The X-Files - 4.

4.15 Memento Mori

German title: Memento Mori

[A fuzzy image slowly enlarges and focuses, showing Scully in a hospital gown, studying aa cranial x-ray that shows an irregularly shaped brighter area between the eyes]

SCULLY: (voiceover): I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in its passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you will read them and share my burden, as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shakened and strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you.

Act I

< Holy Cross Memorial Hospital, Washington DC >

(Mulder enters with a flower bouquet, walking down hallway)

MULDER: (in passing to nurse) Oncology? Thanks.

(He turns down the hall and pauses at a door, seeing Scully through the window. She is looking at an x-ray. He enters.)

MULDER: Scully? I uh, stole these from some guy with a broken leg down the hall. He uh, won't be able to catch me. (pause) How ya doing?

SCULLY: I guess that's the question. Actually I feel fine.

(They nod at each other awkwardly for a few seconds)

MULDER: (looking at x-rays) What uh, what exactly are we looking at here?

SCULLY: It's what's called a nasopharyngeal mass. It's a small growth between the superior conchea and the sinoidal sinus.

MULDER: A growth?

SCULLY: A tumor. You're the only one I've called.

MULDER: Is it operable?

SCULLY: No.

MULDER: But it's treatable.

SCULLY: The truth is that the type and placement of the tumor make it difficult, to the extreme.

MULDER: I refuse to believe that, I ...

SCULLY: For all times I have said that to you, I am as certain of this as you have ever been. I have cancer. It is a mass on the wall between my sinus and cerebrum. If it pushes into my brain statistically there is about zero chance of survival.

MULDER: I don't accept that. Th ... there must be some people who have received treatment for this, we can ...

SCULLY: Yes, there are.

(She sighs and removes an x-ray from the wall)

< Skinner's office >

SKINNER: This news comes as the worst kind of surprise, Agent Scully. I'm sorry, very sorry.

SCULLY: Thank you, sir. I don't mean for this to be awkward and I would appreciate if we could keep this matter confidential.

MULDER: I understand. I assume you'll be taking a leave of absence.

SCULLY: No, sir, actually I've asked my doctors to hold onto my medical records until Agent Mulder and I can exhaust a possible avenue of investigation.

SKINNER: Investigation?

MULDER: Last year Agent Scully and I pursued a case in which a number of women, proported abductees, experienced similar symptoms after having implants removed from the base of their necks. A woman in Allentown, Pennsylvania, named Betsy Hagopian was undergoing treatment for nasopharyngeal tumor. We just haven't been able to contact her yet.

SKINNER: I'm sure you're aware we have contacts with the best physicians and medical facilities in the country.

SCULLY: Yes sir, but for my own reasons I'd like to like to pursue this through the justice department rather than a personal matter.

< Allentown, Pennsylvania >

(A realtor is in the house peeling a MUFON sticker off the window. Mulder and Scully drive up, exit the car and approach the house. The realtor opens the front door.)

REALTOR: I'm sorry, no early birds.

SCULLY: We're not here for the garage sale. We're looking for Betsy Higopian. No one's returning our messages.

REALTOR: Sorry, um, Betsy's passed away, just 2 and a half weeks ago. Are you a relation?

(Scully appears shaken, Mulder gives her a concerned glance.)

MULDER: No, we're with the FBI.

REALTOR: Some kind of trouble?

MULDER: Betsy was part of a MUFON group.

REALTOR: I don't know, I'm just the realtor.

MULDER: Would you mind if we come inside and take a look?

(The realtor hesitates and Mulder shows his badge. She stands aside and they enter. Scully looks at the living room and has a flashback of her meeting with the women the previous year. She touches the back of her neck.)

MULDER: Hey, Scully, listen to this. (he hands the phone to her, which has a modem connection noise) There are two lines coming into this house. I noticed one was lit.

SCULLY: Someone's sending a fax or computer modem.

MULDER: Yeah, but who and for what?

(They go downstairs and find a computer. Mulder switches on the monitor, which shows file transfers in progress.)

MULDER: Someone must have remote access to the system.

SCULLY: They're downloading data.

MULDER: Copying files. Let's get a trace on this before whoever it is hangs up.

(Scully dials her cell phone)

< in front of apartment building, nighttime >

SCULLY: Apartment 234 is listed under Kurt Crawford. (rings bell)

MULDER: I'm going to check around back. Why don't you see if you can get the manager.

(Mulder goes behind the building and walks up the back stairs. A man comes out of a door and runs away. Mulder pursues. As the man starts toward the front, Scully steps around the corner and aims her gun at him.)

SCULLY: (yelling) Stop! Federal agent! Hold it!

(The man turns and run in the other direction but Mulder tackles him from the side. Scully runs up as Mulder is holding the man on the ground.)

SCULLY: Put your hands where we can see them! Is your name Kurt Crawford?

CRAWFORD: Yes.

(Mulder looks back at Scully.)

MULDER: Scully ...

SCULLY: What?

(Mulder dabs at his nose. Scully checks her nose and finds some blood.)

SCULLY: I'm fine, Mulder. Quit staring at me. I'm fine.

< in the apartment >

(Scully is washing the blood from her nose. Mulder knocks.)

MULDER: (through door) You ok, Scully?

SCULLY: Yep, I'm just washing up.

(She finishes, leaves the bathroom and walks to the front of the apartment to join Mulder. She sees Crawford sitting at a table.)

SCULLY: You took his cuffs off.

MULDER: He says he's a member of the same Mutual UFO Network group that Betsy Hagopian belonged to, that he was downloading files for safe keeping as Betsy had instructed him to.

SCULLY: Then why did he run?

MULDER: He thinks his life's in danger. He thinks there's a government conspiracy to suppress the information gathered in those files.

SCULLY: You think he's credible?

MULDER: Well he seems to know an awful lot about Betsy and the other women in the MUFON group that you met at her house.

SCULLY: Well, that will have to be cross-checked.

MULDER: We can't.

SCULLY: Why not?

(Mulder stares at her. After a moment, Scully realizes his meaning. She approaches Crawford, arms crossed.)

SCULLY: (to Crawford) How did they die?

CRAWFORD: Brain cancer. All within the last year.

SCULLY: All of them?

CRAWFORD: From the group you met there's only Penny Northern, and she's in the hospital and it doesn't look good.

SCULLY: What makes you think this is a conspiracy, that the government's involved?

CRAWFORD: What makes you think it isn't. (pause) Eleven women are abducted, all with similar recollections about the experience, all developing identical brain tumors, and all refused state or federal health care because of their insistence of the facts. And all dying within the space of a year.

(Mulder pulls Scully aside.)

MULDER: (quietly) I want you to listen to me.

SCULLY: About what?

MULDER: About what you won't admit to yourself, what you're denying.

SCULLY: What am I denying?

MULDER: Where your cancer came from.

SCULLY: Mulder, it doesn't matter.

MULDER: It does matter, if what you have is a result of your abduction and that abduction is something the government knows about then those are facts that should be brought to light.

SCULLY: (sharp) I don't know what happened to me. I have no clear recollection and I don't think these abductions are even abductions.

MULDER: All these women are dead.

SCULLY: No they are not. One woman isn't. This Penny Northern.

MULDER: Well, if you won't listen to me, then I think you should go talk to her.

SCULLY: (angered) About what? What it feels like to be dying of cancer? What it's like to know that there's absolutely nothing you can do about it?

(Mulder's expression is pained but he keeps his composure and continues in the same quiet voice.)

MULDER: If that's too hard for you then I think you should go as an investigator. You have one remaining witness, Agent Scully. I'd think you'd want to know what her story is.

< Allentown Bethlehem Medical Center >

(Penny Northern is in a hospital bed. Scully enters her room. Penny sees her and smiles.)

PENNY: Dana, hello.

SCULLY: I'm ... I'm sorry. Did someone tell you I was coming here to see you?

PENNY: No.

SCULLY: Then how did you know it was me?

PENNY: I recognized you. I told you when we met last year. I held you and comforted you in the place, after the tests.

SCULLY: I'm sorry, I don't mean to be insensitive, but uh, I don't share those memories.

PENNY: It's all right.

SCULLY: I've come to ask you some questions.

PENNY: About Dr. Scanlon?

SCULLY: No. Who's Dr. Scanlon?

PENNY: He's treating the cancer. He treated Betsy, too. He thinks he might have isolated the cause. And that if he'd caught it earlier he might have been able to do more for her ... and for me.

SCULLY: His name's Scanlon?

PENNY: Yes ... What did you want to ask me?

< Betsy Hagopian's house >

(Mulder is with Crawford looking through some files. His cell phone rings.)

MULDER: (to phone) Mulder.

SCULLY: (on phone) Mulder, it's me.

MULDER: Where are you, Scully?

SCULLY: I'm at the hospital with Penny Northern. Where are you?

MULDER: I'm at Betsy Hagopian's going through some of those hard files before stuff starts disappearing, and call me an early bird but I think I've found something. Now, some of these women who have died, they're childless, and they've been treated for infertility at the clinic about 30 miles from here, Penny Northern and Betsy Hagopian among them.

SCULLY: Mulder that's..

MULDER: I've made some phone calls and I've tried to get some information but nobody is talking to me, so..

SCULLY: Mulder, I need you to come up here.

MULDER: Why, did you find something there?

SCULLY: I need you to bring the overnight bag from the trunk of the car and I need you to call my mother and ask her to bring up some things at the hospital.

MULDER: Is there something I should know?

SCULLY: Mulder, whatever you found or whatever you might find - I think that we both know that right now the truth is in me, and that's where I need to pursue it ... as soon as possible.

MULDER: I will be right there.

(Both hang up. Mulder, upset, closes the file cabinet. He exits the house, leaving Crawford alone. As his car leaves, a second car that was parked down the street pulls up and a man emerges. Back in the house, Crawford hears the door open.)

CRAWFORD: Agent Mulder? (pause) Agent Mulder?

(A man in a dark overcoat walks down the stairs and approaches. Crawford falls to his back and struggles to get away. The man has a "plam". Moments later, he leaves, with Crawford's body, on the floor, dissolving into green slime.)

ACT II

< the hospital >

(Scully is asleep in a hospital bed. She awakes and turns to the window. Out of the bright light steps a man.)

SCANLON: Dana? I'm Dr. Scanlon. We spoke last night on the phone.

SCULLY: (waking and sitting up in the bed) Yeah, hi. Sorry I was sleeping.

SCANLON: I noticed. How's your energy level generally?

SCULLY: Oh you know. I don't, I don't feel sick at all.

SCANLON: Your MRI's and your charts aren't here yet but I have an idea of what to expect. You probably do too from your medical training.

SCULLY: I know that the chemotherapy is going to make me sick.

SCANLON: And the radiation. They're both part of a high dose approach to knock your system down so we can attempt the gene therapy on P53 ... (compassionately) You're going to feel like dying.

(The door opens and Mrs. Scully enters)

MRS. SCULLY: Dana.

SCULLY: Hi, mom.

MRS. SCULLY: Hi.

SCULLY: This is uh, this is Dr. Scanlon.

SCANLON: Hi.

MRS. SCULLY: Hi. (they shake hands) I, uh, I drove. I was going to take the shuttle but it's only an hour more by car. Can you imagine?

SCULLY: Mom ... I'm fine. I'm going to be fine, I'm just here for treatment.

SCANLON: I'm gonna go. I've ordered some additional blood work and I'd like to start in this afternoon.

SCULLY: Thank you. (Scanlon leaves) Mom, I know what you're gonna say, but I don't have any experience being sick. I promise you, I feel fine, I feel ... (she sighs and shrugs her shoulders)

MRS. SCULLY: I don't know why you didn't tell me. (angry) I don't know why you didn't tell me immediately.

(She throws her coat down on a chair. Scully looks down at the floor. MRS. SCULLY puts her hand to her own face, then looks away at the window.)

SCULLY: I wanted to get all the answers first.

MRS. SCULLY: And you found them here?

SCULLY: I have found some clarity, and maybe a way to fight back.

(They now look at each other.)

MRS. SCULLY: I don't wanna be kept in the dark.

SCULLY: You'll know, mom.

(They embrace. MRS. SCULLY's voice is breaking.)

MRS. SCULLY: You have always been the strong one, but you are my only daughter now.

SCULLY: I know.

MRS. SCULLY: (crying) Oh, Dana.

(Later, Scully is undergoing treatment. She is lying down on a table with a plastic mask over her face. A large machine is rotating around her head.)

SCULLY: (voiceover): In med school I learned that cancer arrives in the body unannounced, a dark stranger who takes up residence, turning its new home against itself. This is the evil of cancer, that it starts as an invader, but soon becomes one with the invaded, forcing you to destroy it but only at the risk of destroying yourself. It is science's demon possession, my treatment, science's attempt at exorcism. Mulder, I hope that in these terms you might know it and know me and accept this stranger some may recognize but cannot ever completely cast out. And if the darkness should have swallowed me as you read this, you must never think there was the possibility of some secret intervention, something you might have done. And though we've traveled far together, this last distance must necessarily be traveled alone.

(During the latter part of the voiceover, the scene shifts to Mulder surreptitiously going through the ...)

< Center for Reproductive Medicine, Lehigh Furnace, Pennsylvania >

(Mulder has found the medical records for the center and starts typing on the computer, searching for records for either Penny Northern or Betsy Hagopian. The computer flashes "Access Denied, Password Req'd" as he hears a noise and hides nearby. Another figure enters the area and Mulder surprises him.)

MULDER: I've got a gun pointed at your head. Turn around very slowly.

(The man turns and Mulder shines his flashlight at him. It appears to be Kurt Crawford.)

MULDER: Kurt Crawford, we seem to be traveling in the same circles these days.

CRAWFORD: You can put the gun away.

MULDER: You disappeared with those files from Betsy Hagopian's, I called you at least half a dozen times. I got to thinking you're a liar, now tell me I'm wrong.

CRAWFORD: I'm looking for the same that thing you are. I've been trying to hack my way into that system but I can't seem to make it past the password protect.

MULDER: You think you can get access from here?

CRAWFORD: I need to find that password.

(Mulder puts his gun away and Crawford sits at the computer. As Crawford prepares to work, Mulder notices a snow globe on the desk with the word 'Vegreville' on it.)

MULDER: Vegreville.

(Crawford tries it for the password and the computer shows "Access Granted".)

CRAWFORD: We're in. (both smile)

< the hospital >

(Scully is lying down and sees what appears to be a spinning drill bit coming toward her head. Her eyes widen in fear.)

PENNY: Dana. Dana, it's ok, it's ok Dana, you'll be ok.

(Scully awakens in a daze reaching up and touching Penny's face. Penny takes her hand and clasps it between her own.)

SCULLY: (sleepily) Where am I?

PENNY: You're in your own bed now Dana, you're safe.

SCULLY: I feel nauseous.

PENNY: It's the chemo. The chemo is always the worst.

SCULLY: I had a bad dream. Some ... someone was doing something bad to me. You were ... you were there. I heard your voice.

PENNY: They let me come to you during the procedures. I don't know why. Human compassion is not something that they have.

SCULLY: I'm sorry Penny. I can't ... (her voice breaks) ... I can't hear this right now.

PENNY: You've got to try to make sense of it Dana. It will help you through the pain. To understand why this is ... this is happening to you.

< Skinner's office >

(Skinner enters. Mulder is sitting on the sofa.)

MULDER: I need you to set up a meeting for me.

SKINNER: (to aide, outside) Hold up my calls.

(He closes the door.)

SKINNER: Where's Agent Scully?

MULDER: She's in a hospital in Allentown, beginning treatment.

SKINNER: What happened to your investigative avenues?

MULDER: They've taken a turn. A pretty big U-turn by the looks of it. (pulls out disk) This is a file directory from a federally operated fertility clinic. Agent Scully's name is on this file, although I'm pretty sure, pretty damn sure she's never undergone treatment for infertility.

SKINNER: What's in the file?

MULDER: I don't know. It's just a directory for a mainframe housed in the Lombard Research Facility.

SKINNER: So you want to set a meeting, with whom?

MULDER: Cigarette man. (Skinner turns away) I have no doubt in my mind he's behind this.

SKINNER: You've come to me before like this, Mulder.

MULDER: Yeah, well this is different, this is different. I'm willing to deal now.

SKINNER: Find another way.

MULDER: No, no. I need that meeting.

SKINNER: You deal with this man, you offer him anything and he will own you forever.

MULDER: (heated) He knows what they did to Agent Scully. He may very well know how to save her.

SKINNER: (sharp) If he knows, you can know too but you can't ask the truth of a man who trades in lies. I won't let you.

MULDER: We are talking about Agent Scully's life.

SKINNER: Find another way.

< The Long Gunmen's place >

(Byers is typing on a terminal as data scrolls across the screen.)

FROHIKE: The Lombard system is a dedicated mainframe. Impossible to hack ... so they say.

MULDER: Well, how'd you guys get in?

BYERS: A modified clipper chip we cannibalized from a government surplus army field encoder.

FROHIKE: We bought it back from the Chinese.

LANGLY: But for all the work it took to get it, what we got on Agent Scully's file ... I don't know how much help it's gonna be.

MULDER: What do you mean?

BYERS: It's a gene code we've seen before, detected in Scully's blood after her abduction.

MULDER: Does it tell us anything at all?

BYERS: Normal DNA is inactive when in its helical form. When it's unwound or branched like this one, that's when it's active, when it can mutate.

LANGLY: It's probably what made her sick.

MULDER: Why store something like this and why keep it a secret?

BYERS: Scientists get funky about having their research poached.

LANGLY: Somebody might be trying to find a cause.

MULDER: Or a cure.

FROHIKE: Theoretically.

MULDER: You guys ever been to the Lombard Research Facility?> (pause) Well, pick out something black and sexy and prepare to do some funky poaching.

< Mulder's office >

(Skinner enters the darkened office. Cancer Man is sitting in the chair, smoking.)

CANCER MAN: It's funny, I always thought of you as Fox Mulder's patron. You'd think under your aegis that he wouldn't be consigned to a corner of the basement.

SKINNER: At least he doesn't take an elevator up to get to work.

CANCER MAN: You think I'm the devil, Mr. Skinner?

SKINNER: I'm not here to talk about what I think about you.

CANCER MAN: Then why are you here? Is it Mulder's partner and her illness? (pause) Is it terminal, the cancer?

SKINNER: You tell me.

CANCER MAN: Modern medicine today, I hear they can perform miracles.

SKINNER: I need a miracle.

CANCER MAN: Well, you think a lot more of me than you let on, Mr. Skinner.

SKINNER: What will it take?

CANCER MAN: For Agent Scully's life? What would you offer?

SKINNER: (sharp) What will it take?

CANCER MAN: Well ... I'll have to get back to you on that. (leaving) Oh, Mr. Skinner, which way is the elevator?

Act III

< Lombard Research Facility >

(Frohike and Langly are opening a storm drain, while Mulder and Byers are sitting in a car on the street watching a security guard make rounds. Frohike, Langly and Byers are wearing radio communication headsets.)

BYERS: He'll double back in 54 seconds. Frohike, where are you guys?

FROHIKE: We're in the K section in a storm drain where the communication system links up to public power. Stand by. Two minutes for a system check.

MULDER: We gots to go.

(They get out of the car and head for the facility entrance.)

BYERS: (to Langly and Frohike) We're in motion.

(Langly and Frohike have a computer set up in the storm drain. They are tapped in to the security camera for the entrance and see the guard enter.)

FROHIKE: They're in.

LANGLY: Security cameras offline, patching in now.

(They see Mulder and Byers at the door.)

FROHIKE: Smile, Byers, you're on candid camera.

(Mulder and Byers enter.)

LANGLY: Exterior security has been breached.

(Inside, Mulder and Byers come to a locked door with a security keypad. Byers sees a security camera pointed to the door.)

BYERS: (whispers) Langly, are you reading this?

LANGLY: Redundant systems, triple shunt bypass, this is going to be a toughy.

(Mulder snatches the headset off Byer's head.)

MULDER: You guys couldn't spring for two of these? (into headset microphone) Langly, what the hell is going on?

LANGLY: Mulder. This is going to take a moment.

(Mulder wanders back and looks down another hall. He sees a sign listing doctors on call with Dr. Kevin Scanlon's name on it.)

MULDER: Boys, we have a problem. The doctor that's treating Scully's cancer's on staff here.

LANGLY: More mysteries await. Bypass is complete.

(The door opens.)

MULDER: (to Byers) Look, I need someone to get to Scully to get her to stop treatment. Right now you're the only one who can do that.

(He goes through the door and continues down the hall, leaving Byers.)

< the hospital >

(Scully is in her hospital bed, writing in a journal.)

SCULLY: (voiceover) I have not written to you in the last 24 hours because the treatment has weakened my spirit as well as my body. Mulder, it's difficult to describe to you the fear of facing an enemy which I can neither conquer nor escape. Penny Northern has taken a downturn. I now look at her with a respect that can only come from one who is about to walk the same dark path. Seeing her I can't help but see myself in a month or a year. I pray that I have her courage to face this journey. Mulder, I feel you close though I know you are now pursuing your own path. For that I am grateful, more than I could ever express. I need to know you're out there if I am ever to see through this.

< the Lombard Facility >

(Mulder is walking down a hallway.)

MULDER: Langly, where the hell am I going?

(The display on Langly's computer starts to show static.)

LANGLY: Losing you on the video feed, Mulder. Mulder? Do anything, Frohike?

FROHIKE: Nada. I didn't touch a thing.

(Byers has come back to the entrance. He sees a security patrol, with two guards, outside.)

MULDER: Langly, can you hear me? (static) Langly, I can't hear you.

(Mulder reaches a door and starts to pound on it.)

MULDER: Open the door. Open the damn door!

(The door opens, and Mulder sees a laboratory with three individuals identical to Kurt Crawford.)

HYBRID: Agent Mulder, come in.

MULDER: You're hybrids.

HYBRID: Please come in so that we might explain.

(Mulder walks in and sees a room full of growing tanks with hybrids inside in a greenish liquid, as well as more hybrids.)

MULDER: You've been using me.

HYBRID: Not at all. Your arrival was only coincident with the execution of our objective.

MULDER: What objective?

HYBRID: Subvert the project. The project that created us.

MULDER: (rubs condensation off one of the tanks) I've seen this boy before. These boys were you.

HYBRID: We're among the end results.

MULDER: And you want to destroy them?

HYBRID: No. What we want is the same thing that you want.

[Mulder and one of the hybrids enter a vault with many metal compartments]

MULDER: What are these?

HYBRID: Human ova.

MULDER: Taken from whom?

(Mulder sees a metal drawer with Betsy Hagopian's name on it. The hybrid points out another drawer with Dana Scully's name on it.)

MULDER: (whispered) What?

(He opens the drawer and sees several vials.)

HYBRID: Harvested during her abduction, through a high amplification radiation procedure that caused superovulation.

MULDER: Why?

HYBRID: For fertilization. They constitute one half of the necessary raw materials.

MULDER: For genetic hybridization .. for reproduction. These women, these women are your birth mothers.

HYBRID: Barren now, from the same procedure that caused their cancer. And now they're left to die, their conditions hastened by the men running this project.

MULDER: You're trying to save them.

HYBRID: They're our mothers.

(Mulder puts the vial in his pocket and leaves the vault. The hybrid closes the drawer.)

ACT IV

< the Lombard Facility >

(Mulder is walking down a hallway.)

LANGLY: (faintly, through static) Mulder, are you there?> Copy?

MULDER: Langly, I can't hear you.

LANGLY: We've got a security breach in section J14.

MULDER: You sure it's not Byers?

LANGLY: No, I've got Byers right here on the screen.

(Byers is still near the entrance. Two security men enter and walk past as he ducks into the shadows. He starts to step out but ducks back as a third man walks past. Byers then heads for the door. The third man is walking through the area with the tanks.)

MULDER: Langly, help me out. I don't know where I'm going.

LANGLY: You're in a bioquarantine wing leading to an exit. At the end of the hall you'll access a door to a biosecure room. Working on the locks now.

(Mulder goes through a sliding plexiglass door and then to a locked door at the end of the hall.)

MULDER: OK Langly, Frohike I'm here. Open the door.

FROHIKE: The doors work on redundant systems. We're working fast.

(The third man turns a corner and spots Mulder. He draws and loads his gun, while Mulder steps back and locks the plexiglass door that separates them. As the man approaches, he starts firing, but the plexiglass stops the bullets.)

MULDER: Work faster. Langly, open the door now!

(The man changes his clip and is approaching the plexiglass door. His previous shots have chipped away a hole in the plexiglass.)

MULDER: Get me outta here! Get me outta here now!

LANGLY: Almost there.

(Mulder pounds on the door as the man has almost reached the plexiglass door.)

FROHIKE: (attaching an electrical lead) Go!

(The door opens and Mulder rushes through just as bullets start to hit the door.)

< Allentown Bethlehem Medical Center, 9:47pm >

(Mulder runs into Scully's room, but she's not there. He looks around and sees the journal on her nightstand and starts reading a page. He sets it down and runs back to the nurse's station.)

MULDER: Nurse, nurse! Dana Scully is supposed to be in her room, where is she?

NURSE: She's not there?

MULDER: No, what happened to her?

NURSE: I don't know.

MULDER: Well, who the hell does know?

BYERS: (running toward him from down the hall) Mulder!

MULDER: What happened to Scully?

BYERS: I got to her.

MULDER: Where is she now?

(He points the way down the hall. Mulder opens a door and finds Scully by Penny's bedside. Scully and Mulder exchange a glance, then Scully turns back to Penny.)

PENNY: (weakly) Dr. Scanlon isn't coming back?

SCULLY: No, I don't think so, Penny.

PENNY: Dana, I want you to get well. You've been such a comfort. You've got to be the one. You can't give up hope.

SCULLY: I haven't. I won't.

(Scully looks back at Mulder as he closes the door leaving Penny and Scully alone.)

< same location, 5:05am >

(Mulder is sitting in a chair in the hallway. A nurse runs past him and into Penny's room. Mulder stands. Scully comes out and starts down the hall, not seeing Mulder behind her.)

MULDER: Is she gone?

(Scully turns, very upset. She nods as Mulder slowly walks toward her.)

MULDER: I'm sorry. I know what she meant to you.

(Scully, still upset, looks at him quizzically and walks toward him.)

MULDER: When I came to find you, you weren't in your room. I got scared that something had happened ... and I read some of what you wrote.

(Scully sighs and looks down)

SCULLY: I didn't want you to read that. I had decided to throw it out. I decided tonight that um ... that I'm not going to let this thing beat me. (she now looks up at him) I came into this hospital able to work, and that's how I'm leaving.

(Mulder nods compassionately and gives a hint of a smile. Scully returns the hint.)

MULDER: Byers tell you about Dr. Scanlon?

SCULLY: Yes.

MULDER: He may very well have killed those women.

SCULLY: That will have to be proven, if we find him.

MULDER: When we find him. Scully, something was done to you, something that you're just beginning to remember. You can't quite figure it out but it can be explained and it will be explained. And no matter what you think as a scientist or a doctor, there is a way, and you will find it, to save yourself.

(Scully sighs.)

SCULLY: Mulder, I can't kid myself. People live with cancer. They carry on, and so will I. You know I've got things to finish, to prove to myself, to my family ... but for my own reasons.

MULDER: (smiling) Come on back.

(She smiles and they hug each other and sway slightly in each other's arms. Mulder's chin rests on the top of her head.)

MULDER: The truth will save you, Scully. I think it'll save both of us.

(He gently cradles the side of her head, and Scully closes her eyes tightly. He kisses her gently on the forehead and strokes her temples as she looks up at him. They separate and Mulder watches her walk down the hall. He takes the vial from his pocket and ponders it, then looks back at her and puts it into his pocket.)

< Skinner's office >

(phone rings)

SKINNER: (to phone) Skinner.

MULDER: (on phone) Oh, I ... I was leaving you a voice mail. It's 5:30, what are you ...

SKINNER: I'm working. How can I help you?

MULDER: I want you to know that Scully's doing OK. She says she's coming back to work actually.

SKINNER: Good, that's good to hear.

MULDER: I was calling to thank you for your advice about your chainsmoking friend. I think you were right. We have to know what he knows. We just have to find another way.

SKINNER: There's always another way.

(They hang up, and we see that Cancer Man is sitting in front of Skinner's desk.)

CANCER MAN: Yes, I believe there is ... if you're willing to pay the price.

(Cancer Man puts his cigarette in a coffee cup and exits, leaving a thoughtful Skinner.)

END