Chapter 7

NATIONAL CITY

LUTHORCORP OFFICE

4:15 P.M.

When Catherine Grant had promised Mulder and Scully the full support of CatCo in the fight against the government conspiracy, she knew she was going to be taking a more active role going forward. She was, however, a little doubtful about the nature of his plan.

She admitted that there was a level of hypocrisy in her skepticism of Mulder's recruiting a team of heroes to fight the menace. She knew better than most that they were probably the most – if not the only – qualified people to take on this threat and win. But the fact was, she'd had her doubts about many of the vigilantes that had come out of the woodwork the last four years. Leaving aside the fact that two of them were, in her opinion, borderline psychotic, she knew damn well there had been a rise in crime almost exponential to their arrival. Mulder's own work had confirmed it.

That being said, Cat had been outraged when she'd learned that her own government was planning to terminate these vigilantes with extreme prejudice with no more due process than they'd shown so many terrorists. (Mulder hadn't given her the true identities of these people, but she was no more a fool than he was; she'd managed to make some educated guesses over the years.) Throw in what the DEO had told her about Amanda Waller's utter misuse of ARGUS in this same period, and she was beginning to think that, if anything, Mulder had been wearing rose-colored glasses in his view of the government in his first stint at the Bureau.

She had never liked the old cliché "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" (like Mr. Spock, she knew the true origins of that phrase), but she had to admit there was a certain accuracy to it these days. So when Scully had called her and asked for Catco to send a news team to cover the attacks on the Star City PD, she not only didn't hesitate, she said she wanted to know what else she could do to help.

Cat was a little surprised when James came to see her a little more than a day afterwards, and told her what was going on, what the DEO suspected was behind Tobias Church's 'upgrade', and who might be able to give them some help.

"I'd say that I never trusted Lillian Luthor, but nobody did," Cat admitted. "If anything I was too generous to her over the years. She'd shattered the glass ceiling nearly a decade before I did. The last thing I wanted to do was let the old boy's club tear her down."

"How far do you think the apple fell from the tree?" James asked.

"If anything, I think Lex may have been restrained by a lot of her actions," Cat said thoughtfully. "He could have been trying to win her approval or waiting for the right moment to remove her as an obstacle: pick your poison. And if what the DEO said is true, I'm not sure even Lex would've gone as far as his mother seems to be doing now."

"She could've been driven to this by what happened to her son," James reminded her.

"As a mother, you do anything possible to protect your child. But even I would never go this far." Cat shook her head. "Hell, she's even worse than her son. At least he could make the argument, however perverted, that he was trying to protect humanity. We know what the Syndicate's plans are, James. The human race doesn't enter into them."

"Which brings us back to her daughter. You know her better than I do. Is she the kind of woman who would follow in the family business?"

"Not the Lena Luthor we're been covering for the past two years. She broke from her brother's criminal activities immediately after they were exposed. Her mother still won't." Cat narrowed her eyes. "Of course, if I remember Lois Lane's editorials, she just thought Lena was playing a smarter game than her mother was."

"The Planet had a reason for being pissed when no one was willing to believe the stories about Lex," James pointed out. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… well, we now know how high the stakes are if we get fooled again."

"They were pretty high when Lex was calling the shots," Cat countered. "Lena's disowned her brother. Her mother's all the family she has left. It basically comes down to whether she sees herself as a Luthor or a human being. It's been a long time, and we're still not sure if the two are mutually exclusive."

"Which is why Mulder thinks one of us had to do some digging," James got back to his original point. "If I or Kara goes in, and she's not on our side, she's probably going to be suspicious. But if one titan goes to another…"

"The Luthors speak only to the Grants, and the Grants tell the world what to think.'" Cat must've been audible in her thoughts. "Just a variation on a rhyme I once heard in Hyannisport. But you're right. Whatever side she's on, she wouldn't be able to resist a meeting from me."

So she'd agreed to set up a meeting with Lena that afternoon to try and have a friendly chat. Both of them knew that it probably wouldn't stay friendly, but she hadn't told her to go to hell, either.

Lena Luthor walked out to her, and Cat was again impressed by her appearance. She was closer to Kara's age than hers, but she had gotten a lot more accomplished that Cat had by the same period, and most of it had been done without the Luthor money. She had the determination to make her own path without the stigma of the Luthor name. The problem was, Cat heard stories that Lex had started out the same way too.

"Usually when I call from one of your people, I rarely expect the privilege of seeing you," Lena said.

"I wouldn't come if this wasn't of great importance," Cat told her.

"I've been following your network the last few months," Lena told her. "You've been dealing with high-level stuff the last year, but this… even after everything we hear out of Metropolis, you almost sound like the Enquirer these days."

"When the news sounds like science fiction, it's hard to figure out what reality is anymore. It's part of the reason I'm here."

Lena gestured for her to come into her office. "So in reality, what are we dealing with?"

Cat gave a small smile. "I always wanted there to be equality in every level of our society. I just hoped that there would never be a group of powerful women plotted world domination."

"Do you want to stop it or are you just jealous we weren't invited?" Lena said with a smile.

Another of those double-edged Luthor statements. Cat wasn't going to take the bait. "We're powerful women, but there's being part of the conversation, and trying to make sure no one else – man, woman, or any other resident of the world – can speak at all."

By now, they were in the office. Lena gestured for her to sit down. "This has to do with this shadowy consortium that Catco's been trying to expose the last few weeks."

"Not a problem to expose something when all the players are dead." Cat sat down. "Unfortunately, in the last fifteen years they appear to have regrouped and all but picked up the pieces."

"Let's cut to the chase, Catherine," Lena said. "My brother did some truly horrible things – I've spent my entire adult life living it down – but even I can't believe he would do something this evil."

"We don't think he did." Cat paused. "But right now, there's proof your mother might be."

Like all of the Luthors, Lena had a perfect poker face. She took this in as if she'd just been told the weather report. "My mother has done some horrible things in her life," she said slowly. "You couldn't be part of our family, and not have some degree of corruption touch you. But it takes a special kind of evil to try and advance your own family's lives for that of humanity."

"I've seen the files of the old Syndicate's activities," Cat told her. "According to Fox Mulder, that's exactly what the members of that group tried to do the first time. And because no one believed it, they came within a hair's breath of succeeding."

Lena considered this for a long moment. "My parents were truly terrible people. That's a matter of public record. They were also truly terrible parents, constantly putting Lex and myself against each other. Being your father's favorite had greater consequences in my family."

"I'm willing to believe that," Cat told them.

"When you were a Luthor, you were not allowed to trust anybody," Lena said. "Business rivals, employees, not even your own family. My mother told me can from a poor family, and that all her relatives were dead long before Lex and I were born. I actually let myself believe that for a while."

Cat wasn't share where this was going.

"When my brother was first arrested, I received a phone call from a woman who said she worked for the FBI. She told me that there were powerful forces that thought what Lex was doing was dangerous, and that if he went to prison, he would be found dead in his cell within a week. I told her she clearly had no idea how powerful Luthors were, even behind bars." Lena paused. "She told me: 'They can get to anyone. The only question is when'. I didn't believe her, but I took her card anyway."

"A couple of months later, when things were getting bad, I called the number on the card. It didn't surprise me that it was no longer in service. What did shock me was when I called the FBI, and they told me that the agent in question had been out of the Bureau since 2006 and a missing person since 2009."

Cat frowned. "I've had a few of these sources myself. So have the agents at the X-Files, come to that."

"Were any of those sources from the X-Files?" Lena asked. "Because I did some digging. The agent in question was Monica Reyes. She worked for the department the last year it was in operation."

This was news to Cat. "I've kept this out of the public record, because I didn't want to shine a light on here, but I saw Monica Reyes a few weeks. She was working for the Syndicate."

""I'll raise you one," Lena said. "My mother had one sister, Caroline. She died in 1978. But before that, she was married to a dockworker in Austin. His name was Leonard Reyes. They had a daughter. Guess what her name was."

It wasn't often that Cat Grant felt like she'd been sucker punched, though it was happening more frequently now. "Monica Reyes is a Luthor?"

"Though I don't know how recently she learned it." Lena shook her head. "I had really hoped that one of the only blood relatives I have left wasn't a monster. There isn't any chance she's playing both ends against each other?"

"Mulder and Scully don't know. But she knew what the conspiracy was up to. They can't comprehend why she would consider changing sides."

"Maybe it's in her blood," Lena said. "I'm guessing you didn't just come here to tell me just how horrible the rest of my family is."

"I'm here asking for you to show the world that you're not your mother's daughter. Or anyone else in your family." Cat told her. "Interested?"

"I haven't spoken with my mother in a long time." A small grin began to cross her face. "Maybe it's time I made contact again."

FARMINGTON, NEW MEXICO

11:32 A.M.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been no problem for Kara to get down to New Mexico, have a talk with the Navajo and get some of the magnetite they seemed to have. But they had to play by the rules, and even Supergirl was bound by bureaucracy to an extent.

So she and Agent Mulder got on a DEO flight which was technically a redeye. (Mulder and Scully had been up for nearly forty hours. They would've needed to rest even twenty years ago.) En route, Mulder expanded on his relationship with Albert, which was helpful because a lot of the data wasn't in the original file. Not surprising, as Mulder had been presumed dead and Scully had been dismissed by the higher-ups for most of it.

He told her about the MJ files, which supposed had all the information our government had kept from the public about alien activity from the 1940s. Mulder had never gotten to read most of it, but what he had had been translated into Navajo by code-talkers from World War II. He'd gotten so close that his father had been murdered and he was framed for it, the water supply to his building had been dosed with LSD, and he'd been so close to psychosis that he'd nearly killed Krycek before Scully had stopped him – very unorthodoxly.

"She actually shot you?" Kara had said in disbelief.

"She always had better aim than I did." Mulder said with a rueful grin.

He'd awakened in New Mexico, where Albert Hosteen had translated the files. But a week before they came, they'd had an omen.

"I usually have a lot of trouble with spiritual people," Mulder admitted. "I've been an agnostic most of my life. But Albert never talked down to me. And he talked in a language I could understand."

"Which was?"

"There was an ancient civilization called the Anasazi, "Mulder told her. They existed for hundreds of years, and according to historian one day twelve centuries ago, they vanished without a trace. No records of their fate existed anywhere, but he said they knew the truth. Nothing vanishes without a trace."

"They were taken?"

"'By visitors who come here still," He looked at Kara. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but he might have talking about people like you."

Kara knew that Kryptonians knew about Earth for millennia, and she knew that her people didn't have the brightest history. She made a mental note to check the Fortress. "That's where you met Eric," she said.

"He took me to a boxcar which he said had been unearthed by a quake a week before." Mulder hesitated. "Just before I went in, I got a call from him."

Kara knew there was only one him. "Was he trying to warn you off?"

"He said that my father authorized the project. It was one of the few times he ever told me the unvarnished truth, but I wasn't inclined to listen to him," Mulder shook his head. "The bastard was only calling me to get a fix on my location. Before he could, though… I saw what was there."

This part had never been entered in the file. "What was there?"

"Bodies. What looked to be alien bodies. Stacked floor to ceiling. Believe it or not, that wasn't the most horrific thing." Mulder took a deep breath. "Each of them had a small pox vaccination scar. The only time I've heard of anything remotely like that was at Buchenwald and Auschwitz."

Kara had never heard of very few things so horrid, on this planet or any other.

"That's when they shut the trap door. I heard the sound of a helicopter approaching. I knew who it was, and that it wasn't going to be anything pleasant. And I was pretty much trapped. Then I saw it. There was this gap. Little more than a couple of feet big. One of the bodies was hiding it. Whatever it was must have spent their dying energy trying to get out. Even now, I don't know where they found the strength. I got inside. A few moments later, the car exploded. That's the last thing I remembered for nearly a week."

"They tried to kill you?"

"They did," Mulder looked at her. "Like I said, I'm not a religious person. But Albert and his people when they found me, they performed some kind of ritual. And I was somewhere… else."

"The afterlife?" Kara wasn't sure if even she could believe that much.

"Maybe it was just a spiritual waiting room. But I saw people who were dead, talking me out of joining them." Mulder looked troubled. "One of them was my father. He told me Samantha wasn't there. And I held fast to that for a long time."

The rest of it was in the file. Kara had read it. But Mulder had told her there was more.

"When Scully and I were on the run, in 2003, we came back to Farmington," he said. "It had been more than eight years, but Eric knew who I was. He told me that he felt what he had done for us was the proudest moment of his life. He said that we were blood brothers because we share a thirst for truth and a distrust of the government. He offered Scully and me protection for nearly a month before we left. "

Mulder hesitated. "Eric is one of the few people I told about the final date for colonization. I said, I didn't know if there was anything that could be done to stop it, but he said he'd try."

"So he'll help us?"

Mulder paused. "There are just two minor details. First, of course, is the fact that the date has passed, and nothing has happened. Second, he may have kept up his end of the bargain, but I sure as hell didn't."

Now as they drove up to the reservation, Kara wasn't sure what kind of reception they'd receive.

Mulder got out of the car first. Waiting for them was a fortyish, dark-skinned Navajo.

"Hello, Eric," Mulder said neutrally.

"Hello, FBI Man," Eric said just as neutrally. "They didn't come when you said they would."

"No, but they've been sending a lot of their neighbors." Mulder admitted.

Eric nodded. "I think my people have been pushed enough by new residents." He gave a small smile. "I take it you're here to push back?"

"With a goddamn bulldozer." Mulder told him. "Want to help?"

Eric looked at Kara. "Can we trust her? She is one of them, after all."

Kara got nervous. Mulder had mentioned he was working with the DEO, but he hadn't told them anything else – certainly not who Kara really was. "What are you talking about?"

"You know about our stories," Eric told her. "We know of the people who come from outside. They fought battles here centuries ago."

Mulder had actually heard this story before, but considering the source he hadn't been inclined to trust it. Hearing it from Eric, though… "She's one of the good ones, and you know how loathe I am to trust outsiders myself."

"That's odd," Eric replied. "Since you've always been one. That's what brought you to us in the first place." He looked at Kara again. "Maybe it's what brought her too."

And indeed, Kara was wondering why she had come. The Navajo would've trusted Supergirl. Why had she shown us as Kara Danvers? She remembered that when Clark was growing up in Smallville, he'd had many encounters with the local tribes in order to get information about his own origins. Could the Navajo know the same thing about hers?

"Come in," Eric said. "We have some things we have to discuss."

Now Mulder was getting nervous. "There is an issue of time, Eric."

"I know, FBI Man." Eric replied. "That's why both of you need to hear this."

"A lot has changed, and yet very little has," Eric told them. "Just before Mulder and Scully came here more than twenty years ago, the earth shook. That led to my finding the boxcar, which had a great evil hidden within them. I brought you to that site to bring to light this evil."

"And I failed," Mulder told them.

Eric shook his head. "You were contending with forces you had only the vaguest idea of the scope of. We know that the fight was important. My grandfather believed it, and so did I. That's why, when the time came for him to pass on the information that was in those files, I was one of those who agreed to take it on."

Mulder looked up. "You took on the information."

"The bastards broke my arm," Eric reminded him. "And I saw what they did. I had no intention of letting them off the hook."

Mulder gave a small smile.

"Now aliens walk the earth in the open, and the men who would try to control us don't even bother to live in the shadows any more." Eric told them. "If Twitter is now the great oral tradition, the white man is seriously screwed."

"Unfortunately, it's kind of a universal problem," Kara acknowledged. "But that's not what you wanted us to hear."

""We heard about you on TV. At least this time you have some more allies." Eric went on. "But a week ago, we knew you were coming."

Mulder got it. "There was another omen."

"I'd give you a cigar, but I'm not that kind of Indian," Eric told them.

"I don't like smokers anyway," Mulder reminded him.

"What happened?" Kara asked.

"There was another quake. Smaller than the last one, but it did the same job." Eric told them. "We had been looking through the rubble, and we found a metallic vein. Our people have known of this ore for generations, but it's only recently become of interest to undesirable elements."

"People from the government," Kara guessed.

"Or people who say they are." Eric gave them a long gaze. "I have a feeling that both of you know these people. But that's not all we found. Wrapped among the metal we found this." He looked at Mulder. "You may need to go outside."

Kara didn't understand this for a moment, and then she remembered the other entry in the X-Files that had involved Hosteen. It had started with a rubbing of an artifact that had been found in the Ivory Coast. Mulder had seen the rubbing, and had started going through oral dissonance that had gradually grown louder and louder until he'd been restrained in a mental facility with his brain dying. It had been a long journey that had put Mulder on a path that led to his abduction and his second death.

Now looking at what Eric was holding, Kara could understand his concern. Because what she was seeing was a relic that was covered with hieroglyphics. Her concern was something separate.

She recognized the writing.

Mulder didn't usually do what was best for him, but the second he had seen what Eric was holding, he had walked as quickly as possible outside. It had been years since he had first seen the writing like the kind on that artifact. But he knew what had happened when he'd been exposed to it, even if he had no idea why. The path had led to intense pain, near madness, and a diagnosis so dire it had only been thwarted by brain surgery that hadn't been done with anesthetic. He'd been feeling the aftereffects for more than a year, and he'd almost been certain it would've killed him under normal circumstances. But then again, when had anything in his life approached normal?

Kara came out a couple of minutes looking pale. "Did that thing do the same thing to you that it did to me?" Mulder asked, only partially in jest.

"Only on the inside," she told him grimly. "You know, I've spent the last dealing with the same parental issues you mentioned on the flight in. I thought my parents were good. That they spent their lives pursuing justice and truth. I already learned from one of my aunts earlier this year that wasn't always the case. Now I'm beginning to wonder if my whole race might have been corrupt."

"He didn't have it here to show it to me," Mulder was looking awe-struck. "Are you saying the writing was Kryptonian?"

Kara shook her head. "Not in any words or phrases I've ever learned. The letters, though, definitely."

"There might be a reason for that. Before Albert slipped into his final coma, he was able to make a real translation of it. But only after enough of them had been gathered together. What you're seeing is probably just part of the whole."

"I'm less concerned about what it says than what it means," Kara said.

"I thought the Kryptonians knew about Earth. That's why they sent your cousin here in the first place."

Kara had told a fair amount of her history to Mulder and Scully since they'd joined forces. This was a different story, mainly because it wasn't hers to tell. Clark had never really liked what had been told in the oral legends or what he had learned from Jor-El about the real reason he had been sent to Earth. Indeed, much of the reason he'd become Superman was to rise above the path his father had put out for him.

But this, if it was true, was bigger than why she and Clark were here. Did it have anything to do with the invasion that was on its way? She was pretty sure it didn't. But it was tied to something in the X-Files, and considering what it had done to Mulder, they had a right to know.

"I took a picture of it and sent it to Felicity and Winn. If they can translate what's on it, we might have answers for you soon."

Mulder sighed. "I never saw what was on the actual relics. But what Scully saw on them did more to convince her about the reality of alien life than six years of our arguments. The fact that the world may soon be the target of an alien invasion is a big deal. What's on that relic" Mulder hesitated "what was on that ship could bring an end to civilization, if it ever got out. That's the main reason Scully kept it out of the files, and I agreed with her. Tread very lightly with this."

This was coming from Mulder, the original 'let justice be done, though the heavens may fall' man. Kara had every intention of keeping this private. "Well, we do have an invasion to try and thwart. Eric said he take us if we were ready."

Mulder nodded. "Just as long as he keeps that damn thing in his house."

DEO HEADQUARTERS

5:11 P.M.

"I've seen some weird stuff in my life," Felicity admitted. "And I'm willing to own that you've seen weirder. But have you ever seen anything like this?"

Winn shook his head. "Not even close."

"Care to tell me what we're looking at?" Lance was asking.

"This is a scan of the relic Eric Hosteen found in Farmington," Felicity told them. "Similar relics appear in the X-Files, once in a case Mulder and Scully looked into in 1999, one just a few months before the Files were shut down. The writing on it is Navajo, or at least an offshoot of it. This caused some controversy when it was discovered on the Ivory Coast."

"I'm guessing that's not the only controversial about it," Lance said.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Winn did some typing. "The writing is a match to both sources in the X-Files, only it's a different type. We're still working on translating it."

"What aren't you telling me?" Lance asked.

"That the relics are part of alien vessel," Scully told them. She had just emerged from waiting for Church to wake up. "I saw both of them. One of them was in the Ivory Coast, the other was on the Dakota-Canada border. And it is very powerful, even from a distance."

"What kind of power?" Felicity asked.

"To do tremendous good or tremendous harm, if you don't know what you're doing," Scully said grimly. "I had truly hoped I'd seen the last of them. Do you have any idea what the writing says?"

"We do have what amounts to a universal translator here," Winn told them. "There isn't much here, but we should be able to get something…" He fell silent. "Holy shit."

"'And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of…" Felicity looked a little nonplussed, "It's not even a full quote."

"'I heard the voice of the fourth breast say 'come and see'. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death." Scully finished the quote.

"What the hell is a line from the Book of Revelation doing on an alien relic?" Lance asked.

"When I found the ship on the Ivory Coast, there was writing all over it," Scully told them. "Old and New Testament; scripts from Sumeria and Mesopetamia; lines from the Koran. One of them had the writing for a genetic chromosome. Everything that we consider the wellspring of civilization was on that ship. We already knew it wasn't the only one. Now it looks like their might be more."

"Wait a minute," Lance said. "People from our government conspiring with an alien race to take over the world, that I can believe. I've seen too much over the last few years not to. But telling me that every bit of what we call civilization might have been on the bumper stickers of a UFO fleet? I have to draw the line somewhere."

"I have to agree with Quentin on that one, and I was never very religious," Felicity told him.

"I don't blame you for doubting it. I had a hard time accepting it myself," Scully told them. "That's why I've kept the lion's share of my notes of my experience out of the case files. This is not something I wanted the world to find out by accident."

"Well, I don't think there's much chance of anything happening if they did," Winn told them. "Half the world would just dismiss it as fake news; the other half would say the hand of God exists and created the entire universe in his image."

"The problem is that there are people out there – not many, but enough – who know that there is something behind this." Scully told them. "I'm not sure if the Syndicate was ever part of it – most of this came to light after the original group had been destroyed – but there are people out there who know about this kind of thing and would follow it blindly regardless."

"Let's just hope the new and not necessarily improved Syndicate doesn't know anything about this yet," Felicity said. "We've got enough on our plates as it is."

NEW MEXICO

2:26 P.M.

If anyone other than Eric Hosteen had been in charge of this trip, Mulder would've been convinced that they were being led out into the desert to die. The only reason he trusted Eric was because he had already done that, albeit unintentionally, and he had a genuine superhero by his side this time. So he put the odds of getting out of this alive at least fifty-fifty.

They'd finally reached the lode. "This will help you against the coming invasion," Eric said.

"I wish I could swear to that, Eric," Mulder told him. "Right now, the best I can say is it might stop the collaborators."

"That's good enough." He turned to Kara. "The last time I took Mulder here, it was because there was something he needed to see. This time, I think there's something that you need to see."

Kara had already accepted that Eric knew her secret identity without anyone having told him. It was still a little unsettling. She looked down the cavern. "You're not coming?' she asked Mulder.

"'Some truths are not for you." Off the odd glance he was getting, Mulder added: "Something Scully was told under similar circumstances. Besides, if something should go wrong down there, you're far better equipped to deal with than me."

That's assuming there's no kryptonite. Still Kara could see his point. She began to walk down the path, for the first time in a long time, not sure of what she was going to see.

After having gone about a hundred yards, she started to get the message. She took out the earpiece she had on, and looked around. "Guys, you getting a look at this?" she said to Winn.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure what we are looking at." Winn said. "How old is this place?"

"I don't know," Kara admitted. "But I recognize some part of it." She walked over to an area. There was a skeleton, humanoid in appearance, but it was really hard to tell just how human.

What was bothering her was the fact that there was art on the wall, and a lot of writing. And it definitely wasn't Navajo.

"That's Kryptonian," she told them.

"Can you read it?" Winn asked.

"I think so." She looked at it. "The destroyers have come to El-Ra. The sun will bring life, and this will take it away. Once we bury it, we will share the world with them."

That was definitely not friendly.

"So best case scenario, Kryptonians and whatever race the colonists were part of it were planning to share Earth." Felicity said quietly. "That ore over there. I think that's what we're looking for."

Indeed, based on the descriptions from the files, it looked like there was a deposit of magnetite under her feet.

"Were they working with my people," Kara asked. "Or was one of us going to betray the other?" She took a closer look at the skeleton. "I have to bring this up with me."

"You're telling me you want the DEO to do an actual alien autopsy?" Felicity said doubtfully.

"I need to know whose down here," Kara said. "And maybe that will finally get us some answers."

"Kara?" Winn said suddenly. "Is there another way out of the tunnel?"

"Why?"

"I have a feeling you're going to need one. Fast."

Déjà vu all over again. There was another military helicopter outside a dig where there were genuine alien artifacts. It landing about a hundred feet away, making a general spectacle, which Mulder knew well enough was the idea.

Out of it came a group of soldiers in camouflage armed with heavy grade hardware.

"This is tribal land!" Eric yelled. "You have no authority to be here!"

"We represent the UN Security Council!" one of the soldiers shouted. "We have diplomatic authority to be here!"

"Tell your boss to come out!" Mulder demanded, knowing that she was in the helicopter.

"You have no authority –"

"Tell your boss to quit dicking around, and look at us face to face!" Mulder shouted. "Considering what I did for her the last time we met, she owes me that much!"

There was a level of uneasiness there, as if no one was sure what to do next. Everybody looked towards the helicopter.

And then out stepped a woman, about four or five years younger than Mulder, her blonde hair starting to darken, her icy gaze still unchanged after fifteen years.

"You'd think after all this time, you'd be happy to see me, Agent Mulder," Marita Covarrubias replied.