It was on the call sheet for them
to check in with us at midnight.
You try every band? Repeatedly.
All audiovisuals seem to be down.
Maybe it's just a satellite glitch.
We thought so, too, until we received this
from a tracking station in Bend, Oregon.
They picked it up about a half an hour ago
on an emergency frequency.
What are those guys doing?
We did manage to uplink Firewalker's video camera.
It's at base camp,
so we're hoping it can, uh, give us a picture,
tell us what's going on up there.
Data feed's coming in now.
What's the robot doing in the volcano?
I don't know. There's no descent scheduled.
Firewalker's not responding.
Except for the video feed, I can't get control.
Someone's overriding it.
Lock camera remote and pan left.
Stop, stop!
Go back.
Tilt up and zoom in.
Erikson.
What the hell? Give me that.
There it is again. Did you see that?
You saw that shadow, didn't you?
Yeah, but what could be moving around
in that kind of heat?
I don't know.
Maybe it was, uh,
just a ghost signal.
I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that...
What's going on up there?
Let's go now to our science editor, Eric Parker,
standing by in Mount Avalon, Washington. Eric?
I'm standing here on an historic eve
with a group of scientists
who can barely contain their excitement about this device,
which looks like a large titanium bug.
Its name is Firewalker,
and next week, will make its first descent
into an active volcano.
This amazing robot is the brainchild
of volcanologist Daniel Trepkos,
whose objective is to gather samples from the crater floor
which may hold valuable scientific data
about the Earth's core.
Scientific data?
We're talking about revisiting the very origin of the Earth,
peering into the fire where it all began.
A human endeavor
more important even than man's exploration of space.
It's no mean claim.
Daniel always had a flair for self-dramatization.
I'd always heard that he was brilliant.
Brilliant doesn't go quite far enough.
Daniel occupies that rare place among scientists
where dreams, ambition and great luck converge.
You think his luck just ran out?
That team of scientists you just saw
sent a distress signal yesterday
after failing to make a scheduled status report.
And they haven't responded to any of our calls.
But by using remote telemetry,
we were able to activate Firewalker's camera.
This is what we found.
You're looking at the floor of the volcano.
But this is the last thing we expected to discover.
The dead man is, uh, Phil Erikson,
chief seismologist.
Now, look at this.
Whoa. What the hell is that?
We don't know.
Whatever it was disabled the camera.
The temperature readings are
upwards of 130 degrees at this depth.
But that was alive.
Why weren't you up there?
I left the project six weeks ago.
Trepkos and I nearly came to blows.
Over what?
I wish I could explain.
Daniel and I, uh...
I always played Salieri to his Mozart.
I was never quite on his plane of intellect.
But this time, I found him slipping...
into madness.
The way he began to control the others.
You think he's responsible for what happened?
Whatever there is between me and Trepkos,
I pray that he isn't.
We've got 20 million tax dollars in this project.
If word of it were to get out,
it could destroy years of work.
I'm afraid to go through proper channels.
Yeah.
We're not exactly proper channels.
How soon can we get up there?
We've got a charter flight waiting to take us to Seattle.
From there, a helicopter will fly us to Mount Avalon.
Scully?
I don't think it's a good idea for you to go.
Mulder, I appreciate your concern,
but I'm ready.
I want to work.
Well, maybe you should take some time off.
I've already lost too much time.
There it is.
This was Firewalker's satellite relay.
We installed field instruments all around this area--
seismographs, tiltmeters.
We'll look around out here after we've checked inside.
These instruments are worth millions of project dollars,
and I'm accountable to the USGS for every one of them.
Shouldn't we find the rest of the descent team first?
I just want to take a quick damage survey.
I'll catch up with you in a few minutes.
Hello?
Looks like somebody wanted to put this operation
permanently out of commission.
Mulder!
Wait, wait!
What's going on? Hey!
This isn't what it looks like.
He just about took my head off.
I told you, I made a mistake, okay?
I'm sorry, all right?
Well, who are you?!
I'm-I'm Ludwig.
I'm Jason Ludwig.
I'm the robotics engineer for the descent team.
Do you always greet people this way?
I heard a noise, okay? I thought it was him.
I was trying to protect myself.
You know, self-preservation?
Well, who did you think I was that you thought you had to
protect yourself?
Trepkos.
He ran hot and cold, you know?
Sometimes he wouldn't talk to us for days,
and then, boom, you couldn't get him to shut up.
Don't get me wrong, okay?
No one revered the man more than me.
I mean, he was a prophet.
An oracle.
He saw things.
I mean, he-he saw things that you and me...
we only dream about
and then forget when we wake up.
Well, it's okay, you can come out now.
The cavalry's here.
This is Peter Tanaka, our systems analyst.
And, uh, this is Jesse O'Neil.
Are you the rescue team?
No, we're with the FBI.
But you're taking us back, right?
After we've investigated what happened here.
Trepkos is what happened here.
Did he kill Erikson?
He flipped out.
Right after the descent,
he just flipped out.
Can you think of anything
that might have caused or contributed to
his behavior?
You're asking me?
Daniel was sick.
He had a bipolar disorder.
I think that's what it was.
It wasn't a secret,
but it's not something he advertised either.
But with his medication, he was just fine.
Yeah, well, I think Erikson's wife
might disagree with that.
You're part of the team, Jesse?
Daniel was my thesis advisor
at the university.
He asked me to assist him on this project.
Are these his notes?
Oh, yeah.
Well, whatever's left of them.
First thing he did was destroy all his own work--
you know, his field journals,
his computer discs.
We salvaged what we could, but...
I don't really think you'll find much in there.
Of use, anyway.
Hello?
Anyone there?
Scully.
What do you make of Mr. Trepkos's neighborhood?
What do you mean?
Don't you think their behavior's a little bizarre,
almost paranoid?
Well, considering what they've been through, not especially.
They're practically climbing the walls in there.
Well, they've been living in the middle of nowhere
for almost a year.
One of their team members is dead,
probably at the hands of another.
You'd have to expect some heightened level
of emotional distress.
No, it's more than that.
There's something they're not telling us.
Based on what?
Based on when Ludwig tried to play T-ball with my head.
He knew I wasn't Trepkos.
Now, Mulder, you're sounding paranoid.
Pierce knows these people.
Let's find out what he thinks.
Okay.
No one can leave.
- Pierce?! - Pierce?!
He's not here. Pierce, can you hear me?
Something's happened to him!
I'll check the landing site.
- Pierce! - Oh, my God!
Get over here! He's over here!
I found him! I found him!
I found him!
That should do it.
What should we do with the body?
Do you have a freezer? Yeah. Take him.
Why don't you radio for the helicopter.
I'm almost done here. Let me help you.
No, that's okay. We got it.
We can't leave, Scully. Not yet.
Why not?
Trepkos is still out there. I know.
He killed Pierce and probably Erikson.
I think we should come back for him with a larger party.
I've been going over Trepkos's work.
Fragments mostly, but I found
several references to a subterranean organism.
What are you talking about?
An unknown organism existing within the volcano.
I haven't found anything yet
that describes it in specific terms, but...
Mulder, nothing can live in a volcanic interior,
not only because of intense heat,
but the gases would be toxic to any organism.
What does this say?
It describes the metabolism from hydrogen sulfide
into silicon dioxide.
Doesn't that suggest a silicon-based life-form?
But the fundamental building block
for every organism known to man is carbon--
from-from the smallest bacterium to the largest redwood tree.
Yes, but silicon is the closest element to carbon.
It reacts almost identically with other elements,
the way it combines to form complex molecules.
A silicon-based life-form in the deep biosphere
has been one of the holy grails of modern science,
and maybe Trepkos found it.
Mulder, that is science fiction.
It's some elaborate construct from a delusional mind.
This doesn't prove anything.
Trepkos said he had
physical evidence.
It's got to be around somewhere.
Mulder, whatever evidence Trepkos had, he destroyed.
Maybe it wasn't Trepkos who destroyed it.
What if it was one of the others?
Why on earth would they do that?
Look, Mulder, the fact is that all of these people
are suffering to varying degrees from posttraumatic stress.
And from a strictly medical point of view,
we have to get them out of here sooner rather than later.
Jesse?
Can I talk to you?
Are you okay?
I hate this place.
What happened here, Jesse?
You can trust me.
After the first descent, Daniel changed.
He became withdrawn and paranoid.
He locked himself in the lab for three days
and wouldn't let any of us in.
Do you think the descent somehow triggered his breakdown?
Well, that's what I thought,
and then I found out...
that he'd stopped taking his pills.
"Lithium carbonate."
Yeah, he said that they were
polluting his brain,
and he said I was polluting his body.
I'm scared.
I don't want to die here.
What are you so afraid of, Jesse?
Daniel.
The only reason I even came here was because of him.
He promised me
that this would be an adventure.
That it would change my life.
But eight months is a long time, and I just want to go home now.
Where's home?
Anywhere but here.
Samples 7, 12 and 22
also contained trace evidence of the organism.
The possibility of this new
or perhaps unfathomably old life-form
has left me sleepless,
wondering if I haven't lost all perspective...
if my intense desire to find the truth
hasn't finally eclipsed the truth itself.
Our meddling intellect misshapes the beauteous forms of things
we murder to dissect.
My mind is a tangled knot I can no longer untie.
Daily, I fight the urge to sever it completely,
to stop this descent.
What caused that tremor?
There's been a lot of seismic activity lately
on the northeast rift zone.
Yeah, well, if Trepkos hadn't destroyed all our instruments,
we might even have learned something from it.
You feeling all right?
Yeah.
You know, Agent Scully's a medical doctor.
You should let her take a look at you.
I'm fine.
Why don't you just let her take a look... No!
I'll go get Scully.
Come on, get up.
She'll help you.
I don't want her to help me.
Of course you do.
It's for the best.
We have to get out of here.
He just collapsed after the tremor.
Seems pretty bad.
He's burning up.
What is it?
I can't tell whether it's an infection
or a toxic reaction, but we got to get him to a hospital.
I'll get a stretcher.
What about Trepkos? We can't just leave him.
Give me the shortwave.
This is Agent Scully with the Firewalker team.
Come in, search and rescue.
Got him?
Yeah.
You guys go ahead; I'll get O'Neil
and meet you at the landing site.
This is search and rescue. Over.
Request dispatch of medevac to our location immediately.
We have an Asian male, mid-30s, spiking a high-grade fever.
Tanaka's collapsed.
We're getting him out.
Tanaka!
Peter!
Peter, come on, get back here!
There.
Come on.
Don't go down there! Hey.
Let me go! What are you doing?!
Let go of me! Don't go down there.
For God's sakes, what are you doing?
He needs our help.
So what is it, Scully?
What are we dealing with?
Without better imaging equipment,
I can't say for sure.
I'll take any theory you've got.
It appears to be some kind of a fungus.
Anything you recognize?
Well, I'm not a botanist, but I think
it's fair to guess that it's an unknown genus.
What am I looking at here?
Spores. I scraped them off the tip of the fungus.
It appears as if one of the spores
grew inside of Tanaka
until it reached reproductive maturity,
essentially outgrowing its host.
But by then, it had already caused massive tissue damage,
particularly to the respiratory tract.
That would account for the sand in his lungs.
You found sand in his lungs?
Silicon dioxide-- the waste product
of a silicon-based organism.
Wait a second.
Th-There is no such thing as a silicon-based organism.
Maybe now there is.
But we won't have conclusive proof
until we determine its molecular structure.
Come on, Scully.
How else do you explain the sand in his lungs?
It's the best trace evidence we could ask for.
Trepkos was right.
Daniel knew about this?
He discovered the spore in the samples Firewalker brought up.
He would have told us.
Not if what he discovered was
too disturbing even for him to understand.
This might explain something else though.
The spore could explain Trepkos's dementia.
Fungi often contain alkaloids
that can affect the nervous system.
Yeah, but what about us?
I mean, we weren't exposed?
We don't know that.
If it was an airborne microbe,
any of us could have inhaled the spore.
So we're not going home, right?
Not until we know how it's transmitted,
how it incubates.
If even one of us is infected, we could risk infecting
a much larger population.
Search and rescue, this is Agent Mulder.
Do you copy?
This is search and rescue.
We're still in a holding pattern. Over.
Please notify FBI District Headquarters in Spokane
that our party is quarantining itself
due to possible contagion.
Have CDC set up an evacuation unit
on high alert.
What's the nature of the contagion?
Agent Mulder?
Tell them it's a biological agent...
of unknown origin.
That's affirmative. Standing by.
Maybe you should go check up on O'Neil.
I'm going to go find Trepkos.
What if he's already dead?
Then he'll have a tough time answering my questions.
I've got to find out what he knows.
What he's found could change everything we understand
about the origin and evolution of life.
He's dangerous, Mulder.
He's already killed two men.
Then I have to find out why.
Will you at least let me go with you?
No.
Look, I know what you're thinking,
but you have to get past that; we both do.
I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere.
You have to finish the autopsy on Tanaka.
Hopefully, that will give us a better idea
what we're dealing with-- whatever it is.
I'm counting on you to keep us all
from ending up on that slab.
Do like we said, okay?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
You know what to say, right?
I could use a little help.
Excuse me.
So what do you need?
Directions, contour map, USGS survey--
anything that can help me get here.
Oh.
These are the steam caves.
They feed into the Sherman Crater.
That's how we accessed the caldera.
How did you get these?
Firewalker.
They were transmitted right before Trepkos
destroyed his camera.
Oh. So you're finally going to go after Trepkos?
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
You won't find him with those.
And you won't find him with any map either.
Well, how will I find him?
You won't.
Not without a guide.
A guide?
Yeah, a guide.
Look, I've been up here for almost a year.
I spent months in those caves,
charting every fissure, every crevice,
so Firewalker wouldn't trip.
If Trepkos is there, I can find him.
Why are you so eager to help me find him?
Oh, I'm-I'm not eager.
I-I just don't feel like waiting around
for Trepkos to do to me
what he did to Pierce and Erikson.
Plus, you've got the gun.
You're the only one
who can get us out of this place.
Whatever I'm smelling, is it toxic?
Between the heat and the sulfur,
it can get pretty nasty in here,
but it won't hurt you.
You'll get used to it.
How far does the cave extend?
About...
three quarters of a mile to the crater rim.
Let's head in.
It twists around quite a bit till you get there.
Lots of dead ends.
And blind drops.
Unless you know where you're going,
you're... like a rat in a maze.
Your gun.
Back.
Get back.
Why are you doing this, Trepkos?
He's already dead.
How many times do you have to kill him?
It's not him I'm trying to kill.
I've attempted to culture the spore
using temperatures ranging from human basal
to those approximating the volcanic interior.
I have used nutritive mediums
containing human tissue, blood and saliva,
even sulfur.
However, none of the seven trials
have successfully grown the fungus that killed Tanaka.
Based on this preliminary data,
I have come to the following hypothesis.
That unless these spores are ingested or inhaled
by the host organism immediately upon their release,
they become harmless...
effectively dead.
Jesse?
What is it?
I thought you might like to know,
chances are good that none of us were infected.
We were at a safe distance from Tanaka
when the spores scattered.
And as soon as Mulder and Ludwig come back,
we can leave.
I-I just need to run a few more tests,
but I think we're going to be okay.
Ow. Oh...
Okay, Jesse? Jesse?
What went wrong, Trepkos?
Firewalker carried something back to the surface.
Firewalker brought up an elephant.
The truth is an elephant
described by three blind men.
First man touches the tail and says it's a rope.
Second man
feels the rough leg, says it's a tree.
The third man feels the trunk, says it's a snake.
What about you? What do you say it is?
I say the earth holds some truths best left buried.
Like the spore?
Who are you?
I'm Special Agent Mulder.
I'm with the FBI.
You don't look like a policeman.
I came down here to investigate Erikson's death.
That's not why you're here.
You still believe you can petition heaven
to get some penetrating answer.
If you found that answer...
...what would you do with it?
I just want to know what happened
after the first descent.
What did you find?
It was porous.
Obsidian.
Erikson thought it was some sort of rock,
so I told him to pulverize it for analysis.
Erikson released the spore?
He discovered a new life-form.
In a single moment,
everything that science held sacred
suddenly turned on its head.
What about Erikson?
If... if he was infected...
I was too immersed in the work to notice.
Been alone in the lab for three days
when I heard their screams.
They were all gathered around him.
By the time I realized what was happening,
they were already changing.
Spore grew in each of them until it became them.
What do you mean?
It's a parasite.
Lives to find a host.
But you weren't infected.
No.
You destroyed your work,
the transmitting equipment.
You killed Pierce, so no one could leave.
No one can leave.
What about O'Neil?
Jesse...
Was she exposed to the spore?
They were all exposed.
All of them.
I have a colleague, a friend
who's with O'Neil right now.
Let me go to her.
She may already be infected.
I can't let you leave.
Then you're going to have to shoot me,
because I'm walking out of here.
Jesse?
God, you scared me.
Jesse, are you okay?
Jesse, what's wrong?
Jesse?
Jesse, what are you doing?
Scully!
I'm okay. I'm okay.
You all right?
I'm okay.
Yeah.
Look.
She was infected.
I don't know how.
Erikson was the original host.
When the fungus shed its spores,
everyone was at ground zero except for Trepkos.
Did you find him?
I told her...
it would change her life.
Search and rescue, this is Agent Mulder.
Do you copy?
This is Army biohazard.
How many are in your party?
We have two survivors-- Agent Scully and myself.
Copy that.
Our ETA is seven minutes.
Mulder, what are you doing?
They're going to want to question him.
It's all over, Scully.
He won't talk.
Scully and I are in the third day
of a monthlong quarantine
undergoing level four decon procedures.
We are, so far,
without symptoms of fungal contamination.
All our specimens and field notes were confiscated
by the military biohazard corps prior to our evacuation.
Their presence is delayed for an indefinite period--
the arrival of the USGS Data Retrieval Team.
I suspect, though,
there will be little left for them to retrieve.
There are no plans at present to explore further
any of the hundreds of the volcanically active mountains
in the Cascade Range.
Including Mount Avalon.
All access points to that volcano
have been sealed off by Army engineers.
Of the members of the Firewalker descent team,
only Trepkos and O'Neil remain unaccounted for.
They are presumed dead,
and the search for them has been abandoned.
Firewalker, however, was recovered,
though it's sensory and locomotive systems
were found to be irreparably damaged.
The data it collected from the earth's interior
will never be known.
And of the events that occurred at Mount Avalon
between the 11th and 13th of November, 1994...
...mine stands as the only record.