Chapter 2

WASHINGTON DC

February 8th, 1999

6:01 PM

"All my years in crime, this is the first time I've been in the FBI," Snart said.

""It's got to be underwhelming for you," Mulder said dryly. "Particularly considering that no one's looking at you twice."

"Technically speaking I don't think I even qualified as a juvenile delinquent around now," Snart said. "Right now, they must have more important matters to attend too."

"Yeah, like wiretapping the NAACP," Jefferson said.

"No, that was the main job of the man the building is named for," Scully said dryly. "The directors are dealing with more pressing matters right now."

Ray stopped in his tracks. "Yeah, they're busy doing one of the biggest as we speak."

Mulder and Scully had wanted them to split into separate groups. Snart and Ray had been sent to the Bureau because, as Mulder pointed out, the two of them were built so much like the kind of heavies they encountered that no one would even question their belonging there. The credentials they had shown to get into the Hoover Building were barely given a perfunctory glance as they walked in.

"You know, I expected better security and then I remembered we're still two years out from September 11th," Ray had said as they went in.

"Based on what we've heard, terrorists are only a secondary concern to everybody even now. Certainly the people we're interested in," Jefferson said.

"Well, at this point they seem to be dealing with Bonnie and Clyde," Ray said.

And they were. They had come to the Bureau roughly one hour after Mulder and Scully had been discovered breaking into their own offices and finding the information that had eluded them for the last six years. As they could see through the observation window the two agents were being stripped of their credentials and firearms by two men that were notorious to the Legends by reputation, even though this were their first time looking at them.

"You sure you want us to do this?" Ray Palmer said. "Both of these men were allies at one point."

"Kersh definitely," Scully said. "The man only chose to help us at the last minute, that hardly counts."

WAVE RIDER

MAIN CABIN

It was one thing to know that the Wave Rider was capable of traveling through time; one thing to tell them that they had travel back to critical moments in their moments in their past to learn the truth about it. But it did nothing to prepare Mulder for what he was looking at right now.

There he and Scully were: sixteen years younger if not more innocent. There was Jeffrey Spender, a man he had considered his nemesis because of who his father was and AD Kersh, whose motives he had never understood.

"All my years on the X-Files, I always believed in out-of-body experiences," he said. "I never thought I'd actually live through one."

"It might be better not to watch this," Stein said gently. "This sort of thing can be disconcerting to put it mildly. I speak from personal experience."

"This happened to you," Mulder said.

"Early on. I actually encountered my younger self. Much younger," Stein said.

"I came close to doing something similar the first time around," Snart said in his earpiece. "It did unsettle me and I'm not the kind of person who lets it show."

"Right now, the version of me is thinking this is the end of his career," Mulder said slowly. "He thinks the Bureau finally managed to achieve what they've been trying for over a decade." He chuckled without humor. "He actually thinks that after all the crap he's been through this is rock bottom. And he doesn't know that in little more than a week he'll be back in his office, thinking he's actually won. He doesn't know he isn't even close to losing everything yet. Lucky bastard."

"Maybe you're better off not watching," Scully said gently.

"Like this was any more fun for you? No when we decided this was the course we had to take, we knew very well something like this could happen. Besides it tells us that what the two of you can do what you came her for, at least partially unobserved."

BUREAU HALLWAYS

"Fair enough." Ray said. "All right, Snart, we know their office is empty."

"Not that it was ever that full to begin with," Mulder said. "Remember, you're just supposed to make copies everything you can find. Don't take anything and tempting as it will be…"

"Don't hurt anyone, I know," Snart said. "Keep an eye on them, Slick."

"That's a new one," Ray said as Captain Cold departed.

NEW YORK CITY

"All right, remember Mick, this is observe and report only." Sara said as the two of them began to scale the buildings.

"Hate to say it, Lance, but does it really make much of a difference?" Mick's blunt tone actually seemed to have a bit of sorrow to it. "We've seen the history books. Even if I do get carried away with one of these people, I've only shortened their lives by a week at most."

Sara was slightly surprised that Mick Rory seemed to be a brown study – not that she could exactly blame him. The Legends had dealt with some dark mission in their careers and heaven knew she had done some dark stuff as part of the League of Assassins, but even this troubled her slightly.

Mulder had told them the only way that they could figure out any part of what the Syndicate had done in the past was to figure out who the players were; something he'd never managed to do in five years tracking them. One of the easiest ways to do this was to get pictures of as many members of the Syndicate as possible and the easiest way to do that would be if they were all in the same place at the same time.

Mulder and Scully only knew of one time and place that had happened – the days before the faceless rebels incinerated every single member. They also knew when it ended: El Rico Air Base, three days from now. Neither of them wanted to think how close the two of them had come to being among the dead.

Cassandra Spender had been discovered on February 8th 1999, one of only two survivors of a massacre in a trainyard in Arlington. Jeffrey Spender had learned of it that day. Mulder and Scully had been called to talk with Cassandra. Just an hour ago in DC, the two of them had been discovered breaking into their old offices where they had learned one of the identities of the Smoking Man – C.G.B. Spender. Snart and Ray were in the Bureau right now, trying to find those files and whatever else Jeffrey – and more importantly Diana Fowley, a member of the conspiracy then – and now – had on the Syndicate.

While this was going on the Syndicate was having what was going to be one of the last group meetings they ever held. That was where Mick and Sara came in. Their job was to infiltrate the buildings owned by the Consortium, find whatever details they could about the Syndicate's plans and get out as quickly as possible.

"Just to be clear we can take whatever we find?" Mick said into his earpiece.

"In less than forty-eight hours, the people who owned this building are going to clean the place out," Mulder said. "This'll be the best chance we have to get whatever intel there is."

"I think you both know that's not what Mick was referring too," Sara said.

Mulder paused. "As an agent of the FBI I can't continence any form of criminal activity as part of a federal operation. That being said, I have formed a personal opinion."

"I'm listening."

"First of all, as Mick eloquently put it as far as I know everyone who is in this building will be dead within the week. Even if they were going to live, they had less to concern themselves with at the time whether they'd left behind gold watches or diamond rings."

Mick smiled. "You think that they'll actually be anything like that?"

"I wouldn't hold out hopes for a signed Picasso but don't rule out," Mulder said.

He looked at Scully. "This is usually where you argue the ethical dilemma of this."

"What dilemma?" Scully said. "These men arranged to have me abducted, performed tests on me which gave me cancer and left me barren. You think I'm going to cry if they end up the victims of a home invasion before they leave this world?"

"Damn, that's cold even for me," Mick said. "Besides, it's not like I was actually going to take anything here."

Sara stopped in her tracks. "You've been given permission to loot a place where evil men have been ruling the world for half a century and you're not taking it?"

"I remember reading some of those files," Mick said seriously. "Snart and I do have codes about who we rob and I'm pretty sure even he wouldn't think there's anything here worth stealing that isn't covered in blood. These guys hired Nazis to work for them; you honestly think I want to touch anything they have without taking a shower? I hate taking showers."

"I didn't think you had these kinds of standards, Mr. Rory," Stein said in his earpiece.

"Yeah, well don't let it get out," Mick said. "Right now the biggest thing I can do to hurt these bastards is take their secrets. Which may be a problem: I'm betting they don't have them in a giant safe."

"Don't rule it out entirely," Mulder told Mick. "It's the 1990s and these guys took as long as possible to go digital. That's what I'm hoping anyway."

"So where would we look?" Sara asked. "Now that we're about to get in."

They had finished scaling the walls and were about the open the window.

"That leads to an interesting quandary." Mulder said.

"I thought you guys knew the layout of this place," Mick asked. "Don't you own it now?"

Cat Grant had in fact bought the building fairly recently but the fact that it was eighteen years after the Syndicate had left it hadn't exactly shown them where everything was. It hadn't helped matters that there were no blueprints on file with the City of New York – though whether that was due to a government conspiracy or the simple flaws of a bureaucracy wasn't clear. Mulder wanted to believe the former but having worked for the government for more than a decade, he knew just how screwed up the latter was.

It certainly gave them no insight as to what kind of security the offices had. However Mulder was actually inclined to bet there was less than he might imagine. The fact that no one knew about the building had led them to hide in plain sight. The one time Mulder had called the Well-Manicured Man, he'd been astonished as to how that number was acquired. Clearly the phone was there only to make calls, not receive them. The Syndicate had a more exclusive membership than Cooperstown.

There was also the fact that the Syndicate was behind the times. When all of your government secrets can be fit on a single digital tape – something that had clearly stunned Smoking Man and his allies at the time - it demonstrated they had been stuck technologically back in the 1970s at the latest.

"I don't think you have to be Danny Ocean to get into this place," he told them. "The biggest issue you'll face is armed guards and that was a day at the beach before you got this swanky new time machine."

"What, you want us to just break the window and hope no one notices?" Sara asked doubtfully.

"Right now these men are trying to deal with the fact that the invasion they've been a part for the last fifty years is about to collapse." Mulder reminded them. "When you're dealing with world domination, you don't notice the smaller threats and they never were prepared for them on their best day."

"What are you saying exactly?" Sara said.

"Try to get the window to open normally before you smash it," Mulder said. "After that, we'll see what happens."

X-FILES OFFICES

Leonard Snart had not taken to the notes of history the same way many of the other legends had; he'd always been a pragmatist and never particularly sentimental. That being said, it was hard to deny that as he walked into the official offices of the X-Files he felt something that might have been – ha, ha – a chill crawl down his spine.

There was no reason he should have felt that: if the palaces of Versailles or the Halls of Montezuma didn't induce awe in him, why should an office that had once been little more than a supply closet? And it wasn't like his surroundings were particularly inspiring; even by the standards of the corporate offices he'd broken into over this year, this office – and boy was that pushing the term - looked like it was barely lived in. Considering that for the last several months the two people who'd worked in it had apparently been there not working, that made sense.

Yet his eyes were drawn to all the file cabinets. Instinctually Snart knew little would be in them – last year someone had set fire to them and basically destroyed the lion's share of the files Mulder had spent his lifetime collecting. He'd been working on reconstructing them ever since – he'd freely admitted that he'd spent most of his free time doing so – but the files would be empty now.

"Does it look as bad as it did back then?" Scully asked in his ear.

Snart was not going to lie to this woman. "They don't even seem to have repainted," he told her. "I can still see the scorch marks."

"I knew Jeffrey Spender hated the place, but still," Scully gathered herself. "Good news is, there isn't much to search through. And if you do this normally they won't even know you've been here."

"I might even get luckier than that," Snart said. "Jeffrey Spender was so eager to drum you out of the bureau he hasn't even bothered to clean up yet. And given how much contempt he holds for this place; I doubt he'll take inventory."

"He's probably not even going to come back here," Scully said. "The next couple of days he's going to be dealing with all the ramifications of what his father has done to his mother. The offices are going to be empty for at least four days. "

"Well, don't worry. I've enough experience ransacking places that I'm excellent at making a mess," Snart said. "Of course, it would help immensely if I knew what files in particular to look for."

"I actually have an idea. It rests on the possibility that Jeffrey Spender never bothered to look through my desk that carefully but considering he probably resented even being there, I think it's a good guess," Mulder said suddenly.

Snart walked over there. "In the bottom drawer, there's a small box of sunflower seeds that I hollowed out," Mulder told Snart.

There were in fact five boxes of seeds. They all knew of his oral fixation. Snart shook two of them before he found the one that didn't rattle. "Open it but handle it with care," Mulder said.

"You do know who you're talking to?" Snart said.

It took him a moment to see what he was looking at.

WAVE RIDER

"I didn't know you held on to it," Scully said.

"Call it the instinct of a hoarder," Mulder said with a touch of melancholy.

Stein looked a little stunned. "You mentioned it in the files. I never actually thought I'd see the real thing."

"What is that? An old photo shot of the Syndicate?" Jefferson asked.

"You're not far off," Mulder said. "I found that photo among my father's effects after he…died. The man on the far left; that's him. The faces are familiar ones but I never managed to get names for most of them. Except the one of the far right."

"That's a document that should absolutely be in the Smithsonian," Stein said sincerely. "Right next to the Saturn 5 rocket."

"You're not kidding, are you Gray," Jefferson said.

"I remember when we learned the truth about this in early 1990s," Stein said grimly. "It was one of those occasions when we absolutely should have looked at ourselves in the mirror and we never came close. You know better than most that the American dream always paid out more to some than others. The man in this picture, he was a living example of what the cost was to the rest of us."

Mulder nodded. "The man that Stein is talking about, the one on the far right, is Victor Klemperer."

Jefferson's eyes narrowed. "He was one of those Nazi scientists I read about the files. One of the ones we brought over at the Cold War to win the space race."

"He was one of the most monstrous men in history. And he's smiling just a few feet away from my father," Mulder said sadly.

"You know, if we can identify all the names that go with the faces from this picture, you really don't need me to take anything else," Snart said.

"He's right," Scully said. "This picture was taken in 1977. Everyone who was in the Syndicate goes back at least that far."

"And I don't think you're going to have time to do much more." Ray said in his ear. "Your old boss just called in a bunch of men in suits to his office. And they're heading to the elevator with a collective look of grim satisfaction on their faces."

"Guessing that's my cue to make a break for it," Snart said, putting the photograph in his pockets.

NEW YORK CITY

"The rebels have destroyed project facilities all over New Mexico and the Southwest," Alex Krycek said grimly. "The Arizona research facility was completely destroyed. The deaths of Dr. Openshaw and his colleagues have severely disrupted work on creating an alien-human hybrid."

"What do they want?" asked one of the Elders.

"To disrupt our enterprise," the Cigarette Smoking Man said. "Everything we've worked for."

"That's precisely what's going to happen. Eventually the government will find out, to say nothing of the press," another one said bitterly.

"I'm in control of the situation, specifically with our new man in the FBI."

"You keep telling yourself that, old man," Mick said grimly.

One of the benefits of having 24th century technology was that listening in on a conversation was infinitely easier, especially in a building with barely any security.

"I never understood what was going on in that man's head," Mulder said. "Right now his wife has just been discovered and he knows very well that she is the key to everything he and his group have been working on for half a century. He knows the solution, for better or worse, is to kill her. And with all the blood on his hands already, the man can't bring himself to do it. I'd think the bastard had a heart but in less than three days he's going to shoot his son in the chest and turn him into the same kind of test subject he did to his wife."

"I thought you stopped trying to understand him years ago," Scully said.

"That's easy to say. Harder to do when you're looking at him again," Stein said sincerely.

Sara Lance came back into the room. "I've searched the top floor."

Mick turned his attention back to his fellow legend. "Anything that looks promising?"

"You could say that." She walked back the way she came.

"You know, I'm starting to really feel let down by these bastards," Mick said. "All the banks Snart and I broke into, all the industrial espionage, all the shit we did before Allen caught up to us. And now the goddamn secrets of the universe are in an unlocked file cabinet? Dr. Evil had tougher security."

"Yeah and the security threats are nothing compared to the ones you guys used to fight on an average Tuesday," Mulder said. "The Syndicate, ladies and gentlemen. A bunch of grumpy old men who probably can't program their VCRs are conspiring with aliens to destroy mankind. It doesn't reflect well on us that we never got this close to bringing them down."

"And you know, the aliens," Scully reminded him.

"Speaking of which do you know if any of them are here?" Sara asked. "Because they might actually be a problem."

Mulder thought for a moment then shook his head. "No. Right now that smoking bastard knows that if he tells them what he knows about Cassandra Spender, they have to hand her over to the aliens. Right now, they're trying to figure out their next moves and they don't know they have practically none left."

"Why not side with the rebels?" one of the old men said. "Join their alien resistance?"

A pause. "It's…an option," another said.

"It's an option you declined long ago!"

"Alex Krycek, always protecting his own interest," Scully said resignedly as he began to rant. "Just a year ago he was doing everything in his power to get the vaccine and told Mulder where he could find an alien rebel. Now that's he got a position of power, he's all for drinking the Kool-Aid."

Mulder was silent, which was odd. "Look at Smokey," he said carefully.

"He looks agitated. Not surprising since his authority's just been questioned," Scully said.

"That's not what Mulder's talking about," Stein said. "He's not looking at Krycek. He's looking at the man who suggested allying with the resistance."

"For fifty years, we've worked on the project. Fifty years since Roswell." The Smoking Man was looking at the Elder who'd made the suggestion. "We can't sacrifice ourselves through every new threat, can we?"

"After you were taken, a man gave me a vaccine and coordinates on where to find you. He knew it would cost him his life helping me and it did." Mulder said. "He was as close to an equal to the Smoking Man in their little pow-wows, maybe even his superior at times and occasionally he would help us when our interests aligned. He was the only one at the end who doubts about it. After that, they fell in line behind Smokey."

"And as I recall that's exactly what's going to happen," Jefferson said.

"This would be so much easier if we knew the names of the ones who died at El Rico," Mulder said. "As it is I'm basing all of this on a hunch and on his instincts, which I only trust on one thing."

"Which is what?" Scully asked.

"A threat to his authority. And based on the way he was looking at that man he thinks that there's a mole."

There was a pause. "You think that man's an alien?" Scully said. "A shape-shifter."

"More than that." Mulder paused. "You get all that?"

"You think that the call's coming from inside the house," Sara said.

"Get out of there and wait outside from a discreet distance," Mulder said. "The objective of this mission has changed."

X-FILES OFFICES

"You're sure no one was in here?" Jeffrey Spender demanded..

"We've checked every inch of the place, sir. Everything is in order."

Jeffrey looked around. "Make sure Mulder and Scully are escorted from the building. Alert me if they return."

If Jeffrey Spender had ever given a damn about the Bureau he would have noticed his desk had been disturbed. But he hadn't looked inside the desk of his rival more than twice in the five months he'd been assigned to the unit.

"You've done your job well, Jeffrey," Diana Fowley said. "Your father will be pleased when we tell him."

Jeffrey didn't even look up as he walked to his desk. "You have a lot of faith in the man who nearly killed you," he said slowly.

If Agent Fowley was stunned by this change in subject she hid it well. "There was a plan in play," she said carefully.

"What is it about my father that so many people are willing to follow him?" Jeffrey asked bluntly. "I know that he's powerful and that he can make people skip and jump to his tune. But he never had anything close to a heart or a soul."

"I know you have your issues with him," Fowley said neutrally.

"The man left my mother an insane wreck and abandoned us," Jeffrey said. "My mother disappears without a trace in an inferno that leaves hundreds dead. I've spent the last six months chasing down every possible lead that might find her. It's the only reason I took this job in the first place. Then yesterday she shows up in a trainyard, the only survivor among another group of burned victims. And yet somehow the first person she wants to talk to is Mulder. Not her only son. And my father seems to care more about getting Mulder out of the Bureau then anything that happened to his wife and my mother."

Fowley looked uneasy. "Jeffrey, if you have concerns…"

"You don't," Spender was seating at his desk. "When we first met, you were more on Mulder's side than anyone. You were willing to take a bullet to protect his interests. Then you end up in the office with me. I can understand why; you had an interest in them once. And yet somehow, you've been less active than I have when it comes to investigating cases and seem to be perfectly loyal to the man who nearly killed you. So again, I'd like to know why you're willing to follow him."

Diana Fowley kept her face completely blank.

"Of course. Why should you be any different than anyone else?" Jeffrey asked rhetorically. "That'll be all."

Her poker face dropped. "Don't you want me to…"

"Why? Am I not in charge of these offices?" Spender said. "Can't I be trusted to make a simple report to my superior without someone looking over my shoulder? Besides, now that Mulder and Scully are out of the Bureau, I suspect these offices will be permanently shut down and you will be reassigned. Don't worry. Considering your loyalty to the chain of command, any department would be lucky to have you. I'm sure Skinner will write a glowing recommendation. After you fill out the official paperwork dismissing them from the Bureau. That's not going to be a problem, is it Agent Fowley?"

"No. Of course not," Fowley's words were submissive. Her tone was not.

"Good. Then if you don't mind, I'd like some privacy." Spender said dismissively. "I'm going to call my mother, see if she might be willing to tell me what happened to her yet."

Fowley looked like she was going to question this, then thought better of it. She left slowly.

Jeffrey took out his cell, started to dial, then thought better of it. Instead he picked up the landline and dialed a number. "We need to meet," he said.

"Is it handled?"

"Don't you know already?" There was none of the snark that either agent had come to expect of them in their brief time together. "I'd prefer to tell you in person." Then before his father answered Jeffrey Spender did something that clearly caught his father by surprise.

He hung up on him.

BUREAU GARAGE

9:17 pm

"You sure you don't want us to follow him?" Ray Palmer asked.

"We already know where he's going." Mulder said. "All roads lead back to him. We're changing strategy."

"Don't tell me the plan's gone off the rails already?" Snart asked.

"No but that doesn't mean it's not worth throwing it away anyway," Mulder said. "We may have a singular opportunity. "

"Will it mess with the timeline?" Palmer asked.

"I'm not sure," Mulder acknowledged. "It may be worth risking it anyway."

NEW YORK CITY

9:56 PM

"I can't believe I'm the one that had to hotwire a car," Sara grumbled.

"Hey, you're the one who never learned how to drive stick," Mick reminded her. "Now keep quiet this isn't going to be a picnic."

"Everything I've seen you do and this might be too much?" Sara couldn't help raise an eyebrow.

"I don't care what you did for the League of Assassins; nothing is as tough as trying to tail a car and navigate traffic in New York in the dead of night."

"Can't argue with that one," Scully agreed.

Sara was getting used to running point for Mulder – he was the expert on the conspiracy – but when she'd heard what he was asking of the Legends she had pulled rank. What he was asking her and Mick to do wasn't that far removed from their usual missions but there was a wrinkle (in time, heh heh) that she was concerned about.

It was obvious that the man they were following – one of the Elders, for lack of a better term - had been replaced with an alien. Stein had gotten Gideon to run a bio-scan and even from a distance it was clear that the Syndicate had been infiltrated. Given the nature of what the 'Elder' had said before being shouted down, it was almost certain that this was a member of the resistance here to serve as a fifth column.

This interested Mulder for more than one reason. He knew all too well how this story ended in just a few days – the Syndicate, give or take a few members, was going to be incinerated by the alien rebels. But neither he nor Scully had been aware that before that the rebels had infiltrated the Syndicate and might have been trying to persuade them to come around peacefully. As far as Mulder or Scully was aware, it was the only time that the rebels hadn't responded the any of the Syndicate's activities without indiscriminately attempting to murder everyone in sight.

This didn't gel with what Mulder and Scully had seen or indeed what Alex Krycek had just reported. Up until now the consensus had been that the rebels were not much better than the colonists. The resistance seemed to have no more regard for human life than the colonists did and if their idea of exposure meant mass murder, it didn't seem to make sense to even talk with them.

But what they'd seen threw everybody for a loop.

"The guy had everybody in the Syndicate at his mercy. Why not just kill them then?" Jefferson asked. "Hell, if they'd done it they wouldn't have been killing women and children whose only responsibility was being related to the evil bastards."

"You don't think he was hoping he couldn't win hearts and minds?" Scully asked.

Jefferson scoffed. "He thought he could win over people who'd been plotting for half a century in one meeting? I've known Grey for over a year, the two of us can't agree on lunch most of the time."

"Inelegant metaphor, but nonetheless accurate," Stein agreed. "It can't have been for the purpose of gathering intelligence; that being already knew what was going to be reported."

"Maybe he was trying to learn what the Syndicate knew about Cassandra Spender," Mulder said. "She was the proof of the experiments."

"But that never tracked either, Mulder," Scully said. "Cassandra is going to come to your apartment in less than 24 hours demanding you kill her because she knows what she is. If the rebels interfered to expose her existence, why would they kill her just a few days later?"

"I don't know. It's not like either of us was in a position to find out what was going on or really do much to stop it," Mulder admitted. "Jeffrey Spender changed his mind about what happened because he learned what Smokey had done to his mother. He might have been able to tell us everything he learned but his father shot him in my office before he got a chance to talk to us."

"And then he took Jeffrey away and tortured him for years to make sure he never did," Stein reasoned.

Mulder shook his head. "He may not be my brother but given everything his father put him through, it's clear were spiritual brothers at least. He deserves better than what's coming to him."

"We can't interfere with that" Sara reminded him.

"I know." Mulder said. "So let's try to find the truth from someone who we know is already dead."

"For a dead man, he's driving awfully fast," Mick told them.

"Maybe they don't have stick on his planet" Sara joked.

"Or maybe he's decided that he can't phone home, he's going there," Mick said. "He's heading down to LaGuardia."

"He'd be better served trying to find a flying saucer then getting a plane to arrive on time there." Stein said. "Mr. Rory, read out his license plate?"

"Gideon has access to the DMV in there?" Scully asked.

"Better than the Patriot Act," Mulder said.

It wasn't much help. The man was using a rental and he'd paid cash in order to get it from Avis. They tracked where it had gone to pick him up originally: a private landing strip just off of LaGuardia that had been rented to a private plane through a corporate account. It didn't shock Mulder or Scully that the corporation was Roush.

The good news was while the Syndicate might be private the pilot still had to file a flight plan with the FAA. Gideon managed to find one particular one as well as a car that had come there with a driver.

They still have a name but it had been filed with an address in Silver Springs.

"Well, we know where's he going. Maybe we can catch him before he gets home." Scully said.

"And fortunately we've got people who are closer to it then you two are," Mulder said. "Stay on him."

SILVER SPRINGS

1:57 AM

"For men who are guardians of the world's secrets, they sure as hell do a shit job of keeping their homes safe," Snart said. "I barely broke a sweat picking this lock."

"Does make you wonder what these old men were keeping here." Ray paused. "Snart, how does this place look to you?"

"Orderly and clean. Very clean." Snart said. "According to the flight plan, the man who lived here got in a car from here, went to an airfield and then flew to New York less than twelve hours ago." He looked around. "And apparently before that, he took the time and energy to completely wash the floors and organize his bookcase."

"Maybe he called in a cleaning crew."

"The fate of the world's in the balance and he wants to make sure his home is spotless?" Snart shrugged. "I'll admit there are some industrial companies who wouldn't blink twice at that, but I'd think the man would be more interested in the mess to his best-laid plans rather than his home."

"Bedrooms perfectly neat too." Ray said, examining the place. "Doesn't seem to have packed a bag."

"The Syndicate no doubt would have a change of clothes and he's probably got a place in New York," Snart said. "Though it is strange that before he left, he locked up his bathroom tight and not his front door."

"That's a sure sign the guy's not from around here," Ray agreed. "Well, I think we both know what we have to do."

"Why? We already know what we're going to find in there," Snart said. "Besides, I'd think we have more important things to look for now that we're actually in an evil lair."

"We'll have at least a few hours for that," Ray reminded him. "Don't tell me you of all people are getting squeamish."

"Of course not. I'm just calculating how much time covering our tracks will need before he shows up." Snart mouthed some words. "Just so you know, we do this we're going to have three minutes less to search the place."

"I can live with that."

Snart nodded. "Whatever planet this guy's from clearly either has very elaborate forms of security or he was in a real hurry. He left the key to this door on his desk."

Ray didn't even bother to ask how Snart knew that for sure. He just picked up the key and unlocked the door.

It was a credit to what he'd seen in Star City that the smell and the look of the man's bathtub barely crossed Ray's eyes. After going through everything with Damien Dahrk and the League of Assassins there was something almost ordinary about a body that had clearly been baked alive.

"Yet another reason I hate fire," Snart said, shaking his head.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This will be relatively short as I'm basically covering everything from a single two-part X-Files storyline. Everything you see takes place to a large extent in the Season 6 episode Two Fathers, which as Mulder relates in this episode deals with the fundamental end of the Syndicate storyline. The sequence at the New York offices deals with the meeting of the Consortium in that episode and is quoted in large part, as well as the fact that the Syndicate had been infiltrated by a member of the alien rebels.

The timeline isn't quite accurate but while this is going on Mulder and Scully have just been suspended from the Bureau on the verge of dismissal because they have just broken into their old offices. They've learned the Smoking Man's real name – C.G.B. Spender, which in keeping with The X-Files is just an alias. (No one uses his real name during the series.)

The only real change I've made is the scene between Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley. Around this time in the original episode Jeffrey starts to have doubts about his mission based on the fact of his mother's reappearance and his growing certainty that his father has something to do with it. Not long after this he will make a break from his father's grip which I won't spoil because it will probably take place in the next chapter or two. I wanted to give him the benefit of character growth, because Carter and his colleagues never gave him that until his character was about to be killed off (or so we thought at the time)

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