The X-Files - 5.

German title: Redux 1

Italian title: no change

Japanese title: Kikan Part 1
translation: Redux Part 1

Spanish title: Todas las Mentiras conducen a la Verdad
translation: All Lies Lead To The Truth

US Airdate: November 2, 1997

writer: Chris Carter

David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder

Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully

Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Skinner

Guest Cast:

William B. Davis as Cigarette Smoking Man

John Finn as Michael Kritschgau

Steve Makaj as Ostelhoff

Ken Camroux as Senior Agent

Charles Cioffi as Blevins

Barry W. Levy as Dr. Vitagliano

Bruce Harwood as Byers

Dean Haglund as Langly

Tom Briadwood as Frohike

Don S. Williams as Elder

Julie Arkos as Holly

All Lies Lead To The Truth

Or so the new tagline says...

The day had finally arrived. We had waited 6 long months, some of us patiently, others not. We hashed and rehashed all the theories about Mulder's "suicide" (yeah, right) and we worried about Scully's cancer. We also noticed that "our" show had suddenly become front page news. The

X-Files were hot this summer with no rumour left unturned, the show was all the rage and everyone wanted to talk about it, analyze it, what makes it tick? Where have these people been the last four seasons? Don't they know this is The Best Damn Show On TV??!!

In other words, we were pumped and frankly, now I'm a little deflated. Don't get me wrong, it was a fine season opener, just not the best, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion, for the acronym-challenged). Let's get onto the plotline and I'll add some final notes before the quotes, we'll sort it all out together.

Plotline

After a brief synopsis of Gethsemane, last season's finale and part one of this three-parter, we open with a repeat of Scully's final scene before the FBI board. After saying "Mulder died last night", we see the words, "24 hours earlier" and tune in to Mulder at home on his couch, watching old UFO Convention footage on TV. His voiceover speaks of his deception, how he now believes it was all a hoax and his search for The Truth may even have helped cause Scully's cancer. He no longer believes he'll be reunited with his sister, he is beside himself with grief as he picks up his handgun, checking that it's loaded, deciding to end this "journey" tonight...

The phone rings, interrupting his suicidal thoughts. It's Kritschgau, calling to warn him that he was followed. As he listens to Kritschgau say that "they are probably watching you", Mulder scans his apartment for bugs (like he hasn't done THAT at least once a week!) and, lo and behold, he spies a hole in his ceiling. A hole just big enough for a teeny camera lens. Can we pause for a minute to contemplate the enormity of this? It's been established that the man sleeps on his couch, so the

last thing he sees at night, the first thing he sees in the morning, is his ceiling, and he's never noticed this freakin' HOLE?! It's right next to a light fixture, where does he buy those perpetual light bulbs?! Forgive me, I digress.

Mulder realizes he's being spied on from above, we see the camera's view-point as he rushes upstairs, where we see Ostelhoff (or The DoD Guy, as he's been nicknamed, The Department of Defence Guy) attempting to burn his phone call log in his wastepaper basket (sloppy work, yes, I've addressed this in the Notes). Warrants? We don't need no stinkin' search warrants! Mulder busts down the door and proceeds to frantically stomp on the burning paper, naturally assuming they're a Major Clue. The DoD Guy takes a last chance and grabs for his handy sawed-off shotgun. We hear a shotgun blast from the other side of the door, and the door slowly closes. Cue the theme music, we're off and running!

Scully walks into her apartment, checks her message machine, which for some reason has to verbally announce, "You have no new messages", what a blow to a gal's ego. She continues walking into her darkened bedroom, removing her jacket and begins to remove her shirt (if you can, freeze-frame this scene at the crucial moment, can you see the glint of a navel ring? In real-life, Gillian Anderson does have a navel ring and by golly, it appears Scully's pierced! Thanks to The Cult Of The Smoking Alien and Hindy's super-duper slo-mo work for pointing this out!), when Mulder's voice speaks from the darkness, "Keep going, FBI woman.".

Sidebar: This scene is a direct homage to the classic movie, "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid". Katherine Ross walks into her bedroom, begins undressing, is startled to see Sundance holding a gun on her, he says something like, "Keep going, school teacher.", so she slowly undresses to her undies, he begins to touch the gun to her skin then she says, "You're late." Classic stuff that led to a great scene with Scully and Mulder.

And, this turns out to be the only time we actually *see* our agents together in this ep, although they are certainly working together for the whole hour. Okay, back to the plot...

Mulder proceeds to tell her about the dead DoD Guy, now in his apartment minus a face, the surveillance on his apartment, and how it all leads back to the FBI! They've been the victims of a massive hoax, maybe even going back to when they first began working together. Scully is shocked and disgusted by it all, and Mulder talks her into joining him in lying to the Bureau.

We now see a repeat of the scene where Scully walks into Mulder's apartment and identifies the dead body. She leaves his apartment and is met in the hallway by Skinner. She proceeds to lie yet again by confirming Mulder's suicide to Skinner, although she barely looks in his eyes, a dead giveaway. He doesn't look impressed and tells her Section Chief Blevins wants her to come in for questioning, that she is believed to be withholding information.

Using Ostelhoff's ID card, Mulder enters the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, simply by swiping it through a card-reading device similar to what you may use to scan your credit card. Really! Nobody bothers to check his picture, no one wants a thumb print, nada, just a mere swipe, and if the little light turns green, you're in. Yikes, this is our government at work?! Technically, though, it's not *my* government (I'm in Canada), so who cares? ;-)

Scully enters Blevins' office, just like the scene from The Pilot, with Skinner entering the room behind her and positioning himself by the filing cabinet in the corner, exactly where Cancer Man originally stood in The Pilot. A telling point, especially considering how Scully has begun to see Skinner as an enemy. She is asked about a DoD agent contacting them and she confirms that he told them about an elaborate hoax concerning an alien body. She is tight-lipped when told to cough up the DoD agent's name, she's not going to drag Kritschgau into this as well. But, Skinner whips out a picture of him, a surveillance camera shot taken in Mulder's apartment, saying "Is this the man? Michael Kritschgau?". What's the point in lying now? She confirms it and is told there will be more questions for her before a special joint FBI panel Blevins has assembled for later that night.

So where did Skinner get the picture? We're led to believe that he's working for the dark side, but until I hear differently, I refuse to believe that, not MY Skinner! My instincts (and spoilers for Redux 2), tell me that the pic probably came from Blevins himself.

Mulder meets up with Kritschgau, gleefully waving his ID card at him when asked how he got into the building. Kritschgau nervously tells him to put it away, and takes him to his office, locking the door behind him. He then tells Mulder that he may be able to find a cure for Scully's cancer in Level 4 of the complex they're in, which Mulder's card gives him access to.

We now see Cancer Man as he picks Mulder's lock and enters his apartment. He picks up a framed picture of a young Mulder and his sister, Samantha, lip trembling ever so slightly to indicate emotion. As he puts the picture down, he turns and looks down at the chalk outline and blood stain on the floor by Mulder's couch, his face in turmoil and concern (at least, that's how it looked to me). His shadow, thrown by the sunlight beaming through the window behind him, covers the body outline and shows a spot of light shining from above. He looks up and sees the hole where the camera used to be (now taken by the authorities, I guess, or maybe the Consortium). You can tell he didn't know it was there, and boy, will he be ticked!

In Mulder's office, or *their* office, whatever, Scully phones Holly, now working in the Communications Center of the FBI (that's what ya get for bashing Skinner around in Pusher!) to help track down the phone calls made by the Dod Guy. The phone calls, made at 11:21, 11:14, 3:07, 2:02 and 5:12, all transferred to the same extension, an executive level, a branch which would mean the phone calls were transferred to anyone on that level. Scully asks if Skinner is at that extension, Holly verifies that he is. Her face shows that she's already made up her mind, she believes the calls *were* made to Skinner (lots of others at that extension, I'm sure, come on Scully!).

After hanging up, she receives a call from Dr. Vitagliano at the Paleoclimatogy Department, at American University. He's been working on the ice core samples (the ones she sent him in Gethsemane), and he asks her to come and see him in the lab, there's something she will want to

see for herself.

Kritschgau and Mulder begin what turns into a LONG walk through the DoD complex, strangly absent of any other people to overhear them (handy!). Kritschgau tells him that the Level 4 is a biological quarantined wing, containing labs and storage facilities, housing DNA from nearly every

American born since 1945 that had ever been seen by a government doctor. This is the base of the elaborate alien hoax which Mulder has been drawn into. With the general public scared of the new atom bomb, after World War II, the government began "fanning the flames" of all the UFO

sightings.

It's easier for me to now simply quote what Kritschgau tells Mulder, rather than try to sum it up. While he speaks, we see numerous stock footage which relates to the people and times he's talking about.

"There are truths which can kill a nation, Agent Mulder. The military needed something to deflect attention away from its arms strategy. Global domination through the capability of total enemy annihilation. The nuclear card was fine, as long as we alone could play it, but the generals and politicals knew what they could not win was a public relations war. Those photos from Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not faces Americans wanted to see in the mirror. Oppenheimer knew it, of course, but we silenced him. When the Russians developed the bomb, the fear in the military was not for safety at home, but for armnistace and treaty. The business of America isn't business, Agent Mulder, it's war. Since Antietam nothing has driven the economy faster. We needed a reason to keep spending money, and when there wasn't a war to justify it, we called it war anyway. The cold war was essentially a 50 year public relations battle, a pitched game of Chicken against an enemy we not much more than called names. The Communists called us a few names, too. 'We will bury you', Krushtev said, and the public believed it. After what McCarthy had done to the country, they ate it with a big spoon. We squared off a few times, in Cuba, Korea and Vietnam, but nobody dropped the bomb. Nobody dared."

Mulder asks what any of this has to do with flying saucers, Kritschgau says, "The US military saw a good thing in '47 when the Roswell story broke. The more we denied it, the more people believed it was true. Aliens HAD landed! A made to order cover story for generals looking to develop the national war chest. They opened official investigations with names like Grudge, Twinkle, Project Blue Book, Majestic 12. They brought in college professors and congressmen, fed them enough bogus fact, enough fuzzy photos and eye-witness accounts that *they* believed it too. They even hooked Doug MacArthur, for God's sake. I can't tell you how fortuitous the time of your call was. Do you know when the first supersonic flight was, Agent Mulder? 1947. Soon every experimental

aircraft being flown was a UFO sighting. When the abduction stories started up, it was too perfect. We'd almost gotten caught in Korea, an ambitous misstep. China and the Soviets knew it, the UN got all heated up at us."

Mulder: "Germ warfare, we were accused of using them in Korea."

Kritschgau: "It was developmental then, nothing like what we or the Russians have now. The bio-weapons used in the Gulf War were so ingenius as to be almost undetectable. Developed right in this very building." Mulder asks if he's saying that all reports of alien abductions were lies. He answers, "Not lies exactly, but citizens taken unsuspecting and tested. A classified military project, above top secret, and still ongoing. You've heard the recent denials about Roswell by the military

and the CIA? What's been the effect? Even wilder and more wide-spread belief. The American appetite for bogus revelation, Agent Mulder." Mulder exclaims that he's seen aliens, and he replies, "You've seen what they wanted you to see."

Kritschgau explains that the body Mulder saw would have been proven to be a fake only through extensive scientific examination. Mulder realizes that Scully would have been able to prove it and Kritschgau says that the hoax was timed so that Scully would not be alive to conduct the examination. When questioned as to why Kritschgau went along with it, he answers that his retribution was what happened to his son in the Gulf War and he believes a cure for both of them can be found in Level 4, he *has* to believe. After Mulder leaves him, Kritschgau is taken away by

DoD men for questioning.

Next we see Cancer Man meeting with the 1st Elder at a racetrack, upset that he seems to be "out of the loop" concerning Mulder. Why was he not told the Consortium were watching Mulder? The 1st Elder refuses to let him in on it, denying any knowledge and telling him their FBI source

confirmed Mulder's suicide (WHO?! Skinner? Blevins? Holly?!). Cancer Man is highly doubtful.

Scully is in the lab with Dr. Vitagliano. He has tested the cells found in the ice core samples as she requested, only to find nothing that can be identified as animal or plant material, only a chimeral hybrid. He placed these cells in with bovine fetal material, and the cells began to divide, and indicate the beginning of a life-form. "Growing into *what*, I don't know."

We see Mulder as he wanders through the DoD complex, checking doors and evading the guards. He finally opens a door and finds a huge room full of alien-looking bodies on metal gurneys. As he sadly touches one (thinking back on the body he has already seen, presuming these are fakes as well), he sees a light strobing on and off through another window and walks towards it. He finds another room, this one full of pregnant-looking women! They all have extended bellies and are hooked up to some kind of machinery (very similar to what Scully seemed to go through in Ascension).

Scully can't contact Mulder about the life-form discovery, so she has to soldier on alone. She asks Dr. Vitagliano to draw some of her blood, so she can try to match her own DNA with the ice-core sample, proving a connection between her cancer and this hoax. It's to be done by 7 that evening (the time of the FBI board meeting), which Vitagliano says is impossible, but she insists that it must be done, "everything in my life depends on it". (Not "my life", but everything in it, such as Mulder, awwww)

As a sidenote, plenty of scientific fans wrote in to the mailing list and newsgroup about this plot point. Not a snowball's chance in You-Know-Where that this kind of match could be done in less than 72 hours! Just thought I'd pass that on, let's continue.

After having her blood drawn, Scully looks up to see Skinner poking his face in at the window, watching her. She storms out of the lab, losing her little cotton ball in the process (check your tape, she's holding it on her arm one minute, it's gone, along with any kind of needle mark, the next) and confronts Skinner in the hallway, demanding to know what he's doing there, is he following her? He says he has a forensic report on the body in Mulder's apartment, might she wish to explain it? A verbal volleyball match ensues, which boils down to which one is the bigger and better liar. He asks if she plans to tell these same lies to the FBI panel and where the heck IS Mulder? She won't say a word to him, still under the impression that Skinner is a Bad Guy, and turns to leave. He says, "Your silence won't save you, not with these people. And if you lie, I don't know if anything can." And she replies, "Except proof."

We now watch as Scully plays scientist detective, drawing out drops of blood from one vial, placing it in another, doing all kinds of things I can't properly identify for you here. If you're interested, you can find a pretty good description of what she's doing, called a Southern Blot, HERE <http://128.253.82.7/Block4/Reference/Diagnostics/south.html>. She finally arrives at the proof she seeks, a match between her DNA and the organism found in the ice-core samples, proof that her own government gave her the cancer which has taken over her body.

Meanwhile, Mulder has found a tunnel to the Pentagon (handy-dandy!) and we watch as he enters the same room we've seen Cancer Man enter in The Pilot and The Erlenmeyer Flask, so we KNOW what goodies are behind this door. He finds a room with an ancient-looking card filing system, stacked floor to ceiling with individual cards and finds cards for both Scully and Michael Kritschgau Jr. Oddly enough, Jr.'s card is empty, while Scully's is covered with numerical data, which Mulder somehow "reads" to lead him to another room. There he finds a metallic vial matching the numbers on her card. Could this finally be the cure?

We cut to Cancer Man as his phone rings. One of the guards at the DoD is calling, as per his instructions, to alert him that Ostelhoff has entered the complex. Mulder has been caught! However, the guard is told not to do or say anything, Cancer Man is on his way. He arrives and

confirms for himself that it IS Mulder on the security camera, but when the guard offers to stop him before he leaves the building, Cancer Man tells him to let him go. Hmmmmm....

To help buy Mulder time to get out of the DoD complex, we see a replay of the final scene from Gethsemane as Scully speaks to the FBI board, hoping they'll "believe the lie" that Mulder is dead. The scene, this time, goes on as Skinner walks into the room, carrying a folder (more than likely the reports which prove that it's Ostelhoff, not Mulder, that's dead), and Scully begins to tell Blevins about her proof which points the finger at "someone in this room". Proof that she was given her cancer by the same people she works for and trusts. As she is about to present the DNA report, blood drips from her nose onto the report and she faints. Skinner catches her as she lands in her chair and she looks at him, saying quietly, "You...". He asks for a doctor.

Mulder seeks out the only people he can trust with the vial he's found, The Lone Gunmen, and they run a spectrum analysis on the fluid inside it. Alas, all they find is deionized water. Was it all for nothing? Stay tuned fans, it's ... To Be Continued.

Notes

The title means to return, as from war or from exile.

The cast listing has been altered, the official site had Michael Kritschgau listed as Scott. And on another cast listing note, I got all excited when the official site had Skinner listed as "Starring", as

opposed to "Guest Star", where he usually is. But, the onscreen listing still had him as "Also Starring". Does all that make sense? :-) Anyway, fingers are still crossed that we'll see more of Skinner this year.

I say we all gather in Mulder's apartment for our next big xphile party, after all, his neighbors seem to be deaf and the landlord must be pretty cool to have not tossed him out by now! Let's see now, poisoned water (Anasazi), which caused one of his fellow tenants to murder her husband, X being murdered in his hallway (Herrenvolk), blood everywhere, quite the mess, Scully's sister, Melissa killed (The Blessing Way) and now this! There had to be at least 2 gunshots, one from Mulder's gun when he shot the DoD Guy in the upstairs apartment, and another from the shotgun when he blew Ostelhoff's face off. And you'd think *someone* would have noticed Mulder dragging the body down a flight of stairs into his apartment, presumably with his head wrapped in plastic or something. Sheesh, what a place!

Some homage to Oliver Stone's movie "JFK" here, "Let the truth be known though the heavens fall" is a take on James Garrison's line "Let the truth be told, though the heavens fall", and I'm told that the scene between Cancer Man and the 1st Elder at the racetrack is based on a very similar scene in the movie. As you can tell, I haven't seen the flick, so corrections are welcome.

I found numerous references to "Let there be justice, though the heavens fall" as being an official judicial motto, for lack of a better term, but nothing telling me exactly where it originally came from. I did find out that it's New Jersey’s state motto, how's that?

What has happened to poor Cancer Man?! He's "out of the loop" with the Consortium, didn't know a thing about Mulder's surveillance (which really ticked him off), and was that a tear rolling down his cheek as he looked at the hole in Mulder's ceiling?! He does have an eagle eye, though, took him mere seconds to find that hole, the one Mulder's missed all those months (don't get me started!). He appeared relieved when he spotted Mulder on the Pentagon security camera, pleased that he really wasn't dead. Did he orchestrate Mulder's easy-access to the Pentagon and all the "evidence"? And he must have had some notion of what Mulder would do if he was alive, as can be seen from the request to be told if Ostelhoff's ID card was used.

A note to all aspiring spies out there, NEVER leave paper copies of your phone call log lying around, they don't burn quickly enough. It's probably just as well that Ostelhoff had his face shot off, he never had much of a chance at any future stakeouts if this was any example!

This hour seemed to me to be written for the new fans, the ones lured in by the repeats now being shown in syndication. The voiceovers, or in other words, practically the whole script, simply wrapped up everything that's happened to our agents in the last 4 seasons. Save for Samantha, and she's coming back next week, so... As a long-time fan, I didn't learn anything new, with the exception of the explanation for Mulder's "suicide", and that's what ticked me off. Okay, so Scully is now suspicious of Skinner's involvement, but I think she has been for a while (I present Max as an example). I'm not going to trash this ep, though, it did have its moments and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, after all, they did spend all summer shooting The Movie, they weren't in top form. And I do believe Redux 2 will be the topping on this cake, so guess what? I'm pumped again, man I DO love this show!

Quotes

____________________

Mulder's opening voiceover

"I've held a torch in the darkness to glance upon a truth unknown. An act of faith begun with an ineloquent certainty that my journey promised the chance, not just of understanding, but of recovery. That the disappearance of my sister, 23 years ago, would come to be explained. And that the pursuit of these greater truths about the existence of extra-terrestrial life might even re-unite us. A belief which I now know to be false, and uninformed, in the extreme. My folly revealed by facts

which illuminate both my arrogance and self-deception. If only the tragedy had been mine alone, might it be more easy tonight to bring this journey to its end." (he now has his handgun in his hand .... the phone rings)

____________________________________________________________

In Scully's darkened bedroom

Mulder: "Keep going, FBI woman."

Scully: "Mulder? What are you doing? Why are you sitting in my bedroom in the dark?"

Mulder: "It was too crowded in my apartment, I couldn't sleep."

Scully: "I'm not kidding, Mulder."

Mulder: "Good, 'cause neither am I. There's a dead man on the floor of my apartment, and it's only

a matter of time before he starts to stink the place up."

Scully: "What are you talking about, Mulder? What's going on?"

Mulder: "Apparently somebody thinks my life is interesting enough to put on video tape. My

apartment's been under an electronic surveillance for at least 2 months. Look at this,

courtesy of the US government." (he hands her The DoD Guy's ID card)

Scully: "That's the dead man in your apartment?"

Mulder: "Yeah, he works ... he worked for the Department of Defence."

Scully: "How did he die, Mulder?"

Mulder: "Gunshot wound to the face."

Scully: "Have you contacted anybody at the Bureau?"

Mulder: "I can't do that, Scully, I can't go to the authorities with this."

Scully: "What are you talking about?"

Mulder: "This man, Ostelhoff, worked for the military. Are you beginning to get the picture? Do you

*see* what's happening here?"

Scully: "That the hoax is connected to the military, just like Kritschgau said it was."

Mulder: "This hoax, your cancer, everything! It just doesn't lead back to the military, it leads right

back to the FBI!"

Scully: "What?"

Mulder: "This man, Ostelhoff, was set up in the apartment directly above mine. I caught him trying

to destroy phone records on which the same number was called 17 times."

Scully: "This is a PBX operator at the Bureau."

Mulder: "Yeah."

Scully: "Who would he be calling at the FBI?"

Mulder: "I don't know."

Scully: "Mulder, how long has this been going on?"

Mulder: "Maybe since the beginning, since you joined me on the x-files."

Scully: "That would mean that for 4 years we've been nothing more than pawns in a game, that it

was a lie from the beginning. Mulder, these men... You give them your faith and you're

supposed to trust them with your life."

Mulder: "There are those who *can* be trusted. What I need to know is who among them is *not*. I

will not allow this treason to prosper, not if they've done this to you."

Scully: "Mulder, we can't go to the Bureau making these accusations."

Mulder: "No, but as they lie to us, we can lie to them. A lie to find the truth."

____________________________________________________________

Mulder's voiceover heard as Scully identifies the body in Mulder's apartment

"Let the truth be known though the heavens fall. The web of lies entangling us can now be connected back to the very institution which brought us together. The facts supported by a byzantine plot, executed by someone inside the FBI who, if named, could be tied to the plot meant

to destroy me. And to the terminal disease inflicted on Scully. In four years, I have shared my partner's passionate search for the truth. And if my part has been a deception, I have never seen her integrity waver or her honour compromised. But now, I ask her to lie, to the people that lied to us. A dangerous lie to find the truth. To find the men who would be revealed as its enemy, as OUR enemy. As the enemy within." (Scully now meets Skinner in the hallway)

____________________________________________________________

Mulder's voiceover as he enters the DoD complex

"The military connection to the conspiracy we had pierced was now undeniable. The man who lay dead in my apartment worked for the Department of Defense at its Advanced Research facility. What I might find here, I was uncertain of. But my crime had provided me access. As long as they believed Scully's lie, that it was me lying on my floor, I might learn truths here. But, if our lies were discovered, both Scully and I would be discovered *with* them."

____________________________________________________________

Kritschgau: "I was followed from your apartment the night we spoke."

Mulder: "Someone at the FBI is involved, this man, Ostelhoff, was in contact with somebody ..."

Kritschgau: "How'd you get his card?"

Mulder: "I found it on a dead man."

Kritschgau: "You know what that is? What you have in your hand? That gives you Level 4

clearance."

Mulder: "Level 4 clearance, that means I get to dine at the officer's club?"

Kritschgau: "You have access to everything, Mr. Mulder, things I don't, things I can only tell you

about."

Mulder: "I need to know who did this to Scully!"

Kritschgau: "What you can have, what you may find, is so much more than that."

Mulder: "What?"

Kritschgau: "What you want most desperately of all."

Mulder: "The cure for Scully's cancer?" (notice how he doesn't say anything about his sister,

Samantha)

____________________________________________________________

At the racetrack

1st Elder: "I was told that you needed to see me, that there was some urgency."

Cancer Man: "It seems I've been left out of the loop."

1st Elder: "About?"

Cancer Man: "You were watching Mulder, you had a man on him. No one bothered to inform me of

this."

1st Elder: "I know nothing about a man."

Cancer Man: "I will not be cut out like this! You need my expertise. Is this being run from DoD?"

1st Elder: "If it is, I'm unaware of it."

Cancer Man: "I've always kept Mulder in check. I put this whole thing together, I created Mulder."

(yikes, what does THAT mean?!)

1st Elder: "Agent Mulder is dead, our FBI source confirmed it this morning. Mulder killed himself.

Mulder was an asset, without his partner we may have underestimated his fragility."

Cancer Man: "I've never underestimated Mulder. I still don't."

____________________________________________________________

Dueling voiceovers as Mulder searches through the DoD complex and finds the "aliens" and women

Mulder: "I had come here looking for answers. Hoping not only to lay bare this conspiracy against the country and the men behind it, but to finally learn the truth about the possibilty of intelligent

extraterrestrial life. Now, with what I've heard, my beliefs seemed more and more improbable. The possibility of a cure for Scully somewhere inside these walls, my only hope. But if I might find it, and somehow save her, the very existence of this cure would mean with certainty that I had believed in a lie from the start."

Scully: "I had no way to reach Agent Mulder, to tell him what I had discovered. An unidentified microscopic life-form whose very existence held the possibility of revelation. Was this organism, extracted from the ice which had entombed the alien corpse, the germ cell that might give proof of extraterrestrial life? Or was it just the opposite? The scientifically engineered creation of a chimera. An unclassifiable, biological product designed to set up a hoax. Manufactured to create the false beliefs that have long driven Agent Mulder. I now began to realize that the answer to this question might exist within the life-form itself. Biological proof of its connection to the cancer invading my

body, to a virus living inside this organism, to which I had been exposed during my abduction 3 years ago."

____________________________________________________________

In the hallway outside the lab where Scully has had her blood drawn

Scully: "What are you doing here?"

Skinner: "I was gonna ask you the same."

Scully: "No you weren't, you followed me here. Why are you following me? Is this more dirty work

you're doing for the DoD?!"

Skinner: "Why don't you tell *me* something, Agent Scully. Why don't you tell me what you're

doing here?"

Scully: "I want an answer from you!"

Skinner: "I want an answer from *you*!!"

Scully: "This isn't your job!"

Skinner: "My job is to direct the agents under me, to question their motives when they're lying

about investigations! To take steps to cease or censure those actions. Your lie is on

record, Agent Scully."

Scully: "And what about yours?"

Skinner: "On my desk, I have the pathology and forensics reports for the body found in Mulder's

apartment. Now, you have to answer for yourself in 5 hours. As you compound the lies,

you compound the consequences for them."

Scully: "All lies lead to the truth, isn't that right?"

Skinner: "And what about your lie, Agent Scully? What does it lead to?"

Scully: "The truth. About the men behind what happened to me, about my abduction and the

tests, about being exposed to something against my will, about being put on a table and

having something implanted in me. And then having my memory stolen, only to have it

returned along with a disease that I was given!"

Skinner: "Is that your justification? Is that what you're going to tell the joint panel tonight?"

Scully: "Are you afraid of that?"

Skinner: "Well considering the dead man in Mulder's apartment was murdered in cold blood, and

you willfully misidentified him, yes, I am afraid. But I'm only afraid for you."

Scully: "You're gonna use that against me, aren't you? You're gonna use me as I've been used all

along, to preserve the lies."

Skinner: "Where is Agent Mulder? (Scully says nothing and begins to walk away) Your silence

won't save you, not with these people. And if you lie, I don't know if anything can."

Scully: "Except proof."

____________________________________________________________

More dueling voiceovers as Scully begins her scientific work and Mulder reaches the rooms within the Pentagon

Scully: "The cruelest ironies are those consecrated by the passage of time, chanced and occasioned by shocking discovery. I had joined Agent Mulder on the x-files because of my background in the medical sciences. My assignment was to question his work, to debunk his investigations and reign him back into the FBI mainstream. Now, as fate would have it, I am calling on these very same skills to prove that he has been the target of a scheme, orchestrated by someone close to us in the FBI. Someone we have trusted above all others, involved in a highly organized plot to keep a dangerous secret from the light of day. I could only guess at what Agent Mulder may have uncovered on his own, what he may have found to confirm or deny what he has long held to be a conspiracy to control the public inquiry into the government's knowledge and contact with an alien race, or races. If he had hoped, as I do, to learn the identity of those who sought to destroy us, I had, with the discovery of this unidentified micro-organism, what could amount to forensic evidence. Hard, and undeniable, genetic evidence, of a connection between the

conspirators and the cancer which has now metastasised in my bloodstream. I have few short hours to conduct these tests, before I must appear before an FBI panel to explain myself. And, as I am ready to lie to them about Agent Mulder, I am also ready to confront them with proof. Proof extracted from this tiny organism, that can blow open a conspiracy of global consequence."

Mulder: "If Agent Scully and I had been led to believe that the conspiracy meant to destroy us has its roots in the Department of Defense, that fact seems all but irrefutable now. I had gained entry to

a large storage facility by a hallway connecting underground to the Pentagon. On hundreds of rows of shelves are materials that reveal nothing to me of the cure to Scully's cancer. And now, as I have reached the terminus of this space, what appears to be an old and antiquated filing system seems my only hope of finding what this man, Kritschgau, has assured me exists. If his own desperate hope for his son's cure has alluded him, I now share his desperation. That among these drawers is a sign, a glimmer, some small confirmation that the journey which has brought me here has not been in vain."

____________________________________________________________

Scully's voiceover as she does her scientific detective work

"If my work with Agent Mulder has tested the foundation of my beliefs, science has been, and continues to be, my guiding light. Now I am again relying on its familar and systematic methods to arrive at a truth. A fact that might explain the fate that has befallen me. An investigation that began without, now turning within. Taking cellular material from the unidentified life-form, and isolating a virus contained within it, then matching the DNA from this virus against that which I believe has

caused my cancer, I hope a picture will develop. The picture that might confirm my darkest suspicion, about the source of this disease invading my body. In hope of providing evidence that its cause is not without blame, even though its cure remains unknown. If science serves me to

these ends, it is not lost on me that the tool with which I have come to depend on absolutely, cannot save or protect me. But only bring into focus the darkness that lies ahead."

____________________________________________________________

Mulder's voiceover as she arrives at the FBI board meeting

"If I did indeed have the cure for Scully's cancer, I was now as dependent on her as she was on me. As I had breeched this facility, I needed to find my way out to safety. Depending on Scully to weave her story, to tell her tale, to make them believe the lie."

____________________________________________________________

Blevins: "Agent Scully, these accusations that you've made. You've been given a disease."

Scully: "Yes sir."

Blevins: "They're extremely serious charges."

Scully: "Yes sir. But I have proof, against the men behind this, of the lies that I believed. (she pulls

out a folder and places the "proof" on top of it) What I have here is proof undeniable that

the men who gave me this disease were also behind the hoax. A plot designed to lead to

Agent Mulder's demise and to my own, planned and executed by someone in this room.

What I have here is scientific evidence..." (blood begins to drip onto the evidence, she

seems to weaken and faints into her chair, Skinner catches her just before she lands, she

looks up at him and quietly says...) "You..."