Chapter 7

November 27th 1973

MARTHA'S VINEYARD

"Stunning revelations today in the Senate hearings as Rosemary Woods testified before the select committee."

"Fox, it's your move. Are you gonna move or not?" Pause. "Do we have to watch this, Fox?"

"The Magician comes on at 9."

"Mom and Dad said I could watch the movie – Buttmunch!"

"They're next door at the Galbrands. They left me in a charge."

The Legends had witnessed more than share of historic moments over the year. But this was the first time the moment on the news was actually less important then what was happening in the house.

Understandably neither Mulder nor Scully had wanted Gideon to actually look inside the Mulder household while what was the seminal event in Mulder's life was going on before them. None of them – not even the usually coarse Mick – could blame Fox.

No matter what actually transpired in this house in the next few minutes, Mulder's life course had been set based on what he perceived had happened that night. At this point it was almost superfluous what the events were; much as he might desperately want them to change he knew that if they did a butterfly effect the size of the San Francisco earthquake would unfold and he couldn't let that happen. Besides, it had been agonizing enough to live through and keep trying to remember what happened. Actually seeing it might be too much for him to bear.

"So what happens next, according to Mulder?" Jefferson asked Stein.

"According to him this is his clearest memory of what happened," Stein said. "But sometime in the next few minutes the lights are supposed to go out."

However Stein and Jefferson were close enough to see something else. A car pulled up outside the house.

"Jefferson I think we better hide," Stein said.

Three men in suits walked up to the fuse box. There was a padlock on it but one of the men took out a key. After he pulled a switch, another man walked over to the window.

"What's going on, Fox?" eight year old Samantha asked her brother in a frightened tone.

"I don't know," the twelve year old Fox said.

The man jimmied the window open. Both Stein and Jefferson could imagine that to a terrified child, it might seem like the house was shaking.

Then one of the men took out what appeared to be an aerosol can. Did spray cans exist in 1973? Jefferson wasn't sure but he was sure whatever they were spraying wasn't deodorant.

The men put on masks. "Now remember, our target is the girl. Under no circumstances is the boy to be touched," one of them said.

"What if he talks?" the second man said.

The first man laughed. "You think anyone's going to believe a scared kid? Besides, they'll all think he did something to her and is lying to hide his crime."

Jefferson had his instructions but it took all of his restraint not to leave his hiding place and punch the speaker in the mouth.

"I feel the same way, Jefferson, believe me," Stein said grimly.

The third man while this was going on went inside the Mulder home. Without a moment's hesitation, he walked over to the unconscious Samantha. He took out a small syringe.

"I am truly sorry for this," he said sincerely. "But there have to be sacrifices made for the greater good. I do hope you understand that someday."

SPENDER HOUSEHOLD

Cassandra Spender looked into the distance. Her husband was at another one of his interminable meetings – the ones that caused him to leave the house in the middle of the night and not come back for days at a time.

She looked down at the file for the twentieth time. This was the right decision – really the only she could make. She'd wait for him to come back and then tell him she was leaving him and taking Jeffrey. He didn't deserve this basic dignity but the attorney she'd seen insisted this would make what was likely to be a difficult custody case slightly easy.

She'd known for a very long time her husband didn't love her. But it had taken her until the birth of their child to realize that he might very well be incapable of love at all. She knew that Charles had claimed to love her but she knew now that her husband was gifted with words and little else.

There had always been something off with Charles. There was something in him that seemed dead, almost as if he were one of those futuristic automatons you saw late at night on TV, the kinds involving a world no rational person could ever believe in. She wouldn't bother watching them but she'd needed something to distract her those endless nights he never came home.

Some would claim her husband was an important man, given what he did in the State Department. Cassandra knew that was nonsense. Charles was nothing but a small man who wanted to be big. When he talked to her at all, it was about grand plans and ideas. It was nonsense. She knew who her husband really was.

A man who was having an affair with the wife of his best friend.

Cassandra had once joked with Teena that William and Charles should be married given all the time they spent together. Teena had almost turned white before she laughed. Cassandra would have liked to have thought that was when she knew for sure but given what she had been implying she thought Teena's Orthodox upbringing had been what had caused the shock.

She knew better now. She wasn't sure she blamed Teena so much as she found it incomprehensible. She understood why Teena would have wanted to stray: like her, her husband was largely absent from the marriage and she had two kids to deal with. It wasn't like Bill was a model citizen; during so many of their last social engagements his drinking had become far heavier than usual. Teena had excused it, considering it a burden from the work he did.

Cassandra didn't think that was it all. She suspected that Bill was aware of what was going on under his very nose but had no idea how to broach the subject. Not with his wife and certainly not with Charles. Not that it would have made a difference if he'd gone to her husband: the man was capable of lying with a straight face to anyone.

But she was done with his lies. All of them. When he came home she was going to give him the summons herself, then take Jeffrey and go. It didn't matter how late his meeting went.

She would wait all night if she had to.

MULDER HOUSEHOLD

8:37 PM

A Packard pulled up where the three men were waiting. Jefferson and Stein thought they knew who was going to get out of the car.

They were stunned to find out they were wrong.

"What the fuck?" Jefferson asked.

Neither of them had seen this man in the flesh but they recognized him instantly from the photograph they had at the Strughold mining company. That didn't mean either of them had expected to see him here.

"Is it done?" Bill Mulder asked.

The younger man nodded. "The gas was effective. Your son will be out for two hours."

Bill Mulder looked around. "And Samantha?"

The man said. "She's in the car. I don't know whether I gave her the correct dosage."

"It doesn't matter," Bill Mulder said tiredly. "She's going to have to get used to those kind of things for a long time."

"Sir?"

Bill Mulder shook his head. "Take my car, drive it back to the Galbrand residence. The police won't look that hard but it will verify the alibi. After that, return to the company for further instructions."

The younger men looked weary. "Sir, we were ordered to –"

"I know what your orders were. I'm countermanding them." Bill Mulder said. "There are some things a man must do for himself."

The men looked uneasy, for good reason. Bill Mulder was wobbly on his feet and Jefferson could see the flask in his hip pocket.

"I take full responsibility. Besides" a painful grimace went through Bill's body, "this is going to be the last time I see her for a very long time. You do understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Whose guilt is he trying to assuage? Theirs or his?" Jefferson asked.

"We both know he's never going to be able to take the weight off his own shoulders," There was a disgust in Stein's face that Jefferson wasn't used to from his partner. Something that he completely understood.

"It's gonna be hard for the son to learn just how complicit dear old Dad was in this," Jefferson said sadly.

"He already knew about his father's involvement," Stein said. "But you're right, Jefferson. It's one thing to know how much blood is on your father's hands; it's quite another to see him put it there himself."

"You think Samantha knew about this part of it?" Jefferson asked.

STAR LABS

PRESENT

"Your father handed you over to the Syndicate?" Cisco said.

"He never knew I knew," Samantha said. "Neither does Fox. Though I can't imagine he won't find out in some form now that he's on his journey through the past."

Samantha's memories of the night she had been taken from the Mulder home had been pretty much close to her brother's right up until the lights went out. She remembered collapsing on the floor of her house and then her memory had gone blank. Much of what had happened to her in the immediate aftermath and indeed much of the next several years was sporadic at best. But she did remember one night, when she was eleven.

It had been after another round of the tests and as always she was physically drained. In this particular round of experiments they had left her unable to move or speak but she was completely conscious. That's when her father had come into the room.

"I hadn't seen him in nearly three years but I instantly recognized him." Samantha said bitterly. "For the briefest of moments I was hopeful. I thought that my daddy had found out where I was and was here to save me. Or that this was all some horrible nightmare and I was going to wake up in my bed in Massachusetts."

"When did you know he wasn't there to help you?" Oliver said surprisingly gently.

"I don't know. It's not like I had any awareness of time in that state," Samantha said. "But it took me awhile to realize something weird. He didn't seem overjoyed to be reunited with me. Or surprised. His expression was completely blank. And then he started crying. I thought he was crying out of happiness or joy. And then I realized that he was crying for me at all."

"

"He just stood there for a long time. Then he said simply: 'I can't.' Then he walked back the way he came. Someone was clearly standing outside the door. He looked around and he said: 'Make sure she doesn't remember this.'

"He never came back." Samantha said. "For a long time after that, I did everything in my power to pretend it didn't happen. That it hadn't been him. That it was a false memory. It was only years later when I saw the files for myself that I knew the horrible truth."

NOVEMBER 27TH 1973

SPENDER HOUSEHOLD

Cassandra was shocked when she heard the doorbell ring. She'd ask herself who would come at this hour but she had a good idea. For a long moment she considered just letting the bell ring. Her husband's people had never shown her any consideration before. Why should she treat them any better?

"Cassandra!"

She recognized the voice. It wasn't Bill but rather his other associate. She considered ignoring it anyway but of all her husband's colleagues Ronald was the only one who treated her with decency.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you at this late hour."

"That didn't stop you from doing it," Cassandra saw no reason to be more than polite. "Why did you come? You know Charles isn't here."

"I'm aware of that. I came to speak to you."

"And what makes you think I want to hear anything you have to say?" Cassandra said scornfully. "I've met you all of half a dozen times. I don't even know your last name."

Ronald shook his head. "I don't expect you to believe me, Cassandra, but I feel a great deal of sympathy for your situation."

"If you're here to apologize for my husband's behavior…"

"I know better than that," Ronald said. "Believe me, I know as well as you do the kind of man he is. I wish I could say he has reasons for his behavior but at best, they are feeble."

This was the first time anyone of Charles's associates had talked with him in a term that wasn't at least respectful, if not deferential. "Why are you here?"

"May I come in?

Cassandra considered this for a moment, then acquiesced. "Five minutes."

"Five minutes," he agreed as he entered.

"I realize that your husband is a despicable human being." Ronald said. "I've known him far longer than you have and I'm well aware of his contemptible nature. Sadly it's a necessity in the work we do."

"And of course, you have no intention of telling me what that work is," Cassandra said bitterly.

Ronald paused. "As we speak tonight, history is being made. The President of the United States is facing charges of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and abuse of power. Few people know that is merely the tip of the iceberg."

"I could have gotten that much just by talking to my friends from Los Angeles," Cassandra said dismissively.

"Fewer still know that the things that he and his associates are doing are irrelevant and immaterial in the grand scheme of things," Ronald said smoothly.

"And my husband is one such man," Cassandra scoffed.

"Your husband was the man who arranged for bail to be posted."

Cassandra blinked.

"For a while we truly believed that Nixon was the kind of person who we could work with," Ronald said. "Then it became clear that he was far more dangerous than his predecessors. We made some attempts to have him removed but it was decided it was too soon after the last removal to do another one. So it was decided that rather than tragedy, we would use farce."

"If this is supposed to be funny, I'm not amused," Cassandra said.

"Truth is far too often less believable than the lie," Ronald told her. "I should know. My chief responsibility is to make sure the lies become public. It's been difficult, I admit, but there are currently some people working at the Department of Defense who are hard at work at a new form of technology that will make my job far easier in the future." He paused. "Assuming, of course, there is one."

More of the self-aggrandized flattery. Cassandra had hoped for more. "I promised you five minutes. You're down to three."

"I'm trying to make you understand something Cassandra."

"Yes, you're trying to tell me that my husband is a monster capable of manipulating the men who walk the corridors of power," she said dismissively. "I don't believe a word you say and even if you were telling me the truth, it's not a reason for Charles's treatment of me. It's an excuse."

"We are engaged in a battle that is truly significant," Ronald began.

"Save your breath. You think I give a damn about what my husband does for work? All that I care about is that he's a cruel, narcissistic monster who has no room in his heart for either me or my son," Cassandra said. "He even sends messengers to do his dirty work."

"You don't understand why –"

"I don't care why," Cassandra said. "Go home, Ronald. Tell Charles not to expect me or his son to be here when he gets back."

"That can't be permitted."

"I don't know what world you live in –"

"One that needs to be preserved." Ronald said sincerely. "And in order for that, certain sacrifices will have to be made. One that people like myself – and your husband – have already agreed to."

Something had changed in Ronald's tone. "Your five minutes are up," she said.

"Yes, they are." Ronald made no effort to leave.

"I'd appreciate if you leave now."

"I will. But not without you."

Cassandra was starting to worry. "Why did you really come here tonight?"

"When we made this decision, we knew it would be a difficult one for all of us." Ronald walked towards the window. "We knew if each of us tried to go forward with it ourselves, none of us would follow through. But we also knew that it couldn't be left to subordinates."

"What are you talking about?" Cassandra started to move forward and found her legs buckling.

"Charles isn't here because he's at my house," Ronald said slowly. "I agreed to come to his to do the unforgivable. I thought given his constitution he'd have no problem handling you."

"What have you done to me?" Cassandra found she couldn't move.

"You won't remember this conversation, Cassandra. You won't remember a lot of things for the immediate future," Ronald was looking out into the stars. "But try to remember that your husband didn't have to stomach to do this to you. That has to count for something. If not love, that at least not contempt."

At that moment the phone rang. The man who Mulder would one day call Deep Throat went to it, stepping over the unconscious body of Cassandra as he did.

"Is it done?"

"I've kept my part of the bargain. Have you honored yours?"

FORT MARLENE

The man who would one day be found registered as C.G.B Spender looked at his pack of Morleys. For once he didn't think one of them would give him much comfort.

"Your son was a better man then the rest of us," he told him. "He volunteered to come instead of your wife."

"Does he know the details?"

"He's a solder. He believes in a greater cause." He paused. "Is Jeffrey still asleep?"

"Yes. How do you want me to handle this?"

"I've made an arrangement. One that will not permanently remove Cassandra from her son's life."

"How did you manage to swing that?"

"I may not be the Liar, but I have my moments." Spender toyed with his pack, not willing to open it yet.

"Have we heard back from the Others?"

"All but one."

"Bill Mulder has been the major faction opposed to what we're doing from the beginning," Deep Throat said.

"He agreed in our last conversation."

"And what makes you so sure he'll follow through this time?"

"Bill understands the big picture." Spender put the Morleys back in his pocket. "And he understands that sometimes you in order to lead, you must leave certain things behind you."

EN ROUTE FORT MARLENE

9:47 PM

No one was close to the Smoking Man when they heard that last phrase but if Stein and Jefferson had heard it, they would have laughed without any humor. Because they'd been following Bill Mulder's car – in a rental and from a discreet distance – for the better part of an hour. And they knew all too well that the man driving didn't seem to have any interest in leaving anything behind him.

"He's driving her into the hands of the enemy, " Jefferson said. "He didn't even check to see how his son was doing. Pretty clear no matter who actually is his parent, Mulder has a horrible father."

"We're in complete accord there, Jefferson," Stein agreed. "I've had my share of difficulties understanding the things the Syndicate, but this has to rank as the worst thing that they can do."

"Even compared to the whole selling out the planet thing?" Jefferson was skeptical but didn't sound like he disagreed.

"He's about to hand over his daughter to a group of alien colonists and leave a hole in his family that will never be filled," Stein said. "His son is going to grow up unloved and spend much of his adult life blaming himself for his sister's disappearance and the man who knows why she's gone is going to go to his grave never telling him the truth. He may be the one slightly bright light in this whole syndicate, but it doesn't change the fact that he has no more of a moral compass than anyone else."

"Even if what Smokey tells us is the truth about why he agreed?"

"Level with me, Jefferson. How much do you buy that part?"

It was a question nobody – not even Mulder - knew how to answer.

Mulder was sure that there was a plan with the Syndicate to build a vaccine to fight the alien virus. The Well-Manicured Man had stated as much to Mulder and in fact given him the most recent example of their decades of work and it had worked on Scully when she'd been exposed.

But that fell into a contradiction Mulder couldn't explain. If they had a vaccine – one that worked – why had the Syndicate's essentially decided to move solely towards creating an alien-human hybrid? They had seen the meeting with their own eyes and they knew the end result. Smokey was going to give the order to let colonization begin, vaccine be damned. Smokey had said that they had done so solely to save their families but by that point Mulder and Scully knew that he cared about no one, certainly not Cassandra or his son. And they presumed he cared very little for his own colleagues given how he had essentially left them to die at El Rico just when the going got tough.

The only thing Mulder could think was simple. At the end of the day the Smoking Man was fundamentally only interesting in his own survival. If that meant dooming the entire planet to live under the yoke of an alien race so that he could be little more than a glorified servant, he seemed perfectly fine with that. They might not know much more about this man but it was keeping in nature with what little they did know. And it seemed keeping in the nature with the rest of the Syndicate or at least the ones they met.

Bill Mulder, Fox had to admit, had always seemed made of even weaker stuff than that. His marriage had dissolved not long after that and as far as his son had known, Bill had spent the rest of his life drinking heavily. He and Fox had been estranged ever since then. Fox had assumed had grown up assuming that his parents blamed him for what happened to his sister, which was fair because he'd grown up believing the exact same thing.

Mulder had not exactly been in the best condition the last time he'd met with his father. It hadn't been long after he had acquired the MJ Files and they hadn't spoken since the clone of his sister had been abducted and killed by the Bounty Hunter. His father had sounded like he'd wanted to unburden himself of his sins but it sounded like drunken ramblings. Still the fact that he'd said: "Your politics have always been your own," did seem to make clear that his father's had been compromised long ago. Still he'd refused to believe Smoking Man's claim that his father had authorized 'the project' and the next time he'd held a gun on him, he still couldn't believe his father had acquiesced.

But there was no denying what Jefferson and Stein had just witnessed. Were still witnessing, in fact. And it now seemed that Mulder was going to have to face a truth he might never have wanted to accept.

No matter who his father was, their hands were covered in the blood of innocents.

"How do you think he does this?" Jefferson asked. "You really think he just thinks he's taking his daughter out for a drive in the country?"

"How do you agree to do this kind of thing in the first place?" Stein countered. "I'm a decade older than Fox is right now. I may know less about this conspiracy but I know more about other bizarre things. And I cannot wrap my head around the entire mindset of the people who are doing this. I'm not particularly religious, Jefferson, so I don't know which of the Psalms it is but I assume you might know the one I'm thinking of."

"I went to church with my grandma growing up. Doesn't make me an expert in the Bible, Grey," Jefferson said. "Doesn't mean I don't know this one. 'For what shall it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his own soul?'"

"Perhaps not appropriate given how we spent the last year," Stein acknowledged. "And that doesn't compare to kind of things people like Barry and Oliver have been dealing with the last few years."

"I can wrap my head around people like Darhk and some of the rest. They're at least trying to control the world for the price of their souls. These guys aren't even going to have much of a world to gain if things work out." Jefferson said. "And I find it hard to believe that their families would ever forgive them."

"Let's hope that our more cold-blooded colleagues are having better luck than we are on that front."

NOVEMBER 27TH 1973

GEORGETOWN

10:07 pm

"Déjà vu all over again," Snart said.

"Does it count as déjà vu if you're actually coming back to a place you were twenty six from now?" Mick asked curiously.

"That's one of the things about time travel. You can be in the same place you've been before and it's perfectly normal." Snart said. "And I do recognize the address."

This was the home of the man who was one of the elders who the rebels were going to kill and replace just before the final betrayal in roughly twenty six years' time. Mulder thought that it might be a good idea to see what they could learn about this man, one of the few they knew who would still be with the conspiracy a quarter of a century later, at the beginning of his betrayals rather than the end.

"Another reason to love the seventies," Mick said. "The security's just a bunch of armed guards rather than electronic surveillance and video cameras. A lot easier to work around."

"That said, we'll have to exercise a different kind of caution," Snart reminded him.

"Right, these guys have to follow specific patterns," Mick acknowledged. "And if one of them goes down they're going to be a lot more alarmed."

"Don't expect any warning shots either," Snart said. "I suspect given the people involved their orders will be to kill on command. Particularly given the significance of events tonight."

Mick nodded. "How do you think they handled this? Some kind of forced kidnapping or did they just flat-out lie to their families about what they were doing?"

"According to Mulder, the reason Samantha was taken the way she was had to do with her father being the last to agree to this," Snart said. "Which doesn't answer your question. I have to say I'm hoping that it involves some kind of abduction."

Mick couldn't help but agree. "How the hell would that conversation go? 'Hello, dear. I agreed to give my son over to a bunch of aliens in order to prevent an alien invasion. Good news is, you won't need a sitter for the foreseeable future?' I mean, even if they dress it up, that's still cold."

Snart nodded. "We met some terrible people old friend, but these men make my father look like Ward Cleaver when it comes to family values. And it looks like Mulder's family got off light. Can you imagine what's going on the Smoking Man's house tonight?"

"I don't know what's harder to believe: that this bastard got married or another woman found him alluring enough to cheat on with." Mick shook a little. "Either way, it creeps the hell out of me."

"Well, I think the only good thing about this guy is that doesn't seem to be selling out his family the same way." Snart looked at the file. "Of course that may be because his wife's dead already."

They'd managed to pull some records on the elder and tracked down an alias of his known as Elliot Hunt. Like the man known as X most of the information Gideon had found was heavily redacted. What they did know was that, like Bill Mulder and the Smoking Man, he had worked in the State Department, although he was a few years younger than most of the conspirators and they found no obvious connections in his past to Roswell.

What they were able to find was that he had been working for the CIA since 1960 and had been involved in many suspicious ops: the overthrow and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, part of the team that had been involved in the Bay of Pigs, traveling in the Dominican Republic not long before the assassination of Rafael Trujillo. No connect to Dallas in 1963 – the man had been in Vietnam not long before Ngo Dinh Diem had been assassinated.

There was no clear connection to anything Hunt had done to connect him directly to the kind of things the Syndicate was directly connected to. However Mulder had assumed that given his connections to the CIA he had a position similar to X's – an enforcer responsible for black ops. Perhaps it was for that reason that he'd managed to earn the Syndicate's trust. Or maybe there was another one. With the exception of his son, a freshman in high school Hunt had no remaining family. His wife, Dorthea, had died in a plane crash two years ago. That he had no other personal connections made him the perfect candidate for recruitment.

When he'd learned that what was known as the Syndicate was going to be away from home Snart saw an opportunity. They had the name and address of one person who was going to still be in the Syndicate 26 years later. They knew for certain there was no chance he would be anywhere near his house on November 27th 1973. And they also knew because it was 1973 that it was going to be a lost easier to break into his house then it would be in 1999.

Mulder had been more than willing to agree to this particular operation. He told Snart for he and Mick to do what they did best. Get inside the house, turn it upside down and inside out and look for every bit of information about the Syndicate at that time that they could find.

"And when Hunt or whoever he is comes back home and finds the house ransacked?" Sara asked.

Mulder shrugged. "Then he'll know how the other half lives."

The one instruction he gave, however, was not to take any documents with them. They could make as big a mess as they wanted but they couldn't risk him notice anything missing. Considering that the tech in 2016 alone could hold all of the information they had on a phone, that wasn't going to be a big deal for either of them.

"You really don't think there's a risk here, Mulder?" Scully asked.

"He's going to go every detail in his house to find out what you guys were looking for. That means he's going to clean everything up first and then go through every single document he has to see what was taken," Mulder told them. "Since the home computer doesn't exist in 1973, I'm guessing he's going to have a lot of documents to go through and it will take him a very long time to sort them all."

"And when he does all of this and finds nothing's been taken?" Sara asked doubtfully.

"That will actually be more of a mind-fuck than if something was taken," Mulder pointed out. "He's already going to be wondering who it was who came here and what they were looking for. When he's done and finds that they didn't taken anything, his mind will go to two places. One: that someone in the Syndicate is playing mind games with him to test his loyalty or two: that one of the visitors he and his friends just sold out to Earth to might not trust their loyalty as much as they think. Either way, he's going to go into a deeper panic and either way, he's not going to tell a soul."

"You're not concerned with ripples to the timeline?" Sara asked.

"I hate to be mercenary about it but it's not like these guys trusted each other much to begin with," Mulder pointed out. "And it's not like in the normal course of events he has much of a future anyway. Best case scenario: he lives the rest of his life with the secret of overthrowing mankind only to be burned alive by a member of a completely different enemy. There's no way this ends with him getting a golden parachute and we all know it."

Other members of the Syndicate had some qualms but Mick and Snart couldn't agree more with Mulder's rationale. They knew saying so would undermine the whole idea so in a rare act of discretion, Mick kept his mouth shut.

"All right, we've been at this an hour," Mick said. "And unless either our tech has gone terribly wrong, I make one guard in a car and he's drove by forty minutes ago."

"Considering the size of the community, I figure he'll be back in roughly ten minute, fifteen at most." Snart said. "Now we're going to assume for now that rent-a-cops, even for a Syndicate bent on world domination, are the same all over."

"Bored, lazy and underpaid," Mick agreed. "And based on what we've already seen, it's not like they were hiring the best and the brightest to begin with, even at the top of the heap."

Snart nodded. "Now he's probably afraid of his boss, so he'll want to do a thorough job so he covers his ass."

"Yeah, but he has no idea why he's guarding this house to begin with, so he's not going to be doing much more than a cursory look," Mick said. "So when we go in, we can't be direct. We have to jimmy the lock and shut the door behind us."

"We can't turn the lights on, and we have to make sure the flashlights are sufficiently dim so the guard won't notice anything immediately out of place when he drives by." Snart said. "Still, just to be safe we're going to have to be quick as well as thorough."

"Those two don't normally go together," Mick reminded Snart.

"Can't be helped. Hunt can't find out his home has been broken into until after he comes back from Fort Marlene," Snart reminded him. "And it's not going to help anybody if we end up in some kind of holding cell tonight. This isn't the worst possible night for the Legends to make their presence known but it would have to be in the top five so far."

Mick was the ultimate agent of chaos and not even he could disagree with Snart's assessment. "So from the moment the guard leaves again, you figure we have forty-five minutes at the most to do our thing and clear out?"

"Probably fifty, but better safe than sorry." Snart agreed.

Mick scoffed. "Since when have you ever cared about being either?"

10:35 PM

"I don't expect you to ever understand nor forgive me for this," William Mulder whispered more to himself then to his daughter. "I suspect I will never be able to forgive myself. But believe me when I say I hope that I am creating a better future for your brother, even though I hope he never learns of what I have done."

"I knew when I took on this responsibility that there would be sacrifices that needed to be made. I have spent the last twenty years of my life because I believed what I was doing was right. That is was for a greater purpose. And I spent so much time on that greater purpose that I forgot something basic and fundamental. Something that until this very night I have realized was far more important than that."

"There is no redemption for me. Nor any of us here. I realize that now. My colleagues believe that because of our actions tonight we are preserving the human race. All we have done is forestall it. We've made a bargain with the devil and no matter how much we try; they will eventually collect what they are owed. My only hope is that someone, somewhere will be able to bring about humanity's salvation."

"We've sealed our fates tonight. I can only pray that someone else can rebuild from what we have destroyed."

FORT MARLENE

"We can't keep them waiting much longer," the man who one day be known as the First Elder said. "Someone has to send the signal."

"Give Bill time," Spender said.

"He's taking too long."

Spender turned on him. "The man's has to say goodbye to his daughter," he said sternly. "Who knows when any of us may see our families this. Would you begrudge him that?"

As if he had been called Bill Mulder got out of the car he had parked in the runway. Spender looked at him. Bill gave the most imperceptible of nods and opened the backseat of the car.

One of the men took Samantha out of the backseat gingerly.

"The sedative will no doubt be wearing off soon," Bill said slowly.

In understanding the man took her to the hangar where the rest of the families were waiting.

"I realize how difficult this was for you in particular, Bill," Spender said gently. "I know you were never onboard with this. But it has to be done."

"Let's just get on with it," Bill Mulder said walking away from him.

"Send the signal now," Spender said. "And do the other thing."

"Are you sure about that?" the Second Elder said. "We've made an actual sacrifice; why bother with a symbolic one?"

Spender stared at the Stars and Stripes hanging from the fort's banner.

"We need to show that we're willing to sacrifice everything for the greater good," Spender said. "And that means our loyalty lies to no government but the one we represent."

He took out the pack of Morleys, then crumpled them up and threw them on the ground.

"Congratulations gentlemen. We have formed our own country."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

The scene of Samantha's abduction is taken canon from 'Little Green Men' in Season 2 and 'Paper Hearts' in Season 4. Since both versions are from Fox Mulder's memory and it is now clear that was subject to interpretation, this is my 'official' version.

It is never clear how much of what Cassandra Spender knew about her role in the abductions and when: how exactly she learned in Season 6 changed from what she knew in Season 5 has never been made clear. Both versions, however, make it very clear that her husband (good old Smokey) was responsible for her behavior in either way. Since the Spenders and Mulders were close in the show I've decided to give Cassandra a bit of an edge here; in that she thinks her husband is a cheating bastard – which he is. I also decided to give her more independence than she was allowed in either version of the story.

For the record it is a young Deep Throat was is responsible for taking Cassandra over to the dark side. The fact that he seems somewhat malevolent here is deliberate: Jerry Hardin who played him in the original series was always uncertain whether he ad Mulder's best interests at heart and his actions did show he was capable of manipulations. And I threw in the Watergate reference on purpose – though it's not the only one in this story. The bit about the liar and the killer is a reference to Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man; the implication at the time seemed to be Deep Throat was in charge of disinformation and Smoking Man carried out the executions.

We never really knew Bill Mulder's role in the Syndicate: our only source was Smoking Man and he was, to put it mildly, unreliable. Everything in this fic is officially what we know about him and it's worth noting that his hands were never clean as his son wanted to believe. I'd planned for Bill to be personally responsible for delivering his daughter to the aliens and what we see is his weak way of trying to clear his conscience. He essentially becomes an alcoholic and an outcast when we meet him in the series, and there's a good chance it is because he couldn't carry the burden of what he did as well as the rest of the Syndicate. That doesn't make him any less guilty in this case though in future chapters I may try at least to explain his actions if not excuse them.

The back story of the Elder is as some X-philes might know is in fact what the young smoking man 'denied' doing in Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man to the letter, and the fact that he is named Hunt is a nod as well: that's the alias CSM used when he talked to Oswald in Dallas. All of these winks were to Howard Hunt who was arrested for breaking into the Watergate and is suspected of a role in Kennedy's assassination. This is perhaps the ultimate in-joke of Smoking Man, in which we learned from Frohike at the end of the episode that everything in the episode we just watched was entirely based on a story he found in a magazine and was not real at all. So in my version of events the story was true – it just didn't have to do with Cancer Man.

These part of the story will conclude in the next chapter where I'm going to tie events together. And no Spender isn't giving up smoking – that's going to play a role too.

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