded her girlfriend. "I'm just glad I don't have to worry about whatever fraternization rules are part of the Bureau."
Maggie raised an eyebrow. "You have met my superiors?" she said, glancing at Mulder and Scully. Even from fifty feet away, you could see that his hand was at the small of her back.
"They've gone out of their way to may to tell me to say that whatever approach they had to relationships on the job, do the exact opposite," Alex told her. "In any case, this really is the business before pleasure section of our job, so…"
Maggie nodded as Mulder and Scully walked over. "I'm giving you cover as part of our unit," Mulder told them. "The people and the press are already freaked out that the Bureau's on the scene; they find out an organization with the word 'alien' in its acronym is here."
"Haven't they been watching the news?" Alex asked doubtfully.
"I love this city, but the residents have this ability of compartmentalizing anything that they consider supernatural," Quentin Lance told them. "Made being a cop a lot of the fun the last few years I was on the job."
Mulder and Scully introduced the Deputy Mayor to Alex. "I'm guessing your boss thought it wise not to be seen around the feds," she asked.
Lance looked at Mulder and Scully, who nodded. "Given the nature of the attack, it's taking every bit of restraint we have to keep him from being out here in his fancy dress, managing the transition," he told them. "I'm not entirely sure I blame him, given the circumstances."
"He's not convinced we can handle this?" Alex asked.
"It's his city," Kara walked up in street clothes. "If the situation were reversed, I'd probably feel the same."
"We're going to want a formal debrief en route," Alex told them. "But first impressions?"
"It went a lot better than I thought it would," Scully said. "Winn and Felicity did the appropriate geek out. And the exchange between your system and theirs is going well."
"He's been through a lot," Kara told them. "It's hard to imagine that he's only a year older than you Alex. I don't know what he saw those five years he was on that island, but it must have been nothing short than hell on Earth. Throw that in with the four years he's been defending Star City, and I'm amazed he's still standing. He'd have to have more steel in his spine than I do. Or Kal."
That jarred Alex considerably. She'd looked at Lance. "You know him better than most. From both angles. What's his mental condition?"
Lance paused for a moment. "Just being adjacent to this kind of trauma turned me into an alcoholic and his sister into some dangerous territory. I'm stunned we haven't had to pull him out of a crack den by now. But that's kind of the point."
"I don't follow," Alex said.
"Last night, Mulder here told me that his addiction was truth. Oliver Queen has the same kind of addiction, but to trauma. Dealing it out, and inflicting it on himself. He'd kill me if I said this, but unless he finds some real way of dealing with what happens, he's going to end up dead himself. Only it'll be at the hands of some supervillain that he thinks he and he alone can handle."
"I'm not surprised," Mulder spoke up for the first time. "He's got the whole savior complex down pat. I'd have mentioned it before, but considering my career at the Bureau, I thought it might be a case of the pot calling the kettle green."
"Well, you never tried to bare-knuckle brawl with Krycek," Scully pointed out.
"No, but I did drag him with me to a Russian prison camp once in pursuit of the truth." He must've gotten the looks of confusion. "Fall of 1996. Just before Scully was held in contempt of Congress."
"You know the main difference between your stories and Oliver's?" Lance asked rhetorically. "We can actually get answers about the items you drop."
"God bless transparency in government," Mulder got back to business. "You know, this is a little out there, but among all my other credentials, I am a trained psychiatrist, and I'm one of those people who knows what it feels like to have the weight of the world on your shoulders. If we keep going with this, maybe he'd be willing to talk to me."
"Oliver Queen has never been exactly talkative," Dinah Drake pointed out. "But what the hell. He's about to sign on to try and halt an alien invasion, so maybe he's more open-minded than I thought."
"You haven't been here that long, Detective Drake," Lance said cheerfully. "In the Star City PD, you know what we call that? Wednesdays in May."
"Would things were that easy," Mulder said. He turned to Alex. "All right. This is your show now. How exactly are we running this?"
"Well, we're heading to DEO headquarters," Alex looked around. "I'm guessing because the two of you are here, you're Team Arrow's representatives for this particular mission."
Mulder's decision to give the members of the new 'task force' provisional clearance wasn't exactly popular with the Bureau, but that had never been something he'd cared about before. The military was not thrilled that the DEO was giving civilians clearance to see these files, but Alex and Jonn had paved the way. (Mulder had implied that if there had been a refusal, he would have made sure there was a back door for Team Arrow to get into the files, but he kept that part to himself.)
As for Oliver, much as he wanted to fly down and handle everything, the Mayor of Star City couldn't do that. Even if he could, there were still enough problems around that the Arrow couldn't disappear either. Reluctantly, he had been willing to delegate. Dinah was being let in because she was trying to get a handle on just what being a part of the Arrow's entourage was all about. Lance had a relationship with law enforcement and the Arrow's action to begin with, and as he put it, "it beats attending aldermen's funerals."
"We're just waiting for one other person," Mulder told the group.
And just then, a car pulled up with Felicity behind the wheel. "What?" she asked. "If you thought I was going to miss the opportunity to see what the government's been doing for aliens all these years, you're out of your mind."
Quentin didn't look surprised, but Dinah was. "Tech support's going to be okay without you?" she asked.
"Curtis has been behind the scenes for the last year," she reminded him. "If he's not ready now, he never will be. Besides, it's not like we're going to be disconnected, right?"
Alex looked uneasy for the first time. "Um, Felicity, nothing personal, but you do know that you have both an FBI and NSA file?"
"That's part of the reason I wanted her here," Mulder told them. "Some of my closest friends were people exactly like her. Though I'm pretty sure that even when they were at their peak, they never considered a world where the Felicity Smoaks would have the influence they had. "
Felicity blinked. "Wait a minute. You knew them?"
Mulder gave a small smile. "From their inception pretty much til their deaths."
Felicity shook her head. "So they really are buried at Arlington? Part of me hoped that they were still out there, fighting the good fight."
"'No good thing ever dies,' Scully said. "And the fact that you know who they are just goes to prove it."
"What's all this about?" Maggie asked.
Mulder nodded. "On our way to headquarters, I'll tell you about the three wise men."
7:05 A.M.
"I still can't believe you actually read their newsletter," Scully said with a smile.
Mulder and Scully had spent most of the trip back to the DEO regaling those in the group who didn't know about the tales of the Lone Gunmen, or as Felicity called them "the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria of hacktivism."
"Believe me, copies of their work are basically collector's items by now," Felicity replied. "And it wasn't entirely of my own volition. I found a lot of them in my father's things after he disappeared."
"Better those than used Playboys," Maggie said.
"For the last time, those magazines weren't mine," Mulder said.
"In retrospect" ,Winn said more seriously. "That probably should've been a hint as to what your father was up to right then. "
Felicity gave a sympathetic smile to the person on this flight who probably had a clearer idea of what her family had been like. "In my case, it wouldn't have made much of a difference," she argued. "Given everything that was going on in the world, I think I got locked into my course a long time ago. Besides, most of what they published even when I was ten years old, I couldn't take it seriously. I mean, come on, Monica Lewinsky was a mandroid?"
Now was not the time to drop the name of Morris Fletcher. "Out of deference to them, I didn't put their names directly in any of the files they assisted us with," Mulder told them. "But I'd say maybe 15% of them, maybe a little more, they offered critical advice. And they were willing to help Scully and John the rest of the time I wasn't, you know, part of the Bureau."
"You didn't want to give them credit?" James asked.
"They were very clear they didn't want the government to know they existed," Scully told them flatly. "I have a feeling that if it wasn't for the circumstances of their meeting, they'd never even have trusted Mulder."
'Which was mildly ironic, given that at least two or three Bureau AD's new about them near the end, not to mention a couple of my own informants," Mulder still wasn't willing to reveal just what they might have known about the man he'd only known as X.
"You know, I've been to Arlington a couple of times since I got back to the world," he admitted instead. "And every time I go there, I keep walking around the memorials, looking for some kind of wire that shouldn't be there or some kind of panel. "
Now Alex looked a little skeptical. "Come on. You're seriously telling me you think they're running their newspaper from there."
"We've seen stranger things believe me," Scully said. "I'm willing to be you have, too."
"Speaking for myself, I know I have," Quentin replied. "Need I mention what were carrying for cargo?"
"I know, I should probably hand in my own security clearance just for even hinting at the idea," Alex admitted. "Hell, you're speaking to a woman who spent a good part of her time at the DEO looking for her dead father. That being said, it's been nearly fifteen years. After everything that's happened, if they were still out there, don't you think they would've tried to reach out? At least to one of you?"
"We've been out of circulation for a long time," Mulder said quietly. "But you're right. I guess I'm just still depressed I never a got a chance to say goodbye." He decided not to mention the vision he'd had when he'd been on the run with Scully. Even among this group, he wasn't willing to go this deep yet.
"We're coming up on headquarters," Winn told them. He turned to Felicity. "I know what STAR Labs is like by reputation, but trust me, this is the biggest candy store in the world."
DEO HEADQUARTERS
7:39 AM
Felicity looked like she was on the verge of the kind of ecstasy that you only saw in the movies Mulder kept denying he had a stash of. "I think you guys win on the whole secret underground lair bit," she finally whispered to Winn.
"Depends entirely on who's operating it," Winn told her. "This whole task force probably will get you a permanent visiting pass."
Felicity returned to earth – so to speak. "Baby steps. What room are they keeping Church in?"
"Holding Cell 11," Winn told them. "All of the cells have been designed so that they could withstand Kryptonian abilities. Theoretically, that should be enough to keep Church locked down."
"And in practice?" Lance asked.
"That's why I'm glad there are so many armed guards here," Winn admitted.
"Who will guard the guards?" Mulder muttered to himself.
Winn heard it. "This is where I should upbraid him about being so skittish."
"But?" Felicity asked.
"A lot of things have gone FUBAR in the year I've been working here," Winn allowed. "I try to keep myself calm by reminding myself Supergirl works here. If the enemy gets past her, then the world has a lot more problems than just our safety."
"Then let's hope like hell we don't get that far," Mulder admitted.
HOLDING CELL 11
Scully had conducted a lot of scientific examinations since becoming a doctor, and she would be the first to admit how bizarre the majority of them had been. She'd seen a severed head open its eyes, watched a body complete dissolve when its fatty tissue had been removed, seen viruses that took the shape of black oil, and autopsied an invisible man. So logically speaking, what she was doing with Church didn't even come within the top fifty of the craziest medical procedures she'd performed with the Bureau. It was the fact that she was accompanied by people as experienced as her that made it strange.
Of course, what she was seeing was weird enough that even the Star City M.E. would have had trouble dealing with it.
"Church is clearly still humanoid, that much is obvious," Kara was saying. "There's clearly been cybernetic enhancement that's certainly above man-made capacity, and quite a number of alien races as well."
"A lot of this is clearly nano-technology," Jonn told him. "Our own equipment can see it running through his bloodstream."
"Well, that's not remarkable on its own," Scully argued. "I mean, we've known about some variation of nanites since 1998."
"Any personal experience?" Alex asked.
"Never ask Skinner what's running through his blood," Scully told them. "How are the nanites working in Church?"
"These aren't ordinary machines," Alex said. "And yes, I know how that sounds. They're responding to advanced radio technology, and they seem to have more upgrades than your next Ipad. "
"Someone's sending a signal to them even now?" Scully asked.
"There's mechanics for it, but right now they're all dormant," Kara told them.
"Considering the DEOs location, Cadmus is having trouble penetrating our defenses." Jonn theorized.
"How long can we count on that lasting?" Alex asked.
"Normally, never," Kara told them. "Considering that Lillian Luthor and Amanda Waller are calling the shots, we can't count on this remaining permanent." She looked at Jonn. "You having any luck reading him?"
"This is a new one for me," Jonn admitted. "It's not like a normal mind. I just keep getting random images. None of which seem to be anything coherent."
"You think what we might be getting is some kind of mental screensaver?' Alex asked doubtfully.
"That's as good a definition as any," Jonn told them. "Especially since none of our machines can pick up any physical or electronic activity, biological or otherwise. If this were any other being, we'd say he was dead. Given everything we know, it's more likely he's in some kind of sleep mode."
"So what are we supposed to do? Wait until he wakes up?" Scully told them. "Because even if this thing isn't a supersoldier, everyone who came with us can assure you it's not dead. Which means it's a matter of time before Church reboots and starts trying to dismantle all of us."
Everyone knew that much. "How are we on that treasure hunt I sent you on?" Jonn said in his earpiece.
Ever since Mulder and Scully had been considering the possibility that Church was a supersoldier, they had told the DEO to start searching for the one thing that they could destroy them – magnetite. Since the first time the DEO had heard of it was in the X-Files – Winn had thought it was it was an evolution of a Pokemon – Mulder wasn't exactly filled with confidence that they'd be able to find it.
And indeed, the new and improved Syndicate had taken advantage of this. A few months before Amanda Waller had been 'killed', A.R.G.U.S. agents had spent the previous year doing sweep of metallic deposits across the globe. The cover mission had been they were looking for rare earth elements that could be use in centrifuges as well as reactors. But no one had understood why ARGUS would be so interested in iron and steel refineries.
Similarly, there had been a special mission of the UN to handle a similar objective in an effort to thwart Al-Qaeda and similar organizations. One of the major operatives came from the office of the Secretary General. Apparently, Marita Covarrubias had moved up in the world.
But the piece de resistance came when several business operations in the past several months had begun an initiative in mineral refinery. Turned out that many of these businesses were shell companies for Luthorcorp.
All in all, intelligence agencies, the international community and corporate America had all in the space of a year started hunting down the exact mineral that might be the only thing that could thwart an alien takeover of Earth.. And according to Winn's research, they now controlled nearly ninety percent of all the reserves. The only reason that they hadn't gotten to the other ten percent was because it was so deep underground, no one knew exactly where it was. This led to the environmental agencies protesting so loudly that overt recovery couldn't be done publicly. But that had never stopped the Syndicate before.
"We may have closed in on one lode of it," Winn told them. "One of Luthorcorp's shell companies has been in litigation with a Navajo reservation in New Mexico over tribal lands for the past six months."
"Wait a minute." Mulder eyes went big. "Would this be Farmington?"
Winn blinked. "How did you...?" He trailed off. "They're in the Files aren't they?"
"We may have caught a break," Mulder got on the earpiece. "Jonn, get in touch with someone at Indian Affairs. Tell them I want to have a conversation with an Eric Hosteen."
Felicity blinked. Hosteen – that name rang a bell. She did some typing, and sure enough Eric Hosteen was the tribal representative of the Navajo nation for the entire Southwest. But that wasn't why she knew the name.
"Albert Hosteen, he was an ally for you going back as far as 1995," she said.
Mulder nodded. "Eric's his grandson. He led me to a treasure trove of aliens. He found my body when I died the first time, and he was instrumental in my coming back to life."
"Its been twenty years and I still don't know the truth behind that story," Scully told him.
"You don't have to. You knew." Mulder turned back to Felicity. "Albert died of cancer in 1999. Members of his family have been making sure the Navajo have been represented by the government ever since. And they may know more about the world of the paranormal and extraterrestrial than even Scully or I could ever tell you about."
"They're not going to be inclined to listen to the government," James reminded him.
"They'll listen to us. We owe them."
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
"You have some of the most advanced technology in the world. How can you not have a fix on Church's location?"
"The DEO firewall was built to stop invaders from another planet from getting in." Lillian Luthor said patiently. "It's not like trying to turn on your phone from across the country."
"In a way, it doesn't matter," Marita Covarrubias said. "How long will it be until Church is active again?"
"A little less than five hours. But I know what the facilities in the DEO are like. Even with my enhancements, he's going to have trouble breaking out."
"Not if we get someone to turn them off from the inside." Covarrubias said.
"And how exactly do we manage that magic trick?" Lillian asked.
"You're not the only one with friends in high places." Marita got on the other line. "This is the Secretary General's office. I need to talk with Investigator McMahon."