Dr. Openshaw, congratulations.
Your work-- it's completed.
You should see her.
25 years.
She must seem like an old friend.
Yes.
We're, uh... going out to celebrate.
If you'd like to come...
No.
You go on ahead.
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.
A.D. Skinner,
I... I didn't hear the elevator.
I was working here.
Working on what, Agent Spender?
Progress report on the X Files.
Progress report to who?
Just to file.
I wasn't aware that you'd made any progress.
In the months since your assignment,
I've received but one memorandum.
Are you planning to hit me all at once?
Uh, it's been slow going.
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.
Alleged abduction.
That's what I'm here about.
What happened here?
No one knows yet.
Group of people were burned alive here.
Another man's on life support.
Only your mother survived.
Where is she? Where is she?!
They've got her outside.
Mom?
Mom...
it's me, Jeffrey.
Mom, what happened to you?
You've been gone so long,
I thought I'd never see you again.
Oh...
don't cry, honey.
Where have you been?
What did they do to you?
I need to talk to someone.
You can tell me.
I need to speak to Agent Mulder.
I don't want him talking with her.
Why?
He's forbidden from the X Files.
He's to stay out of this.
She's asking for him.
She's my mother.
What are you afraid of, Agent Spender?
Of Agent Mulder filling her head
with alien-abduction nonsense.
Are you afraid of the truth?
I want to know who did this to her and why.
That's all I want.
Then why not use every resource available to you?
I'll send you a progress report.
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.
Hey, milk,
let's play ball.
Yo, homestyle, cough up the rock.
Game.
Oh, no, no, ock. It don't work like that.
Hey, homegirl, word up.
Mulder, it's my distinct impression
that you just cheated.
And that you're not coming in again today.
Scully, I got game.
Yeah, you got so much game, I'm wondering if you have
any work left in you.
No, I'm ready to J-O-B,
just not on some jagoff shoeshine tip.
No "jagoff shoeshine tip"?
No background checking jagoff shoeshine tip.
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.
About what?
About an X File.
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.
I was just writing you a note.
I think you know why I'm here.
They found your mother.
She wants to talk to you.
I didn't hear the magic word. Look, Agent Mulder,
I'm not going to get down on my knees here.
Are you asking me, Agent 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.
The truth is out there, Agent Spender.
Maybe you should find it for yourself.
I expected you sooner.
I've been at the train yard.
Trying to tidy things up.
The overkill will be hard to divert attention from.
But not as hard as from Cassandra.
You have no idea, do you?
Cassandra is a success.
No... she can't be.
Not now.
I had prepared a syringe for her as agreed.
But the rebels came.
They saved her to expose us.
She's the key to everything.
I won't let her out of our hands.
They will run medical tests on her.
It's only a matter of time.
Cassandra must be terminated.
They will come and question me.
I know.
I'm sorry.
A man should never live long enough
to see his children or his work destroyed.
Hello.
Have you heard the news?
No.
The rebels have struck.
Where?
In Virginia,
during one of our medical procedures.
They killed the project doctors.
They burned them.
All of them?
Yes.
Dr. Openshaw died
in the hyperbaric chamber this evening.
My God.
I've called an emergency meeting of the Syndicate.
Only the future rides on our response.
I'll be on a plane.
Dr. Openshaw?
I've come to see you.
Didn't expect to find you here.
Where'd you expect to find me?
I thought Agent Spender offered you an X File assignment.
It wasn't exactly an offer.
But isn't it just the opportunity
you've been waiting for?
It is an opportunity made to order
for the powers that be.
You think it's a setup?
This is exactly the kind of mistake
they've been waiting for to come down on me full force.
But Agent Spender asked you.
not exactly.
We've seen this before.
Bodies set aflame
with no conclusive cause of combustion.
Mulder...
I know.
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.
I have no doubt that what Cassandra would tell us
would expose more than just what happened to her.
I was taken to one of those train cars.
I was tested, just like Cassandra.
What if what she tells us
could-could expose who did this to me?
Mulder, Agent Spender doesn't have to know.
Oh, my God.
My God...
Cassandra.
Oh, Dana.
Oh, my God.
It's so good to see you.
We're old friends.
If, uh... if I can get ahold of a wheelchair,
you want to go out for some fresh air?
I don't need a wheelchair.
But I am dying for a cigarette.
It feels so good to walk.
The doctors don't know what to say.
I told them they wouldn't believe how it happened,
and they wouldn't.
No, I'm not going to tell anybody this time,
because nobody believes you anyway.
They want to hear it,
but they just think you're crazy.
Guess I wouldn't believe it either,
except that it happened to me.
No, I'm only going to tell somebody I can trust
and who can do something about it.
I was hoping when I saw you that Agent Mulder was going to be
coming in the door behind you.
I've got a surprise for you, Cassandra.
Agent Mulder?
Shh-shh-shh-shh-shh.
Oh...
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, I think I'm going to pee the floor.
Don't... don't do that.
Look at you.
I told you about their power.
You said you didn't believe it.
Well, I had reasons for doubt when I met you, Cassandra.
You just doubted yourself.
You were just doubting you'd ever see her again, weren't you?
Your sister.
Agent Mulder told me
he believed he saw his sister... last year.
That wasn't her, Agent Mulder.
Then where is she?
Out there, with them.
The aliens.
Cassandra, you were found in a train car.
You'd been operated on by doctors.
Yes, that's right.
And these are the doctors who cured you?
No, the aliens cured me.
The doctors were working with the aliens.
That's what I wanted to tell you.
What?
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.
What are they here for?
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.
It's the virus-- the black oil.
But, Cassandra, the doctors weren't infected.
They were burned.
By another race of aliens.
A rebel force
that are mutilating their faces
so that they won't be infected.
This is what I couldn't tell my son Jeffrey.
Why couldn't you tell Jeffrey?
Because he doesn't believe me.
Even though his life is
in danger by these same rebel aliens.
Spender's life's in danger?
He's in with the men
that have been working with the alien colonists for 50 years.
Working to do what?
Whatever it is they did to me.
And to you, Dana.
And you know who these men are?
Oh, sure.
One of them's my ex-husband.
Jeffrey's father.
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.
Rebels have attacked and burned project facilities
in New Mexico and the Southwest.
The medical staff
at our Arizona research facility's been slain.
The train-car deaths cost us.
Work on the human/alien hybrids will suffer the death
of Dr. Openshaw.
What do they want?
To expose our enterprise--
everything we've worked for.
Well, some hotshot reporter's
going to put the pieces together,
not to mention law enforcement.
We have our control on the federal agencies.
Our new man at the FBI's very capable
of diverting attention.
Why not side with the rebels...
...join their alien resistance?
It's an option.
It's an option you declined long ago.
Resistance was futile then.
Why would it be any less so now?
That's why you voted against it--
against men like Bill Mulder.
Collaboration has allowed you
to prepare, to stall colonization.
How close are you to developing a human/alien hybrid?
That alone
ensures your survival.
As slave laborers for the aliens.
What about your vaccine?
By collaborating, you bought yourself time
to secretly develop a way to combat the aliens,
to fight the future.
Alex, enough!
For 50 years, we've worked on this project.
50 years since Roswell.
We can't sacrifice ourselves
for every new threat, can we now?
Why risk getting caught here?
They're going to be monitoring
any work on our machines, in or out.
We need access to files, and a name that'll raise flags.
Maybe she was making it all up.
Smokey's got a name.
Get up from the desk.
Get up, turn the computer off, grab whatever you took
or printed out and give it to me.
Let's go, Agents. They're coming.
Who?
Just go.
Assistant Director.
I'll assume you came down to apprehend these agents
for unauthorized entry into my office.
I'll make sure it's duly noted
in the report of their dismissal.
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.
Do for you?
I think I'm entitled.
To...?
The truth.
The truth about my mother.
She won't tell me.
Because you won't believe her.
Maybe you won't believe me.
Maybe it's better not to know.
Look, I need to know!
You need to show me that you're capable of handling
the responsibility that comes with this knowledge.
Don't try me, old man!
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!
Keeping Fox Mulder down is not a job.
It's your dirty work!
You pale to Fox Mulder.
Bet you're curious about C.G.B.
What's that?
C.G.B. Spender-- his name.
Cigarette Smoking Man.
What's it stand for?
It's an alias, as far as I can figure.
One of hundreds.
Scully, you want to go one-on-one?
We got nothing but time
now that we're on administrative leave.
Aren't you curious what I've got in the box?
Everything I could find on him.
Nothing you could ever find
would be accurate or credible.
Maybe.
But there's a picture you're going to want to see.
That's C.G.B. Spender and my father.
It was taken in 1973.
I traced the connection to something
they worked on together for 25 years
at the State Department.
A highly classified project.
There's more, if you're ready.
Cassandra Spender is, indeed, the mother
of Agent Jeffrey Spender,
and the ex-wife of C.G.B. Spender.
But there's something that you're going to be
surprised to find out.
She was first abducted in 1973, on the night of November 27.
That's the same night as my sister.
And there are other names
connected to C.G.B. Spender and your father--
PhDs...
doctors...
one a Nobel winner for early works in genetics.
A Dr. Eugene Openshaw.
He was the doctor that was found
amongst the burn victims,
clinging to life beside Cassandra Spender.
He died the next day in the hospital
before he was questioned.
Project is still going on.
Yeah.
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.
I waited, like you asked.
Good.
I'm pleased.
I was doubtful after our last meeting.
You have a new job for me?
Yes.
I may have been unduly harsh.
You deserve a fighting chance
to prove your father wrong.
What is it?
A weapon.
A man has infiltrated the group that I work with.
That's to kill him.
I don't understand.
He's pretending to be a member of our group,
disguising himself as a man he's already killed.
You will greet him as that man.
Engage him in conversation.
Then put that in the back of his neck.
You can do it, Jeffrey.
Watch where you point that.
Sir, my name is Jeffrey Spender.
My father sent me to see you.
I have a message from the group.
They've changed their minds?
That's what I'm here about.
Sit.
Please.
What have you to tell me?
Something I've been entrusted with.
It's, uh... it's a name, actually--
one that will have meaning for you.
I'm sorry.
Thanks for coming. I know it's late
and you've been forbidden to have any contact with us.
Sir.
You say Cassandra Spender's life is in danger.
Her life's been in danger going on 30 years...
just not the way I think it is now.
In danger from who?
Men who've conducted medical experiments
in what began as a secret government project,
but what is now the most private global enterprise.
Enterprising to do what?
To develop alien/human hybrids
that will survive the viral apocalypse
when aliens colonize the earth.
And I suppose you have proof of this?
Files that Agent Scully dug up
that make all the right connections
to Dr. Eugene Openshaw,
to my sister, to my father...
to Agent Spender's father.
Agent Spender's father?
The Smoking Man.
What?
It's true, sir.
We have documented evidence.
Then you believe this, Agent Scully?
This whole account?
I know that Agent Scully has her doubts
about the purposes of these experiments,
but I also know that she herself
believes she was a test subject
when she was abducted four years ago.
Well, if Cassandra Spender's life was in danger,
why not Scully's?
Because I believe Cassandra Spender
represents the final stages of these experiments--
that she may very well be
the first successful alien/human hybrid.
What I don't understand is:
if she was a success, then why is her life threatened?
Because...
the men who created her would rather kill her
than let her expose the enterprise.
She's under 24-hour guard.
Assigned by Agent Spender?
You've never seen one before, have you?
It's shocking at first.
The acceptance of the idea, it's...
it's something you thought only...
only children and fools believed in.
It undermines your beliefs--
in yourself, in the world...
but then you come to understand.
Understand what?
Well, the responsibility that this knowledge demands
by the men who have it.
The great sacrifice
by great men like your father.
What sacrifice?
The sacrifice of your mother.
What do you know about that?
Just that she's... been the subject
of an experiment for 25 years.
My father's involved in that?
Is he?
Your father directs the experiments.
So... I'm protecting her now
so the experiments can continue?
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.
I'll be my own great man.
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's 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.
I'll help you.
It's not too late.
Cassandra?
Ms. Spender?
Where's my mother?
You tell me, Agent Spender.
Where's the guard?
I had a guard posted here.
I got here and she was gone.
He took her.
Who?
Agent Spender?
Cassandra.
I can't believe I found you.
How did you find us?
Cassandra?
How did you get here?
How'd you get out of your room?
How'd you get your clothes?
Oh, Agent Scully, Agent Mulder,
you cannot let them find me.
You cannot let them have me! Let go!
You have got to kill me now!
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!
Mulder, what are you doing?
Stand away, Scully.
Mulder!
Mulder, we have to protect her.
Mulder?
Mulder!