The X-Files - 2.

5.02 Redux

Finnish title: Paluu 1/2
translation: Return 1/2

director: R. W. Goodwin

STARRING: DAVID DUCHOVNY as Mulder GILLIAN ANDERSON as Scully MITCH PILEGGI as Skinner GUEST CAST: WILLIAM B. DAVIS as The Cigarette-Smoking Man JOHN FINN as Scott STEVE MAKAJ as Ostelhoff KEN CAMROUX as Senior Agent CHARLES CIOFFI as Blevins BARRY W. LEVY as Dr.Vitagliano BRUCE HARWOOD as Byers DON S. WILLIAMS as Elder DEAN HAGLUND as Langley TOM BRAIDWOOD as Frohike JULIE ARKOS as Holly WRITTEN BY: CHRIS CARTER DIRECTED BY: R.W. GOODWIN

24 HOURS EARLIER THAN THE END OF "GETHSEMANE"

MULDER'S APARTMENT

(Mulder is watching the tape of the astronomers speculating on the existence of extra terrestrial life. Mulder is crying.)

MULDER's voice over: 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. (Mulder stands and puts his hands to his face) And that the pursuit of these greater truths about the existence of extraterrestrial life might even reunite 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. (He picks up his gun from the coffee table. He looks at it in his hand) If only the tragedy had been mine alone, might it be more easy tonight to bring this journey to its end. (He checks the clip. There are bullets in it. He loads it...the phone rings. He picks it up but doesn't say anything)

KRITSCHGAU on phone: Agent Mulder? (No answer.) Agent Mulder?

MULDER: Yes...

KRITSCHGAU: There's a matter of security. Something I hadn't anticipated. Just after I left your apartment

MULDER: Who are you? (Cut to Kritschgau in a phone booth at night)

KRITSCHGAU: Just after our last conversation, I was followed by people..

MULDER: Who are you?!

KRITSCHGAU: Are you listening to me, Agent Mulder? Are you hearing me? We can't talk now. I have reason to believe ...

MULDER: Did they give... Agent Scully this disease? Did they do this to her because of me?

KRITSCHGAU: They may be listening, Agent Mulder. They may be watching you. Everything you do and say. (Mulder starts to look around his apartment.) Are you listening, Agent Mulder? (Mulder looks to the ceiling at the light.) Agent Mulder?

(There's a little pin hole next to the ceiling fixture. Mulder hangs up. We see through the surveillance camera at Mulder looking at the camera. Mulder runs out of the apartment.)

UPSTAIRS (Mulder runs up the stairs and kicks in the door to the apartment right above him. He has his gun pointed. There is a man, Scott Ostlehoff, who is burning evidence: papers, videos, etc.)

MULDER: Back away!

(He does. Mulder tries to stomp out the fire. Mulder looks up to see Ostlehoff grab a shotgun. Cut to the hallway outside. A gunshot. Camera pans to the door which is ajar. A hand closes the door.)

TAG LINE DURING CREDITS: ALL LIES LEAD TO THE TRUTH

SCULLY'S APARTMENT

(Scully walks into her apartment and locks the door. She walks through the dark. She plays her answering machine. No new messages. She takes off her coat. In Scully's darkened bedroom as she is just about to take off her top, she hears a voice.)

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, cuz 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 stands from his chair in the corner and walks to the window, looks outside, shuts the blinds and turns on a lamp)

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 Ostlehoff's ID card)

SCULLY: That's the dead man in your apartment?

MULDER: Yeah, he works ... he worked for the Department of Defense.

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?

SCULLY'S DINING ROOM

(Mulder and Scully walk into the dining room. Mulder switches on the light and Scully sits at the table.)

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 looks at a phone log Mulder shows her.)

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. (He kneels down beside her)

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.

6:47 am MULDER'S APARTMENT BUILDING (The elevator lights are shown. The car is going up. It opens to reveal Scully as she was in "Gethsemane" going into Mulder's apartment.)

MULDER's voice over: 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. (Scully shows her ID to the cops in Mulder's apartment and she is let through.) The facts supported by a byzantine plot, executed by someone inside the FBI who, if named could be tied to the hoax meant to destroy me. (Scully sees the body on the floor in front of the couch.) 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... (The detective pulls the sheet up from the dead man's face) or her honor compromised. (Scully nods and leaves) 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... (Scully enters the hallway) as OUR enemy. As the enemy within.

HALLWAY (Scully now meets Skinner in the hallway.)

SKINNER: Agent Scully. Is it true?

SCULLY: Yes, sir. (She can't look at his face.)

SKINNER: Are you all right?

SCULLY: I'm um.... I don't know what to say. They asked me to come down and identify the body.

SKINNER: How did you make the ID? Word has it from Alexandria P.D. that it was self-inflicted. A shotgun blast to the face.

SCULLY: I saw Mulder earlier this morning. He was wearing the same clothes. (Skinner takes a minute to size her up. He's not sure it's the truth.)

SKINNER: I'm very sorry. (Scully walks past him to the elevator.) Agent Scully... (She turns around) Section Chief Blevins wants you in for questioning about this. He believes you have information you haven't come forward with.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (Mulder enters and walks through like he belongs there. Blends in.)

MULDER's voice over: 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. (He goes to security area) 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. (Mulder sees that everyone is using a code card to get in. He puts Ostlehoff's through the scanner) But, if our lies were discovered, both Scully and I would be discovered with them. (The light turns green and Mulder can enter)

FBI HEADQUARTERS WASHINGTON DC 8:41 am BLEVINS' OFFICE (Scully opens the door and Skinner is behind her. There is a senior agent by Blevins seated at his desk. Blevins looks up.)

BLEVINS: Agent Scully. Please have a seat. (She comes in along with Skinner. The senior agent by Blevins sits in a seat next to the desk, facing the chair opposite which Scully sits at. Skinner stands behind Blevins) Some time has past since you were first in this office.

SCULLY: Yes, sir. Four years.

BLEVINS: From all reports, your work on the X-Files has brought you very close to Agent Mulder.

SCULLY: Yes, sir.

SENIOR AGENT: We're awfully sorry about what's happened, Agent Scully.

SCULLY: But that's not why I'm here.

BLEVINS: You're here because we've been informed by the Department of Defense that prior to Agent Mulder's accident, you may have been notified by a DoD employee.

SCULLY: Yes, that's right.

OTHER GUY: And he may have given you classified information.

SCULLY: He had information about the discovery of what Agent Mulder believed to be an alien corpse. He said the body was part of a hoax.

BLEVINS: He provided evidence?

SCULLY: No... hard... evidence, no.

BLEVINS: Agent Scully, I suggest you tell us everything you know. If you have any knowledge of this man, you should speak up now.

SCULLY: What knowledge?

BLEVINS: His name. (She just looks at Blevins. All three men look at Scully.) Whatever you're withholding, you'll be asked to explain yourself tonight at a joint FBI panel I've asked assembled on this matter.

SKINNER: Is this the man? Michael Kritschgau? (She looks at a photo that Skinner is showing her. It's a photo of Kritschgau sitting on Mulder's chair in his living room. The angle is from the ceiling)

SCULLY: Yes.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

(Kritschgau is walking down the hall. Across a great room, hall in the building, he sees Mulder. He catches up to him and grabs him on the shoulder to stop him.)

KRITSCHGAU: Hey! (With a nervous smile) How did you get in here?

MULDER: Through the front door.

KRITSCHGAU: You can't bypass security.

MULDER (Mulder shows him the code card) You can if you have the card.

KRITSCHGAU: Put it away. Put it away. (He's looking around serious.)

MULDER: You knew my apartment was being surveilled. How? (He smiles again)

KRITSCHGAU: Come with me.

OFFICE IN DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (Kritschgau and Mulder enter. Kritschgau turns on the light and shuts and locks the door.)

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? (Kritschgau nods.)

10:02 am MULDER'S APARTMENT (The door opens and a pick locking device is put into a suit pocket. It's Cancerman. He shuts the door behind him. He looks around the apartment. He sees the chalk outline of the dead man. He sees a framed picture of Fox and Samantha as kids. He cries softly. He puts the picture down. He looks at the blood on the floor. He looks at the ceiling peep hole.)

X-FILES OFFICE (Scully walks in and picks up the phone, pushes a button and sits at the desk.)

VOICE ON PHONE: Federal Bureau of Investigation. How may I direct your call?

SCULLY: Communications center, please. (She takes the phone log out of her pocket)

HOLLY ON PHONE: Communications Center. This is Holly.

SCULLY: Holly, this is Dana Scully.

HOLLY: Dana, I'm so sorry about what's happened. I just heard.

SCULLY: Holly, I need your help on something. I was hoping you could help me with some information.

HOLLY: Sure, what do you need?

SCULLY: I have some calls placed to the Bureau on consecutive dates. On the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth. They came into the PBX operator. The first was at 11:21, the next was at 11:14, 03:07, (Holly is typing in on her computer as Scully rattles them off.) 02:02, and 05:12. They would have all been transferred to the same extension.

HOLLY: And you're looking for that extension?

SCULLY: Yes.

HOLLY: I've got five calls matching those times and dates transferred to an executive level extension.

SCULLY: Whose?

HOLLY: It's a branch extension. It could be any of them at that level.

SCULLY: Would Assistant Director Skinner be at that extension? (Holly types again)

HOLLY: Yes.

SCULLY: (Scully is wounded.) Thank you.

HOLLY: Okay. You take care now, Dana. (As soon as Scully hangs up, the phone rings)

SCULLY: Yes?

DR VITAGLIANO ON PHONE: Special Agent Scully?

SCULLY: Yes.

VITAGLIANO: This is Dr. Vitagliano over at the paleoclimatology department over at American University. You had, ah, me look into these ice core samples for you?

SCULLY: Right. I...ah... I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you.

VITAGLIANO: I think you want to come down here to the lab. There's something I know you're going to want to see for yourself.

11:04 am DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (Mulder and Kritschgau are walking down the hall)

MULDER What am I looking for?

KRITSCHGAU: Level 4 is a biological quarantine wing. It houses a series of labs and medical facilities, and an elaborate facility for the storage of mass quantities of DNA.

MULDER: DNA from whom?

KRITSCHGAU: Virtually every American born since 1945. Every immigrant, every indigenous person who's ever given blood or tissue to a government donor. This is what I was telling you. This is the hoax into which you've been drawn. The roots go back 50 years to the end of World War II. Playing on a virulent national appetite for bogus revelation and a public newly fearful of the atomic bomb... (During the rest of the monologue by Kritschgau, we see old film and pictures of what he's talking about) the U.S. Military Command began to fan the flames of what were being called flying saucer stories. There are truths that can kill a nation, Agent Mulder. The military needed something to deflect attention away from its arms strategy - global domination from the capability of total enemy annihilation. The nuclear card was fine as long as we alone could play it. But the Generals and Politicos knew they could not win a public relations war. Those photographs 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 armistice and treaty. The business of America isn't business, Agent Mulder, it's war. Since Antitam, 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 a war anyway. The Cold War was essentially a fifty 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," Kruschev said, and the public believed it. And after what McCarthy had done, they ate it with a big spoon. We faced off a few times in Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, but nobody dropped the bomb - nobody dared.

MULDER: But what does all this have to do with flying saucers?

KRITSCHGAU: The U.S. Military saw a good thing in '47 when the Roswell story broke. The more we denied it, the more people thought 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 and fed them enough bogus facts and fuzzy pictures and eyewitness accounts that they believed it, too. They even hooked Doug MacArthur, for God's sake. I can't tell you how fortuitous it 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 almost got caught in Korea, an ambitious misstep. China and the Soviets knew it. The UN got all heated up at us.

MULDER: Germ warfare. We were accused of using it in the Korea.

KRITSCHGAU: It was developmental then, nothing like what we and the Russians have now. The bio-weapons used in the Gulf War were so ingenious as to be almost undetectable. Developed in this very building. (They walk through a door)

MULDER: What about all the reports of abductions? You're saying they've all been lies?

KRITSCHGAU: Not lies exactly, (We see a woman laying on a table with a big stomach and a grid pattern of lights shining on her, like Scully during her abduction) 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 widespread belief. The American appetite for bogus revelation, Agent Mulder.

MULDER: But I've seen aliens. I've witnessed these things.

KRITSCHGAU: You've seen what they wanted you to see. (They go into an elevator) The line between science and science fiction doesn't exist any more. This is about control, of the very elements of life. DNA - yours, mine, everyone's.

MULDER: Then why a hoax? Why create hard evidence, an alien body that could be disproved?

KRITSCHGAU: The body you found was so good, so believable, that only a directed scientific examination could have proven the fraud.

MULDER: Scully would have known.

KRITSCHGAU: The timing of the hoax was planned so Agent Scully wouldn't be alive to do the examination.

MULDER: You went along with all this. You let them do this to Scully.

KRITSCHGAU: I paid the price, Agent Mulder. When my son came back sick from the Gulf War, that was my retribution. I'm helping you now, but not unselfishly.

MULDER: You believe there's a cure for him in here, too.

KRITSCHGAU: I have to think there is. (Mulder uses Ostlehoff's code card to enter Level 4 clearance. Kritschgau watches. When Mulder enters, Kritschgau walks away but is met by two men in fatigues)

SOLDIER: Michael Kritschgau... May we talk to you?

KRITSCHGAU: What about?

SOLDIER: DOD is detaining you for questioning. Would you come with us, Mr. Kritschgau? (He doesn't have much of a choice)

RACE TRACK 12:11 PM (A rider is working out a horse on the track. The stands are empty except for the Fat Man Elder. Cancerman walks to him and sits next to him)

ELDER: I was told that you needed to see me, that there was some urgency.

CSM: It seems I've been left out of the loop.

ELDER: Left out?

CSM: You've been watching Mulder. You had a man on him. No one bothered to inform me of this. (He lights a cigarette)

ELDER: I know nothing of this man.

CSM: I will not be cut out like this. You need my expertise. Is this being run from the DOD?

ELDER: If it is, I am unaware of it.

CSM: I've always kept Mulder in check. I put this whole thing together. I created Mulder.

ELDER: Agent Mulder is dead. Our FBI source confirmed it this morning. Mulder killed himself. Mulder was an asset. Without his partner, you may have underestimated his fragility.

CSM: I've never underestimated Mulder. I still don't.

PALEOCLIMATOLOGY LAB AMERICAN UNIVERSITY (Scully meets with Dr.Vitagliano)

VITAGLIANO: As you've asked, I've tested some of the cellular material found in the ice core sample. Because we couldn't classify it as either plant or animal, only as some kind of chimeric hybrid, I put some of the cells in media containing fetal bovine serum. And the cells began to divide.

SCULLY: Well then they were animal cells that you found.

VITAGLIANO: They are not classifiable.

SCULLY: What do you mean? You said there was mitotic cell division.

VITAGLIANO: When the cells began to divide they didn't just multiply, they began to go through the stages of merula, blastula, gastrula.

SCULLY: They began somatic development?

VITAGLIANO: The beginning of a life form. Growing into what, I don't know.

LEVEL 4 (Mulder walks to doors, tries them, locked as he talks in voice over)

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 possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. (A door at the end of the hall opens and two security men enter. Mulder tries more doors and finds one and enters and closes the door as he talks) Now with what I've heard my beliefs seem more and more improbable. The possibility of a cure for Scully somewhere inside these walls is my only hope but if I might find it and somehow save her the very existence of such a cure would mean with certainty that I had believed in a lie from the start. (He's relieved when they walk away. The room he entered is a big, dark one filled to the brim with tables containing grey aliens)

(Commercial Break)

(Mulder walks through the room looking at the comatose aliens as Scully speaks in voice over)

SCULLY's voice over: 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 unclassified biological product designed to set up a hoax manufactured to create a false set of beliefs that have long driven Agent Mulder? (Mulder reaches another door with a window and he sees women on tables with big stomachs and grid pattern lights shining on them) I now begin to realize that the answer to this question might exist within the life form itself, biological proof of this connection to the cancer invading my body to a virus living inside this organism to which I had been exposed during my abduction three years ago.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 2:04 PM (Vitagliano is taking blood from Scully)

VITAGLIANO: I'm still not sure what you're trying to find here.

SCULLY: I need to do a Southern Blot to run a culture of what you showed me against my own DNA. You said that the unclassified cells you looked at under the EM were full of virus.

VITAGLIANO: Right. What are you looking for?

SCULLY: A match. And I need it before seven.

VITAGLIANO: Tonight? Not going to happen. Not unless we have a blazing hot probe.

SCULLY: It's got to happen. Everything in my life depends on it.

(Vitagliano leaves with her blood. She looks at the window on the door and sees Skinner looking at her and leaving. She gets up and goes after him)

HALLWAY (Scully meets up with Skinner in the hallway)

SCULLY: What are you doing here?

SKINNER: I was going to 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 their 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 Agent Mulder's apartment. Now you have to answer for yourself in five 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 return 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 afraid only for you.

SCULLY: You're going to use that against me, aren't you. You're going to use me as I've been used all along. To preserve the lies.

SKINNER: Where is Agent Mulder? (She just walks back to the door she came out of) Your silence won't save you. Not with these people. And if you lie, I don't know if anything can.

SCULLY: Except proof.

LATER (Scully goes through what I guess is an actual Southern Blot test being done with her blood. Complicated for me to figure out exactly what she's doing. She talks over the procedure)

SCULLY: The cruelest ironies are those consecrated by the passage of time, chanced and occasioned by shocking discovery. I had joined Agent Mulder because of my background in the medical sciences. My assignment was to question his work, to debunk his investigations, and rein 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. (We see Mulder going through Level 4, in a hallway, lower ceilings, air ducts and pipes exposed) 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 government's knowledge and contact with an alien race or races. (Back to Scully) 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 microorganism, what could amount to forensic evidence. Hard and undeniable genetic evidence of the connection between the conspirators and the cancer which has now metastasized in my bloodstream. (Mulder gets to the door Cancerman used in the Pilot! The vast room of shelves of files and evidence in the Pentagon. He uses the code card. It opens. He goes inside. He walks through the rows of shelves) 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. (Back to Scully) Proof extracted from this tiny organism that could blow open a conspiracy of global consequence. (Mulder's turn for voice over as he walks through the room)

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 have gained access 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 a cure for 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. (He pulls a ladder over and climbs to higher on a wall of little filing drawers) If his own desperate hope for his son's cure has eluded 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.

(He opens SCU-SCY. There are two rows of index cards. He flips through and sees Scully, Dana Katherine with her date of birth, 2-23-64, her position number 2317-616 and four rows of other numbers. He takes the card and then opens another card file and pulls out Kritschgau, Michael Jr. It's blank)

LOCATION UNKNOWN (It's a dark room and Cancerman is smoking a cigarette. The phone rings. He answers it)

CSM: Yes?

MP: Yes sir. (It's the security soldier from the Level 4 Clearance security area Mulder went through with Kritschgau watching) I had orders to contact you in the event Scott Ostelhoff entered the building.

CSM: Is he there?

MP: His keycard was scanned through the level four entrance. He used the subterranean access to breach the Pentagon.

CSM: Are you sure it's him?

MP: I can't ascertain that. Do you want me to apprehend him?

CSM: Don't do anything, don't say anything. I'm on my way.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY (Scully is continuing her test)

SCULLY's voice over: 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'm again relying on its familiar 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 with that which I believe has caused my cancer. I hope a picture will develop. A picture that might confirm my darkest suspicions about the source of this disease invading my body in hope of obtaining 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 which I've come to depend on absolutely cannot save or protect me... but only bring into focus the darkness that lies ahead.

PENTAGON FILE ROOM (Mulder walks through an aisle with Scully's card in his hand. He's looking for the matching set of files of the number printed in red in the upper corner. MN 1068-06. He finds a box. Looks inside. Finds a tray of metal tubes)

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY (Scully is conferring with Dr. Vitagliano)

SCULLY: There it is.

VITAGLIANO: I don't understand.

SCULLY: My DNA hybridized with the viral DNA from the cell culture.

VITAGLIANO: But that means the material form the ice core sample you'd have to have DNA from the unclassified chimera cells in your own body.

SCULLY: I know.

VITAGLIANO: But how? How did you know?

SCULLY: I believe that I was exposed to this material and that it is responsible for giving me a serious illness.

VITAGLIANO: What kind of illness?

SCULLY: One which cannot be cured.

PENTAGON FILE ROOM (Mulder takes one of the metal tubes. It matches the number on her card)

(Commercial Break)

OUTSIDE PENTAGON FILE ROOM (The door opens and Mulder sticks his head out. No one is coming either way so he closes the door and walks down the hall)

MULDER's voice over: 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 breached this facility I needed to find my way out to safety... (Cut to Scully walking down the hallway in FBI Headquarters in the blue suit from Gethsemane hearing) depending on Scully to weave her story, to tell her tale, to make them believe the lie.

FBI HEADQUARTERS (The door opens of the meeting and Scully enters. This is the replay of the hearing in Gethsemane)

BLEVINS: Agent Scully, have a seat. Agent Scully, we've had a brief discussion, but will you restate the matter we're here to put to rest?

SCULLY: Yes sir. Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X-Files. (A flash of Scully sitting in a chair in Blevins office in the Pilot) As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical perspective (Scully entering the X Files office for the first time in the Pilot) on the work of Agent Fox Mulder, whose investigations into the paranormal (Flash of Mulder looking for the file in Paper Clip, the Strughold Mining Company) were fueled by a personal belief that his sister (A flash of Samantha's file in Paper Clip) had been abducted by aliens when he was twelve. I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work. That it is my scientific opinion that he became through the course of these years, a victim. A victim of his own false hopes, and of his belief in the biggest of lies.

SENIOR AGENT (from Blevin's office earlier): You were contacted by a man who claimed that he worked for the Department of Defense. A Michael Kritschgau. He told you that Mulder had been taken in by a hoax.

SCULLY: Yes, sir. (Mulder comes out of the door he ducked through earlier to get away from the security guys) He told me a story which detailed point by point the systematic way in which Agent Mulder had been deceived and used. (Mulder walks quickly down the hallway) And how I as his partner had been led down the same path, losing a family member due to my allegiance (Mulder reaches the code card slide thing) and contracting a fatal disease, which I was being told was engineered by the men who were responsible for Agent Mulder's deception. (Mulder slides the card through and waits)

BLEVINS: Were you able to convince Agent Mulder of these facts? (It refuses Mulder's card)

SCULLY: What I couldn't tell Agent Mulder, what I had only just learned myself, was that the cancer which had been diagnosed in me several months earlier had metastasized. And the doctors told me short of a miracle it would continue to aggressively invade my body, advancing faster each day towards the inevitable.

(Mulder looks down the hall. Two security men enter and walk down the long hallway toward him. He tries the card again. It refuses it again. Mulder winces and looks at the two coming closer. He tries it again. No good. The two are closer. Mulder slides the card through again, fast. He waits. It works. He goes out the door and away. Cancerman is standing by the door in the security booth. Mulder didn't see him)

MP: I'll have security stop him at the entrance.

CSM: No, it's okay, that's okay - let him go.

(Back at the meeting)

SCULLY: Early this morning, I got a call from the police... asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. The detective asked me... He needed me to identify a body.

BLEVINS: Agent Scully...

SCULLY: Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. (There, she's said it. She sniffs. The door opens. She turns to see Skinner enter with the autopsy results)

BLEVINS: Agent Scully, these accusations 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. 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.. (She opens her file on the table and it's the result of the Blot) What I have here is scientific evidence-- (Blood drips on the result. She looks at Blevins. She has a bloody nose. She feels woozy. She falls back into the chair, helped by Skinner. She looks at Skinner) You...

SKINNER: Somebody get a doctor. (She faints)

LONE GUNMEN'S OFFICE (Byers opens the metal tube and pours its contents into a vial. He tests it as Frohike, Langly and Mulder watches and waits. Byers punches into the computer. A graph appears. He looks at Mulder)

MULDER: What? What is it?

BYERS: It's deionized water. It's nothing more than that.

CONTINUED IN REDUX II