6ABX12 One Son

Mulder: [voiceover] Two men, young, idealistic — the fine product of a generation hardened by world war. Two fathers whose paths would converge in a new battle — an invisible war between a silent enemy and a sleeping giant... on a scale to dwarf all historical conflicts. A 50-years war, its killing fields lying in wait for the inevitable global holocaust. Theirs was the dawn of Armageddon. And while the world was unaware, unwitting spectators to the hurly-burly of the decades-long struggle between heaven and earth, there were those who prepared for the end; who measured the size and power of the enemy, and faced the choices: stand and fight, or bow to the will of a fearsome enemy. Or to surrender — to yield and collaborate. To save themselves and stay their enemy's hand. Men who believed that victory was the absence of defeat and survival the ultimate ideology... No matter what the sacrifice.

---

[Mulder has his gun aimed at Cassandra Spender and Scully is protesting]

Cassandra Spender: Shoot me now, before it's too late!

Scully: Mulder?!

Cassandra Spender: Shoot!

[People in biohazard suits break down the door and enter Mulder's apartment with hoses blasting]

Mulder: Who are you?

Scully: What's going on?

CDC Leader: Get down! Get down!

---

Mulder: Who are you?

CDC Leader: We're with the Centres for Disease Control. Remain calm and where you are for your own good. You're going to be transported to a quarantine facility as soon as we can secure the environment.

Scully: Quarantine for what? [Agent Fowley enters the apartment wearing a biohazard suit]

Fowley: A contagion. A contagion of unknown origin.

---

[Mulder and Scully are being checked for radioactivity by a pair of technicians]

Mulder: There must be some kind of mistake. I signed up for the aromatherapy treatment.

Scully: Are we going to be able to talk to somebody who can tell us what this is all about? [The technicians ignore Scully's query and leave]

Mulder: Where the hell do you think we are?

Scully: I think, based on our travel time, probably Fort Marlene. High risk decontamination and quarantine. [A pair of doctors enter the room and begin checking them out. Agent Fowley follows them in]

Fowley: I'm going to beg for your understanding and forgiveness and offer my humblest apologies for the way this went down. I didn't have a lot of choices. I owe your neighbours apologies as well. It's going to be some time before they get back in the building. We're still acting on a CDC Level-Four quarantine protocol.

Scully: Based on what information?

Fowley: That Cassandra Spender had contracted a highly contagious vectoring organism which produces a spontaneous cellular breakdown and combustion.

Scully: What?

Fowley: She was and remains the only surviving victim of an unspecified medical experiment that killed seven doctors with violent and unexplained burning.

Mulder: Who called you?

Fowley: Agent Spender.

Scully: Where's Cassandra?

Fowley: She's isolated... pending full and satisfactory medical evaluation.

Scully: Cassandra Spender was in a general hospital environment for days. We met with her, and yet on a whim you call in the third battalion. It's unjustified and highly suspicious as to motive.

Mulder: Scully...

Fowley: What motives are you suspecting?

Scully: Your isolation of Cassandra.

Fowley: She's Patient Zero.

Scully: No one is sick or infected here. I mean, I assume that based on you walking in here dressed to the nines offering apologies masquerading as explanations.

Mulder: Scully...

Scully: Mulder, I want to see Cassandra.

Fowley: I told you — she's isolated.

Scully: Yes, and I am a medical doctor.

Fowley: Who is suspended indefinitely from her position at the FBI.

---

[Scully opens a locker and removes a plain grey dress, looks at it in disgust and puts it back in the locker as Mulder enters the locker room]

Scully: They've burned our clothes.

Mulder: Hey... I heard grey is the new black.

Scully: Mulder, this stinks, and not just because I think that woman is a... well, I think you know what I think that woman is.

Mulder: No. Actually, you hide your feelings very well.

Scully: Agent Spender calling the Centres for Disease Control? Mulder, this is just somebody using their position to stage a hi-tech government kidnapping.

Mulder: Apparently not. I just spoke to AD Skinner. He was at the hospital when Cassandra went missing. He heard Spender make the phone call to the CDC.

Scully: But she wasn't sick, Mulder. I mean, the remarkable thing is she was well.

Mulder: Well, then why did she come to my apartment demanding to be killed?

Scully: Because of everything that had been done to her. Because of the tests, because of the medical experiments and the implant put in her neck — the same thing that was done to me. She just wants it to stop. And I'm telling you, they have taken her so that it can continue.

Mulder: No. It won't continue. It doesn't have to any more. She knows what she is, Scully. That's why it's so dangerous for her to be alive. That's why she came to my apartment asking to be killed.

Scully: What is she?

Mulder: I think she's the one, Scully.

---

Krycek: I recovered all the medical records from the hospital. The doctors who examined her before she escaped are telling us Cassandra Spender may be the culmination of 25 years of this group's finest efforts.

Third Elder: That's why the rebels struck. They were trying to kill her.

Krycek: They killed everyone but her. They struck to keep her alive — keep us from killing her.

First Elder: What do the rebels want?

Third Elder: To destroy us. They know that when the aliens learn of Cassandra, colonisation will begin.

Fourth Elder: We must destroy Cassandra.

Smoking Man: No. Let colonisation begin. We must turn over Cassandra. Save ourselves.

Fourth Elder: Bill Mulder was against this. He said this would be our tragic mistake.

Smoking Man: Bill Mulder sacrificed his only daughter because he knew this day would arrive. What choice have we... if you want to see your families survive? If we want to see those we sacrificed returned to us?

---

Marita Covarrubias: I can't be seen with you.

Mulder: Marita?

Marita Covarrubias: If they catch me with you, they'll kill me this time.

Mulder: Who?

Marita Covarrubias: The Smoking Man and... his group.

Mulder: What have they done to you?

Marita Covarrubias: Tests. Terrible, terrible tests.

Mulder: Like the tests on Cassandra Spender?

Marita Covarrubias: No. No, Cassandra Spender is part of a program that's been going on for 25 years. A hybrid program.

Mulder: Then what were the tests on you?

Marita Covarrubias: I was infected with the alien virus — the black oil. My tests were on the vaccine against it... being developed in secret.

Mulder: In secret from the alien colonists. The hybrid program was in co-operation with the aliens but the conspirators never intended to succeed... to finish the work.

Marita Covarrubias: They were buying time.

Mulder: To make a vaccine and build a weapon.

Marita Covarrubias: But Cassandra Spender happened.

Mulder: She's the first, isn't she? She's the first successful alien-human hybrid.

Marita Covarrubias: If she is... and the aliens learn a hybrid exists... colonisation of the planet will begin. With no stopping it.

---

Cassandra Spender: Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Jeffrey. [She is strapped to a medical gurney]

Spender: Mom... How are you feeling?

Cassandra Spender: Uh, fine. Why are they keeping me here?

Spender: I'm keeping you here, because you're safe here.

Cassandra Spender: Safe from who?

Spender: You know who. From my father.

Cassandra Spender: You can't keep me safe from him.

Spender: I can, Mom and I'm going to. There won't be any more tests on you.

Cassandra Spender: You don't understand. You don't understand about me.

Spender: I do. I understand everything now.

Cassandra Spender: You don't understand what will happen... what will happen to you if they find me out. You've got to let me go.

Spender: They'll just hurt you again, Mom.

Cassandra Spender: Yes. You must let them. Or everyone dies. Everyone. Jeffrey... please... [Agent Spender leaves the room] Jeffrey... Jeffrey! Jeffrey...

---

Mulder: The latest in home security. [Noting the eight locks on the Lone Gunmen's door]

Frohike: Hey, you get through this, you got to come through me.

Mulder: I got a call from Scully. Said it was urgent. [Mulder enters the office, where Scully and the other Lone Gunmen are waiting]

Scully: I'll ask you to hear me out before you launch any objection. Mulder, I asked them to pull up everything they could on Diana Fowley.

Mulder: I don't have time for this.

Scully: Mulder, she's playing you for a fool.

Mulder: I know her, Scully. You don't.

Scully: You knew her. You don't any more. I think we can prove that to you.

Byers: She took a position in the FBIs foreign counter-terrorism unit in 1991. Seven years in Europe.

Scully: Yet there isn't a single piece of information available on her activities in the FBI files.

Mulder: [feigning shock] I hope you've got something more than that to indict her with.

Scully: Travel records, pulled from airline manifests that had been purged from her FBI records. Extensive movement throughout Western Europe. Almost weekly trips to and from Tunisia.

Mulder: For the purpose of what?

Langly: That's what we couldn't figure, until we took a flyer and we found this.

Frohike: Mutual UFO network logs.

Mulder: MUFON.

Scully: Special Agent Diana Fowley of the FBI was visiting every European chapter collecting data on female abductees.

Mulder: So she's collecting data. Big deal.

Scully: Or hiding it.

Mulder: Scully, you're reaching.

Scully: Mulder, when I was abducted a chip was put in my neck. When I happened upon a MUFON group filled with women who'd had the same experience.

Mulder: So you're suggesting that Diana is monitoring these abductees? Monitoring these tests?

Scully: You tell me that Cassandra Spender is the critical test subject — the one who could prove everything. And yet, who is watching over her? Mulder, I can prove what you're saying or I can disprove it but not when Diana Fowley is keeping us from even seeing her. Mulder, ask yourself why there is no information whatsoever on Special Agent Diana Fowley. Why she would suddenly happen into your life when you are closer than ever to the truth. I mean, you... you ask me to trust no one and yet you trust her on simple faith.

Mulder: Because you've given me no reason here to do otherwise.

Scully: Well, then I can't help you any more.

Mulder: Scully, you're making this personal.

Scully: Because it is personal, Mulder. Because, without the FBI, personal interest is all that I have. And if you take that away then there is no reason for me to continue.

---

Mulder: [knocking] Diana? Diana? [With no reply, Mulder picks the lock and enters the apartment and looks around, searching through Agent Fowley's lingerie drawers. He draws his gun as the door opens again and the Smoking Man enters] Sorry. Nobody home. What are you doing here?

Smoking Man: The door was open. I came in.

Mulder: Interesting company you keep.

Smoking Man: No more interesting than your apparent... ah... lingerie fetish.

Mulder: You feeling smug, CGB? Yeah, I know your name. I know your game and I got nothing to lose.

Smoking Man: I remember looking over a gun barrel at you once before, Agent Mulder. You couldn't pull the trigger then. What makes you think you can do it now? [Mulder cocks the gun] I came here looking for my son.

Mulder: Why?

Smoking Man: Because he's betrayed me. He's chosen the wrong side. He's chosen to believe in your cause.

Mulder: That presumes my cause is wrong.

Smoking Man: Oh, it is, Agent Mulder. It is.

Mulder: I'm not the one using innocent people — innocent women — as lab rats, trying to create a hybrid — an alien-human hybrid — so that I might save my own sorry ass when they finally come knocking! [The Smoking Man smiles] You find that funny?!

Smoking Man: Your father was against it too, back in 73. The lone dissenter. But he came to his senses. And gave up your sister, Samantha.

Mulder: He didn't give up my sister. He was forced to. You made him do it.

Smoking Man: Oh, you're wrong, Agent Mulder. I can't tell you how wrong you are. How wrong you've always been. We had agreed to co-operate with alien colonists. By a majority vote, taken by the group that your father and I worked for. The group that came together at the State Department on a project dating back to 1947, to Roswell. The vote changed that, though. It changed everything. We no longer cleaved to any government agency. We would now operate privately, on our own project. That was your father's objection: that we would ally ourselves with the alien colonists.

Mulder: Towards your own selfish end.

Smoking Man: We forestalled an alien invasion.

Mulder: No, no, no, you only managed to postpone it.

Smoking Man: We saved billions of lives.

Mulder: You put those lives on hold so you alone could survive!

Smoking Man: No, Agent Mulder, so you could. That's exactly what your father failed to realise. He railed at us and our plans even as the process had begun. While the group had agreed to the most... painful sacrifices. Sacrifices that... no one else would ever be asked to make.

Mulder: You gave them your children! You gave them your wife! You sent them away... like they were things.

Smoking Man: We sent them away, Agent Mulder, because it was the right thing to do.

Mulder: You sent them away to be tested on.

Smoking Man: We sent them so they would come back to us. Don't you see? You can't think these choices were made lightly. They were the most painful decisions of our lives. Watching our families' faces...

Mulder: You're a liar. My sister wasn't taken from any hangar. She was abducted from our home right in front of me.

Smoking Man: Because your father was late to understand the necessity. That he, too, must give up one of his children to the alien colonists. The aliens insisted on it. It was the only way they would give us the one thing that we needed. The one thing without which we could not proceed. You see, the alien foetus would give us the alien genome... the DNA with which we could make a human hybrid. A new race, Agent Mulder. An alien-human hybrid who could survive the holocaust. So you could survive. And live to see your sister.

Mulder: And now you've succeeded?

Smoking Man: Quite... in spite of ourselves. The plan was to stall, to resist.

Mulder: To work secretly on a vaccine.

Smoking Man: That was your father's idea. To use the alien DNA to make a vaccine. To save everyone. The world. It was the reason he came along. But it's too late now. Colonisation is going to begin. There will be a sequence of events. A state of emergency will be declared because of a massive outbreak of the alien virus delivered by bees. And the take-over will begin. I have only to hand over Cassandra.

Mulder: You can't do that.

Smoking Man: Our hand's been forced by the faceless rebels. We've no choice.

Mulder: Stop it now or... I will stop it.

Smoking Man: No, Agent Mulder. You won't stop it. Not if you want to see your sister again.

Mulder: You stop it... or everyone dies.

Smoking Man: No. I live. You live... to see your sister return. It's what your father realised. It's what you'll realise as your father's son. Or die in vain with the rest of the world. Save her. Save yourself. [He hands Mulder a folded piece of paper and walks out of the apartment]

---

Krycek: You're looking for your father. He's gone. They've all gone.

Spender: But they're coming back.

Krycek: No. No, they left, for good.

Spender: What do you mean?

Krycek: Well, they've abandoned these offices.

Spender: But they've been here for 50 years.

Krycek: I don't think you understand.

Spender: Where did they go?

Krycek: To West Virginia. They'll be transported by the colonists and begin medical preparations to receive the hybrid genes. Except for your father. He's gone to get your mother.

Spender: No one can get to her. I've got her secured away.

Krycek: Secured away? He's already had his doctors looking at her.

Spender: I've got her under guard.

Krycek: She's probably being prepared as we speak, Jeffrey.

---

Cassandra Spender: No! No! Don't! Damn you! Bastards! [The doctors inject her as the Smoking Man enters the room] The biggest bastard of all.

Smoking Man: [to doctors] I need a few minutes. [The doctors leave]

Cassandra Spender: They never question it, do they?

Smoking Man: What?

Cassandra Spender: Your power and authority... When you're really such a coward.

Smoking Man: I... I came in hopes that we might speak of the future... not the past.

Cassandra Spender: I'm at a disadvantage... since you've stolen the past from me.

Smoking Man: I won't defend myself. Except... except to say that... we're here now only because of what I've done. It's due to it.

Cassandra Spender: I know it now. Only now. But for so many years, I didn't understand — through all the abductions and the tests — that it was you.

Smoking Man: I ordered them, yes. But it was never my intention to harm you.

Cassandra Spender: God.

Smoking Man: It was to save you. And Jeffrey.

Cassandra Spender: You can never save our son. He knows what you've done to me.

Smoking Man: I saved you.

Cassandra Spender: There's only one way... to save him. Only one thing you must do.

Smoking Man: I can't do it to you. I can't.

Cassandra Spender: I must die or they all die. [The Smoking Man quickly leaves] No! No!

---

Fowley: Geez.

Mulder: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.

Fowley: Fox, what are you doing?

Mulder: Nothing. Not a damn thing. I came here looking for evidence.

Fowley: What are you talking about?

Mulder: Evidence that you'd lied to me — that you had loyalties other than to me or to the X-Files.

Fowley: Nothing could be further from the truth, Fox. Nothing.

Mulder: I didn't find anything, Diana. But something found me.

Fowley: What?

Mulder: Fate. Destiny. Whatever it's called when you... when you realise the choices you thought you had in life were already made.

Fowley: Fox, what happened here?

Mulder: You were being paid a visit by young Jeffrey Spender's father. The Cigarette-Smoking Man came looking for his son who has now taken up the futile cause that used to be mine — against his father.

Fowley: Why futile?

Mulder: Because there's nothing to be done. And at some point, you just have to accept that the only way those you love are going to survive is if you give up. [Mulder hands her the slip of paper from the Smoking Man which reads El Rico Air Force Base] That's where it all begins. That's where we need to be if we want to survive it.

---

Marita Covarrubias: Please help me. They're going to leave me here.

Spender: Please stay away from me. I can't help you.

Marita Covarrubias: They're packing everything up. They aren't coming back here. I know you. I can help you.

Spender: You can't help me.

Marita Covarrubias: I know where they're taking her. I know how they're taking her. You've got to trust me, Jeffrey.

---

Mulder: [on mobile phone] Hey, Scully. It's me.

Scully: Mulder, I was just dialling you. Where are you?

Mulder: I'm with Diana.

Scully: I'm coming to get you.

Mulder: No. We're coming to get you. You're coming with us.

Scully: No, Mulder, listen to me. I'm going to take you to Cassandra.

Mulder: Cassandra's gone, Scully.

Scully: I know, but I know where she's gone to, Mulder.

Mulder: Scully, it's no use.

Scully: Mulder, I'm going there whether you're coming or not.

Mulder: Going where?

Scully: To the Potomac yards. They're transporting her by train car.

Mulder: Who gave you this information?

Scully: Agent Spender called me.

Mulder: All right. [He hangs up] I'm going to send you on ahead.

Fowley: What is it? What did she say?

Mulder: This may be our last chance to stop them.

---

Mulder: [to Scully] This is him. [Skinner drives into the train yard]

Skinner: You going to tell me what the hell is going on?

Mulder: Our lives are in danger. We don't have much time.

Skinner: Why couldn't you tell me that over the phone?

Mulder: If somebody overheard us, it might create mass panic.

Skinner: Mass panic over what?

Mulder: El Rico Air Base.

---

Spender: Krycek! I'm trying to get out of here.

Krycek: What are you talking about?

Spender: We can't get past security. They won't recognise my authority to remove a patient. [Krycek is shocked to see Marita Covarrubias] My father did this to her. She wants to tell her story.

Krycek: You sorry son of a bitch. You don't get it, do you? It's all going to hell. The rebels are going to win. They took it.

Spender: They took what? [The Purity Control foetus]

---

[Skinner, Agent Spender, Mulder, and Scully are present for a meeting with Assistant Director Kersh. Kersh is looking at photos of the burned bodies of the Consortium members and their families from the Air Force base]

Assistant Director Kersh: The way these people died... the loss of life here — it is beyond words. I can't imagine how it must be for you — losing your mother.

Spender: Yes, sir. But that's not why I asked for this meeting.

Assistant Director Kersh: Why did you ask for it?

Spender: Because I'm responsible for the deaths of those people at the Air Base hangar in no small way. I certainly didn't prevent them.

Assistant Director Kersh: I can assume then you can explain how they died? Because I have yet to hear any explanation.

Spender: Agent Mulder can explain it. I think Agent Scully, to an extent. They might have even prevented what you see in those photos.

Assistant Director Kersh: Agents Scully and Mulder have been suspended by the FBI.

Spender: Also my doing... and my mistake.

Assistant Director Kersh: I would ask...

Spender: I'd ask, sir — before you tell me that it's not my business — that you do everything you can to get them back on the X-Files. Far worse can happen... and it will. [He places a comforting hand briefly on Mulder's shoulder and begins to leave the room]

Assistant Director Kersh: Where are you going?

Spender: To pack up my office.

Assistant Director Kersh: Agent Spender... [Spender leaves the office and Assistant Director Kersh turns to Mulder] You have answers now? Why didn't I hear about those answers before?

Mulder: I've had answers for years.

Assistant Director Kersh: Then why didn't we hear about them?

Mulder: Nobody ever listened.

Assistant Director Kersh: Who burned those people?

Mulder: They burned themselves. With a choice made long ago by a conspiracy of men who thought they could sleep with the enemy. Only to awaken another enemy.

Assistant Director Kersh: What the hell does that mean?

Mulder: It means the future is here, and all bets are off.

Assistant Director Kersh: Agent Scully, make some sense.

Scully: Sir, I wouldn't bet against him.

---

[The Smoking Man is in the X-Files office, looking at picture of himself and Bill Mulder]

Spender: Get out of here.

Smoking Man: This picture you have — I haven't seen it since you were born. You probably don't even know who the other man is.

Spender: I don't care. Get out.

Smoking Man: It's Bill Mulder, Fox Mulder's father. Isn't that something? He was a good man... a friend of mine... who betrayed me in the end.

Spender: I know more than enough about your past... enough to hate you.

Smoking Man: Your mother was right. I came here hoping otherwise. [He takes a gun out of a drawer] Hoping that my son... might live to honour me... like Bill Mulder's son. [He aims the gun at Agent Spender and fires]