CSM: This is the end. I never thought I'd hear myself say those words after all these years. You put your life into something . . . build it, protect it . . . The end is as unimaginable as your own death or the death of your children. I could never have scripted the events that led us to this. None of us could. All the brilliant men . . . the secret that we kept so well. It happened simply, like this. We had a perfect conspiracy with an alien race. Aliens who were coming to reclaim this planet and to destroy all human life. Our job was to secretly prepare the way for their invasion. To create for them a slave race of human/alien hybrids. They were good plans . . . right plans. Kept secret for over 50 years, ever since the crash at Roswell. Kept secret from men like Fox Mulder. Plans that would have worked had not a rebel alien race come to destroy them. Had not my own son chosen betrayal. Or chosen to betray more wisely.
Spender: AD Skinner . . . I . . . I didn't hear the elevator. I was working here.
Skinner: Working on what, Agent Spender?
Spender: Progress report on the X-Files.
Skinner: Progress report to who?
Spender: Just to file.
Skinner: I wasn't aware that you'd made any progress. In the months since your assignment, I've received but one memorandum. Were you planning to hit me all at once?
Skinner: Truth is your purpose here is not to make any progress, isn't it? Truth is you have no interest in the X-Files. Beyond a certain . . . personal case. Your mother's abduction.
Spender: Alleged abduction.
Skinner: That's what I'm here about.
Cassandra Spender: I need to talk to someone.
Spender: You can tell me.
Cassandra: I need to speak to Agent Mulder.
(Spender angrily gets out of the ambulance and follows Skinner who overheard the conversation.)
Spender: I don't want him talking with her.
Skinner: Why?
Spender: He's forbidden from the X-Files. He's to stay out of this.
Skinner: She's asking for him.
Spender: She's my mother.
Skinner: What are you afraid of, Agent Spender?
Spender: Of Agent Mulder filling her head with alien-abduction nonsense.
Skinner: Are you afraid of the truth?
Spender: I want to know who did this to her and why. That's all I want.
Skinner: Then why not use every resource available to you?
Spender: I'll send you a progress report.
CSM: My son refused to believe that his mother had been abducted . . . though it had been going on for years. Even after I schemed to put him in charge of the X-Files where Fox Mulder had amassed so much evidence of our secret plans . . . he still couldn't bring himself to accept the possibility of alien life. When he did . . . come to believe . . . when the facts became so glaring he turned . . . not to me, his father, but to the man I'd ruined. The man I'd chosen for him to replace.
(Several guys, including Mulder in a torn Knicks sweatshirt and sweatpants, are playing basketball. Mulder makes a basket, then stops when he sees Scully enter the gym. She is wearing a shorter than usual business suit and trenchcoat. Looks like Mulder checks out Scully's legs as she approaches.)
B-ball Player: (to Mulder) Hey, Milk, let's play ball.
(Mulder waits for Scully to get closer.)
B-ball Player: (irritated, to Mulder) Yo, Homestyle, cough up the rock.
Second B-ball Player: Got Nick over here?
Third B-ball Player: Yeah, yeah, I got Nick!
(Mulder tosses the ball over his shoulder to a teammate, then turns, recieves and casually shoots the ball, making the basket.)
Mulder: Game.
B-ball Player: (shaking his hand, not accepting the basket) Oh, no, no. Aw, it don't work like that.
(Mulder joins Scully at the side of the court.)
Mulder: Hey, Homegirl, word up.
Scully: Mulder, it's my distinct impression that you just cheated. And that you're not coming in again today.
Mulder: Oh, Scully, I got game.
Scully: Yeah, you got so much game I'm wondering if you have any work left in you.
Mulder: No, I'm ready to J-O-B just not on some jagoff shoeshine tip.
Scully: (small smile) No "jagoff shoeshine tip"?
Mulder: (smile) No background checkin' jagoff shoeshine tip.
Scully: Well, about your J-O-B, Mulder, somebody's been trying very hard to reach you by phone. Somebody who wants you back at the FBI ASAP.
Mulder: About what?
Scully: About an X-File.
(Mulder enters the FBI bullpin and finds Spender siting at Mulder's desk writing a note.)
Mulder: You looking for work, Agent Spender? 'Cause if you are, I got a whole pile in that middle drawer that I'd love to shove down someone's throat.
Spender: I was just writing you a note. I think you know why I'm here.
Mulder: They found your mother.
Spender: She wants to talk to you.
Mulder: I didn't hear the magic word.
Spender: Look, Agent Mulder, I'm not going to get down on my knees here.
Mulder: Are you asking me, Agent Spender?
Spender: My mother's been gone for almost a year. She turns up in a train car where she's been operated on by a group of doctors who were burned alive. I just want the truth.
Mulder: The truth is out there, Agent Spender. Maybe you should find it for yourself.
Dr. Openshaw: A man should never live long enough to see his children or his work destroyed.
(Mulder is sitting alone at his desk looking at computer images of the burned doctors from the train car as Scully enters.)
Scully: Didn't expect to find you here.
Mulder: Where did you expect to find me?
Scully: I thought Agent Spender offered you an X-File assignment.
Mulder: It wasn't exactly an offer.
Scully: But isn't it just the opportunity you've been waiting for?
Mulder: It is an opportunity made to order for the powers that be.
Scully: You think it's a setup?
Mulder: This is exactly the kind of mistake they've been waiting for to come down on me full force.
Scully: But Agent Spender asked you.
Mulder: Like I said, not exactly.
(Scully notices what Mulder is looking at on the computer.)
Scully: We've seen this before. Bodies set aflame with no conclusive cause of combustion. Mulder . . .
Mulder: (looking at her, gently) I know.
Scully: I was with Cassandra Spender when she disappeared. You sat with me while I was under hypnosis when I spoke of just these sorts of details.
Mulder: I have no doubt that what Cassandra would tell us would expose more than just what happened to her.
Scully: I was taken to one of those train cars. I was tested, just like Cassandra. What if what she tells us could expose who did this to me? Mulder, Agent Spender doesn't have to know.
(Mulder looks at her, then considers it.)
Scully: (to Cassandra) If I can get ahold of a wheelchair you want to go out for some fresh air?
Cassandra: (smiling) I don't need a wheelchair.
(Cassandra Spender gets out of bed and wiggles her toes on the floor. Scully stares in amazement.)
Cassandra: But I am dying for a cigarette.
Cassandra: I was hoping when I saw you that Agent Mulder was going to be coming in the door behind you.
Scully: (smiling) I've got a surprise for you, Cassandra.
(Cassandra enters a deserted lab/storage room, followed by Scully. Mulder sticks his head out from behind a shelf.)
Cassandra: (loudly) Agent Mulder?!
Mulder: Shh. Shhh. Shhhh.
Cassandra: Oh, my God. Oh, my God, I think I'm going to pee the floor.
Mulder: (nervous chuckle) Don't . . . don't do that.
(Cassandra hugs Mulder warmly.)
Mulder: Look at you.
Cassandra: I told you about their power. You said you didn't believe it.
Mulder: Well, I had reasons for doubt when I met you, Cassandra.
Cassandra: You just doubted yourself. You were just doubting you'd ever see her again, weren't you? (Mulder looks up at Scully) Your sister.
Scully: Agent Mulder told me he believed he saw his sister . . . last year.
Cassandra: That wasn't her, Agent Mulder.
Mulder: Then where is she?
Cassandra: Out there, with them. The aliens.
Cassandra: I told you that the aliens were here to do good and that I was being used as an oracle to spread the word. Only now I know what the aliens are here for and it isn't good.
Mulder: What are they here for?
Cassandra: To wipe us off the planet. They're taking over the universe. They're infecting all other life-forms with a black substance called Purity. It's their life force. It's what they're made of.
Mulder: It's the virus -- the black oil.
Scully: Why couldn't you tell Jeffrey?
Cassandra: Because he doesn't believe me . . . even though his life is in danger by these same rebel aliens.
Scully: Spender's life's in danger?
Cassandra: He's in with the men that have been working with the alien colonists for 50 years.
Scully: Working to do what?
Cassandra: Whatever it is they did to me . . . and to you, Dana.
(Mulder and Scully look at each other.)
Mulder: And you know who these men are?
Cassandra: (bitterly) Oh, sure. One of them's my ex-husband . . . Jeffrey's father.
CSM: Cassandra was beginning to realize her role in the greatest science project that man had ever known. She was the center of 50 years of work . . . The key to all of our plans . . . something even my colleagues didn't realize yet. I killed to keep them unknowing. I killed Dr. Openshaw so they wouldn't discover her. When it's Cassandra I should have killed . . . Cassandra who needed to die. I couldn't do it. With all the blood on my hands I couldn't kill the mother of my own son, a woman I never even loved. My colleagues never knew, focused as they were on the new threat -- the faceless alien rebels who'd burned our doctors alive . . . But my colleagues had become old men . . . blind to the fact that the faceless rebels already held the upper hand . . . that they'd used their powers of disguise to infiltrate our group.
(Mulder and Scully sneak into the X-Files office.)
Scully: Maybe she was making it all up.
(Mulder shakes his head and types another command. He and Scully stare at the screen, then look at each other.)
Mulder: Smokey's got a name.
(Screen has picture of CSM with name Spender, C.G.B.)
Spender: I've done as you've asked. Mulder's been brought up to his superiors. He and his partner will be processed out of the FBI. I've done as you've asked. Now, I would like you to do for me.
CSM: Do for you?
Spender: I think I'm entitled.
CSM: To . . .?
Spender: The truth. The truth about my mother. She won't tell me.
CSM: Because you won't believe her. Maybe you won't believe me. Maybe it's better not to know.
CSM: You need to show me that you're capable of handling the responsibility that comes with this knowledge.
Spender: Don't try me, old man.
(CSM stands and slaps Spender hard across the face.)
CSM: I gave you responsibility. I gave you a position. I gave you the things that you couldn't get yourself and you can't do the job!
Spender: Keeping Fox Mulder down is not a job. It's your dirty work!
(CSM slaps him hard again. Spender sits heavily.)
CSM: (disgusted) You pale to Fox Mulder.
Mulder: Scully, you want to go one-on-one?
CSM: If Mulder hadn't known of his father's history with me he was fueled now with names and dates and . . . certainties. I couldn't stop him any longer -- stop him from learning our sins. His father's and my own. The truth was out there fatally exposed. I had one last hope. One chance to preserve my legacy.
Spender: You have a new job for me?
CSM: Yes. I may have been unduly harsh. You deserve a fighting chance to prove your father wrong.
(Spender gets into the back seat of the car. Krycek, the driver, looks back at Spender distrustfully as he holds the plam.)
Krycek: Watch where you point that.
(Spender is sitting staring at the dead alien as green fluid bubbles out of the back of the neck. He looks a bit sick.)
Krycek: You've never seen one before, have you? (Spender shakes his head.) It's shocking at first. The acceptance of the idea, it's . . . it's something you thought only children and fools believed in. It undermines your beliefs -- in yourself, in the world . . . but then you come to understand.
Spender: Understand what?
Krycek: Well, the responsibility that this knowledge demands by the men who have it. The great sacrifice by great men like your father.
Spender: What sacrifice?
Krycek: The sacrifice of your mother.
Spender: What do you know about that?
Krycek: (surprised that Spender doesn't know [like you believed that!]) Just that she's . . . been the subject of an experiment for 25 years.
Spender: My father's involved in that? Is he?
Krycek: Your father directs the experiments.
Spender: So . . . I'm protecting her now so the experiments can continue?
Krycek: That's why he put you on the X-Files. That's why your father sent you here tonight. You're protecting the project, Jeff. Making the sacrifices. So that you can be a great man, too.
Spender: (leaving the room angrily) I'll be my own great man.
CSM: I've trusted no one. Treachery is the inevitable result of all affairs. Every man believes he has his own good reason. I have little doubt of my son's disloyalty to me. Certainly he led Mulder and Scully to us. His mother must know by now her central role in the grand plan . . . That she's as much alien as human. Do you wonder why I've chosen you? You've never betrayed me. Now I need someone to trust.
(We now see that he has been talking to Diana Fowley.)
Diana: I'll help you. It's not too late.
Cassandra: You have got to kill me now! (desperate) If you don't kill me, it all starts. There won't be any stopping it. I am the one. You have to shoot me . . . Please!
(More knocking at Mulder's door. Mulder unholsters his gun and raises it.)
Scully: Mulder, what are you doing?
Mulder: Stand away, Scully.
Scully: Mulder! Mulder, we have to protect her.
(The pounding at the door continues, getting louder. Mulder aims the gun at Cassandra Spender's head.)
Scully: Mulder? Mulder!
6x10 6x12
