The X-Files s05e01 Episode Script
Redux (1)
- Last season.
- What we have is the corpus of an extraterrestrial biological entity.
The ice core samples I took, they can't be faked.
I refuse to believe that it's not true.
So youre saying it's all been orchestrated.
A hoax.
Which you've been used to perpetuate.
He said the men behind this hoax gave me this disease to make you believe.
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.
Agent Scully- Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
When we speak of life beyond the earth, what we generally mean is, of course, intelligent life, something resembling our noble selves.
It is highly probable that there are such intelligent forms of life in other galaxies in the universe.
And it is even more probable that many of these forms are vastly more intelligent than we.
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 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.
If only the tragedy had been mine alone, might it be more easy tonight to bring this journey to its end.
Agent Mulder? - Agent Mulder.
- Yeah.
There's a matter of security.
Something I hadn't anticipated.
- Just after I left your apartment- - Who are you? Just after our last conversation, I was followed- - Who are you? - Are you listening, Agent Mulder? Are you hearing me? We can't speak right now.
I have reason to believe that these- Did they give Agent Scully this disease? Did they do this to her because of me? They may be listening, Agent Mulder.
They may be watching you, everything you do and say.
Are you listening, Agent Mulder? Agent Mulder? Put that out! Back away! Get away.
You have no new messages.
- Keep going, F.
B.
I.
woman.
- Mulder? What are you doing? Why are you sitting in my bedroom in the dark? It was too crowded in my apartment.
I couldn't sleep.
- I'm not kidding, 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.
What are you talking about, Mulder? What's going on? Apparently somebody thinks my life is interesting enough to put on videotape.
My apartment's been under electronic surveillance for at least two months.
Look at this.
Courtesy of the U.
S.
government.
- That's the dead man in your apartment? - Yeah.
He works- He worked for the Department of Defense.
How did he die, Mulder? Guns hot wound to the face.
Have you contacted anybody at the bureau? I can't do that, Scully.
I can't go to the authorities with this.
- What are you talking about? - This man, Ostelhoff, worked for the military.
Are you beginning to get the picture? Do you see what's happening here? That the hoax is connected to the military, just like Kritschgau said it was.
This hoax, your cancer, everything.
It just doesn't lead back to the military.
It leads right back to the F.
B.
I.
What? 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.
This is the P.
B.
X.
operator at the bureau.
Yeah.
Who would he be calling at the F.
B.
I.
? - I don't know.
- Mulder, how long has this been going on? Maybe since the beginning, since you joined me on the X-Files.
That would mean that for four 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.
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.
Mulder, we can't go to the bureau making these accusations.
But as they lie to us, we can lie to them.
A lie to find the truth.
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 F.
B.
I.
, - who, if named, - Agent Scully? could be tied to the hoax 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 honor compromised.
Is it him? - But now, laskher to lie - Yeah.
to the people lying 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.
Agent Scully.
Is it true? - Yes, sir.
- Are you all right? I'm, uh- I don't know what to say.
They asked me to come down and identify the body.
Well, how'd you make the I.
D.
? The word from Alexandria P.
D.
is it was self- inflicted.
A shotgun blast to the face.
I saw Mulder earlier this morning.
He was wearing the same clothes.
I'm very sorry.
Agent Scully.
Section Chief Blevins wants you in for questioning on this.
He believes you have information you haven't come forward with.
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 they believed Scully's lie that it was melying on that floor, I might learn truths here.
Beautiful lies were discovered, both Scully and I would be discovered with them.
Agent Scully, please have a seat.
Some time has passed since you were first in this office.
Yes, sir.
Four years.
From all reports, your work on the X-Files brought you very close to Agent Mulder.
Yes, sir.
We're all sorry about what's happened, Agent Scully.
But that's not why I'm here.
You're here because we've been informed by the Department of Defense that prior to Agent Mulder's accident you may have been contacted by a D.
OLD.
employee.
Yes, that's right.
And that he gave you classified information.
He had information about the discovery of what Agent Mulder believed to be an alien corpse.
He, uh- He said the body was part of a hoax.
He provided evidence of this? N- No hard evidence, sir.
No.
Agent Scully, I suggest you tell us everything you know.
If you have any knowledge of this man, you should speak up now.
What knowledge? His name.
Whatever you're withholding, you'll be asked to explain yourself tonight at a joint F.
B.
I.
panel I've asked assembled on this matter.
Is this the man? Michael Kritschgau? Yes.
Hey! How'd you get in here? - Through the front door.
- You can't bypass security.
You can when you have the card.
Put that away.
Put it away.
You knew my apartment was being surveilled.
How? Come with me.
I was followed from your apartment the night we spoke.
Someone at the F.
B.
I.
is involved.
This man Ostelhoff was in contact with somebody- How'd you get his card? I found it on a dead man.
You know what that is, what you have in your hand? It gives you level four clearance.
Level four clearance.
That means I get to dine at the Officer's Club? You have access to everything.
Things I don't.
Things I can only tell you about.
I need to know who did this to Scully.
What you can have, what you may find, - is so much more than that.
- What? What you want most desperately of all.
The cure for Scully's cancer? Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- How may I direct your call? - Communications center, please.
One moment.
- Communications, Holly.
- Holly, Dana Scully.
Dana, I'm so sorry about what's happened.
I just heard.
Holly, I need your help on something.
I was hoping that you could help me with some information.
What do you need? I have some calls placed at the bureau on consecutive dates.
On the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth.
They came in to the P.
B.
X.
operator.
The first was at 11:21.
The next at 11:;14, 3:;07, They would have all been transferred to the same extension.
- And you're looking for that extension? - Yes.
I've got five calls matching those times and dates transferred to an executive level extension.
- Whose? - It's a branch extension.
It could be anyone at that level.
Would Assistant Director Skinner be at that extension? Yes.
- Thank you.
- Okay.
You take care now, Dana.
- Yes? - Special Agent Scully? - Yes.
- This is Dr.
Vitagliano at the Paleoclimatology Department at American University.
You asked me to look into these ice core samples for you.
Right.
I'm sorry that I haven't gotten back to you.
You might want to come down here to the lab.
There's something I know you're gonna want to see for yourself.
What am I looking for? Level four is a biological quarantine wing.
It houses a series of labs and medical facilities- an elaborate system for the storage of vast quantities of DNA.
DNA from whom? Virtually every American born since 1945.
Every immigrant, every indigenous person who's ever given blood or tissue to a government doctor.
This is what I was telling you, Agent Mulder.
This is the hoax into which you've been drawn.
The roots go back 50 years to the end of World War ll, playing on a virulent national appetite for bogus revelation and a public newly fearful of something called the atom bomb, the U.
S.
military command began to fan the flames of what were called "flying saucer stories.
" There are truths which can kill a nation.
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 politicos knew that what they could not win was a public relations war.
Those photos from Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not faces Americans wanted to see in a mirror.
Oppenheimer knew it, 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, it's war.
Since Antietam, nothing has driven the economy faster.
We needed a reason to keep spending money.
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, "Khrushchev said, and the public believed it.
After what McCarthy had done 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.
What does any of this have to do with flying saucers? The U.
S.
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 and fed them enough bogus fact, enough fuzzy photos and eyewitness accounts that they believed it too.
They even hooked Doug MacArthur, for God's sake.
I can't tell you how fortuitous the timing of it all was.
Do you know when the first supersonic flight was, Agent Mulder? Soon every experimental aircraft being flown was a U.
F.
O.
sighting.
When the abduction stories started up, it was too perfect.
We'd almost gotten caught in Korea, an ambitious misstep.
China and the Soviets knew it.
The U.
N.
got all heated up at us.
Germ warfare.
We were accused of using it on the Koreans.
Yeah.
It was developmental then, nothing like what we and the Russians have now.
The bioweapons used in the Gulf War were so ingenious as to be almost undetectable- developed right in this very building.
And all these reports of abductions, you're saying they've all been lies.
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, about the military and CIA.
? Whats been the effect? Even wilder and more widespread belief.
The American appetite for bogus revelation, Agent Mulder.
But I've seen aliens.
I've witnessed these things.
You've seen what they wanted you to see.
The line between science and science fiction doesn't exist anymore.
What this is about is control of the very elements of life - DNA.
- Yours, mine, everyone's.
- Then why a hoax? Why create hard evidence, an alien body that could be disproved? The body you found was so good, so believable, that only a directed scientific examination - would have proven the fraud.
- Scully would have known.
The timing of the hoax was planned so that Agent Scully wouldn't be alive to do an examination.
You went along with all this.
You let them do this to Scully.
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.
You believe there's a cure for him in here too.
I have to think there is.
Michael Kritschgau.
May we talk to you? What about? D.
O.
D.
is detaining you for questioning.
Would you come with us, Mr.
Kritschgau? Sir.
I was told that you needed to see me, that there was some urgency.
It seems I've been left out of the loop.
Left out? You were watching Mulder.
You had a man on him.
No one bothered to inform me of this.
I know nothing about a man.
I will not be cut out like this.
You need my expertise.
Is this being run from D.
O.
D.
? If it is, I'm unaware of it.
I've always kept Mulder in check.
I put this whole thing together.
I created Mulder.
Agent Mulder is dead.
Our F.
B.
I.
source confirmed it this morning.
Mulder killed himself.
Mulder was an asset.
Without his partner, we may have underestimated his fragility.
I never underestimated Mulder.
I still don't.
As you had asked, I've tested some of the cellular material found in the ice core sample.
Because we couldn't identify it as either plant or animal, only as some kind of chimeric hybrid, I put some of the individual cells in media containing fetal bovine serum, and the cells began to divide.
Well, then they were animal cells that you found.
They are not classifiable.
What do you mean? You said there was mitotic cell division.
When the cells began to divide, they didn't just multiply.
They began to go through the stages of morula, blastula, gastrula.
They began somatic development? The beginning of a life-form.
Growing into what, I don't know.
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.
Now with what Ive 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 this cure would mean with certainty that I have believed in aliens from the start.
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 setup 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 three years ago.
I'm still not sure what you're hoping to find here.
I need to do a Southern blot to run the culture that you showed me against my own DNA.
You said that the unclassified cells you looked at under the E.
E.
M.
were full of virus.
Right.
What are you looking for? A match.
And I need it before 7:00.
Tonight? Not gonna happen.
Not unless we have a blazing hot probe.
It's got to happen.
Everything in my life depends on it.
- What are you doing here? - I was gonna ask you the same.
No you weren't.
You followed me here.
Why are you following me? Is this more dirty work you're doing for the D.
O.
D.
? Why dont you tell me something? Tell me what youre doing here.
- I want an answer from you.
- I want an answer from you! - This isn't your job! - 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.
- And what about yours? - 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 five hours.
As you compound the lies, you compound the consequences for them.
All lies lead to the truth.
Isn't that right? And what about your lie, Agent Scully? What does it lead to? 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 having my memory stolen, only to have it returned along with a disease that I was given.
Is that your justification? Is that what you're gonna tell the joint panel? Is that your justification? Is that what youre gonna tell the joint panel? - Are you afraid of that? - Well, considering the dead man in Mulder's apartment was murdered in cold blood and you will fully misidentified him, yes, I am afraid.
But I'm only afraid for you.
You're gonna use that against me, arent you? You're gonna use me as I've been used all along, to preserve the lies.
Where is Agent Mulder? Your silence won't save you.
Not with these people.
And if you lie, I don't know if anything can.
Except proof.
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 rein him back into the F.
B.
I.
mainstream.
Now, as fate would have it, lam 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 F.
B.
I.
,; 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 microorganism, what could amount to forensic evidence.
Hard and undeniable genetic evidence of a connection between the conspirators and the cancer which has now metastasized in my bloodstream.
I have few short hours to conduct these tests before I must appear before an F.
B.
I.
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 could blow open a conspiracy of global consequence.
If Agent Scully and I had been led to believe the conspiracy meant to destroy us has its roots in the Department of Defense, that fact seems all but irrefutable now.
I have 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 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.
If his own desperate search 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.
- Yes? - I had orders to contact you in the event Scott Ostelhoff entered the building.
Is he there? His key card was scanned through the level four entrance.
He used the subterranean access to breach the pentagon.
- Are you sure it's him? - I can't ascertain that.
- Do you want me to apprehend him? - Don't do anything.
I'm on my way.
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 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 against 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 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've come to depend on absolutely cannot save or protect me, but on lybring into focus the darkness that lies ahead.
- There it is.
- I don't understand.
My DNA hybridized with the viral DNA from the cell culture.
But that means the material from the ice core sample- You'd have to have DNA from the unclassified chimera cells - in your own body.
- I know.
But how? And how did you know? I believe that I was exposed to this material, and it is responsible for giving me a serious illness.
What kind of illness? One which cannot be cured.
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,; depending on Scully to weave her story,; to tell her tale,; to make them believe the lie.
- Agent Scully, please have a seat.
- Thank you.
Agent Scully, we've had a brief discussion, but will you restate the matter we're here to put to rest.
Yes, sir.
Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X-Files.
As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical perspective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, whose investigations into the paranormal were fueled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was 12.
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.
You were contacted by a man who claimed he worked for the Department of Defense, a Michael Kritschgau, who told you that Mulder had been taken in by a hoax.
Yes, sir.
He told me a story which detailed point-by-point the systematic way in which Agent Mulder had been deceived and used, and how I as his partner had been led down the same path- losing a family member due to my allegiance and contracting a fatal disease which I was being told was engineered by the men who were responsible for Agent Mulder's deception.
Were you able to convince Agent Mulder of these facts? What couldnt telI 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.
I'll have security stop him at the entrance.
No, it's okay.
Let him go.
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.
Agent Scully- Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Agent Scully, these accusations that you've made- - you've been given a disease.
- Yes, sir.
They're extremely serious charges.
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.
What I have here is scientific evidence- - You.
- Somebody get a doctor.
What? What is it? It's deionized water.
It's nothing more than that.
- What we have is the corpus of an extraterrestrial biological entity.
The ice core samples I took, they can't be faked.
I refuse to believe that it's not true.
So youre saying it's all been orchestrated.
A hoax.
Which you've been used to perpetuate.
He said the men behind this hoax gave me this disease to make you believe.
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.
Agent Scully- Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
When we speak of life beyond the earth, what we generally mean is, of course, intelligent life, something resembling our noble selves.
It is highly probable that there are such intelligent forms of life in other galaxies in the universe.
And it is even more probable that many of these forms are vastly more intelligent than we.
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 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.
If only the tragedy had been mine alone, might it be more easy tonight to bring this journey to its end.
Agent Mulder? - Agent Mulder.
- Yeah.
There's a matter of security.
Something I hadn't anticipated.
- Just after I left your apartment- - Who are you? Just after our last conversation, I was followed- - Who are you? - Are you listening, Agent Mulder? Are you hearing me? We can't speak right now.
I have reason to believe that these- Did they give Agent Scully this disease? Did they do this to her because of me? They may be listening, Agent Mulder.
They may be watching you, everything you do and say.
Are you listening, Agent Mulder? Agent Mulder? Put that out! Back away! Get away.
You have no new messages.
- Keep going, F.
B.
I.
woman.
- Mulder? What are you doing? Why are you sitting in my bedroom in the dark? It was too crowded in my apartment.
I couldn't sleep.
- I'm not kidding, 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.
What are you talking about, Mulder? What's going on? Apparently somebody thinks my life is interesting enough to put on videotape.
My apartment's been under electronic surveillance for at least two months.
Look at this.
Courtesy of the U.
S.
government.
- That's the dead man in your apartment? - Yeah.
He works- He worked for the Department of Defense.
How did he die, Mulder? Guns hot wound to the face.
Have you contacted anybody at the bureau? I can't do that, Scully.
I can't go to the authorities with this.
- What are you talking about? - This man, Ostelhoff, worked for the military.
Are you beginning to get the picture? Do you see what's happening here? That the hoax is connected to the military, just like Kritschgau said it was.
This hoax, your cancer, everything.
It just doesn't lead back to the military.
It leads right back to the F.
B.
I.
What? 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.
This is the P.
B.
X.
operator at the bureau.
Yeah.
Who would he be calling at the F.
B.
I.
? - I don't know.
- Mulder, how long has this been going on? Maybe since the beginning, since you joined me on the X-Files.
That would mean that for four 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.
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.
Mulder, we can't go to the bureau making these accusations.
But as they lie to us, we can lie to them.
A lie to find the truth.
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 F.
B.
I.
, - who, if named, - Agent Scully? could be tied to the hoax 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 honor compromised.
Is it him? - But now, laskher to lie - Yeah.
to the people lying 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.
Agent Scully.
Is it true? - Yes, sir.
- Are you all right? I'm, uh- I don't know what to say.
They asked me to come down and identify the body.
Well, how'd you make the I.
D.
? The word from Alexandria P.
D.
is it was self- inflicted.
A shotgun blast to the face.
I saw Mulder earlier this morning.
He was wearing the same clothes.
I'm very sorry.
Agent Scully.
Section Chief Blevins wants you in for questioning on this.
He believes you have information you haven't come forward with.
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 they believed Scully's lie that it was melying on that floor, I might learn truths here.
Beautiful lies were discovered, both Scully and I would be discovered with them.
Agent Scully, please have a seat.
Some time has passed since you were first in this office.
Yes, sir.
Four years.
From all reports, your work on the X-Files brought you very close to Agent Mulder.
Yes, sir.
We're all sorry about what's happened, Agent Scully.
But that's not why I'm here.
You're here because we've been informed by the Department of Defense that prior to Agent Mulder's accident you may have been contacted by a D.
OLD.
employee.
Yes, that's right.
And that he gave you classified information.
He had information about the discovery of what Agent Mulder believed to be an alien corpse.
He, uh- He said the body was part of a hoax.
He provided evidence of this? N- No hard evidence, sir.
No.
Agent Scully, I suggest you tell us everything you know.
If you have any knowledge of this man, you should speak up now.
What knowledge? His name.
Whatever you're withholding, you'll be asked to explain yourself tonight at a joint F.
B.
I.
panel I've asked assembled on this matter.
Is this the man? Michael Kritschgau? Yes.
Hey! How'd you get in here? - Through the front door.
- You can't bypass security.
You can when you have the card.
Put that away.
Put it away.
You knew my apartment was being surveilled.
How? Come with me.
I was followed from your apartment the night we spoke.
Someone at the F.
B.
I.
is involved.
This man Ostelhoff was in contact with somebody- How'd you get his card? I found it on a dead man.
You know what that is, what you have in your hand? It gives you level four clearance.
Level four clearance.
That means I get to dine at the Officer's Club? You have access to everything.
Things I don't.
Things I can only tell you about.
I need to know who did this to Scully.
What you can have, what you may find, - is so much more than that.
- What? What you want most desperately of all.
The cure for Scully's cancer? Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- How may I direct your call? - Communications center, please.
One moment.
- Communications, Holly.
- Holly, Dana Scully.
Dana, I'm so sorry about what's happened.
I just heard.
Holly, I need your help on something.
I was hoping that you could help me with some information.
What do you need? I have some calls placed at the bureau on consecutive dates.
On the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth.
They came in to the P.
B.
X.
operator.
The first was at 11:21.
The next at 11:;14, 3:;07, They would have all been transferred to the same extension.
- And you're looking for that extension? - Yes.
I've got five calls matching those times and dates transferred to an executive level extension.
- Whose? - It's a branch extension.
It could be anyone at that level.
Would Assistant Director Skinner be at that extension? Yes.
- Thank you.
- Okay.
You take care now, Dana.
- Yes? - Special Agent Scully? - Yes.
- This is Dr.
Vitagliano at the Paleoclimatology Department at American University.
You asked me to look into these ice core samples for you.
Right.
I'm sorry that I haven't gotten back to you.
You might want to come down here to the lab.
There's something I know you're gonna want to see for yourself.
What am I looking for? Level four is a biological quarantine wing.
It houses a series of labs and medical facilities- an elaborate system for the storage of vast quantities of DNA.
DNA from whom? Virtually every American born since 1945.
Every immigrant, every indigenous person who's ever given blood or tissue to a government doctor.
This is what I was telling you, Agent Mulder.
This is the hoax into which you've been drawn.
The roots go back 50 years to the end of World War ll, playing on a virulent national appetite for bogus revelation and a public newly fearful of something called the atom bomb, the U.
S.
military command began to fan the flames of what were called "flying saucer stories.
" There are truths which can kill a nation.
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 politicos knew that what they could not win was a public relations war.
Those photos from Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not faces Americans wanted to see in a mirror.
Oppenheimer knew it, 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, it's war.
Since Antietam, nothing has driven the economy faster.
We needed a reason to keep spending money.
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, "Khrushchev said, and the public believed it.
After what McCarthy had done 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.
What does any of this have to do with flying saucers? The U.
S.
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 and fed them enough bogus fact, enough fuzzy photos and eyewitness accounts that they believed it too.
They even hooked Doug MacArthur, for God's sake.
I can't tell you how fortuitous the timing of it all was.
Do you know when the first supersonic flight was, Agent Mulder? Soon every experimental aircraft being flown was a U.
F.
O.
sighting.
When the abduction stories started up, it was too perfect.
We'd almost gotten caught in Korea, an ambitious misstep.
China and the Soviets knew it.
The U.
N.
got all heated up at us.
Germ warfare.
We were accused of using it on the Koreans.
Yeah.
It was developmental then, nothing like what we and the Russians have now.
The bioweapons used in the Gulf War were so ingenious as to be almost undetectable- developed right in this very building.
And all these reports of abductions, you're saying they've all been lies.
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, about the military and CIA.
? Whats been the effect? Even wilder and more widespread belief.
The American appetite for bogus revelation, Agent Mulder.
But I've seen aliens.
I've witnessed these things.
You've seen what they wanted you to see.
The line between science and science fiction doesn't exist anymore.
What this is about is control of the very elements of life - DNA.
- Yours, mine, everyone's.
- Then why a hoax? Why create hard evidence, an alien body that could be disproved? The body you found was so good, so believable, that only a directed scientific examination - would have proven the fraud.
- Scully would have known.
The timing of the hoax was planned so that Agent Scully wouldn't be alive to do an examination.
You went along with all this.
You let them do this to Scully.
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.
You believe there's a cure for him in here too.
I have to think there is.
Michael Kritschgau.
May we talk to you? What about? D.
O.
D.
is detaining you for questioning.
Would you come with us, Mr.
Kritschgau? Sir.
I was told that you needed to see me, that there was some urgency.
It seems I've been left out of the loop.
Left out? You were watching Mulder.
You had a man on him.
No one bothered to inform me of this.
I know nothing about a man.
I will not be cut out like this.
You need my expertise.
Is this being run from D.
O.
D.
? If it is, I'm unaware of it.
I've always kept Mulder in check.
I put this whole thing together.
I created Mulder.
Agent Mulder is dead.
Our F.
B.
I.
source confirmed it this morning.
Mulder killed himself.
Mulder was an asset.
Without his partner, we may have underestimated his fragility.
I never underestimated Mulder.
I still don't.
As you had asked, I've tested some of the cellular material found in the ice core sample.
Because we couldn't identify it as either plant or animal, only as some kind of chimeric hybrid, I put some of the individual cells in media containing fetal bovine serum, and the cells began to divide.
Well, then they were animal cells that you found.
They are not classifiable.
What do you mean? You said there was mitotic cell division.
When the cells began to divide, they didn't just multiply.
They began to go through the stages of morula, blastula, gastrula.
They began somatic development? The beginning of a life-form.
Growing into what, I don't know.
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.
Now with what Ive 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 this cure would mean with certainty that I have believed in aliens from the start.
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 setup 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 three years ago.
I'm still not sure what you're hoping to find here.
I need to do a Southern blot to run the culture that you showed me against my own DNA.
You said that the unclassified cells you looked at under the E.
E.
M.
were full of virus.
Right.
What are you looking for? A match.
And I need it before 7:00.
Tonight? Not gonna happen.
Not unless we have a blazing hot probe.
It's got to happen.
Everything in my life depends on it.
- What are you doing here? - I was gonna ask you the same.
No you weren't.
You followed me here.
Why are you following me? Is this more dirty work you're doing for the D.
O.
D.
? Why dont you tell me something? Tell me what youre doing here.
- I want an answer from you.
- I want an answer from you! - This isn't your job! - 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.
- And what about yours? - 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 five hours.
As you compound the lies, you compound the consequences for them.
All lies lead to the truth.
Isn't that right? And what about your lie, Agent Scully? What does it lead to? 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 having my memory stolen, only to have it returned along with a disease that I was given.
Is that your justification? Is that what you're gonna tell the joint panel? Is that your justification? Is that what youre gonna tell the joint panel? - Are you afraid of that? - Well, considering the dead man in Mulder's apartment was murdered in cold blood and you will fully misidentified him, yes, I am afraid.
But I'm only afraid for you.
You're gonna use that against me, arent you? You're gonna use me as I've been used all along, to preserve the lies.
Where is Agent Mulder? Your silence won't save you.
Not with these people.
And if you lie, I don't know if anything can.
Except proof.
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 rein him back into the F.
B.
I.
mainstream.
Now, as fate would have it, lam 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 F.
B.
I.
,; 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 microorganism, what could amount to forensic evidence.
Hard and undeniable genetic evidence of a connection between the conspirators and the cancer which has now metastasized in my bloodstream.
I have few short hours to conduct these tests before I must appear before an F.
B.
I.
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 could blow open a conspiracy of global consequence.
If Agent Scully and I had been led to believe the conspiracy meant to destroy us has its roots in the Department of Defense, that fact seems all but irrefutable now.
I have 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 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.
If his own desperate search 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.
- Yes? - I had orders to contact you in the event Scott Ostelhoff entered the building.
Is he there? His key card was scanned through the level four entrance.
He used the subterranean access to breach the pentagon.
- Are you sure it's him? - I can't ascertain that.
- Do you want me to apprehend him? - Don't do anything.
I'm on my way.
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 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 against 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 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've come to depend on absolutely cannot save or protect me, but on lybring into focus the darkness that lies ahead.
- There it is.
- I don't understand.
My DNA hybridized with the viral DNA from the cell culture.
But that means the material from the ice core sample- You'd have to have DNA from the unclassified chimera cells - in your own body.
- I know.
But how? And how did you know? I believe that I was exposed to this material, and it is responsible for giving me a serious illness.
What kind of illness? One which cannot be cured.
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,; depending on Scully to weave her story,; to tell her tale,; to make them believe the lie.
- Agent Scully, please have a seat.
- Thank you.
Agent Scully, we've had a brief discussion, but will you restate the matter we're here to put to rest.
Yes, sir.
Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X-Files.
As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical perspective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, whose investigations into the paranormal were fueled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was 12.
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.
You were contacted by a man who claimed he worked for the Department of Defense, a Michael Kritschgau, who told you that Mulder had been taken in by a hoax.
Yes, sir.
He told me a story which detailed point-by-point the systematic way in which Agent Mulder had been deceived and used, and how I as his partner had been led down the same path- losing a family member due to my allegiance and contracting a fatal disease which I was being told was engineered by the men who were responsible for Agent Mulder's deception.
Were you able to convince Agent Mulder of these facts? What couldnt telI 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.
I'll have security stop him at the entrance.
No, it's okay.
Let him go.
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.
Agent Scully- Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Agent Scully, these accusations that you've made- - you've been given a disease.
- Yes, sir.
They're extremely serious charges.
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.
What I have here is scientific evidence- - You.
- Somebody get a doctor.
What? What is it? It's deionized water.
It's nothing more than that.