AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
PALEOCLIMATOLOGY LAB


Scully meets with Dr.Vitagliano

VITAGLIANO
As you've asked, I've tested some of the cellular material found in the ice core sample. Because we couldn't classify it as either plant or animal, only as some kind of chimeric hybrid, I put some of the cells in media containing fetal bovine serum. And the cells began to divide.

SCULLY
Well then they were animal cells that you found.

VITAGLIANO
They are not classifiable.

SCULLY

What do you mean? You said there was mitotic cell division.

VITAGLIANO
When the cells began to divide they didn't just multiply, they began to go through the stages of merula, blastula, gastrula.

SCULLY
They began somatic development?

VITAGLIANO
The beginning of a life form. Growing into what, I don't know.



LEVEL 4

Mulder walks to doors, try them, locked as he talks in voice over

MULDER
I had come here looking for answers hoping not only to lay bare this conspiracy against the country and the men behind it but to finally learn the truth about the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

A door at the end of the hall opens and two security men enter. Mulder tries more doors and finds one and enters and closes the door as he talks

Now with what I've heard my beliefs seem more and more improbable. The possibility of a cure for Scully somewhere inside these walls is my only hope but if I might find it and somehow save her, the very existence of this cure would mean with certainty that I had believed in a lie from the start.

He's relieved when they walk away. The room he entered is a big, dark one filled to the brim with tables containing grey aliens. Mulder walks through the room looking at the comatose aliens as Scully speaks in voice over

SCULLY
voice over
I had no way to reach Agent Mulder to tell him what I had discovered--an unidentified microscopic lifeform whose very existence held the possibility of revelation. Was this organism, extracted from the ice which had entombed the alien corpse, the germ cell that might give proof of extraterrestrial life--or was it just the opposite? The scientifically engineered creation of a chimera, an unclassified biological product designed to set up a hoax manufactured to create a false set of beliefs that have long driven Agent Mulder?

Mulder reaches another door with a window and he sees women on tables with big stomachs and grid pattern lights shining on them

I now begin to realize that the answer to this question might exist within the life form itself, biological proof of this connection to the cancer invading my body to a virus living inside this organism to which I had been exposed during my abduction three years ago.



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
2:04 PM


Vitagliano is taking blood from Scully

VITAGLIANO
I'm still not sure what you're trying to find here.

SCULLY
I need to do a Southern Blot to run a culture of what you showed me against my own DNA. You said that the unclassified cells you looked at under the EM were full of virus.

VITAGLIANO
Right. What are you looking for?

SCULLY
A match. And I need it before seven.

VITAGLIANO
Tonight? Not gonna happen. Not unless we have a blazing hot probe.

SCULLY

It's got to happen. Everything in my life depends on it.

Vitagliano leaves her with the blood. She looks at the window on the door and sees Skinner looking at her and leaving. She gets up and goes after him



HALLWAY

Scully meets up with Skinner in the hallway

SCULLY
What are you doing here?

SKINNER
I was going to ask you the same.

SCULLY
No, you weren't. You followed me here. Why are you following me? Is this more dirty work you're doing for the DOD?

SKINNER
Why don't you tell me something, Agent Scully. Why don't you tell me what you're doing here.

SCULLY
I want an answer from you.

SKINNER
I want an answer from you!

SCULLY
This isn't your job!

SKINNER
My job is to direct the agents under me, to question their motives when they're lying about investigations, to take steps to cease or censure their actions. Your lie is on record, Agent Scully.

SCULLY
And what about yours?

SKINNER
On my desk, I have the pathology and forensics reports for the body found in Agent Mulder's apartment. Now you have to answer for yourself in five hours. As you compound the lies, you compound the consequences for them.

SCULLY
All lies lead to the truth, isn't that right?

SKINNER
And what about your lie, Agent Scully? What does it lead to?

SCULLY
The truth. About the men behind what happened to me, about my abduction and the tests, about being exposed to something against my will, about being put on a table and having something implanted in me, and then having my memory stolen, only to have it return along with a disease that I was given.

SKINNER
Is that your justification? Is that what you're going to tell the joint panel tonight?

SCULLY
Are you afraid of that?

SKINNER
Well, considering the dead man in Mulder's apartment was murdered in cold blood, and you willfully misidentified him: yes, I am afraid. But I'm only afraid for you.

SCULLY
You're going to use that against me, aren't you? You're going to use me as I've been used all along. To preserve the lies.

SKINNER
Where is Agent Mulder?

She just walks back to the door she came out of

Your silence won't save you. Not with these people. And if you lie, I don't know if anything can.

SCULLY
Except proof.



LATER

Scully goes through a Southern Blot test being done with her blood. She talks over the procedure

SCULLY
The cruelest ironies are those consecrated by the passage of time, chanced and occasioned by shocking discovery. I had joined Agent Mulder on the X-Files because of my background in the medical sciences. My assignment was to question his work, to debunk his investigations, and rein him back into the FBI mainstream. Now, as fate would have it, I am calling on these very same skills to prove that he has been the target of a scheme orchestrated by someone close to us in the FBI. Someone we have trusted above all others. Involved in a highly organized plot to keep a dangerous secret from the light of day.

We see Mulder going through Level 4, in a hallway, lower ceilings, air ducts and pipes exposed

I could only guess at what Agent Mulder may have uncovered on his own, what he may have found to confirm or deny what he has long held to be a conspiracy to control the public inquiry into the government's knowledge and contact with an alien race or races.

Back to Scully

If he had hoped, as I do, to learn the identity of those who sought to destroy us, I had, with the discovery of this unidentified microorganism, what could amount to forensic evidence. Hard and undeniable genetic evidence of a connection between the conspirators and the cancer which has now metastasized in my bloodstream.

Mulder gets to the door Cancerman used in the Pilot!

The vast room of shelves of files and evidence in the Pentagon. He uses the code card. It opens. He goes inside. He walks through the rows of shelves

I have few short hours to conduct these tests before I must appear before an FBI panel to explain myself. And as I am ready to lie to them about Agent Mulder, I am also ready to confront them with proof.

Back to Scully

Proof extracted from this tiny organism that could blow open a conspiracy of global consequence.

Mulder's turn for voice over as he walks through the room

MULDER
If Agent Scully and I had been led to believe that the conspiracy meant to destroy us has its roots in the Department of Defense, that fact seems all but irrefutable now. I have gained entry to a large storage facility by a hallway connecting underground to the Pentagon. On hundreds of rows of shelves are materials that reveal nothing to me of a cure for Scully's cancer. And now, as I have reached the terminus of this space, what appears to be an old and antiquated filing system seems my only hope of finding what this man Kritschgau has assured me exists.

He pulls a ladder over and climbs to higher on a wall of little filing drawers

If his own desperate hope for his son's cure has eluded him, I now share his desperation. That among these drawers is a sign, a glimmer, some small confirmation that the journey which has brought me here has not been in vain.

He opens SCU-SCY. There are two rows of index cards. He flips through and sees Scully, Dana Katherine with her date of birth, 2-23-64, her position number 2317-616 and four rows of other numbers.

He takes the card and then opens another card file and pulls out Kritschgau, Michael Jr. It's blank



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