As he stares through his dive suit faceplate into the cockpit of the plane, he sees the eyes of the occupant cloud over with a black, oily substance. When his shipmates finally pull him back onto the ship safely, we see the same oily cloud effect in Gauthier's eyes. A day or so later, as Skinner sits eating in the same restaurant, a belligerent Hispanic man is harassing the counter girl and as Skinner intervenes on her behalf, the man wheels around and shoots him in the stomach. As the man turns to leave he spits on Skinner. We see a meeting in the smoke filled room in NY, as the WMM and the Italian Elder discuss with the group the information leak that allowed the French ship to locate the downed plane. They seem to feel that an explanation should be forthcoming from CSM. Scully relays to Mulder Johansen's words and wonders if we do "bury the dead alive." Cut to the silo, where an oil covered Krycek pounds vainly on the locked door of his chamber in the silo, eight stories below the ground.

Piper Maru (part 1 of 2) Gauthier, a crewman from a French salvage vessel, dives in the Pacific Ocean in search of a downed W.W.II plane. He loses contact with his shipmates above just as he finds the plane with what appears to be a man still alive in the wreckage. As he stares through his dive suit faceplate into the cockpit of the plane, he sees the eyes of the occupant cloud over with a black, oily substance. When his shipmates finally pull him back onto the ship safely, we see the same oily cloud effect in Gauthier's eyes. Scully is detained by Skinner on her way into the Bureau and he asks to see her privately in his office. He is the bearer of bad news as he informs her that the case looking into the murder of her sister is being dropped. The FBI and the police have turned up no new leads after five months so the case will be made inactive. He says he will do everything he can to see that this is not the end and that she shouldn't read anything into the action. Scully, suppressing several emotions including anger, frustration, and sorrow, wonders aloud how no clues can be found in her sister's death when the murder weapon and potential evidence were left at the crime scene. She heads down to the basement office where Mulder shares his latest interest, a French salvage ship, the Piper Maru, which somehow made it into port the previous day with its crew suffering from radiation sickness. The last known coordinates of the ship match those of the Talapus, the ship from the satellite photos in Nisei/731. "There's something still down there,"says Mulder. Mulder and Scully head to San Diego where the ship's crew are being treated for radiation burns. The doctor tells them that the levels the men were exposed to should not exist in nature and that surprisingly, one man was not exposed though the rest of the crew was. The man, named Gauthier, has just been released and is heading to his home in San Francisco. The partners visit the Piper Maru and are told that there are no remaining traces of radiation on board. Mulder does find evidence of an oily, black substance on a dive suit and a video of the most recent dive shows a W.W.II plane resting on the ocean bottom. Mulder decides to head to San Francisco to track down Gauthier while Scully heads to Miramar Air Base to reacquaint herself with someone she thinks might be able to help her with information on the plane. Meanwhile, we see Gauthier arriving at his home in San Francisco. As he searches the place, his wife arrives home and is glad to see him saying she was worried when she heard about the accident. But Gauthier is not responding to her and hasn't said a word. As she realizes this, she tries to back away as he grabs her. The next thing we see is Gauthier's wife leaving the house and the cloudy, oil effect in her eyes. Mulder arrives at the Gauthier residence and finds a disoriented Gauthier, lying on the floor, covered in a slick, oily substance. The last thing he remembers is his dive, but when Mulder asks him what the ship was searching for, he quits talking, obviously hiding the truth. Mulder finds a letter which lists the address of a salvage broker in the letterhead and not getting any straight answers from Gauthier, heads off to check it out himself. Scully arrives at the Naval Air Base, and as she watches children playing near the housing compound, she gets nostalgic and remembers playing with her sister on the very same base. She has come to talk to Major Johansen, an old colleague of her father. When she asks him about the plane, giving him the number off the tail, he says it doesn't ring a bell. Scully had also read the name Zeus Faber off a chart on the Piper Maru and she asks him if this name means anything to him. Once again, Johansen says he can't remember anything...that his memory isn't what it used to be. Scully leaves, asking to be remembered to his son who she used to play with, and Johansen tells her he was killed. Just as she is about to drive out the gates of the base, she is detained and is surprised to see Johansen coming out to speak to her. He has decided to confess what he knows, having had a pang of conscience remembering the dead. "We bury our dead alive,"he says as he recounts an incident he was involved in when he was aboard a submarine called the Zeus Faber. The sub was sent after W.W.II to find a downed plane. The men all started succumbing to radiation sickness but the captain would not turn back, so a mutiny broke out. In flashback, we see these events play out and the captain has the oily, clouded eyes. By the time the ship limped back into port, all but 7 of the crewmen were dead or dying. The official story was that the plane was carrying an atomic bomb on its way to Japan. While Scully is learning of the Zeus Faber, Mulder has found the salvage broker's office but the secretary tells him the boss is out of the country on business. Mulder stakes the place out and sees two cars full of men arrive and storm the place as the secretary slips out a side door. Mulder follows her to the airport where she is about to board a flight to Hong Kong. Mulder books onto the same flight but before boarding his cell phone rings and it's Scully calling to update him. After she tells him what Johansen revealed, Mulder hops the flight as we see Gauthier's wife following him down the boarding ramp. He tracks the secretary in Hong Kong and confronts her only to find out she's not the secretary but in fact the boss. Mulder accuses her of dealing in classified government secrets then handcuffs himself to her and drags her to her Hong Kong office. What they find, is Krycek waiting inside with a gun pointed at them. He has apparently been selling information from the DAT tape and the salvage broker and he are partners of sorts. Krycek pushes the woman out the door and slams it shut putting her on the outside with Mulder, still handcuffed to her, on the inside. Suddenly, gunshots are heard in the hallway as a dead weight drags Mulder's cuffed arm to the floor. Scrambling to find his key and release his arm, Krycek escapes out the window as several men try to break down the door. By the time they are successful, the find only an empty handcuff as Mulder barely escapes through the window ahead of them. It is the same group of men who had raided the salvage broker's office in San Francisco. As they head back down the hallway, they are met by Gauthier's wife who suddenly emits a blinding flash of light and the men fall to the floor dying, covered in radiation burns. Meanwhile in D.C., AD Skinner sits in a coffee shop he regularly frequents as several men enter and position themselves around his table. They say they work for the intelligence community to which he replies,"Remind me not to move there." They have come to tell him not to re-open the case of Melissa Scully's death and they threaten his job and livelihood if he chooses to go against their advice. A day or so later, as Skinner sits eating in the same restaurant, a belligerent Hispanic man is harrassing the counter girl and as Skinner intervenes on her behalf, the man wheels around and shoots him in the stomach. As the man turns to leave he spits on Skinner. The gunman is Krycek's past compatriot that was with him when Melissa was shot and when Skinner was attacked in the hospital stairwell. As Scully arrives home from San Diego, she receives a call that Skinner has been shot and she rushes to the hospital. In Hong Kong, we see Krycek enter the airport only to be met with Mulder's fist as Mulder wrestles him into a corner and pummels him a few times. "This one's for my father," he says as he administers one of the punches. Mulder demands that Krycek give him the tape but he says he doesn't have it, but he knows where it is. He has it stashed in a locker and he holds the key out to Mulder as proof. He wants to make a trade...the tape for his life. Mulder really wants the tape so decides to travel back to Washington with Krycek, retrieve the tape, and play it by ear. He lets Krycek clean himself up in the bathroom (alone!) and while Krycek is inside, he sees a woman enter. It is Gauthier's wife and as Krycek exits to the waiting Mulder, we see the oily, cloud effect in his eyes. "Feel better?" Mulder asks. "Like a new man,"Krycek replies. To be continued...   Apocrypha (part 2 of 2) The episode opens with a flashback to 1953 and an interview in a naval hospital. It is one of the crewmen from the Zeus Faber who lays dying as he recounts his story to three onlookers in suits. He tells the same story as Johansen, but he also saw what happened when the captain was knocked unconscious during the mutiny. A black, oily substance oozed from his eyes, nose, and mouth and slipped away down a grate on the floor. He doesn't know what it was or what was down on the ocean floor that they were sent to find on their mission, but whatever it was killed all those men. "That thing is still down there." As he says this, he grabs the arm of the nearest man and beseeches him,"You've got to make sure the truth gets out. I can trust you to do that, can't I, Mr. Mulder?" A young Bill Mulder looks at his two companions instead of answering, the second of whom is clearly recognizable as CSM. As CSM lights a cigarette, he says,"You can trust all of us." Mulder and Krycek arrive back in Washington and rent a car. As they begin the drive, Mulder notices a car following them and tells Krycek to speed up. The car pursues and forces them off the road and the impact knocks Mulder senseless. The two men in the pursuing car, get out and demand that Krycek exit the car, leaving Mulder alone. They ask for the tape and one of the men proceeds to beat on Krycek until a blinding light erupts and the man falls screaming. As the other man rushes to his aid, he too succumbs to Krycek's new, radiant personality. Mulder, mostly unconscious, looks up to see the blinding light but then sinks into total unconsciousness. Scully has rushed to the hospital to determine Skinner's condition. As he is being wheeled into recovery, he tells her that he has seen his attacker before. She follows up on the evidence, part of which is a saliva sample, and the PCR results are used in a search against known offenders. She heads back to the hospital and is sitting at Mulder's bedside when he awakens. He tells her the little he remembers and she is shocked to hear that the other passenger in the car was Krycek. She is angry that they were that close to apprehending him, and this is clearer when she shares with him the information that the PCR turned up. The man who shot Skinner is Luis Cardinal, the same man who shot her sister. She goes to talk to Skinner and he tells her the man who shot him is one of the men who beat him up and stole the DAT tape from him. She shares her info as the pieces fall into place. We see a meeting in the smoke filled room in NY, as the WMM and the Italian Elder discuss with the group the information leak that allowed the French ship to locate the downed plane. They seem to feel that an explanation should be forthcoming from CSM. After being released from the hospital, Mulder has the oily substance from the dive suit tested, and knowing that it was also found on Gauthier and his wife, who turned up in the men's room in a Hong Kong airport (go figure), he works out a hypothesis. This one is strange, even for Mulder, and as Scully listens she finally has to laugh, and Mulder even realizes how ludicrous it sounds. The lab showed that the substance was actually oil used on the downed airplane. He proposes that an alien is using the oil as a medium to body jump from one person to the other. But what does it want? The alien and the answer might lie in Krycek. Mulder still has the key to the locker where Krycek stashed the DAT, so he takes the Lone Gunmen with him to retrieve it but the envelope they find is empty. It's location is clear when we see Krycek enter a room where CSM sits, throwing the tape on the table. "Where is it," Krycek asks. "I've been expecting you,"CSM replies as he looks into the black, cloudy eyes of Krycek. CSM arrives at a meeting ofthe consortium and find himself called on the carpet for several offenses. He has taken it upon himself to move the salvaged UFO to a new location in North Dakota and the others are not pleased. They are also upset at his associates' involvement in the shooting of Skinner, risking exposure. CSM tells WMM that he will handle it. Mulder and the Lone Gunmen have no tape but they find the imprint of a telephone number on the envelope itself. When Mulder dials the number he finds himself talking to WMM in the NY meeting room. WMM says he'd like to meet with Mulder, who agrees to a meeting in Central Park. WMM tells Mulder that they retrieved a UFO from the ocean floor, a foo-fighter downed during W.W.II. When the Zeus Faber was sent to salvage it, trouble broke out and the story of an atomic bomb was created as a cover. Mulder asks where Krycek is and WMM wonders aloud why Mulder didn't kill him when he had the chance. Mulder says it's because Krycek had the tape which comes as a surprise to WMM, and proof that CSM has been lying to them all along. Mulder realizes that WMM doesn't know where Krycek is either and goes to leave, prompting WMM to say that "anyone can be gotten to." A paranoid Mulder immediately calls Scully and tells her to get to the hospital and check on Skinner. When she arrives, she finds the posted guards missing and is told that Skinner is being transported to another hospital. She runs to catch up with his ambulance and climbs on to escort him. While the ambulance is stopped at a light, she hears someone at the rear door and throws it open, surprising Luis Cardinal who fires a shot then hightails it out of there. Scully pursues him on foot (highheels, no less) and catches him after he is broadsided by a car and falls to the ground. With her gun trained on him, Scully shouts at him, "Are you Luis Cardinal? Did you kill my sister?" Resisting the urge to shoot the weasel as he begs for his life, she turns him over to the police after he tells her the whereabouts of the man Luis says she really wants. Krycek. Mulder and Scully meet up at the airport and head to North Dakota where Krycek has apparently gone. What they find are abandoned missile silos where Mulder believes the salvaged UFO is being kept. When they descend into the silo they find a guard who is dead, suffering from massive radiation burns. "He's here,"Mulder says. But before they can locate him, they are run down by a black-ops team and when they resurface topside, they find CSM waiting for them. As they are being forced into unmarked vans, Mulder shouts that he can't bury the truth, but CSM says,"You saw nothing." Back inside the silo, CSM walks to a doorway and takes a drag on his cigarette before walking away. Behind the door, the salvaged UFO sits with Krycek on top, coughing and gagging as the oil alien drips from his mouth and eyes and is absorbed into the smooth skin of the craft. Back in D.C., Skinner tells Mulder that justice of a kind was done but not necessarily what Scully wanted. The shooter, Luis Cardinal, was imprisoned but was later found dead in his cell. Mulder thanks Skinner for helping Scully find her sister's killer but Skinner denies any special favor, saying he was just doing his job. Mulder finds Scully at her sister's graveside and tells her the news of Luis, saying the same men have probably gotten to Krycek too. Scully relays to Mulder Johansen's words and wonders if we do "bury the dead alive." Cut to the silo, where an oil covered Krycek pounds vainly on the locked door of his chamber in the silo, eight stories below the ground.