4X15 Memento Mori

Scully: [in journal] For the first time, I feel time like a heart beat. The seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The numerous 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 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 shaken 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.

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Mulder: Scully? I... stole these from some guy with a broken leg down the hall. He won't be able to catch me. [Giving Scully flowers] How are you anyway?

Scully: I guess that's the question.

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Mulder: Is it operable?

Scully: No.

Mulder: But it's treatable?

Scully: The truth is that the type and placement of the tumour make it difficult... to the extreme.

Mulder: I refuse to believe that.

Scully: For all the times that I have said that to you I am as certain about this as you have ever been.

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Scully: [on phone] 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 found something.

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Scully: [on phone] Mulder, whatever you've found... or whatever you might find... I think we both know that... right now, the truth is in me. And that's where I need to pursue it, as soon as possible.

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Scully: [in journal] 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 is 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 treatments, science's attempt at exorcism. Mulder, I hope that in these terms you might know it and know me and accept this stranger so many recognise but can not 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 travelled far together, this last distance must, necessarily, be travelled alone.

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Skinner: What happened to your investigative avenues?

Mulder: They've taken a turn. A pretty big U-turn by the looks of it. 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.

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Mulder: He knows what they did to Agent Scully. He may very well know how to save her.

Skinner: 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.

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

Mulder: How did you guys get in?

Byers: A modified clipper chip we cannibalised from a government surplus Army field encoder.

Frohike: We bought it back from the Chinese.

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Mulder: You guys ever been to the Lombard Research Facility? [Byers and Langly in unison look at Frohike, Frohike looks back, Byers and Langly look back to Mulder] Well, pick out something black and sexy and prepare to do some funky poaching.

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Smoking 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...

Smoking Man: You think I'm the devil, Mr Skinner?

---

Smoking Man: Oh, Mr Skinner? Which way is the elevator?

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Frohike: Smile, Byers. You're on Candid Camera...

Langly: External security has been breached.

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Mulder: You guys couldn't spring for two of these? [Grabbing headset from Byers] Langly, what the hell is going on?

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Scully: 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 is 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 to ever see through this.

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[Kurt Crawford shows Mulder a drawer in a storage facility for human ova]

Dana Scully
0000121336S40-009
29.10.94

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Kurt Crawford: Harvested during her abduction. Through a high amplification radiation procedure that caused super ovulation.

Mulder: Why?

Kurt Crawford: For fertilisation. They constitute one half of the necessary raw materials.

Mulder: For genetic hybridisation. For reproduction. These women... these women are your birth mothers.

Kurt Crawford: 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.

Kurt Crawford: They're our mothers.

[Mulder pockets a vial of Scully's ova]

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

[The Grey-Haired Man starts firing]

Mulder: Work faster.

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Scully: Mulder, I can't kid myself. People live with cancer. They carry on. And so will I.

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Mulder: The truth will save you, Scully... I think it will save both of us.

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Mulder: [on phone] I was calling to thank you for your advice about our chain smoking 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. [Hangs up]

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