Episode Summary
Special Agents Mulder and Scully are drawn into a web of intrigue while investigating the mysterious bombing of a Dallas office building and the secrets buried inside.
Episode Details
- Original Story: Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz
- Writer: Chris Carter
- Director: Rob Bowman
- Original Broadcast: AU: 23.07.1998 US: 19.06.1998
Cast
- Scully Gillian Anderson
- Mulder David Duchovny
Guest Cast
- Fireman TC Badalato
- Second Creature Gregory B Ballora
- FBI Agent Luis Beckford
- Stevie Lucas Black
- Frohike Tom Braidwood
- Assistant Director Jana Cassidy Blythe Danner
- First Primitive Craig Davis
- Smoking Man William B Davis
- Dr Ben Bronschweig Jeffrey DeMunn
- Second Boy Chris Fennell
- Last Agent Out Steven M Gagnon
- Fire Captain Miles Cooles Gary Grubbs
- Langly Dean Haglund
- Windbreakered Agent Randy Hall
- Byers Bruce Harwood
- Barmaid Glenne Headly
- Security Guard Gunther Jenson
- British Valet Milton Johns
- First DC Officer Lawrence Joshua
- FBI Agent On Roof TW King
- Second Paramedic Michael A Krawic
- Dr Alvin Kurtzweil Martin Landau
- Buzz Mihoe Josh McLaglen
- Young Samantha Mulder [in photograph] Vanessa Morley
- Conrad Strughold Armin Mueller-Stahl
- Second Elder George Murdock
- Well-Manicured Man John Neville
- Third Boy Cody Newton
- Second Primitive Carrick O'Quinn
- Special Agent Darius Michaud Terry O'Quinn
- Assistant Director Walter Skinner Mitch Pileggi
- Field Agent Steve Rankin
- Second DC Officer Glendon Rich
- Towncar Driver Larry Rippenkroeger
- Well-Manicured Man's Valet Ian Ruskin
- Technician Scott Smith
- Fourth Boy Blake Stokes
- Young Naval Guard Joel Traywick
- First Paramedic Paul Tuerpé
- Young Fox Mulder [in photograph] Marcus Turner
- Third Elder Stanley Walsh
- Control Room Operator Paul Welterlen
- Black-Haired Man Michael Shamus Wiles
- First Elder Don S Williams
- First Creature Tom Woodruff Jr
- Tunisian Amine Zary
Quotes
Stevie: It's a human skull!
[Holding it aloft for the others to see]
Third Boy: Toss it up here, dude!
Stevie: No way, butt-wipe, this is mine! Anyway, there's bones all over the place, man!
Dr Bronschweig: [on mobile] It's Bronschweig. Sir, the impossible scenario that we never planned for? Well, we better come up with a plan...
[Scully is on the building roof opposite the site where the bomb threat was called in]
Scully: [on mobile] Mulder, it's me.
Mulder: Where are you, Scully?
Scully: I'm on the roof.
Mulder: Did you find anything?
Scully: No, I haven't.
Mulder: What's wrong?
Scully: Well, I just climbed up twelve floors, I'm hot, I'm thirsty, and to be honest, I'm wondering what I'm doing up here.
Mulder: You're looking for a bomb.
Scully: Yes, I know that. But the threat was called into the Federal Building across the street.
Mulder: I think they have that covered.
Scully: Mulder, when a terrorist bomb threat is called in, the rational purpose of providing that information is to allow us to find the bomb. The rational object of terrorism is to promote terror. If you'd study the statistics, you'd find the model behavioural pattern for virtually every case where a threat has turned up an explosive device; and if we don't act in accordance with that data, if you ignore it as we have done, the chances are great that if there actually is a bomb, we might not find it. Lives could be lost.... Mulder. Mulder?
Mulder: Boom!
[Appearing behind her]
Scully: [startled] Jesus, Mulder.
Mulder: Whatever happened to playing a hunch, Scully? The element of surprise, random acts of unpredictability? If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorised or easily referenced... What are we doing up here, Scully? It's hotter than hell.
Scully: I know you're bored in this assignment, Mulder, but unconventional thinking is only going to get you in trouble now.
Mulder: What makes you think I'm bored?
Scully: You've got to quit looking for what isn't there. They've closed the X-Files. There's procedure to be followed now... protocol.
Mulder: Maybe we should call in a bomb threat to Houston. I think it's free beer night at the Astrodome.
[Scully just looks at Mulder, then turns and tries the door]
Scully: Oh! Now what?
Mulder: It's locked?
[Scully jiggles the handle again]
Scully: So much for anticipating the unforeseen.
[Mulder pushes past her to try the door for himself and it swings open easily. Scully smiles smugly] I had you.
Mulder: No you didn't.
Scully: Oh yeah. I had you big time.
Mulder: You had nothing. Come on, I saw you jiggle the handle.
Scully: I saw your face Mulder. There was a definite moment of panic.
Mulder: Well you've never seen me panic. When I panic I make this face.
[Mulder pulls a serious face to demonstrate]
Scully: That was the face.
Mulder: You didn't see that face.
Scully: I saw that face. You're buying...
Mulder: What? Coke, Pepsi, saline IV?
Scully: Something sweet.
Mulder: You didn't see that face.
Scully: I saw that face. You're buying...
Scully: [answering mobile] Scully.
Mulder: Scully, I've found the bomb.
Scully: You're funny. Where are you, Mulder?
Mulder: I'm in the vending room.
[He pounds on the door]
Scully: Is that you pounding?
Mulder: Yeah, you got to get somebody to open that door.
Scully: Nice try, Mulder.
[She jiggles the door handle]
Mulder: Look, Scully, it's in the soda machine, you got about fourteen minutes to evacuate this building.
Scully: Come on, Mulder...
Mulder: 13:56, 13:54, 13:52, 13:50. You see a pattern emerging here, Scully?
Scully: Hold on, Mulder, I'm going to get you out of there.
[She sees that the lock on the door has been welded shut]
Scully: I need this building evacuated and cleared out in ten minutes. I want you to call the fire department and have them block off the city centre in a one mile radius around the building.
Guard: Ten minutes?
Scully: Don't think! Just pick up that phone and make it happen.
[on mobile] This is Special Agent Dana Scully, I need to speak to SAC Michaud, he's got the wrong building.
[Mulder is staring at the drink vending machine rigged up as a bomb, when his phone rings startling him]
Mulder: Scully, you know that face I just showed you? I'm making it again.
Mulder: Tell me that's just soda-pop in those canisters.
Agent Michaud: It's just what it looks like. A big IED. Ten gallons of Astrolight. Okay, get everybody out of here, clear the area.
[Mulder and Scully get out of the car and look at the damage caused by the explosion]
Mulder: Next time, you're buying.
Skinner: Sit down, they're still talking to Agent Scully.
Mulder: About what?
Skinner: They're asking her for a narrative, they want to know why she was in the wrong building.
Mulder: She was with me.
Skinner: You don't see what's going on here, do you? There's forty-five million dollars worth of damage to the city of Dallas. Lives have been lost. No suspects have been named. So the story that's being shaped... is that this could have been prevented.
Mulder: They want to blame us?
Skinner: Agent Mulder, you and I both know that if it looks bad, it's bad for the FBI. Blame has to be assigned somewhere.
Mulder: If they want somebody to blame, they can blame me, Agent Scully doesn't deserve this.
Skinner: She's in there right now saying the same thing about you.
Mulder: I breached protocol. I broke contact with the SAC. I ignored a primary tactical rule and left him alone with the device.
Skinner: Agent Scully says it was she who ordered you out of the building, that you wanted to go back in.
Mulder: No.
[Scully leaves the hearing room and joins them]
Scully: They're asking for you, sir.
Skinner: Thank you.
[He leaves]
Mulder: Whatever you told them in there, Scully, you don't have to protect me.
Scully: All I told them was the truth.
Mulder: They're trying to divide us on this and we can't let them.
Scully: Mulder, they have divided us. They're splitting us up.
Mulder: What? What are you talking about?
Scully: I have a meeting with OPR day after tomorrow for remediation and reassignment.
Mulder: But they're the ones who put us together.
Scully: Because they wanted me to invalidate your investigations into the paranormal. But I think this goes deeper than that now.
Mulder: This is not about you, Scully. They're doing this to me.
Scully: They're not doing this. Mulder, I left behind a career in medicine because I thought that I could make a difference at the FBI. But it hasn't turned out that way. And now if they were to transfer me to Omaha or Cleveland, or some field office, it just doesn't hold the interest for me that it once did. Not after what I've seen and done.
Mulder: You're quitting.
Scully: Maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's still in it, too.
[Skinner comes back out for Mulder]
Skinner: Agent Mulder, you're up.
Scully: I'm sorry. Mulder. Good luck.
Barmaid: I'd say this just about exceeds your minimum daily requirement.
[Mulder empties the glass and as he sets it down he knocks over some of the numerous other glasses on the bar] Whoa, you've got to train for that kind of heavy lifting. Poopy day?
[Mulder signals that he wants another drink] So, what do you do?
Mulder: What do I do?
Barmaid: Mmm hmm.
Mulder: I'm the key figure in an ongoing Government charade, the plot to conceal the truth about the existence of extraterrestrials. It's a global conspiracy, actually, with key players in the highest levels of power, that reaches down into the lives of every man, woman and child on the planet.
[Mulder laughs] So, of course, no one believes me. I'm an annoyance to my superiors, a joke to my peers. They call me
Spooky
. Spooky Mulder, whose sister was abducted by aliens when he was just a kid and who now chases after little green men with a badge and a gun, shouting to the heavens or to anyone who'll listen that the fix is in, that the sky is falling and when it hits it's going to be the shit storm of all time.
Barmaid: Well. I would say that about does it, Spooky.
[She takes his shot glass away]
Mulder: Does what?
Barmaid: Looks like 86 is your lucky number.
Mulder: You know, one is the loneliest number.
[Finding the bathroom occupied Mulder heads into the alley to relieve himself]
Dr Kurtzweil: That official FBI business?
Mulder: What?
Dr Kurtzweil: Bet the Bureau's accusing you of the same thing in Dallas. Standing around holding your yank while bombs are exploding.
Mulder: Do I know you?
Dr Kurtzweil: No, but I've been watching your career for a good while, back when you were just a promising young agent. Before that.
Mulder: You come out here for a reason?
Dr Kurtzweil: Yeah, I did.
[Pulls up to the dumpster next to him and urinates on the wall]
Mulder: How'd you find me?
Dr Kurtzweil: I heard you come in here now and again, figured you'd be needing a little drinkie tonight.
Mulder: You a reporter?
Dr Kurtzweil: I'm a doctor, but I think I mentioned that. OB-GYN.
Mulder: You've got something to tell me, you've got as much time as it takes for me to hail a cab.
Dr Kurtzweil: There's something you don't know about the bombing in Dallas.
Mulder: What's that?
Dr Kurtzweil: SAC Darius Michaud never tried, or intended, to defuse that bomb.
Mulder: He just let it explode in his face, huh?
Dr Kurtzweil: What's the question no one's asking? Why that building? Why not the federal building?
Mulder: The federal building was too well guarded.
Dr Kurtzweil: No. They put the bomb in the building across the street because it did have federal offices. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had a provisional medical quarantine office there, which is where the bodies where found. But that's the thing... the thing you didn't know. The thing you'd never think to check. Those people were already dead.
Mulder: Before the bomb went off?
Dr Kurtzweil: That's what I'm saying.
Mulder: Darius Michaud was a twenty-two-year veteran of the Bureau.
Dr Kurtzweil: Michaud was a patriot. The people he was loyal to know their way around Dallas. They blew that building to hide something, maybe even something they couldn't predict.
Mulder: You're telling me they blew up that entire building just to hide the bodies of those firemen.
Dr Kurtzweil: And one little boy.
Mulder: I think you're full of shit.
Dr Kurtzweil: Do you?
Mulder: I woke you. Did I wake you?
Scully: No.
Mulder: Why not? It's 3:00 in the morning.
Scully: Are you drunk, Mulder?
Mulder: I was until about 20 minutes ago, yeah.
Scully: Was that before or after you decided to come here?
Mulder: Listen, son, we don't have time to dick around while you demonstrate your ignorance of the chain of command. The order came directly from General McAddie, you call him. We'll conduct our business while you confirm authorisation.
Guard: Why don't you head on down, and I'll confirm authorisation.
Mulder: Thank you.
[whispering to Scully] Why is the morgue suddenly off limits on orders of a General?
Scully: This is one of the firemen who died in Dallas?
Mulder: According to the toe tag.
Scully: And you're looking for...?
Mulder: Cause of death.
Scully: I can tell you that without even looking at him.
[She picks up a file near the body's head and reads aloud] Concussive organ failure due to proximal exposure to source and flying debris.
Mulder, this man's already been autopsied, you can tell by the way he's been wrapped and dressed.
[Mulder pulls back the covering sheet. It sticks to a gooey substance which covers the body]
Mulder: Does this fit the description you just read me?
[Scully walks around to join Mulder on the other side of the gurney, looks down and is shocked at the sight]
Scully: Oh my God. This man's tissue, Mulder...
Mulder: It's like jelly.
Scully: There's been some kind of cellular breakdown. It's completely oedematous. There's been no autopsy performed here, no Y-incision, no internal exam.
Mulder: You're telling me the cause of death on that report is false? That this man didn't die from an explosion or from flying debris?
Scully: Mulder, I can't tell you what killed this man. I'm not sure anybody else could claim to either.
Scully: Mulder, you knew before we got here this man didn't die at the bomb site.
Mulder: I've been told as much.
Scully: You're saying this is a cover-up? Of what?
Mulder: I don't know, but I have a hunch that what you're going to find won't be categorised or easily referenced.
Scully: Mulder, this is going to take some time. Somebody's going to figure out sooner or later, that we're not even supposed to be here.
Mulder: We are being blamed for this man's death, I'd like to know what he died of, wouldn't you?
Detective: Real nice business he's got, huh?
Mulder: What's that?
Detective: Selling naked pictures of little kids on his computer. You looking for him for some other reason?
Mulder: Yeah... I had an appointment for a pelvic examination.
Dr Kurtzweil: See this crap?
[Police] Somebody knows I'm talking to you.
Mulder: Not according to the men in blue.
Dr Kurtzweil: Well, what is it this time? Kiddie porn again? Sexual battery of a patient?
Mulder: They want to discredit you, for what?
Dr Kurtzweil: Because I'm a dangerous man. Because I know too much about the truth.
Mulder: Oh, that end-of-the-world apocalyptic garbage you write?
Dr Kurtzweil: You know my work? I was right about Dallas, wasn't I?
Mulder: How? How were you right?
Dr Kurtzweil: Are you familiar with the Hanta virus, Agent Mulder?
Mulder: Yeah, it was a deadly virus spread by field mice in the southwestern United States several years ago.
Dr Kurtzweil: According to the newspaper, FEMA was called out to manage an outbreak of the Hanta virus. Are you familiar with what the Federal Emergency Management Agency's real power is? FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon declaration of a national emergency. Think about that! What is an agency with such broad-sweeping power doing managing a small viral outbreak in suburban Texas?
Mulder: You're saying it wasn't such a small outbreak.
Dr Kurtzweil: No, I'm saying it wasn't the Hanta virus.
Mulder: Well, what was it? What was it?
Dr Kurtzweil: When we were young men in the military, your father and I were recruited for a project. They told us it was biological warfare, a virus.
Mulder: What killed those men?
Dr Kurtzweil: What killed them I won't even write about. We have no context for what killed those men, or any appreciation of the scale at which it will be unleashed in the future.
Mulder: A plague?
Dr Kurtzweil: The plague to end all plagues, Agent Mulder. A silent weapon for a quiet war. The systematic release of an indiscriminate organism, for which the men who will bring it on still have no cure. They've been working at this for 50 years, while the rest of the world have been fighting gooks and commies, these men have been secretly negotiating a planned Armageddon.
Mulder: Negotiating with whom?
Dr Kurtzweil: I think you know. The timetable has been set. It will happen on a holiday, when people are away from their homes. The president will declare a state of emergency, at which time all government, all federal agencies, will come under the power of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, the secret government.
Mulder: They call me paranoid.
Dr Kurtzweil: Go back to Dallas, Agent Mulder, and dig. Or we're going to find out along with the rest of the country, when it's too late.
[Scully hides in the refrigeration room when she hears soldiers heading for the morgue. Her mobile rings and she grabs it before it can alert the soldiers to her presence]
Mulder: Hey, Scully, it's me...
Scully: [whispering] Yeah?
Mulder: Why are you whispering?
Scully: Mulder, I can't really talk right now.
Mulder: What did you find?
Scully: Evidence of a massive infection.
Mulder: What kind of infection?
Scully: I don't know.
Mulder: All right, listen to me. I'm going home and then I'm booking myself on a flight to Dallas. I'm going to get you a ticket too.
Scully: Mulder...
Mulder: I need you there with me. I need your expertise.
Scully: Mulder, I've got a hearing tomorrow...
Mulder: I can get you back in time for that hearing, maybe with evidence that will blow it away.
Scully: Mulder, I can't! I'm way past the point of common sense here.
Mulder: This is not common sense.
[Scully hears a soldier at the door] Scully? Are you there? Scully?
[Scully hangs up and hides]
Mulder: I thought you said you weren't coming.
Scully: I wasn't planning on it. Particularly not after spending a half an hour in cold storage this morning. But I got a better look at the blood and tissue samples I took from the fireman.
Mulder: And what did you find?
Scully: Something I couldn't show to anybody else. Not without causing the kind of attention I'd just as soon avoid right now. But what those men were infected with contains a protein code that I've never seen before. What it did to them, it did extremely fast.
Mulder: How was it contracted?
Scully: That I don't know. But, unless it can respond to conventional treatment, it could be a serious health threat.
Dr Bronschweig: So much for little green men.
[Seeing the vicious black alien]
Strughold: We began to worry. Some of us have travelled so far and you are the last to arrive.
Well-Manicured Man: I'm sorry. My grandson fell and broke his leg.
Strughold: While we have been made to wait, we watched surveillance tapes which have raised more concerns.
Well-Manicured Man: More concerns on what?
Strughold: We have been forced to reassess our role in Colonisation by new effects in biology which have... presented themselves.
First Elder: The virus has mutated.
Well-Manicured Man: Into what?
Strughold: A new Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.
Well-Manicured Man: My god!
Strughold: The geometry of mass infection presents certain conceptual re-evaluations for us about our place in the Colonisation.
Well-Manicured Man: This isn't Colonisation, this is spontaneous repopulation! All our work... If it's true, they've been using us all along. We've been labouring under a lie.
Second Elder: It could be an isolated case.
Well-Manicured Man: How can we know?
Strughold: We're going to tell them what we've found, what we've learned, by turning over a body infected with the gestating organism.
Well-Manicured Man: In hope of what? Learning that it's true? That we are nothing but digestives for the creation of a new race of alien life-forms? By co-operating now, we are but beggars to our own demise.
Strughold: Co-operation is the only chance of saving ourselves.
Smoking Man: They still need us to carry out their preparations.
Strughold: We'll continue to use them as they do us. If only to play for more time, to continue work... on our vaccine.
Well-Manicured Man: My lateness might just as well have been absence. A course has already been taken!
Smoking Man: There are complications. Mulder saw one of the infected bodies that we destroyed in Dallas. He's gone back there again. Someone has tipped him.
Well-Manicured Man: Who?
Smoking Man: Kurtzweil we think.
Well-Manicured Man: No one believes Kurztweil... or his books. He's a toiler, a crank.
First Elder: Mulder believes.
Smoking Man: Then Kurtzweil must be removed.
Strughold: As must Mulder.
Well-Manicured Man: Kill Mulder, we take the risk of turning one man's quest into a crusade.
Strughold: Then you must take away what he holds most valuable. That with which he can't live without.
Scully: I don't know, Mulder. I don't see any evidence of an archaeological or any other kind of a dig site.
Mulder: This is where he marked on the map. Where he said those fossils were unearthed. You're sure those fossils were infected with the same virus you saw at the morgue?
Scully: Both sets of bones were porous, as if the virus or the causative microbe were decomposing it.
Mulder: And you've never seen that virus before.
Scully: No.
Mulder: Look at that.
[They walk over to an oasis in the surrounding desert, complete with a brand new playground] That look like new grass to you?
Scully: Looks pretty green for this climate.
Mulder: Uh huh. Ground's dry about an inch down. This was laid recently.
Scully: The equipment looks brand new too.
Mulder: No irrigation system. Somebody's covering their tracks.
[They see three boys on bicycles] Hey! Hey!
Scully: Do you boys live around here?
Second Boy: Yeah.
Mulder: You see anybody digging over there?
Second Boy: We're not supposed to talk about it.
Scully: You're not supposed to talk about it? Who told you that?
Third Boy: Nobody?
Mulder: Nobody? Same nobody that built that playground? Nobody buy you those new bikes too?
Scully: I think you better tell us.
Second Boy: We don't even know you.
Scully: Well, we're FBI agents.
Second Boy: You're not FBI agents.
Mulder: How do you know?
Second Boy: 'Cause you all look like door-to-door salesmen.
Mulder: Hey, you want to buy a badge?
[Flipping out ID]
Third Boy: They left an hour ago. Going that way.
[They all point in same direction]
Mulder: Unmarked tanker trucks. What are archaeologists hauling out in tanker trucks?
Scully: I don't know, Mulder.
Mulder: Where are they going with it?
Scully: That's the first question to answer if we're going to find them.
Mulder: What are my choices?
[They've stopped at a tee-intersection]
Scully: About a hundred miles of nothing in both directions.
Mulder: Well, which way do you think they went?
Scully: I got two choices. One of them's wrong.
Mulder: I think they went left.
Scully: I don't know why, I think they went right.
[They look at each other and Mulder makes a decision, heading straight ahead along a dirt road]
Mulder: Five years together, Scully. How many times I been wrong? Never... Not driving, anyway.
[They reach a dead end at a railroad crossing]
Mulder: I was right about the bomb, wasn't I?
Scully: This is great, this is fitting.
Mulder: What?
Scully: I have to be in Washington, DC in eleven hours for a hearing, the outcome of which might possibly effect one of the biggest decisions of my life, and here I am in the middle of Nowhere, Texas chasing phantom tanker trucks!
Mulder: We're not chasing tanker trucks, Scully, we're chasing evidence.
Scully: Evidence of what exactly?
Mulder: That bomb in Dallas was allowed to go off, to hide something. Bodies infected with a virus you yourself detected!
Scully: Mulder, they haul oil in tanker trucks, they haul gas in tanker trucks, they do not haul viruses in tanker trucks.
Mulder: Well, they may be hauling a virus in these tanker trucks.
Scully: What do you mean...? Mulder...? What are you not telling me? Mulder?
Mulder: The virus may be extraterrestrial.
Scully: I don't b... Mulder, I don't...
[She's cut off by the train crossing's warning bell] What? Mulder, what?!
[They watch the train go by and spot the white unmarked tanker trucks on the end of the train]
Scully: This is weird, Mulder.
Mulder: Very weird.
Scully: Any thoughts as to why anybody would be growing corn in the middle of the desert?
Mulder: Well, those could be giant Jiffy-Pop poppers...
Mulder: What are they?
Dr Kurtzweil: What do you think?
Mulder: A transportation system. Transgenic crops that are polygenically altered to carry a virus.
Dr Kurtzweil: That would be my guess.
Mulder: Guess? What do you mean
your guess
? Hey! You told me you had answers.
Dr Kurtzweil: Yeah, well... I don't have them all...
Mulder: What's wrong?
Scully: Salt Lake City, Utah. Transfer effective immediately. I already gave Skinner my letter of resignation.
Mulder: You can't quit now, Scully.
Scully: I can, Mulder. I debated whether or not even to tell you in person, but...
Mulder: We are close to something here! We're on the verge!
Scully: You're on the verge, Mulder. Please don't do this to me.
Mulder: After what you saw last night, after all you've seen, you can just walk away?
Scully: I have. I did, it's done.
Mulder: I need you on this, Scully.
Scully: You don't need me, Mulder. You never have. I've just held you back.
Scully: I got to go.
Mulder: You want to tell yourself that so you can quit with a clear conscience, you can, but you're wrong!
Scully: Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work, to rein you in, to shut you down...
Mulder: But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your god damned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over. You've kept me honest... you've made me a whole person. I owe you everything... Scully, and you owe me nothing. I don't know if I want to do this alone... I don't even know if I can... and if I quit now, they win.
[They hold each other, Scully kisses Mulder's forehead. They look into each others eyes and lean towards each other to kiss, when Scully grabs the back of her neck]
Scully: Ow! Jesus!
Mulder: I'm sorry.
Scully: No. Something stung me.
[She holds a bee between her fingers]
Mulder: Must've gotten in your shirt.
Scully: Mulder... something's wrong.
Mulder: What?
Scully: I'm having lacinating pain in...
Mulder: What?
Scully: ...my chest.
Mulder: Scully...
Scully: My motor functions are being affected.
[She starts to collapse, Mulder grabs her and lays her on the floor]
Mulder: Scully...
Scully: My pulse is thready... a funny taste in the back of my throat.
Mulder: I think you're going into anaphylactic shock.
Scully: No... I have no allergy.
[Mulder runs into his apartment and grabs the phone]
Mulder: This is Special Agent Fox Mulder, I have an emergency! I have an agent down!
Frohike: What are you doing?
Langly: Reading his chart.
Frohike: Put it down.
Langly: I'll put it down when I'm ready.
Byers: I think he's coming out of it.
Langly: He's coming to.
[The Lone Gunmen hover around Mulder's hospital bed, where he's recovering from a gunshot wound to the head]
Frohike: Hey, Mulder? Mulder?
Mulder: Oh God. Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow... Toto! What am I doing here?
Byers: The bullet grazed your brow and glanced off of your temporal plate.
Langly: Three centimetres to the left and we'd all be playing harps by now.
Frohike: You've been unconscious since they brought you in.
Mulder: Where's Scully?
Byers: We put together you called 911. That call must have been intercepted.
Frohike: Scully had a reaction to an Africanised honeybee we found in your hall.
[He holds up a vial containing the bee]
Mulder: I've got to get to her.
[Skinner enters the room and grabs Mulder before he can fall over in his attempt to leave]
Skinner: Mulder, easy, easy... look, you're staying right here.
Mulder: You don't understand, this goes all the way back to Dallas.
Skinner: Tell me where she is, I'll find her.
Mulder: I don't know where she is! But I can think of someone who might.
Skinner: You leave here unprotected, how far will you get? How far will they let you get? Because they'll know the minute you walk out of here.
Langly: What can we do?
Mulder: You can strip Byers naked...
Byers: What?
Mulder: I need your clothes.
Well-Manicured Man: Mr Mulder.
Mulder: What happened to Kurtzweil?
Well-Manicured Man: He's come and gone.
Mulder: I want to know where Scully is.
Well-Manicured Man: The location of Agent Scully and the means to save her life.
[He holds up a small pouch, then gestures towards the car] Please...
[The car drives off immediately, as they pass The White House, the Well-Manicured Man hands Mulder the pouch]
Mulder: What is it?
[Mulder opens the pouch and pulls out a small bottle of green liquid and a piece of paper with the co-ordinates BASE 1. SOUTH 83°00 LAT. EAST 63°00 LONG. 326FT
written on it]
Well-Manicured Man: A weak vaccine against the virus Agent Scully has been infected with. It must be administered within 96 hours. That leaves you little time to reach those co-ordinates.
Mulder: You're lying.
Well-Manicured Man: No. Though I have no means to prove otherwise. The virus is extraterrestrial. We know very little about it, except that it was the original inhabitant of this planet.
Mulder: A virus...
Well-Manicured Man: What is a virus, but a colonising force that cannot be defeated? Living in a cave, underground, until it mutates — and attacks.
Mulder: This is what you've been conspiring to conceal? A disease?
Well-Manicured Man: No. For God's sake, you've got it all backwards! AIDS, the Ebola virus, on an evolutionary scale they are new-borns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs.
Mulder: What do you mean walked?
Well-Manicured Man: Your aliens, Agent Mulder. Your little green men arrived here millions of years ago. Those that didn't leave have been lying dormant underground since the last ice age in the form of an evolved pathogen, waiting to be reconstituted by the alien race when it comes to colonise the planet — using us as hosts. Against this we have no defence, nothing but a weak vaccine. Do you see why it was kept secret? Why even the best men, men like your father, could not let the truth be known. Until Dallas we believed the virus would simply control us, that mass infection would make us a slave race. Imagine our surprise when they began to gestate.
Mulder: Why are you telling me this?
Well-Manicured Man: For the sake of my own children. Once it's learned what I have told you, my life will be over.
Mulder: Where's Dr Kurtzweil? I'd like to get out of the car now.
[to Driver] Stop the car!
Well-Manicured Man: Driver.
[The car pulls to a stop in yet another alleyway] The men I work with will stop at nothing to clear the way for what they believe is their stake in the inevitable future. I was ordered to kill Dr Kurtzweil, as I was ordered to kill you.
[Suddenly, Well-Manicured Man grabs a gun and shoots the driver in the back of the head. Mulder recoils]
Mulder: Ow!
Well-Manicured Man: Trust no one, Mr Mulder.
[He opens his door and exits, holding the door open] Get out of the car.
Mulder: Why? The upholstery's already ruined.
Well-Manicured Man: Get out of the car!
[Mulder gets out] You have precious little time. What I've given you, the alien colonists don't yet know exists. The vaccine you hold is the only defence against the virus. Its introduction into an alien environment may have the power to destroy the delicate plans we have so assiduously protected for the last 50 years!
Mulder: What do you mean,
may
have?
Well-Manicured Man: Find Agent Scully. Only then will you realise the scope and grandeur of the project. Go. Go now!
[As Mulder walks away the Well-Manicured Man re-enters the car, closes the door and it explodes, knocking Mulder off his feet]
Control Room Operator: There's a contaminate in the system!
Smoking Man: Mulder has the vaccine!
Smoking Man: Abandon your posts! Evacuate!
Technician: What's happened?
Smoking Man: It's all gone to hell!
Technician: But, what about Mulder?
Smoking Man: He'll never make it!
[Mulder is performing CPR on Scully]
Mulder: Breathe in, breathe in, breathe!
Scully: I had you big time.
[Mulder watches the spaceship as it rises from the ground and flies overhead]
Mulder: Scully, you got to see this! Scully?
Scully: I saw it. I saw it.
Assistant Director Cassidy: In light of the report I've got before me and in light of the narrative I am now hearing, my official report is incomplete — pending these new facts I'm being asked to reconcile. Agent Scully, though there is now direct evidence that a federal agent may have been involved in the bombing, the other events you've laid down here are too incredible on their own, and quite frankly implausible in their connections.
Scully: What is it you find incredible?
Assistant Director Cassidy: Well, where would you like me to start? So many of the events described in your report defy belief. Antarctica is a long way from Dallas, Agent Scully. I can't very well submit a report to the Attorney General that alleges the links you've made here. Bees and corn crops do not quite fall under the rubric of domestic terrorism.
Scully: No, they don't.
Assistant Director Cassidy: Most of what I find in here is lacking a coherent picture of any organisation with an attributable motive. I realise the ordeal you've endured has clearly affected you. But the holes in your account leave this panel with little choice but to delete these references to our final report to the Justice Department — until which time hard evidence becomes available that would give us cause to pursue such an investigation.
[Scully places the vial containing the bee that stung her on the table]
Scully: I don't believe the FBI currently has an investigative unit qualified to pursue the evidence at hand.
[Mulder shows Scully an article in the paper about the incident in Dallas to Scully]
Mulder: There's an interesting work of fiction on page 24. Mysteriously, our names have been omitted. They're burying this thing, Scully. They're just going to dig a new hole and cover it up.
Scully: I told OPR everything I know. What I experienced, the virus, how it's spread by the bees from pollen in transgenic crops.
Mulder: You're wasting your time, Scully. They'll never believe you. Not unless your story can be programmed, categorised, or easily referenced.
Scully: Well, then we'll go over their heads.
Mulder: No! No. How many times have we been here before, Scully? Right here. So close to the truth and now with what we've seen and what we know to be right back at the beginning with nothing.
Scully: This is different, Mulder.
Mulder: No it isn't! You were right to want to quit! You're right to want to leave me! You should get as far away from me as you can! I'm not going to watch you die, Scully, because of some hollow personal cause of mine. Go be a doctor. Go be a doctor while you still can.
Scully: I can't. I won't. Mulder, I'll be a doctor but my work is here with you now. And that virus that I was exposed to, whatever it is, it has a cure. You held it in your hand. How many other lives can we save? Look... if I quit now, they win.
Strughold: You look hot and miserable. Why have you travelled all this way?
Smoking Man: We have business to discuss..
Strughold: We have regular channels.
Smoking Man: This involves Mulder..
Strughold: Ah. That name, again and again.
Smoking Man: He's seen more than he should have..
Strughold: What has he seen? Of the whole he has seen but pieces.
Smoking Man: He's determined now. Reinvested.
Strughold: He is but one man. One man alone cannot fight the future.
Smoking Man: Yesterday, I received this...
[A telegram that reads]
X-FILES REOPENED. STOP. PLEASE ADVISE. STOP.