Chapter 9

LUTHORCORP

"I've spent my entire life thinking that my family history is by far the hardest thing to escape," Lena Luthor said. "Looking at the Mulders… no, mine is still pretty terrible but his is definitely more complicated."

There had been some debate among the task force about giving Lena Luthor this much access to what Mulder and Scully had uncovered. But as Cat Grant pointed out, they had been trying to go through every rock in the real government and the shadow government and they were still barely hitting above their weight. She knew better than anyone that there were doors the rich and powerful could open that even the most devoted government officials could not.

So while the DEO and ARGUS were trying to get through redacted files through government channels and Star Labs was going to go through the internet, there was nothing to be lost by trying corporate access. And who better to get a look at the old conspiracy then someone who had family in the new one?

"So Mulder still doesn't know which one of these men is his real father," Lena asked Cat Grant.

Cat Grant shook her head. "You can't exactly blame him. Considering what this man," she pointed to the young Smoking Man, "is considered one of the original evil white men, it's hard to blame him for not wanting to be related to him. Trouble is, Star Labs has already found more than enough information to show that Bill Mulder is never going to be considered for sainthood."

"There's this old line that Truman once said. 'Heroes pick the right moment to die'," Quentin Lance said. "Now it's never the best time to lose your father and even worse to have him die in your arms but in a horrible way, it managed to ensure that Fox never truly learned the scope of his father's role in the evils he was tracking down."

"Right now, the best case scenario for William Mulder is that he went along with everything for the better part of twenty years and only repented of his sins when he learned he would have to personally make a sacrifice," Cat Grant said sadly. "I realize compared to your family tree that might make him something close to the good son…"

"…but my anyone else standards, he should have been tried for war crimes," Lena agreed. "And the rest of the men in this photo are all the collaborators."

"Most of them were incinerated at El Rico in 1999. The two exceptions are those two men who we've identified personally."

Cat Grant pushed the button on the screen. "This is Ronald Pakula, Mulder's first informant who he would only identify as Deep Throat. He would be shot and killed in May of 1994, right before the X-Files were closed for the first time. Mulder never knew much about him only that he was highly placed and was an admirer of his work."

"In reality he and William Mulder were colleagues in the State Department going back to the early days of HUAC." Quentin Lance said. "Trying to track down exact details of his work is tricky but what we have found is that from at least 1951 onward, he, William Mulder and a man named Raul Bloodworth were engaged in trying to cover up any information regarding extraterrestrial life. There's evidence that he worked within the NSA during the 1960s and was engaged in several trips to the Middle East and North Africa."

"What's in North Africa?" Lena Luthor asked.

"According to his travel reports, nothing," Cat Grant said. "The vast majority of his trips are to the middle of the Sahara. But based on what Mulder has told us; it is those sections of the world that the Syndicate was in the middle of growing fields in order for bees to gather. Those bees were going to be the method of carrying the virus that had the alien DNA."

"Do you have any idea what caused him to turn against the Syndicate in 1993?" Lena Luthor asked.

"Not a clue," Quentin said. "According to him, he was one of only three men responsible for the death of an E.B.E and it was for that reason that he chose to come to Mulder. In order to unburden himself."

"But you think it has to do with his connection to Bill Mulder," Lena Luthor said.

"This photo proves that he was connected both to the Syndicate and Operation Paper Clip," Cat Grant said. "And honestly if what the aliens were planning was true, killing one of them is one of the most moral things he's done in his entire life. He has to have known about what Bill's son was doing and it's almost certain he made a similar sacrifice at the same time."

"Maybe it only started with Bill Mulder asking an old friend to keep an eye on his son," Quentin said slowly. "They'd been estranged for two decades after all. And maybe Pakula thought this was a way to help someone he thought he could make up for his father's legacy."

"And maybe he couldn't live with either," Cat Grant said. "Scully's told me about why Deep Throat died. Scully was going to make the trade but Deep Throat insisted on it. In hindsight she thinks he had to know that the person who made the exchange was going to be killed."

"We'll never know for sure. It seems that before he was killed he went out of his way to make sure someone he trusted would carry on in his work," Cat Grant said. "He's not in the photo by the way, so let's not deal with him. The one who was killed – less than a year before the fire – was him."

She pressed another button. "This man is Neville Burgess," she said showing a picture of a well-groomed Englishman. "Both Mulder and Scully knew about his connection to the Consortium starting in May of 1995. Burgess was sent to kill Mulder in July of 1998 but he would double cross them, setting up the circumstances that led to his own death not long after."

She paused. "I met him, in a sense." Cat explained how she had come to Mulder's first funeral and how she'd overheard this man talking to Scully. "I could tell he had a British accent. It all but said James Bond villain, which was more accurate than I could ever have thought given what we know."

"MI6?" Lena guessed.

"You might say that" Quentin said. "For all we know Fleming based some of his villains on him."

"How much of that is hyperbole?" Lena asked.

"We're lucky that so much of British intelligence ending up working with Moscow," Cat Grant said. "That's actually where we got a lot of our information on Burgess in the first place."

"Let me guess. He went to Cambridge."

"Oxford. Same purposes though. He was in counterintelligence with Moscow during World War II. Then right around the time Burgess started recruiting, he ends up going to America on a different series of transatlantic voyages." Quentin said. "Have to love that special relationship."

"We know much of the conspiracy was global," Cat said. "And based on what we've found he was involved as a go-between between several trips to Nuremberg and Tokyo not long after the war. From what we understand he was responsible for recruiting some of the most critical scientists who were part of this. Klemperer, Shiro Zama, Eugene Openshaw. All men who spent the decades doing the dirty work for the Syndicate."

"At some point after the Apollo program was formed, he officially relocated to New York. Officially he retired and went into the private sector." Cat Grant pushed another button. "Which is only half-true."

Lena Luthor looked at this. "You can connect him to Roush?"

"Not quite. I can connect him to one of the shell-companies that was later owned by Strughold Mining. That company is connected to Roush."

"Follow the money, indeed," Quentin said. "According to Mulder and some apocryphal evidence, Burgess was at least Spender's equal in the Consortium and may even have been his superior. He may have taken over the role of leadership when the Syndicate tried to have Spender killed."

"Let me guess, they didn't do a very good job," Lena said flatly.

"Honestly I've seen the investigation that was done," Quentin told her. "Even by federal standards it was half assed. They didn't find a body in Mulder's apartment but there was so much blood there, they assumed no one could have lost that much and lived."

Lena raised an eyebrow. "I thought no one even knew his name at the time."

"Hence the half-assed part," Cat Grant agreed. "Admittedly the Bureau was trying to deal with the fact that one of the higher ups – a Section Chief named Scott Blevins – had ties to the Syndicate and a conspiracy to commit various acts of illegal wiretapping as well as connections to the Department of Defense going back nearly eight years. Blevins was connected to Roush; Mulder had just linked him to it but before he could face charges he 'killed himself'."

"Did they leave a body this time?" Lena said sarcastically.

"They did a more thorough investigation on this at least," Quentin said. "It was clearly staged. Mulder himself admitted he was going through a crisis of confidence at the time so he never followed it up. And as much as he didn't really believe it, he so wanted to hope the chain-smoking son of a bitch was dead, he engaged in some magical thinking of his own."

"Who can blame it for that?" Lena looked at the other file. "What led to Burgess's change of heart?"

"In his case it was more like trying to get information from Mulder and Scully than anything else," Cat Grant said. "He was trying to get a hold of some valuable information he was convinced they had. That didn't make him any less committed to the cause – and then events in March of 1998 seem to have changed his mind."

Cat and Quentin explained what little they knew about the so called resistance and how it had sent everything the Syndicate had been working on into chaos.

"It sounds like Burgess was more committed to the plan for the vaccine then the rest of his colleagues were," Quentin said. "In the final months they seemed to have been more committed to retaining their original plan. For whatever reason when Smokey returned to their good graces, he seems to have officially resumed leadership of the project and Burgess very likely was being frozen out."

"So you're guessing he helped Mulder for the same reason as Pakula did," Lena said.

"It's a straw but it's more than even he's been able to grasp at in a quarter of a century," Cat Grant acknowledged. "But that's not as disturbing as compared to the one man in this photo Mulder knew the identity of before that."

Lena Luthor knew about Paper Clip but she had not known Victor Klemperer's connection to the Syndicate. "My family's done some pretty shitty things but I think even Lionel would have known better than to be in a photo with an actual war criminal. How did he deal with it?"

"Compartmentalizing the hell out of it, from what I understand," Cat Grant acknowledged. "His sister doesn't share that opinion but given everything that happened to her…"

"Which brings me to a question I don't want to ask but you know I have too," Lena gritted her teeth. "Did Samantha recognize of these men from her period in captivity?"

"Thank you for being direct," Quentin said. "According to her she spent a lot of time being held by the man we know as C.G.B. Spender. He acknowledged to Scully that he had the search officially called off."

"Of course he also said that he did because she was dead, and we all know that was a lie," Cat Grant reminded them. "Samantha does remember on some occasions she lived at the Spender household and was actually friends with Jeffrey, the man Smoking Man acknowledged was his son."

"After that he elevated him to a position of power in the Bureau. When his son learned the truth about who his father was – and what he was doing his mother all those years – he turned on him," Cat Grant then revealed what had supposedly happened to Jeffrey Spender and what had actually happened.

"All right that part actually does sound like something my family would do," Lena Luthor said. "Lillian might actually consider it an opportunity for personal growth. "

"That brings us to the next very clear question. Obviously your mother isn't old enough to have been close to these men either when we know they got started or when this photograph was taken in 1973." Quentin said. "But the Luthor family has the money and the government connections that someone in your family might very well have been able to come across them when Mulder and Scully learned of their existence."

"Strike the 'might' part," Lena said almost distractedly. "Given the Luthor legacy I'm pretty sure my mother could find out where Jimmy Hoffa was buried if she asked the right person. And Lionel knew more than enough about aliens before he died that he had to at least have suspicions of the larger context."

"That doesn't mean he'd share them with any of you," Cat said bluntly. "I can't imagine this is the kind of thing you'd discuss at Thanksgiving."

"You assume we all got together for Thanksgiving," Lena said. No these were the kinds of things we had to find out on our own and we all had enough money and a name to get us through many doors. But Lillian couldn't have learned about this until after the original Syndicate was destroyed."

"You sound a little too sure of that," Quentin said suspiciously.

"Because I know my mother. If she had found out about any part of this while it was going on she would have demanded a seat at the table. That real estate you say the Consortium met at for half a century, she would have infiltrated it and demanded a takeover."

That was keeping with the Luthor name. "The other possibility is that she might have thought it safer to be behind the scenes," Cat Grant said. "Made herself privately indispensable but not publicly visible."

"That's not my mother's style. Never has been." Lena paused. "It was, however, completely Lionel's."

Cat Grant had actually met Lionel Luthor on more than one occasion and the thought had crossed her mind more than once since she had learned about the existence of the Syndicate. She'd known more than enough about the previous CEO of Luthor Corp to know behind his gladhanding public persona was a cutthroat industrialist who would do anything for power.

There had been stories, whispered but never even near print, that Lionel had worked in conjunction with a Metropolis crime lord named Morgan Edge to have his father murdered when they were both teenagers. In one conversation Lois Lane had told Cat that her cousin had proof on Lionel's involvement but had buried it for reasons that she didn't share. When Lionel had died in 2008 the question was moot – but considering who had ascended to the head of the company, many believed history had repeated itself.

Cat Grant knew this but demonstrated tact. "I realize that this is delicate for you," she said slowly.

"I'll do some digging. But you have to know my family is just as good at covering tracks as the Syndicate is," Lena said. "And they certainly won't answer any questions I might ask."

Both Cat and Quentin knew who she was talking about. "There is one person who might be able to answer our questions," Quentin said slowly. "Someone who has even more of a reason to bring this all crashing down. But we're not even sure he's still alive."

He punched a couple of keys. "Or for that matter, what he even looks like now."

CATCO

"I honestly expected you to be more impressed by this," Kara Danvers said to Felicity.

"You know what they say, you've seen one multi-billionaire's corporate headquarters, you've seen them all," Felicity said as she walked through the place. "And honestly, having been CEO of one on them, even for a few months I'm entitled to be a little jaded."

"Hard to argue with that," James admitted.

"That said, it was nice of Miss Grant to give me the keys to your tech offices," Felicity said.

"She was probably trying to make your life easier," Oliver said. "Save you the trouble of having to hack in."

While Quentin and Cat Grant were having their own meeting with one of corporate overlord she'd opened the door in another way. The official story was that she was allowing Star City access to CatCo in part of the continued security against the threat of metahumans. This was not even a real cover story: the only difference was the details, which everyone knew the devil was in.

"You don't even want to see her office? Try her chair on for size?" James said.

"Been there, done that," Felicity said. "I don't care if she's on the opposite of the country. The moment I try to do anything resembling geeking out, someone in authority is going to come in."

"I'd honestly think you've had a thicker skin for that by now," Oliver said fondly.

"Yeah but it's different when its someone who actually was a role model for you growing up," Felicity reminded him. "Besides we're basically friends. Next time, I'll ask permission first. Anyway, show me where the magic happens."

James led her to the main media room.

"Please tell me she's willing to use all this power for good," Felicity said as she looked over the vast array of screens. "I'm sorry but after the last four and a half years I'm just not ready to believe anyone with this money, power and influence over the world is just benevolent. I've seen too much."

"So have I," James acknowledged.

"Is there anyone we know who hasn't?" Kara asked rhetorically. "I would hope by this point by word is good enough for you."

"It is." Felicity paused. "But save for being from another planet, you're no less capable of being fooled like any other mild-mannered reporter. I mean, you've already told us as much."

"I know," Kara asked. "But in the case of Catherine Grant I think we all know we can trust her by now."

"That doesn't mean she's not capable of being fooled either," Felicity said. "Look this is a long, roundabout way of saying that before I officially do anything that can expose us, I'm going to have to do a security sweep."

"No, for you it's actually short and sweet," Oliver said worriedly.

"I'm trying to figure out how much time and energy it's going to take for me to a top-down, completely thorough and utterly secure monitoring of this site to make sure that we can use it safely."

"So, ten minutes?" Kara asked.

"Better make it fifteen. I skipped my morning latte today." Felicity said absently.

"Where's the coffee bar around here?" Olliver asked.

"The good stuff's on the fifth floor, third door on the fourth left," Kara asked.

Oliver wandered off.

"There's plenty of coffee on this level," James whispered.

"How many times did I have to take a coffee order before I was told where it was?" Kara whispered. "Besides, a billionaire ordered me around for six months without looking at me twice. Forgive me for wanting to know how the other half lives."

HALF AN HOUR LATER

"All right. Let's all be honest about this going in," Felicity said slowly. "We all know how good I am when it comes to working with very little. What I have is, for a hacktivist like myself, the world's biggest trainset. But."

"We're looking for people who spent the better part of half a century trying – and for all intents and purposes, succeeding – to control the world while making sure no one knew they existed," Kara admitted. "The fact that we now know what they look like doesn't mean they're going to pop up on doing punditry on CNN in 1987."

"Not to mention we're going to be going through, roughly twenty six years of everything that may ever have been filmed on a camera at some point," James said. "We'll be lucky if this gets done in two weeks."

"And that would be if I could devote every bit of CatCo's mainframe to this program," Felicity said grimly. "Since we're trying to do this without being noticed…"

She took out the flash drive. "James, you're going to have to keep at least one eye on this for a while and make sure no one gets near this room."

"You're the brains of this operation, have you even got a guestimate as to how long this will take?"

"Best case scenario," Felicity said. "Six weeks, minimum."

"Would this have gone any faster if we'd done it back at Star City?" Oliver wasn't entirely joking.

"In Star City you had me looking for needles in a haystack. This is looking for every kind of permutation of a needle ever designed in thirty years of planets made entirely of hay." Felicity looked at Kara. "I know I shouldn't ask this…"

"As far as I know there aren't any," Kara acknowledged. "And I don't blame you for being frustrated. Winn and Alex have been digging under every rock with the DEO. And we all know how tricky it's going to be with ARGUS."

"Have you gotten anywhere with our one live source yet?" James asked.

"UN-Blonde?" Felicity shook her head. "She's being as unhelpful as ever. Considering she knew all of these people and was probably thrilled when they met a fiery death, you'd think she'd be willing to spill all of their dirty secrets. It's been over a month in captivity, she won't even acknowledge that she knew any of their names."

"You haven't tried your usual methods?" Kara asked Oliver.

"The woman was infected with an alien virus and used as a lab rat for nearly a year," Oliver said. "There is nothing I can do to her that she hasn't been through before."

"Hell, she might even like it." Everyone looked at Felicity. "You do remember who she spent some valuable sack time with during the conspiracy? I don't want to think what it takes to want to sleep with a man like Alex Krycek."

Oliver thought for a moment. "Maybe we're taking the wrong approach with Covarrubias."

"We've used the carrot and the stick. I don't know what else we could offer her."

"Maybe we need someone who's been in her position." Oliver said. "Or someone's whose been in a position to make both kinds of offers."

"Our fake feds are otherwise occupied along with our real ones," Kara said.

"I'm thinking about our most recent recruit from our little trip to Russia last month," Oliver said.

"We came away with two, remember?" Felicity asked. "Who do you think is better suited for the job?"

"I said someone who's been on both sides of this, remember?"

STAR LABS HOLDING AREA

"I told you up front this area is for metahumans only!"

"Take it up with the Justice Department!" the guard said.

"Henshaw would never go along with this." Cisco shouted.

"Read the signature on the order." The guard held up the slip of paper.

Caitlin got in the guard's face. "We made it very clear two weeks ago we didn't want her within a hundred miles of this place."

"Fine. File your complaint. I'll be sure to expedite."

"That'll take months!"

The guard smiled. "Bureaucracy at its finest. And to be clear, I don't give a rat's ass what any mutant loving, alien screwing freaks tell me what to do."

"Hey," Cisco held Caitlin back with a whisper. "We have to pick our battles."

Caitlin looked at the guard as if Killer Frost was just moments away. "Fine. But you're staying her until we say the prisoner's secure."

The guard froze. "Hey, I'm just here for the transfer order –"

"Take it up with the DEO." Cisco said unpleasantly for him. "We certainly will be."

"What are you worried about? She's only human." There was an unpleasant smile on Caitlin's face that not even Killer Frost was capable of.

"You – you know what this woman did? What she's capable of?"

"Why do you think we didn't want her here in the first place?" Cisco said. "Now you can feel free to argue with us but I'm pretty sure those sedatives you used on her won't last nearly as long as you were told."

The guard was clearly nervous but then she got on her radio. "Bring in the prisoner. Carefully."

Marita Covarrubias had listened to this conversation with a glazed expression on her face. She wasn't sure yet whether what was going on was a dumbshow staged for her benefit or whether this was a countermove by the new Syndicate to strike back at the task force that she was being held prisoner by. At this point she was in the gathering intelligence phase trying to find a way for her to get out of this box.

There were other metahumans here of course – she'd seen at least half a dozen from her cell - but none of them had made even an effort to engage with her ever since he'd been imprisoned here – weeks ago? Months ago? Time had lost all meaning.

Mulder and Scully had been the only people to even try to talk with her on a regular basis ever since she'd been taken prisoner. Part of it may have been sheer gloating – which to be fair, they'd more than earned the right to do over the past twenty plus years – but a fair part was trying to figure out what she knew about the new Syndicate and the old one.

The problem was Marita had not survived this long by telling anybody what she knew. She was very aware of what had happened to her predecessors and she was sure the only reason she was still alive was that the old Guard was all but wiped out. She knew whatever protection these impregnable cages might give her against all human and metahuman forces were ultimately useless against the shadow government when they put their minds to it.

Covarrubias also knew every time Mulder and Scully came into see her she was lucky this forcefield was here. If looks alone could kill, the stares they sent here several times a meeting would have done so in their first interaction. Left to their own devices, they probably would have killed her for any one of the number of betrayals she'd done to them over the years. She was alive right now as much to their behest as anything else and they knew it. At a certain point they would run out of patience with her and then let her go – and then publicly announce that she had been fully cooperating with the FBI. Mulder and Scully were not cold-blooded killers even now, but they had made it clear that at this point in their lives they had realized they couldn't save everybody. Keeping her alive was very low on their list of priorities.

Marita suspected that there the various costumed heroes were no doubt serving as a partial check on Mulder and Scully's authority. She hadn't seen as much of them since her captivity had begun but she knew that they had far more important things on their agendas and that they didn't know her well enough to know how she ticked. She wasn't sure of the pecking order of this task force - the X-Files seemed to be running it, but she also know that none of their experience would help them against the least of the superpowered members if they chose to intervene.

That was likely the other reason the Syndicate hadn't made an effort. Considering the level of firepower it contained, there was so much cannon fodder they were willing to risk to eliminate her. No doubt the current leadership was counting on everyone else to lose patience with her and then they'd remove her.

So Marita was in a metaphorical prison far more deadly than the one she was actually in. Collaboration was not an option any more than staying quiet was. She'd spent a lot of time trying to think of some other path that might work, but she couldn't find one that led to freedom or if that followed, survival beyond minutes.

Marita knew by this point she had survived long past any real expiration date – the alien virus should have killed her twenty years ago and the cure had almost been worse than the disease. But it had filled her with a certainty that she wanted to live, no matter what the cost. There was nothing despicable of doing whatever it took to survive. Which left the only option she had: watch and wait.

And at least there was some entertainment today.

Three guards came in with a figure who was heavily restrained. Given the way they were moving her – it was clearly female – she was heavily sedated as they had said. And whoever it was had to be human; the chains and bonds they used to hold her would have been useless on an alien or a metahuman.

Oh well. Might as well play along. "So who's my new neighbor?" Marita said deadpan. "Is their overcrowding in Arkham or did Hannibal Lecter have a sister I don't know about?"

The guards didn't even break stride. They were laser focused on getting the prisoner into the cell. "Where are my jailers? Didn't they want to hang out?"

No answer from the guards. One of them entered the code and was clearly so nervous she had to do it twice. For the first time Marita actually considered that the person they were bringing it might actually not be for her benefit – or if she was, the guards weren't in on the scam.

One of them looked up. "Until they sort this out we do this in shifts. No one's here for more than three hours. Remember don't engage with the prisoner at all. Don't even acknowledge her presence."

Marita was actually started to get intrigued. "You'd think you'd locked up the devil himself."

All three guards reacted for the first time – and whatever else Marita might think, there was genuine fear on the oldest. "Who the hell are you?" he said nervously.

"My lawyer fucked me. Everyone's innocent in here," Marita said sweetly.

Marita expected a violent reaction. "Count yourself lucky," he said. "In there, you're safer than any of us. I'm going to get on the phone with Justice. See if they can expedite the paperwork. Antilles, you're with me."

The third guard – the only woman – looked scared. "I don't want to have the first shift," she said.

"You read her file," Antilles said. "Of the three of us, you're the only one she might hesitate before killing if things go FUBAR. Use that if you can."

Neither of them even waited for a response; they both got to the exit as fast as they could.

The woman who'd been left behind was clearly unsettled, if not outright terrified. She got as far away from the new prisoner's cell as she could without leaving the room.

Marita's knew that there were some peoples in the X-Files who had psychic abilities; that there were some who had the ability to bend people to their will with just the sound of their voice or their own mental powers. They'd existed before metahumans had been classified and there were no doubt just as many after the particle accelerator had exploded. That would explain why she was sedated. But if that was the case the last thing you'd do is have a guard in here.

Something else was clearly going on. And it became clear that the moment the guard got to her post, the woman in the cell rose to her feet and sat with her legs crossed.

"Clever putting me here," she said serenely. "Flattering, almost. But irrelevant. I was born in a prison that was inescapable but I found a way to climb out of it. You think by keeping me out of sight that I'm less dangerous."

It was clearly taking every bit of effort for the guard to remain upright now. "This prison was built to hold creatures far stronger than you. It can hold you."

"Admirable, but mistaken," The woman got to her feet. "They may be called metahumans, but they are still merely human. They can't possibly hold a demon."

She smiled broadly. "Or even the Heir."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I figure it was time to bring Lena Luthor into the story. Considering the tangled family dynamics of the Mulder family it was worth bringing her in.

Deep Throat has been connected to the Smoking Man both in Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man and through other subtle clues. Since we know about Smoking Man's connection to Mulder, it is worth considering that Deep Throat may have been Mulder's first informant out of loyalty to Bill Mulder more than anything else. It's certainly the most obvious reason he'd have sought him out in the first place more than any information he might have given.

Well-Manicured Man was played by John Neville in the original series and its never been clear why someone who was so clearly British would be part of what was to that point an American conspiracy. I tried to give an explanation as to who he was and how he got involved. (And since no one referred to him as the Well-Manicured Man, I wasn't going to bother and even try to make an attempt here. Besides, it's not like we ever saw him buffing his nails.) Neville Burgess by the way is a play not only on the actor's last name but one of the members of the Cambridge 5, those in MI-6 who acted as double agents for Moscow for decades until they were exposed in the 1960s.

Yes the Smoking Man was 'killed' during Season 5 under those exact circumstances. I never bought it when it happened and it's amazing to think any reputable government agency – much less Mulder - would have taken it at face value. I'm giving him the benefit that he was undergoing a crisis of confidence based on Scully's health crisis and his beliefs that he let it go. (For the record, it's around this point I mark an overall decline in the series quality, certainly with the mythology.)

Most of what involves Lionel Luthor is taken pretty much verbatim from Smallville including how Lionel was killed. It's never clear how close Smallville is to the mythology of Berlanti but considering that in Supergirl we learn that Clark and Lex were friends at one point and that some of the backstory of Smallville was made official Superman lore I think I can be allowed some dramatic license. As for who they're looking for, that may not be answered immediately or even in this installment, so I'll remain vague for now.

I figured Felicity would be a little blasé having spent a so much time working – and at one point, running – Queen Enterprises. I figured at some point they'd use CatCo to see if there was any footage of the Syndicate but this may not be revealed until the story ends.

Why hasn't Marita revealed her secrets yet? Because she survived The X-Files. She knows what happens to anyone who tries to help Mulder and Scully and since the federal government is powerless to stop the shadow government she knows how dangerous things are. I'm putting myself inside the head of the enemy.

I was honestly intended to reveal more of my secrets in this part of the story when it comes to the prisoners. Yes its one of the Al Ghul daughters. But which one? Is this an act like Marita thinks and if so who is on it? Marita is familiar with the tricks of the Syndicate so she is raised to assume everything is a move in a game. Right now, I know what my plan was. I may change my mind soon. But since the next chapter of the story is going to be almost entirely new ground for me, I may not return to this for a while.

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