Scully enters Mulder's apartment which is filled with police. A sheet-covered body is visible lying on the floor next to the couch. The officer in charge thanks her for coming down and leads her to the body. Uncovering the face, he says, "It him?" Scully is shaken and nods her head, saying, "Yeah." "I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work." She says it is her scientific opinion that he became a victim of his false hopes and his belief in the biggest of lies. "BELIEVE THE LIE" They enter an ice cave where they get their first glimpse of the prized discovery they've traveled all this way to see. It appears to be an alien entity preserved in a huge wall of ice. Scully's mom has pulled a fast one on her and invited the family's priest to the gathering so he can have a chat with Scully. She tells the priest that she hasn't felt a need to turn back to the church. "I have strength. And I'm not going to come running back now. That's just not who I am. I'd be lying to myself and to you." Scully has been brought to see a slide show of the alien in ice that Arlinsky claims is 200 years old, determined from ice core samples which are the only physical evidence he has brought from Canada so far. "Proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish," Scully says. Mulder returns, "This is not some selfish pet project of mine, Scully." "You already believe, Mulder. What difference will it make?" Mulder queries, "What if it could be proven? Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?" Scully had just been told that her cancer had metastasized. Short of a miracle, it would aggressively advance to its inevitable conclusion. They continue up to the summit and enter the cave, Mulder with his gun drawn. Everyone appears to be dead and the block of ice with the body is no longer in the wall. They hear muffled moans from a tent and find Babcock who tells Arlinsky he hid the ice block. Mulder and Arlinsky look under the tent and find the ice block from the wall with the alien body intact. Scully notices he has an ice core sample container with him. She checks the freezer, realizes it's one of Arlinsky's samples, and chases the suit down. She tries to wrestle the container from him and he pushes her down the stairwell. Scully says she's okay and Bill says, "You're not okay, Dana." He knows about her cancer. She says it's very personal and she doesn't want sympathy. "You think you can cure yourself," he says incredulously. They find a set of prints in the lab and on a hunch, Scully asks them to check them against the federal employee database. Michael Kritschgau shows up as the assailant. The file says he has US Army military training and is currently attached to the research division of the Pentagon. Arlinsky is doing a physical examination of the body . There are x-rays of the head, body, and extremities displayed, showing either a very complex ruse or a true entity with an enlarged cranium, four digits on each hand, and three on each foot. Scully chases Kritschgau down, gun drawn, until she has his full attention. He says, "If you arrest me, they'll kill me. The same people who are trying to kill you. The people who gave you your cancer." Mulder says through his work with the DOD he watched the military industrial complex run unbridled and unchecked during the cold war then divert attention from their misdeeds by using passionate people like Mulder to create these myths. "They invented you." The regression hypnosis, the story of his sister's abduction, the lies they fed his father...all fabricated. Kritschgau tells him the body Arlinsky found was meticulously constructed out of biomaterials created through the hybridization of differentiated cells, called chimeras, frozen into place with sediment and materials that would bear out its age, poured through a small channel drilled in the rock. After Mulder sits listening to Kritschgau's story in a state of denial, he heads back to the warehouse and his worst suspicions are confirmed. Arlinsky's dead, Babcock's dead, and the alien body is gone. S: Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe. M: After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's not true. S: Because it's easier to believe the lie, isn't it? M: What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe his story? S: He said the men behind this hoax, behind these lies, gave me this disease to make you believe. This is too much for Mulder who is in emotional overload. Cut to Mulder's apartment where he sits watching a taped broadcast of the NASA Symposium that opened the episode. Mulder sits on his couch listening and watching with tears rolling unchecked down his face. "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 Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

Gethsemane The teaser opens with a broadcast of the NASA Symposium at Boston University on November 20, 1972. Carl Sagan, Philip Morrison, and Ashley Montague are on the panel of speakers. The speaker is saying that contact with extraterrestrials is not beyond their dreams but may be a natural event in the history of mankind, possibly within their own lifetimes. Cut to Scully entering Mulder's apartment which is filled with police. A sheet-covered body is visible lying on the floor next to the couch. The officer in charge thanks her for coming down and leads her to the body. Uncovering the face, he says, "It him?" Scully is shaken and nods her head, saying, "Yeah." We then see a group of men and women seated around a conference table at FBI headquarters. Chief Blevins, the man who originally assigned Scully to the X-Files division, sits in charge at the head of the table. Scully enters and sits down as she is instructed to "restate the matter we are here to put to rest." She proceeds to tell of her assignment to the X-Files, how Mulder's interest was fueled by his belief that Samantha was abducted by aliens. Scully says, "I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work." She says it is her scientific opinion that he became a victim of his false hopes and his belief in the biggest of lies. Yukon Territory, Canada. We see a helicopter fly in with researchers who are landing to meet with a guide who will take them to the mountain's summit. When they arrive at the summit camp, they enter an ice cave where they get their first glimpse of the prized discovery they've traveled all this way to see. It appears to be an alien entity preserved in a huge wall of ice. Blevins says he presumes Scully has a basis for her break from Mulder. She says that Mulder was recently contacted by a man whose pursuit of evidence of extraterrestrial life coincided with his own. She says that Mulder was duped by this man, fueled by his intense desire to believe. She says they used scientific sleight of hand to fool him and draw him into a "larger lie". She is here to expose how they were both drawn into the lie and to show Agent Mulder's work for what it is. Cut to a family gathering at Mrs. Scully's house. Dana is there with her mother and we see her brother Bill arrive, dressed in his naval uniform. Bill asks Scully how she's feeling and she gives him her standard, "I'm fine," and segues immediately to the topic of dinner. Scully's mom has pulled a fast one on her and invited the family's priest to the gathering so he can have a chat with Scully, maybe draw her back into the church during her time of crisis (her illness). Scully is not thrilled and throws a glance her mother's way before telling the priest that she hasn't felt a need to turn back to the church. "I have strength. And I'm not going to come running back now. That's just not who I am. I'd be lying to myself and to you." She's called away from the awkward and slightly painful conversation by a phonecall from Mulder. With a quick apology for breaking up the family dinner, Mulder tells Scully that a man named Arlinsky from the Smithsonian contacted him. Mulder says he found something on a mountain in Canada but he'd rather not discuss it over the phone. He wants her to meet him...now. Bill overhears part of the conversation and doesn't seem to approve of Dana being dragged away. Arlinsky, the lead scientist we saw in the helicopter, is a forensic anthropologist who has been in contact with Mulder for four years. What Scully has been brought to see is a slide show of the alien in ice that Arlinsky claims is 200 years old, determined from ice core samples which are the only physical evidence he has brought from Canada so far. He says a geosurvey team, along with his colleague Babcock who was the second researcher we saw in the helicopter, found the body on the mountain. Mulder asks who else knows and Arlinsky says no one. He thinks it's much too far to go for a hoax and that the ice core data supports his belief in the find's validity. Mulder says even if it is real, the people in charge of its authentication are the same people who have been burying the truth all along. Arlinsky says, "That's why I came to you." As they leave Arlinsky's office, Mulder asks if Scully thinks it's foolish. She says she has no opinion. She tells Mulder that it's his holy grail not hers. "Proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish," she says. Mulder returns, "This is not some selfish pet project of mine, Scully." (Hello!?) Mulder thinks this offers proof that could shake the scientific world, saying there is no greater scientific discovery. When this doesn't motivate her interest, he tries drawing parallels to religion. What if she was offered proof of God's existence? She doesn't buy into his analogy and says, "You already believe, Mulder. What difference will it make?" Mulder queries, "What if it could be proven? Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?" Philosophical discussion aside, Scully says she's not going with him to Canada. But she does agree to look at the ice core samples. As she narrates to Blevins and the group, she says what she couldn't, or didn't, tell Mulder was that she had just been told that her cancer had metastasized. Short of a miracle, it would aggressively advance to its inevitable conclusion. Back at the ice cave, the wall around the alien is being sawed into to eventually release the block of ice containing the alien body. While sawing into the ice, they discover a strange tunneling hole leading down into the area where the body is. They don't know if it's an air pocket or something that was drilled down more recently. Babcock says the angle seems wrong for the drilling theory and they'll never know for sure unless they keep working to get the body out. One of the survey team members is preparing to hike down the mountain to guide Mulder and Arlinsky to the summit and he sees Babcock with a gun. He asks why and Babcock says he doesn't know all these men and he feels safer with the gun while the other man is gone. Scully consults with a paleoclimatologist regarding the ice core samples. He says they look intact and the ice is consistent with old ice leading him to conclude that no one has tampered with them. He's curious why they're testing it and where it's from because he's found some cellular matter in the sample. He says he hasn't examined it too closely but it appears to be some sort of chimeric, hybrid cell. He wants to do some electromagnetic imaging and Scully says, please do. That night at the summit camp, the last light is extinguished and the camp is down for the night when we see someone with a shotgun meticulously shooting everyone as they sleep in their tents. Babcock wakes up and rolls out of his tent and we see the gunman turn in his direction followed by a muzzle flash. The next morning, Arlinsky and Mulder land at the base camp and are puzzled to find no guide. They start up on their own and find the body of their guide, shot dead on the trail. They continue up to the summit and enter the cave, Mulder with his gun drawn. Everyone appears to be dead and the block of ice with the body is no longer in the wall. Then they hear muffled moans from a tent and find Babcock, still alive. He tells Arlinsky he hid the ice block. Mulder and Arlinsky look under the tent and find the ice block from the wall with the alien body intact. Scully returns to talk to the paleoclimatologist but finds he's not in, though a guy in a suit is in the lab. She tells him she was supposed to meet with the scientist and asks where he is. The suit is incommunicative at first and unhelpful overall. As he walks out, Scully notices he has an ice core sample container with him. She checks the freezer, realizes it's one of Arlinsky's samples, and chases the suit down. He's gone into the stairwell and, as she enters and begins looking for him, he throws open a door, knocking her against the wall. She tries to wrestle the container from him and he pushes her down the stairwell. Dana is surprised when Bill shows up at the hospital where she's being treated for her fall down the stairs. He says he picked up the phone when the hospital called and didn't tell their mom. She says she's okay and Bill says, "You're not okay, Dana." He knows about her cancer and she's not pleased that her mother told him. She says it's very personal and she doesn't want sympathy. "You think you can cure yourself," he says incredulously. B: What are you doing at work? What are you trying to prove? That you're going to go out fighting? S: What should I be doing? B: We have a responsibility, not just to ourselves but to the people in our lives. S: Just because I haven't bared my soul to you or to Father McCue or to God, it doesn't mean I'm not responsible to what's important to me. B: To what? To who? This guy Mulder? Well where is he Dana? Where is he through all this? It's a painful conversation but the questions are good ones and Scully doesn't have a great answer for that last one. We see a truck pull up at a warehouse in D.C. and unload a wooden crate. Mulder and Arlinsky pry the lid off to reveal their prized alien body. The huge block of ice is lowered into a tank of warm water to begin the thawing process. As Babcock looks on, Arlinsky and Mulder discuss their pending examination of the body. Mulder is still not convinced it isn't a hoax and says it will need to be carbon dated to prove its authenticity. (!! It's only 200 years old. What does he hope to determine using carbon dating?) Babcock says if it is a hoax, why are there six dead men on that mountain? Someone else certainly believes it's real and worth killing for. Scully has the FBI Sci Crime Lab looking at the prints from the stairwell and lab where her assailant might have left a telltale trace of his identity. They find a set in the lab and on a hunch, Scully asks them to check them against the federal employee database. Sure enough, a Michael Kritschgau shows up as the suit. The file says he has US Army military training and is currently attached to the research division of the Pentagon. Back at their makeshift warehouse laboratory, Arlinsky is doing a physical examination of the body and verbally cataloging his findings as Babcock video tapes the proceedings. There are x-rays of the head, body, and extremities displayed, showing either a very complex ruse or a true entity with an enlarged cranium, four digits on each hand, and three on each foot. Arlinsky performs a thorough autopsy while Mulder watches everything with an intense curiosity. Meanwhile, Scully waits outside the Department of Defense Research Division for Kritschgau to exit the building. As he enters the underground parking lot, he turns in reaction to squealing tires approaching. Stopping just inches from Kritschgau, Scully prepares to exit the car as Kritschgau makes a run for it. She chases him down, gun drawn, until she has his full attention. He asks her not to shoot, that he didn't mean to hurt her. He had no choice. "If you arrest me, they'll kill me. The same people who are trying to kill you. The people who gave you your cancer." He better not be yanking her chain because she doesn't appear to be receptive to a joke. Arlinsky has finished his gross exam and says they need to look at the tissues, check the DNA sequence, perform a gas chromatograph, and, of course, there's Mulder's carbon dating. Arlinsky states, "If this isn't alien, I don't know what it is." Just then Mulder's phone rings and it's Scully. We cut back to Scully reporting to the group at FBI headquarters. She tells them that after the limited physical exam of the corpse, Mulder was ready to believe it was a genuine extraterrestrial biological entity. That he had finally found the proof which had eluded him. Which would confirm not only the existence of alien life but of his sister Samantha's abduction. But while Mulder watched Arlinsky's exam, Kritschgau was detailing point by point the systematic way that Mulder had been deceived and used. And how Scully, as his partner in their quest, had been lead down the same path, had lost a family member, and had contracted a fatal disease that Kritschgau claimed was engineered by the men responsible for the deception. Scully's phonecall to Mulder was to convince him to meet with Kritschgau to hear the story the way she had. Kritschgau tells Mulder that he's been lead to believe that there is intelligent life other than our own and that we've make contact with them. Kritschgau says it's all been orchestrated; it's a hoax and Mulder was used to perpetuate the story. He says through his work with the DOD he watched the military industrial complex run unbridled and unchecked during the cold war then divert attention from their misdeeds by using passionate people like Mulder to create these myths. Mulder's not buying it and wonders why Kritschgau just happened to run into Scully. Kritschgau says it's just like Mulder to be suspicious of everything but what he should be. He says he has records of disinformation from before Mulder was born. He chose to come forward now because he has a son who fought in the Gulf War and is now very sick. Kritschgau says, "The lies are so deep, the only way to cover them is to create something even more incredible." Kritschgau tells Mulder, "They invented you." The regression hypnosis, the story of his sister's abduction, the lies they fed his father...all fabricated. Mulder wanted to believe so badly and who could blame him. Every question Mulder puts to him, he has an answer for...answers based in earthly, natural explanations. Kritschgau tells him the body Arlinsky found was meticulously constructed out of biomaterials created through the hybridization of differentiated cells, called chimeras, frozen into place with sediment and materials that would bear out its age, poured through a small channel drilled in the rock. Mulder says that can't be because the engineers of such a hoax would know that tests would show it was a fake. "The body will never be tested," Kritschgau says. "You were only meant to see it, to make you believe the lie so you might finally commit and go public with the news." Mulder turns to Scully and says, "This man is a liar." Kritschgau says, "You can see for yourself, Agent Mulder. The body is already long gone." When Mulder left the warehouse, we saw a man sitting in a car with a gun in his possession. With Mulder out of the way, this man entered the warehouse and, bringing a gun to bear on a surprised Arlinsky, began talking to an unsurprised Babcock. Arlinsky looked to Babcock questioningly but got no response from that quarter. What he did get was shot dead by the gunman. Babcock was apparently in on the killings in the ice cave, sacrificing himself to a bullet to make the drama play out realistically. The gunman now asks Babcock where Mulder is and whether he is a "believer". Babcock answers in the affirmative and assures the gunman that they are now "the only two who know". Not the best answer for Babcock, as it turns out. After Mulder sits listening to Kritschgau's story in a state of denial, he heads back to the warehouse and his worst suspicions are confirmed. Arlinsky's dead, Babcock's dead, and the alien body is gone. S: Who did this , Mulder? M: What we had here was proof, Scully. There's no way it could be anything else. S: You said it yourself, Mulder. More test needed to be run. M: The ice core samples checked out. If the ice hasn't been tampered with, how could the body within be a fake? S: Cellular material found in the ice core samples were a direct match for what this man Kritschgau described. Hybrid cells. Chimeras within the matrix. M: Do we know for sure that those cells are not extraterrestrial? Scully says that Kritschgau couldn't have just guessed at all these details so there must be truth in his story. Mulder believes these "facts" and details are overwhelmed by the lies created to support them. S: Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe. M: After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's not true. S: Because it's easier to believe the lie, isn't it? M: What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe his story? S: He said the men behind this hoax, behind these lies, gave me this disease to make you believe. This is too much for Mulder who is in emotional overload. He walks away, leaving Scully standing alone in the warehouse. Cut to Mulder's apartment where he sits watching a taped broadcast of the NASA Symposium that opened the episode. Ashley Montague speaks of the likelihood of the existence of intelligent life in other galaxies and, most likely, some more intelligent than us. Carl Sagan says by finding and learning about possible civilizations on other planets, we could re-establish a meaningful context for ourselves. Mulder sits on his couch listening and watching with tears rolling unchecked down his face. The shot fades from Mulder's tortured countenance to Scully's equally pained face as she concludes her statement to the group. She is trying to hold her emotions in check as unshed tears shimmer in her eyes and a tremor runs through her voice. "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 Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."