THE X-FILES CHRONOLOGY - SEASON 4
August 1996 4X01 Herrenvolk	Mulder and Scully desperately try to protect the life of Jeremiah Smith. Not only is this mysterious man a link to the colonisation plan but his paranormal healing powers are Mulder's only hope of saving his mother's life. Close on their trail is the relentless Alien Bounty Hunter: an assassin who is hard to escape. And harder to kill. With the assassin close behind, Smith leads Mulder to an eerie, isolated farm community. There, Mulder is stunned to see clones of his sister Samantha, who had been abducted by aliens as a child. Smith tells Mulder that these children have been bred as worker drones. Before Smith can reveal more about the "Colonisation" conspiracy, they are set upon by the alien assassin. Mulder is helpless to save Smith or Samantha. Back in Washington, Scully's investigations into Smith's background lead her to a disquieting conclusion. All five of the identical men named Jeremiah Smith were secretly cataloguing the entire human population. But at whose orders? And why? Meanwhile, CSM and the Elder have identified X as a traitor. He is ambushed and gunned down. As he dies, he leaves behind one last ambiguous clue: the letters "SRSG" scrawled in blood. With his mother still in a coma, a despondent Mulder follows the last of his meagre clues to the end of the line: the United Nations office of Special Representative to the Secretary General. An enigmatic official denies the Colony ever existed, as she hands him a folder containing photographs of the farm and of Samantha. And finally, because "the fiercest enemy is the man who has nothing left to lose," CSM directs the Alien Bounty Hunter to heal Mulder's mother. Scully baby-sits her nephew, one week before the episode "Home." He watches the movie "Babe" several times. It is unclear who this nephew is. Siblings Bill Junior and Melissa have no children as of this date. Apparently this is a reference to a son of Charles Scully. (Home)
August 1996 4X03 Home	Home, Pennsylvania. An idyllic small town is the last place anyone would expect to find a hideously malformed newborn buried in a shallow grave. This gruesome discovery is enough for the local sheriff, Andy Taylor, to call in the FBI. Although the child's deformations indicate multiple genetic abnormalities, neither Mulder nor Scully believe this local tragedy is a matter for the X-Files: until they learn more about Home's reclusive Peacock clan. For over a century, this farm family has lived on the outskirts of town, and the outskirts of civilisation. Generations of inbreeding have deformed their bodies and their souls into something less than human, and more than animal. Now that the family has dwindled down to three brothers, Mulder and Scully suspect that the Peacocks have devised a grotesque plan to propagate their species by forcing a kidnapped woman into involuntary pregnancy. While someone (or something) watches unseen, Mulder and Scully explore the Peacock farm and find the bloody evidence of a recent birth. Before they can arrest the Peacocks, the family strikes back. Later that night, the Peacock boys massacre the sheriff and his wife. As Mulder says, "They went caveman." Fearing for the life of the Peacocks' prisoner, Scully and Mulder courageously invade the farmhouse with only the local deputy as back up. When they discover the hiding place of the clan matriarch, they finally comprehend the appalling truth. Mrs Peacock, a multiple amputee, is the mother of the murdered infant. And also the proud mother of three sons who'll do anything for mom. With guile, luck and firepower, Mulder and Scully manage to kill two of the rampaging Peacocks. In the confusion, the oldest boy and Mrs Peacock escape in their long white Cadillac. Mother and son drive off in search of a new place to call Home.
August 1996 4X04 Telico Date given as three months after 17 May events.	Four African-American men have vanished off the streets of Philadelphia. An FBI/Police task force has come up with no leads until the body of the most recent victim is discovered. Surprisingly, violence isn't the cause of death. The body's bizarre lack of pigmentation hints at some unknown ailment. The Centre for Disease Control calls in Scully to unravel the medical mystery. Mulder, however, believes that more than a simple pathogen is involved. His investigations lead to a cover-up of a similar death on a flight from West Africa, and the presence of a toxic plant native to that area. Meanwhile, Scully discovers that the victim's pituitary gland, which produces melanin among other hormones, has somehow been destroyed. While their investigation is under way, the killer strikes again. This time a young black student is stalked and kidnapped from a bus stop. The evidence leads Scully and Mulder to a recent West African immigrant, Samuel Aboah. They arrest him when he attempts to escape. Hospital tests reveal that, among other peculiar abnormalities, Aboah lacks a pituitary gland. A tip from his UN informant sends Mulder to Minister Diabira, a diplomat from the West African country of Burkina Faso. Reluctantly, Diabria admits he had ordered the cover-up of the first murder because he knew the identity of the killer. It was one of the mythical Teliko: evil spirits of the air, who emerge at night to suck the life and colour out of their victims. Who would have believed that a terrifying West African folktale could come to life in 20th century America? Mulder explains his theory to a sceptical Scully: the Teliko are not ghostly entities, but members of a lost African clan, who have survived over generations by hunting down other humans to steal what they lack: hormones from the pituitary gland. Aboah escapes the hospital. In the ensuing manhunt, Aboah captures Mulder. Scully comes to Mulder's aid and shoots Aboah just in time to save Mulder's life. And the truth about the Teliko is destined to die along with him.
Circa August 1996	CSM is notified by Walden Ross of Pivotal Publications that his story "Take a Chance: A Jack Colquitt Adventure" dealing with alien assassinations will be serialized beginning on the 12 November 1996, in Roman A'Clef Magazine. He still receives mail at the same address as in 1991, 555 Brooksbank Avenue, Apartment 24, Washington DC, 20091, which is not the address where Mulder found him living in One Breath. (Musings...)
11 October 1996 4X02 Unruhe Date from Scully's final report.	Northern Michigan. A young woman is kidnapped and her boyfriend murdered. Her passport photographs, taken only moments earlier, don't show the expected smiling portraits. Instead, they display nightmarish images of the terrified girl. The photographs fascinate Mulder. Scully tries to find a logical explanation: the pictures were planted, or the film is damaged. But to Mulder, they are an example of "psychic photography": the paranormal ability to create images on film with the mind. Mulder theorises that the suspect doesn't even know he possesses this gift and that the photographs reveal the killer's darkest fantasies. The kidnap victim is found: alive, but almost brain-dead. Her abductor had given her a primitive, botched lobotomy with an ice pick inserted through her eyes. Her mind almost gone, she endlessly repeats the word "unruhe": the German word for "trouble" or "unrest." Soon, the kidnapper abducts and kills again. Scully realises that the same construction company had job sites near each crime scene. While Mulder is in Washington to examine the photos at the FBI labs, Scully follows up on her lead. She knows foreman Gerry Schnauz is the kidnapper by his terrified reaction to the word "unruhe." She arrests him. Schnauz is a formerly institutionalised paranoid schizophrenic with a history of violence. When confronted by the photographs of his victims, he is startled at the sight of his own paranoid delusions brought to life on film. Admitting the crime, he tells them where to find his other victim. She too has been lobotomised. Schnauz kills a guard and escapes from jail. He returns to the scene of the first crime to steal the camera and film. Mulder's blood runs cold when he sees exposed photographs of Schnauz's next victim: Scully! Now, Mulder's only hope of saving her is studying the photos to get deep inside Schnauz's mind. In captivity, Scully, too, must use everything she knows about Schnauz to keep herself alive. But she can't talk him out of his delusions. It won't be long before he wields the icepick to rid Scully of the "unruhe" he believes is tormenting her. Mulder's insight into the madman's mind leads him to Schnauz's dark den. With hardly a moment to spare, he shoots Scully's kidnapper. And finds one last series of psychic photographs: Schnauz, shot dead on the floor.
November 1996 4X05 The Field Where I Died	Apison, Tennessee, once the site of a Civil War battle, is now the home of the Temple of the Seven Stars, a doomsday religious cult that believes in reincarnation. A member named "Sidney" calls the FBI with accusations of child abuse and weapons stockpiling. Fearing another Waco or Jonestown, the BATF and the FBI lead a joint raid on the compound. No weapons are found. Neither is Vernon Ephesian, the cult's dangerously charismatic leader, who dominates his followers with a mix of Biblical prophecy, New Age channelling and old-fashioned intimidation. An odd compulsion leads Mulder to search a nearby field where he finds an underground Civil War bunker concealing Ephesian and his six wives, all on the verge of committing mass suicide. One of the wives, Melissa, catches Mulder's attention. She feels somehow familiar to him. Ephesian, his wives and the cultists are taken into custody. But with no evidence of abuse or illegal weapons, the FBI can hold them for only a day. Mulder and Scully are assigned to interrogate Ephesian and his wives. Preaching fire and brimstone, Ephesian admits nothing. Melissa is a different story. Under questioning, this withdrawn and hostile girl suddenly shifts personalities into the mysterious informant Sidney, a gruff male New Yorker. But somehow Mulder knows Melissa's case is even more unusual than Multiple Personality Disorder. He is certain that "Sidney" is one of Melissa's past lives. Scully, who has a hard enough time with MPD let alone reincarnation, can't understand why Mulder is so obsessed with Melissa, and so certain he is right. Then comes a revelation that surprises even Mulder. Melissa shifts into yet another identity: a Civil War nurse named Sarah Kavanaugh. She tells them she watched as her fiancée Sullivan Biddle died in the aftermath of the long-ago battle. And that Biddle is one of Mulder's past lives. Mulder unconditionally believes her. Desperate to discover the truth, Mulder has himself regressed. Scully listens as Mulder cycles through a series of his past lives. He says that same souls reincarnate together repeatedly: he, Samantha, Scully, even CSM are destined to play out many lifetimes together. Melissa and Mulder are soul mates, fated always to be star-crossed lovers. The current Melissa hears Mulder's story, but she won't allow herself to believe. She returns to Ephesian. Scully doesn't know what to think, especially when she discovers photographs of Sarah and Sullivan in historical archives. After Ephesian and his cultists are released, everyone's worst fears come true. Ephesian leads the cult in a mass suicide. Mulder discovers the body of Melissa, clutching the photograph of Sarah Kavanaugh in her hand.
November 1996 4X06 Sanguinarium Waite wore a red cord around her wrist to help protect her, similar to the red string used in The Calusari.	Everyone wants to be beautiful. And the Aesthetic Surgery Unit of Chicago's Greenwood Memorial Hospital can make anyone more attractive for a price. For one patient thought to be undergoing a scalp-reduction the price is a grisly death, when Dr Lloyd goes insane during surgery and performs a violent liposuction instead and literally sucks the lifeblood out of the man. Scully and Mulder are called in to investigate the doctor's unusual defence: demonic possession. Scully logically assumes the doctor's sleeping pill addiction caused a psychotic break. When Mulder discovers evidence of a pentagram, an occult symbol of protection, on the floor of the operating room, he concludes that some kind of magic is at work. Scully is dubious, to put it mildly. Another surgeon goes into an uncontrollable frenzy, using a laser to burn through the flesh of a patient's face. Mulder discovers the mark of the pentagram on this body as well, placed there by Nurse Waite, a practising witch. Dr Franklyn admits that Nurse Waite worked at the clinic ten years earlier when similar deaths had occurred. Scully and Mulder search her house, finding a spooky den of candles, incense, herbs and witchy objects. But Nurse Waite is gone. She's lying in wait for Dr Franklin; submerged in a tub full of gore in his bathroom. Her sneak knife attack fails, and she's arrested. Before Nurse Waite can explain herself to Mulder, she dies horribly, in what Mulder recognises from Nurse Waite's occult books as a classic case of death by hex. Waite was trying to protect the patients, but against what or whom? Maybe Dr Franklyn, who smiles inscrutably as he levitates a few feet above his bed. Putting all the clues together, Mulder deduces that Franklyn is a black magician. Cursed with the sin of vanity, Franklyn transforms his looks beyond the limits of surgery: using sorcery and human sacrifice. Ten years ago, he had escaped suspicion. Today, he manages to escape even Mulder. Mulder is too late to stop the final sacrifice that completes the spell. Dr Franklyn slices off his own face, to disappear forever… ...the classically handsome Dr Hartman is welcomed aboard at a Los Angeles cosmetic surgery clinic. Walter Skinner moves to a new apartment on the seventeenth floor of a building in Crystal City, Virginia. His wife, Sharon Skinner, does not appear to be in residence although she and Skinner partially reconciled in The Avatar. Krycek sends Mulder anonymous information about members of a right wing militia planning a bombing. The information, delivered over the next two weeks, consists of receipts for detonation cord, diesel fuel and 80 bags of ammonium nitrate, paid for in cash and over three different signatures. The timeframe given for these deliveries is "over the last several weeks" prior to 25 November.
12 November 1996 4X16 Unrequited	A crowd gathers at the US Capitol Mall, near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC As the re-dedication ceremony begins, General Benjamin Bloch steps up to a podium and delivers his speech. A short distance away, Mulder, Scully and other FBI agents feverishly hunt down an armed man making his way through the crowd. When Mulder attempts to focus on the suspect, he seemingly vanishes. As the story unfolds in flashback, Lieutenant General Peter MacDougal is gunned down at close range in the back seat of a limousine, a Death Card at his side. Though the murder weapon is never located, the General's driver, who has ties to a radical paramilitary group called the Right Hand, is held on suspicion of murder. But the driver, who maintains his innocence, passes a polygraph test, and lab tests reveal he did not fire a weapon. With dozens of high-ranking military officials arriving in Washington for the re-dedication ceremony, Skinner assigns his agents to investigate the Right Hand movement, and its leader, an ex- Marine named Denny Markham. Markham gives the FBI a photograph of a man named Nathaniel Teager, a Green Beret captured by the enemy in 1971. Markham's group liberated Teager from a POW camp in 1995. When US government commandos attempted to kidnap Teager, he suddenly disappeared. Scully suspects Markham's story is a cover-up for an elaborately orchestrated conspiracy plan. Meanwhile, Teager approaches a woman, Renee Davenport, as she views the Memorial. He informs Davenport her husband is still alive and gives her his dog tags as proof. Suddenly, Teager disappears. Davenport positively identifies Teager as the man she saw at the memorial. Scully takes Davenport to an ophthalmologist when her eye haemorrhages. She is diagnosed with a floating blind spot-but the cause is undetermined. Mulder learns that MacDougal was one of the original military officials who signed Teager's death certificate, although forensic evidence was inconclusive. Mulder assigns two FBI agents to guard General Steffan, one of MacDougal's counterparts, who also signed the certificate. But Teager slips by the agents and murders Steffan. A security camera captured Teager's image passing through a metal detector at the Pentagon. Skinner is outraged. Mulder tells Skinner that Teager has the ability to hide himself from a person's field of vision. He notes that, during the war, US soldiers reported that Viet Cong guerrillas had the ability to appear and disappear at will. He speculates that Teager learned this trick during his 25 years in the POW camp. Mulder believes the only way to stop Teager is to find his next victim. Marita Covarrubias tells Mulder that MacDougal, Steffan and a third general headed a secret three-man commission that covertly disposed of South Vietnamese soldiers who co-operated with the US government during the war. Covarrubias reveals that testimony from the generals could have been used in the calculation of reparations. Mulder realises the government wanted the generals dead all along. Covarrubias gives him the name of the third general: Bloch. Bloch is rushed from the podium at the re-dedication after the agents spot Teager in the crowd. Skinner escorts Bloch toward an awaiting limo. Mulder, however, realises Teager is hiding inside. Skinner tackles Bloch moments before gunshots flash from inside the limo. Teager puts the limo in gear and attempts to make a getaway. Agent Hill opens fire, killing him.
12 November 1996 4X07 Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man Date from the resignation letter. Frohike events may be same day or shortly thereafter.	In the Lone Gunmen's office, Scully and Mulder listen, as Frohike reveals what he suspects to be the chilling, secret past of CSM. Hiding in a nearby high rise, CSM eavesdrops on them with electronic listening devices, his sniper's rifle trained on the office's front door. Who will be his next target? Frohike believes CSM was orphaned as a baby. His father, a Communist spy, was electrocuted. His mother died of lung cancer. In 1963, he was an Army Captain (whose only friend is the proud father of one-year-old Fox Mulder). Recognising his capabilities, the right-wing conspiracy that operates within the shadows of the official government recruits the young officer, his first assignment: the assassination of JFK. In its successful aftermath, he lights his first smoke and becomes The Cigarette Smoking Man. By 1968, even J Edgar Hoover takes orders from CSM, and no President has ever suspected he exists. CSM personally takes charge of the operation against Martin Luther King. Yet, even CSM has a dream. He longs to be a published author, and writes political potboilers under a pen name. Despite a pile of scathing rejections, he keeps trying. Christmas 1991. CSM has covertly started wars, assassinated world leaders, rigged elections, the Oscars, the Olympics, the Super Bowl and moved the Rodney King trial to Simi Valley. Despite his power, he is a lonely man leading an empty life. He still can't get his written works published. And with the Soviet Union gone, he doesn't even have any more enemies. Then it happens. A survivor is discovered in the wreckage of an alien craft. His mysterious associate, known to Mulder and Scully as Deep Throat executes the only alien who survived the crash CSM has a new purpose, and new truths to conceal. He goes forth on this mission with a vengeance. Young FBI agents Fox "Spooky" Mulder and Dana Scully take on the "X-Files." Unknowingly they are part of CSM’s plans. This year. CSM is jubilant when a magazine finally accepts one of his stories. He prepares his resignation, and lights his last cigarette. Until he realises, the magazine is nothing but a cheap girlie rag whose editors even had the nerve to change the story's ending. With all his dreams destroyed, he sits on a park bench and muses about the similarity of life to a cheap, tasteless box of chocolates. Resuming his role, CSM lights up a smoke. The present. CSM's finger is on the trigger of a sniper rifle, ready to repeat the act that started his shadowy career. He watches Frohike leave the office. Does he shoot? No. He can kill Frohike any time he chooses, and he revels in that power.
23 November 1996	At Honolulu International Airport, a US government operative is detained by Customs officials in spite of his diplomatic visa. He is carrying what he calls toxic soil samples in a diplomatic case that originated in Georgia, Russia. Accidentally broken, the sample container contains organisms that enter human bodies and immobilize them. They also give the appearance of oil within the human eyeball, similar to the entities from the Pacific Ocean Foo Fighter. (Tunguska)
24 November 1996 4X08 Paper Hearts Date 24 November is given on evidence tags containing the hearts. These events are difficult to resolve with Tunguska. Scully says clearly that Abbie is found on a Sunday morning, which is consistent with the 24 November. Two nights pass in this episode, however, meaning Roche was killed on 26 November, while Mulder and Krycek are otherwise reported to be flying to Russia.	Mulder experiences a series of vivid dreams that lead him to the discovery of the long-buried skeleton of a murdered child. Mulder is shaken, recognising the MO of serial killer John Lee Roche, one of the first killers Mulder profiled. Between 1979 and 1990, Roche abducted girls between the ages of 8 and 10 from their homes, strangled them, and cut a heart-shaped piece of fabric from their clothes as a trophy. When captured, Roche confessed to 13 murders. Mulder fears that this discovery means there are more victims than those Roche had admitted to. When the girl is identified, it proves that Roche began his crimes as early as 1975. Another clue from the dream helps Mulder locate where the killer hid his trophies. He finds 16 hearts, and realises there are two more unknown victims. Scully and Mulder interview Roche in jail. He won't tell them about the missing children, and toys with their questions. Oddly, he comments that he understands why Mulder is taking the case personally. His meaning becomes clear with Mulder's next dream. Mulder goes back in time to the terrifying night in 1973 when his sister Samantha was abducted, except the creature who bursts through door is not an alien, it is Roche. Could Roche have abducted and murdered Samantha? Mulder tries to get the truth from Roche, who claims that he sold a vacuum to Mulder's father before Samantha's disappearance. When Roche won't answer Mulder directly, Mulder becomes enraged and punches Roche in the face. Scully, who witnessed Mulder's loss of control, tries to convince him the dreams are nothing but images from his subconscious. She is certain that Roche is only cleverly manipulating Mulder's emotions. Mulder always believed Samantha was abducted by aliens, and now he doesn't know what to believe. His fears seem confirmed when, in the basement of his family home, Mulder discovers the same model of vacuum that Roche claimed Mulder's father bought for his mother. When Skinner finds out Mulder struck Roche, he denies Mulder further access to the prisoner. Yet, Skinner is sympathetic when Mulder tells him his fears about Samantha, and finally allows Mulder interview Roche again, as long as Scully keeps an eye on him. Mulder finally agrees to give Roche what he had been demanding: the heart trophies he cut out of pyjamas of his victims. Now, Mulder demands to know the truth about Samantha. Roche's description of the night Samantha was abducted is the same as Mulder remembers. He refuses to tell Mulder if one of the cloth hearts was taken from Samantha's clothing. Instead, he makes Mulder choose one of the hearts at random, and tells them where to find the body. Another body is discovered but it is not Samantha. When Mulder and Scully return, Roche is fully in control. Refusing to divulge anything more unless he is taken to the scene of the crime. Scully can't stand to listen anymore, and makes Mulder leave with her. She insists that Roche is playing Mulder. Willing to risk everything to find out the truth about his sister's abduction, Mulder makes a difficult decision. Without notifying Scully or Skinner, he releases Roche from jail and takes him to his childhood home in Martha's Vineyard. Inside the house, Roche describes everything in detail, except Mulder says they are in the wrong house. He has tricked Roche by deliberately taking him to a house 6 miles away from his childhood home. Now he now knows Roche has been lying all along. Mulder guesses that his extensive knowledge of Roche enabled Roche to get into his head saying, "I profiled you... maybe some connection was created between us. And through it, you pilfered my memories of Samantha." Mulder plans to return Roche to jail the next morning. In the motel, he has one final dream of Samantha and wakes up to find himself bound in his own handcuffs with Skinner and Scully pounding on the motel room door. Roche is missing; and so are Mulder's FBI badge and his gun. With Mulder's ID, Roche tracks down the whereabouts of Caitlin, a little girl he had spotted on their flight to Boston. Mulder shoulders all the blame for placing Caitlin in such horrific danger. And he admits to Scully that she was right. Roche was just playing him. Mulder's knowledge of Roche pays off when he correctly identifies where Roche took the girl. He shoots Roche to save Caitlin's life still plagued by the doubts Roche planted about Samantha's fate. With Roche dead, will Mulder ever find out the truth? On 24 November, Mulder receives another anonymous night time delivery of receipts - one for first and last month's rent for a warehouse in Flushing, Queens, New York and one for rent of a two ton truck, purchased with the same signature. Mulder fears "we could be looking at the next Oklahoma City." (Tunguska)
25 November to 6 December 1996 4X09 Tunguska The events of 25 November to 6 December are depicted in Tunguska and Terma. There is significant intermixing of events. Particularly, the events experienced by Mulder in Russia, and Scully in America, while depicted as happening simultaneously, may be offset by a few days.	While performing a random search of a suitcase being carried by a man claiming to have diplomatic immunity, an airport customs agent is attacked by a black oil that congeals into tiny worms which penetrate his skin. An anonymous tipster warns Mulder about a right-wing militia organisation planning a bombing which could be the next Oklahoma City. The informant turns out to be Alex Krycek, the traitor Mulder blames for his father's murder. Left trapped in an abandoned missile silo by CSM, Krycek says he was freed by a militia group during a salvage operation. Claiming he wants revenge on CSM, Krycek promises Mulder that he can help expose CSM and the Shadowy Syndicate. Despite his hatred for Krycek, Mulder reluctantly believes him. Krycek leads Mulder and Scully to intercept a Russian courier at the airport. The courier escapes, but the diplomatic pouch he is carrying is recovered. The pouch contains a four-billion-year-old rock of extraterrestrial origin. Dr Sacks, a government exobiologist, drills into the rock. The same black worms which killed the customs agent emerge from the rock and attack him. Scully and Pendrell investigate this deadly enigma. Mulder's possession of the artefact alarms the Well-Manicured Man, who orders the CSM to take care of the problem. Mulder seeks out his UN contact, Marita Covarrubias, who finds out the origin of the Russian courier's flight. Mulder learns the flight originated near Tunguska, Siberia and instantly recognises the significance. In 1908, a fireball crashed to earth in Tunguska, igniting a series of cataclysmic explosions. It was the most massive and most mysterious event of its kind in history. Until now, no one had been able to discover what really happened. Maybe someone has finally found out the truth... Marita helps Mulder with credentials that will get him to Tunguska. At the last minute, Mulder discovers Krycek is fluent in Russian, and brings him along as a translator. Mulder and Krycek discover a Siberian Gulag located at the site of the crash, its hard-labouring prisoners sentenced to mine the extraterrestrial rocks. Before they can learn any more, they are captured, beaten and jailed. Mulder realises Krycek is in league with their captors. Krycek is freed, and Mulder is subjected to an inhuman medical experiment. Under the most primitive of conditions, Mulder and other prisoners are infected with the oily black worms, and injected on the left arm with an amber liquid.
4X10 Terma Date of these events from Mulder's wristwatch display. Date based on Scully's comment about Dr Sacks not receiving anything but fluids for 48 hours, with 48 hours counted from his infection. Scully mentions that she left behind a career in medicine for one in law enforcement four years ago. December 1992 would be several months after she was assigned to the X-Files, and at that point she had already been employed by the FBI for a couple of years. She may mean that her assignment to the X-Files marked the transition from a career in which her job was mostly medicine - teaching at the FBI Academy, to one in which medicine was more incidental.	In Tunguska, Mulder has survived his ordeal for now, but is still being held captive in a Siberian Gulag. The prisoner in the next cell explains that all the men in the camp are injected with "black cancer" until the toxin finally kills them. Escape is impossible. Resistance is futile. Mulder swears he will survive long enough at least to kill Krycek. Impressed by Mulder's will to survive, the prisoner gives Mulder his own home made knife. Back in Washington, Dr Sacks is alive after being infected by the black worms from the rock that was recovered in the diplomatic pouch, although he is comatose. For Scully and Agent Pendrell, the medical mystery starts to unravel when tests reveal a black vermiform organism attached to his brain's pineal gland. St Petersburg. A former KGB assassin, Vassily Peskow, comes out of retirement when a messenger from "Comrade Arntzen" requests his help, and tells him the Cold War isn't over. Peskow makes his way to a horse farm that belongs to the Well-Manicured Man where he assassinates Dr Bonita Chung-Sayre, a well-known authority on viruses and the Well-Manicured Man's personal physician. Due to testify before the Senate Subcommittee hearing, Skinner presses a reluctant Scully for more information about the pouch and its contents. Skinner surprises her with his news: the pouch's intended recipient was the late Dr Chung-Sayre, who was killed in a "riding accident." Tunguska. The prisoners, including Mulder, are on the march. Nearby, Krycek is laughing with Mulder's tormentors. The sight spurs Mulder to action. Armed only with the knife, Mulder steals a battered truck and makes his escape, knocking Krycek into the back of the truck and taking him along for the ride. The chase ends when the truck's brakes give out. Krycek bails out before the crash, but Mulder is trapped inside. Krycek flees through the woods where he runs into a group of men, all of which are missing their left arm. Krycek tells them he is an escaped prisoner, and the men take him in. Meanwhile, Mulder has survived the accident and hides in the forest from his pursuing captors. In Washington, Scully is jailed for contempt of Congress when she refuses to reveal Mulder's whereabouts at the Senate hearing. As she explains to Skinner, someone with a secret agenda is deliberately obfuscating the case: focusing on a missing FBI agent, rather than the existence of a toxic biohazard of extra-terrestrial origin and the deaths of those connected to it. Mulder is discovered hiding in the woods by a family, who explains that the villagers' only means of saving themselves from the fatal experiments is a drastic one: amputation of the left arm. Mulder must persuade them to take him to St Petersburg, or they may amputate his arm to "save" him. Unfortunately for Krycek, his rescuers "save" him as he sleeps. Peskow continues his mission, paying a visit to the comatose Dr Sacks whom he injects with the same amber fluid that had been shot into Mulder at the Gulag. The worms emerge, and he kills Sacks. At the Senate hearing, Scully is just about to be charged with contempt again when Mulder appears, arm intact. Mulder's presence puts the attention back on the rock and the biotoxin, but when Scully tries to bring up the subject of the biotoxin's extraterrestrial origin, her claims are not taken seriously. Mulder interrupts the hearing, challenging the scepticism of the Senators when the most conservative scientists and science journals have every reason to believe that life exists outside our terrestrial sphere. Taken aback by Mulder's statement, the chairman of the subcommittee abruptly adjourns the hearing, calling for a recess until the evidence can be properly evaluated. Following the lead that Dr Chung-Sayre was the supervising physician at a nursing home in Boca Raton, Mulder and Scully travel to Florida to investigate. She and Mulder arrive too late. Peskow has already poisoned all of the patients and black worms have emerged from their deceased bodies. Mulder realises a similar experiment to the one being conducted in Russia had been conducted at this nursing home. Still bent on finding a trace of evidence left behind, Mulder and Scully travel to New York where they interview the head of the militia group Krycek was running with. The militia member tells them Krycek told them his name was Arntzen, and that Krycek approached them. Everything Krycek told him was a lie. They also learn that the US government covered up their knowledge that Soviet-developed "black cancer" was deployed by Saddam during the Gulf War. Mulder now believes the whole thing was a set up from the beginning by someone who doesn't want the rocks in American hands. Finally, he discovers where Krycek is hiding another rock: Terma, North Dakota, in the stolen truck carrying the Militia's fertiliser bomb. Again, Peskow is one step ahead of Mulder and Scully. He drives the truck to a Canadian oil refinery, intending to destroy the remaining rock. Mulder and Scully arrive too late to prevent Peskow from igniting a fiery explosion that engulfs the last piece of evidence. Both barely escape with their lives. The final report on their investigation is turned over to the Senate subcommittee, but in vain. CSM controls the Senator who chairs the committee. In St.Petersburg, Peskow returns home to find Krycek, sporting a prosthetic left arm, who commends Peskow for a job well done.
1997	Sometime during 1997, Kathy Lee Tencate changes her story about the disappearance of her son, Dean. She claims to have killed him and tells authorities where she left the body, but the body is found. She believes that a confession claiming temporary insanity might lead the parole board to release her sooner. In fact, she believes that Dean was taken to protect his soul from the harm it would suffer in life. (Sein ünd Zeit) In a deserted part of New Mexico, a human body is found with its skull smashed in and with a strange wound on its back. The murder remains unsolved for some years. The body has formerly been occupied by a parasite that is capable of taking complete control of the human body, but which finds many humans unsuitable. (RoadRunners)
January 1997	Max Fenig's letters to his sister take on a different tone, implying he has stolen or acquired evidence that puts his life in danger. (Tempus Fugit)
January 1997 4X11 El Mundo Gira	In a migrant workers' shantytown in California's San Joaquin Valley, Eladio Buente flirts with pretty Maria Dorantes while his brother Soledad watches jealously. Flakita, a nosy neighbour, bemoans the age-old story: "Two brothers. One woman. Trouble." Suddenly, three ear-splitting booms come from the sky, followed by a painfully bright flash, and a brief but torrential downpour of hot yellow rain. In its aftermath, Flakita discovers the mutilated corpses of Maria and one of her goats, their faces partially eaten away. Eladio is missing. Mulder and Scully investigate the deaths. According to Mulder, the strange occurrences preceding Maria's death are called Fortean events, "An unusual or highly infrequent meteorological phenomenon... Fortean events have been linked to alien encounters, and cattle mutilations..." Scully greets Mulder's information with her usual scepticism. She can't tell much from the goat's corpse, and Maria's body is at the morgue. According to Flakita, Maria was killed by El Chupacabra, the Goatsucker, a grey hairless creature out of Puerto Rican folk tales with a small body, large head and bulging black eyes. Scully notes the amazing similarity between the descriptions of El Chupacabra and a grey alien. Soledad angrily refutes Flakita's story. He accuses his brother, Eladio, of killing Maria out of jealousy. This lover's triangle convinces Scully that Eladio is the killer, until she examines Maria's remains. The state of Maria's corpse shocks even Scully. It's hardly visible beneath mounds of greenish fungal growth. Meanwhile, Mulder locates Eladio with the help of Conrad Lozano, a cynical Immigration agent. Eladio is in INS custody, segregated from fearful prisoners who think he's El Chupacabra. Eladio denies killing Maria, claiming something or someone unknown mutilated Maria during the yellow rain. Mulder believes Eladio did not kill Maria, and Scully must agree. Scully's autopsy of the body revealed that Maria succumbed to a massive fungal infection, no one, she says, could deliberately do such a thing. Eladio escapes from INS custody, and the agents discover the driver of the INS deportation bus dead from a different fungal infection. Mulder thinks there may be a connection between the fungi and the missing immigrant. Lozano and Mulder track Eladio to a construction site where he has found work, but the vengeful Soledad is also on Eladio's trail. Both brothers escape before Lozano and Mulder can take them into custody. The site's foreman is dead, his body ravaged by a myriad of fungi. Scully calls Mulder and warns him against touching or inhaling the lethal lichen. A mycology professor has isolated an enzyme that acts as a catalyst, accelerating fungal growth. If it escapes into the environment, there could be a biological hazard of frightening proportions. Scully believes that Eladio is inadvertently responsible for deaths by spreading the enzyme that he somehow is carrying. Mulder now thinks the Fortean events could have been caused by something falling from space, which would mean the enzyme is alien. Scully, on the verge of losing patience with Mulder's theories, just wants to find the man who seems to be spreading it. Now quite ill, Eladio begs his cousin Gabrielle for help. She reluctantly agrees to lend him money. Flakita, the village gossip, warns the agents that Soledad is planning to kill Eladio. Eladio eludes them again, but Lozano arrests Soledad. When Eladio sees his own face for the first time, he can't believe the horror of it. He no longer looks human, Eladio has transformed into El Chupacabra. Gabrielle tells Scully and Mulder that Eladio has run away to Mexico. But Mulder realises it's a lie. Speeding on their way, he alerts a hazmat team to meet them at the shantytown where it all began, where the two brothers will finally settle their dispute over Maria. What really happened that night? According to Flakita, Lozano brings Soledad to the camp, and orders Eladio to face his brother like a man. But Eladio is no longer a man, he is El Chupacabra. Flakita hides as grey aliens, whom she calls Chupacabras, descend on the village. They kill Lozano, and take Soledad up in the sky with them. Gabrielle weaves another tale. Lozano orders Eladio to face Soledad. In the horror of realising his brother is El Chupacabra, Soledad can't shoot. He and Lozano struggle over the gun, and Lozano takes a bullet. The two brothers, now both Chupacabras, run away to Mexico. The story Mulder and Scully report to Skinner isn't much clearer. All they know is that by the time they got to the camp, both the brothers were gone. Lozano was dead, brought down by two bullets and the fungus. And Los Chupacabras? The Buente brothers, their faces luridly disfigured, may have hitchhiked off into the Mexican night.
January 1997 4X12 Kaddish	Mourners gather at a cemetery in Brooklyn to pay their last respects to Isaac Luria, a Hasidic man brutally murdered by three teenaged hate-mongers. Among the group is Ariel Luria, and her father, Jacob Weiss. When night falls, a shadowy figure enters the cemetery and shapes a man-sized sculpture out of mud. Mulder and Scully investigate Isaac Luria's death. Isaac, who lived in a neighbourhood with a history of racial tension, was severely beaten inside his market. Police ruled out robbery as a motive as nothing was stolen. They later retrieved a store surveillance tape from the VCR of a sixteen year-old named Tony Oliver, one of the teenagers who participated in the killing. Oliver was strangled by an unknown assailant. Most intriguing to Mulder is the discovery of Isaac Luria's finger prints on Oliver's body. Weiss shows them an anti-Semitic pamphlet left at his door that very morning. Mulder tells his partner that whoever printed the pamphlets probably knows who killed Isaac. The agents interview Curt Brunjes, who owns a copy shop across the street from Isaac's market. When the agents show Brunjes photos of Banks and Macguire, the teenagers suspected of beating Isaac, he claims their faces are unfamiliar. Unknown to the agents, Banks listens in on the conversation via a security surveillance camera. Scully tells Brunjes there are rumours that Isaac has risen from the grave to avenge his murder. Spooked, Banks and Macguire dig up Isaac's coffin. As Macguire walks to the car to retrieve some tools, Banks pries open the coffin lid and discovers Isaac's body inside. Later, Banks finds Macguire's body protruding from a mound of mud. The agents are called to the crime scene. Mulder locates a slender leather book tucked beneath Isaac's burial shroud. But when he touches the old book, it suddenly bursts into flames. The agents turn to Kenneth Ungar, a scholar from the Judaica Archives. Ungar explains that what Mulder found was a book on Jewish mysticism. He insists it would never have been buried with the dead. Ungar notes a name engraved into the leather: Jacob Weiss. Ariel tells the agents that although she and her husband received their wedding license weeks before the murder, the marriage ceremony never transpired. The agents locate Weiss in the attic of a synagogue. They also discover Banks' dead body hanging from a wooden beam. Weiss is arrested and charged with murder. He admits to both of the murders, but Mulder believes someone, or something, was in the attic with him. Unger tells Mulder about the Golem, a creature from mystical text. He explains how early Kabbalists believed a righteous man could create a living being from the earth itself. A single Hebrew word, "emet," is inscribed on the back of the Golem's hand. To destroy the Golem, Unger explains, the first letter, "e," must be erased. Brunjes is found murdered. When the agents examine the surveillance camera tape. they discover that the Golem whose physical features match those of Isaac Luria is responsible for the murder. Weiss returns to the synagogue after he is released from jail. There he discovers Ariel preparing for her wedding ceremony. When Weiss attempts to stop his daughter, the Golem attacks him. The agents rescue Weiss and, as Scully attends to his injuries, Mulder searches for Ariel. The Golem attacks Mulder, knocking him aside as he attempts to fend off the being. But Ariel intercedes. When the wedding continues, the Golem places a ring on Ariel's finger. Ariel expresses her love for Isaac, then wipes the letter "e" off the Golems' hand. The creature crumbles into dust.
January 1997 4X14 Leonard Betts	Michele Wilkes, an Emergency Medical Technician, races an ambulance through the streets of Philadelphia as her highly-regarded partner, Leonard Betts, attends to a dying man. As the ambulance speeds through an intersection, it is broadsided by a truck. Wilkes survives, but she is horrified to discover Betts' decapitated body nearby. Mulder and Scully are brought into the case when Betts' headless corpse disappears from a hospital morgue. Scully theorises that someone attempted to steal the body and sell it to an unscrupulous medical supplier. But when security camera footage shows an unidentified person with a strange distortion around the head area leaving the hospital. Mulder suspects something strange is going on, perhaps the body left by itself. With Mulder's reluctant help, Scully fishes through the hospital's bio-disposal unit for the missing corpse. The agents recover the missing head, but the whereabouts of the body remains a mystery. As Scully prepares to perform an autopsy on the head, its eyes and mouth suddenly snap open. A tissue sample taken from Betts' head is analysed by a pathologist who determines that Betts was riddled with cancer, so much that a normal human could have never lived that way. Mulder hypothesises that Betts had somehow incorporated cancer into his body, and possessed unimaginable regenerative powers, perhaps the next step in Man's evolution. A fingerprint search reveals that Betts' real name is Albert Tanner. The agents interview his mother, Elaine, who claims that Albert died in an automobile accident six years earlier. As Wilkes is transporting another patient, she recognises Betts' voice transmitting over the ambulance radio. She locates Betts working as an EMT at another hospital. As the two embrace, Betts sadly pulls out a syringe and injects Michele with a lethal substance. A security guard witnesses the murder and handcuffs Betts to his car. Betts slips out of the cuffs by tearing off his own thumb. When the thumb is found, Mulder guesses he tore it off because he knew he could grow another. When the agents search the trunk of Betts' car, they discover plastic bags filled with human tumours. Mulder postulates that Betts is ingesting the cancerous tissue in order to survive. They learn that the car is registered to Albert Tanner's mother. Weak and needing sustenance, Betts attacks and kills a heavy-smoking bearded man after he leaves a bar. Strengthened, Betts is then able to "gives birth" to a duplicate of himself. The agents discover a storage locker key at Mrs Tanner's home. When they open the door to the locker, they find the smoking man's body, its left lung missing. Suddenly from within the locker, a car roars to life, and Betts attempts to run down Mulder and Scully. The agents dive for cover and open fire. The car bursts into flames, incinerating Betts. Though Mulder is convinced that something else is going on, Scully reminds her partner that Betts is quite dead, he is not coming back to life and the case is over. Nonetheless, Mulder exhumes the body of the man Mrs Tanner claimed was killed in the automobile accident. Inside the casket is a corpse identical to Betts. Mulder concludes that the fiery crash was a ruse and the real Leonard Betts is still alive. The agents stakeout Mrs Tanner's home waiting for Betts to return. When an ambulance arrives at the scene, Mulder and Scully race inside. They find Mrs Tanner, still clinging to life, with a fresh surgical incision on her chest. Mulder searches the neighbourhood while Scully accompanies Tanner to the hospital, but when the ambulance pulls into the hospital parking lot, she realises Betts hitched a ride by hiding on the vehicle's roof. Betts jumps inside the ambulance and slams the rear doors behind him. Wielding a scalpel, he tells Scully she possesses "something I need." A scuffle ensues, and Scully kills Betts using defibrillation pads. Later that night, as Scully lies in bed, she wakes up coughing and finds a few drops of blood on her pillow. As her nose continues to bleed, she recalls Betts' haunting words.
January 1997 4X13 Never Again This episode, produced before Leonard Betts, was broadcast later. Was Scully's fling the result of her suspicion that she has cancer? A customer Ed talks to, trying to sell her a stock offering, comments "it is so hard after the holidays," providing the January date.	Ed Jerse, a handsome Philadelphia resident, is devastated as a judge decrees the harsh terms of his divorce settlement. After downing too many drinks at a neighbourhood bar, Ed enters a tattoo parlour and selects a Betty Page-like design (on which is printed the words, "Never Again.") The next day, while at work, Ed hears a female voice refer to him as a "loser." Angered, Ed picks a fight with some women close to his cubicle, but they don't understand his anger. His boss sends him home for the day. Meanwhile, Mulder tells Scully he must take time off for vacation or face losing several week's pay. Tension erupts between the pair when Mulder tells his partner what cases need her attention during his absence. Scully refuses to waste her time on a dubious case involving a Russian living in Philadelphia whom Mulder believes possesses valuable information on UFOs. Scully tells Mulder she feels as though she has lost sight of herself, as if her own life does nothing but stand still. Now in his shabby apartment, Ed hears the female voice taunting him again, mocking him. Not realising where the voice is coming from, he thinks it's his downstairs neighbour. The voice eventually drives Ed to the point of madness. In a rage, Ed bursts into the woman's apartment and attacks her. Later, he drags the body into the basement and stuffs it inside an incinerator. Despite her reservations, Scully decides to keep tabs on Mulder's Russian. She quickly realises the man is an extortionist and his activities have nothing to do with the X-Files. Scully follows the Russian into a nearby tattoo parlour, where she strikes up a conversation with Ed (who is in the process of begging the tattoo artist to cover his handiwork). They strike up a conversation and an undeniable chemistry develops between the pair. Ed hands Scully his business card, and suggests they have dinner. She politely declines, but takes his card anyway. After a tense phone conversation with Mulder about the Russian, Scully sets up a date with Ed. Scully tells Ed how her whole life, she is followed some type of father figure around, until she has to rebel. Ed observes that it looks like she is ready to rebel again. After consuming a few drinks, Scully and Ed return to the tattoo parlour, where Scully has the image of a snake eating its own tail tattooed on her back. The pair return to Ed's apartment. Noting the bad weather, Ed suggests Scully spend the night. Scully notices blood dripping from Ed's tattoo and, doctor-like, helps him pull off his shirt. A moment of intimacy develops, but before Ed can act upon his feelings, the Betty tattoo cries out: "Kiss her... and she's dead." The next morning, Ed awakens on the couch. He leaves Scully a note that he is going to get breakfast. While Ed is away, detectives roust Scully from her sleep. They reveal that a resident downstairs was reported missing, and that a blood type different from her's was found inside the apartment. The detectives tell Scully that the blood contains chemical abnormalities. Seeing the chemical breakdown, Scully realises it is composed of the same odd ingredients the Russian tattoo artist used to make the ink he used in their tattoos. When Ed returns with breakfast, Scully tells him about the detectives' visit. She also reveals that the chemical found in the blood is an ergot alkaloid that can produce dangerous hallucinations. Ed confides in Scully about hearing Betty's voice in his head, taunting him, controlling him but now that Scully is here, the voice has gone away. Now afraid for herself, Scully prepares to take them both to the hospital. But when Ed learns Scully is an FBI agent, he snaps. He attacks her and Scully is knocked unconscious. As Betty's voice urges him on, Ed drags Scully's body into the basement, intending to stuff it inside the incinerator. Scully regains consciousness and tells Ed to "take control." Suddenly, Ed gathers the strength to thrust his arm inside the incinerator, burning off the tattoo. He is transported to a burn centre for treatment. When Mulder returns from vacation, the air between him and Scully remains tense. Scully reminds her partner that not everything revolves around him and that she intends to live her own life.
February 1997 4X15 Memento Mori Of course the vial rode around in Mulder's pocket for some time, so presumably thawed out, possibly resulting in the loss of viability.	Scully shows Mulder an MRI x-ray indicating a cancerous mass has been detected on the wall between her sinus and cerebrum. The tumour is inoperable and if it grows, the chance for survival is slim. Instead of requesting a leave of absence, Scully opts to follow another avenue of investigation: contacting a group of purported female abductees who experienced similar symptoms after having implants removed from the base of their necks. The agents travel to the home of Betsy Hagopian in Allentown, Pennsylvania where Scully had met these women before. A realtor informs them that Hagopian (one of the female abductees) passed away two weeks earlier. While searching through Hagopian's house, the agents realise someone is downloading computer files via phone modem. The call is traced, and the agents apprehend Kurt Crawford, the man who downloaded the files. Crawford explains that he and Hagopian were both members of the same UFO network and downloaded Hagopian's files because the government is out to destroy them. Crawford also reveals that all of the women who claimed they were abducted by aliens died of similar tumours, with the exception of Penny Northern, who is now hospitalised and near death from cancer. Scully visits Northern at the hospital, who reveals that Dr Scanlon, who has been treating her cancer, may have isolated the cause. Seeing her future self in Penny's condition, Scully checks herself in and Dr Scanlon begins treating her cancer. Meanwhile, Mulder and Crawford search through hard files in Hagopian's basement. They discover that all of the woman abductees, including Northern, were treated at the same fertility clinic in Pennsylvania. When Scully asks Mulder to bring her overnight bag to the hospital, Mulder leaves Crawford in the basement to attend to Scully. Later that evening, the Grey-Haired Man (the same man who killed X) shows up and kills Crawford, whose body melts into a pool of green liquid. Meanwhile, Mulder breaks into a federally subsidised fertility clinic where all the female UFO network members were patients. Inside, he discovers Kurt Crawford (Mulder is unaware of the other Crawford's death). They access a computer terminal and download a directory containing Scully's name. Near the breaking point, Mulder demands that Skinner arrange a meeting with CSM. But Skinner refuses, insisting CSM deals only in lies. Nonetheless, Skinner secretly enlists CSM's help. Mulder turns to the Lone Gunmen, who tell him that the fertility clinic's mainframe is housed in a high-security federal research facility. The foursome infiltrate the research facility, and once inside, Mulder realises Dr Scanlon is on staff. He instructs Byers to find Scully and stop her treatment immediately. As he continues through the building's corridors, Mulder encounters additional Crawfords and realises Kurt is a clone. He finds several of them dressed as doctors inside an incubator room housing tanks containing human forms, including those of Samantha. One of the Kurts shows Mulder a cold storage room containing vials of human ova, including a vial with Scully's name on it. The eggs were harvested from women during their abduction, which were later used for reproduction. Mulder realises the women are the Kurts' birth mothers and the clones are actually working to save their mothers' lives. The Grey-Haired Man arrives at the clinic and traps Mulder between two security doors in a quarantine wing. The Grey-Haired Man opens fire, slowly cracking the bullet proof glass that stands between himself and his prey. Working feverishly, Frohike breaks a computer code from a remote location, allowing Mulder to open the outside door and run to safety. When Mulder returns to the hospital, he finds Scully at Penny's bedside. Byers arrived in time to stop Scully's treatment, but Penny Northern had died and Dr Scanlon was gone. Scully tells her partner she has decided to fight the disease and continue her work. Mulder later says that as soon as he acquired the vial containing Scully's ova, he took it to an expert who determined that the ova were not viable. (Per Manum)
23 February 1997 4X17 Tempus Fugit This episode covers four days, beginning on the evening of 23 February and concluding somewhat after midnight on the morning of 26 February.	At the Headless Woman's Pub, waiters singing "Happy Birthday" approach Mulder and Scully's table. Scully is surprised that her partner remembered the occasion. Before the celebration continues, the agents are approached by Sharon Graffia, who identifies herself as the sister of Max. Fenig was killed in an aeroplane crash in Upstate New York two hours earlier. It was Fenig's wish that the agents be sought out should any harm befall him. The agents attend a Go-Team meeting assembled by the National Transportation Safety Board. Mike Millar, the man in charge of the operation, plays a tape recording of the last radio exchange between Flight 549 and air traffic control in Albany. During the recording, the pilot refers to an "intercept." Mulder believes is an indication the airliner was forced out of the sky. But his comments before the group are met with great scepticism. The agents comb the crash site for possible clues. Mulder realises there is a nine minute discrepancy between the official time of the crash and the time indicated on passengers' wristwatches. In the distance, an investigator named Garrett sprays an acid-like substance on one of the bodies, dissolving the victim's fingertips and face. A few moments later, other Go-Team members pull a survivor, Larold Rebhun, from the wreckage. Scully concludes he was exposed to extreme radiation. Mulder tells Scully that he believes Fenig was abducted from the aircraft by being sucked out of the emergency exit door. However, Go-Team members find Fenig's body amongst the debris field. The agents interview Louis Frish, who, along with Armando Gonzales, manned the Air Force Reserve air control tower on the night of the crash. Louis claims there was no radio contact between the Air Force and the civilian plane. Later, Louis finds Gonzales' dead body inside the control tower. Several government men storm the tower. Louis avoids capture by hiding on the roof. Later, Sharon Graffia disappears from her motel room. Mulder concludes she was abducted by a UFO. Louis Frish tells Mulder, Scully and Millar that he, not an air traffic controller in Albany, was the last person to communicate with Flight 549. Louis explains that his commanding officer ordered him, along with Gonzales, to lie to investigators. The men saw an unidentified radar blip enter Flight 549's airspace. Moments later, there was an explosion. Mulder speculates that a third, unidentified aircraft shot down the intercept craft but is at a loss to explain the absence of a second crash site. As the agents drive Louis away from the Go-Team's headquarters, two automobiles give chase. In an attempt to outmanoeuvre his pursuers, Mulder drives onto a runway. An airliner lands on the strip, narrowly missing Mulder's car. The two chase cars break off their pursuit. Later, Mike Millar encounters a UFO hovering above the crash site. He finds Sharon Graffia nearby. Scully and Louis await a Federal Marshal at the Headless Woman's Pub. Garrett enters with a gun. Scully draws her weapon and a shoot-out ensues. Agent Pendrell, who happened to be frequenting the bar, is shot in the chest. Scully manages to shoot Garrett in the leg. After examining a map, Mulder concludes that the second craft crashed into Great Sacandaga Lake. He scuba dives into the murky water, where he encounters twisted wreckage, and the body of a grey alien. Suddenly, a bright beam of light emanates from the surface. Mulder shields his eyes from the impossibly intense light.
26 February 1997 4X18 Max	Mulder, clad in scuba gear, inspects what appears to be the wreckage of a UFO deep beneath the murky waters of Great Sacandaga Lake in upstate New York. A bright beam of light penetrates the darkness, illuminating the agent. The light's source is revealed to be a team of frogmen, accompanied by an amphibious craft equipped with large searchlights. Mulder attempts to make an escape, but he is placed under military arrest. A wounded Garrett escapes from the Headless Woman Pub. Scully immediately turns her attention to Agent Pendrell, who was caught in the crossfire. Paramedics are called to the scene and Pendrell is transported to a nearby hospital. Skinner tells Scully that Louis Frish is being placed under military arrest for suspicion of murder and providing false testimony to a federal investigation. Mulder is released from jail. The Air Force asserts that Flight 549 collided with a military fighter jet when Frish and his tower co-controller made an error in judgement. Based on the wreckage he saw beneath Lake Sacandaga, Mulder believes Flight 549 collided with a UFO after it was shot down by a military jet. Scully tells Mulder that Agent Pendrell died of his injuries. Mulder conveys his sympathies. Records reveal that Sharon Graffia is not Max Fenig's sister, but an unemployed aeronautical engineer who spent time in mental institutions where she met Fenig. The agents search Fenig's mobile home. They discover videotape in which Fenig states that the military salvaged alien technology for use in their own technological applications. He claims to have undeniable, irrefutable proof to back up his assertion. Mulder describes for Mike Millar the sequence of events that he believes led to the downing of Flight 549. According to Mulder, Max boarded the plane carrying physical proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Someone followed him aboard the craft, intending to obtain the object at any cost. But before the assassin could carry out his plot, Flight 549 was intercepted by a UFO. As the UFO began to abduct Fenig, flight controllers ordered a military jet into 549's airspace on a mission to destroy the alien craft. When the Air Force shot down the UFO, the airliner, caught in its "tractor beam," spun out of control and crashed. The manager of the trailer park where Fenig lived gives Mulder Fenig's undelivered mail. One envelope contains a luggage claim ticket bearing a three-letter designation for Syracuse. Meanwhile, Scully meets with Sharon Graffia at a mental health centre. She admits she stole an object from her employer after Max insisted it could prove the existence of alien life. The object was divided into three parts. Max and Sharon each took a segment, but they were later confiscated. Mulder finds the third piece inside Fenig's luggage at the Syracuse airport. He boards a flight for Washington, but is followed by Garrett, Agent Pendrell's killer. Mulder gets the jump on Garrett and confines him to a toilet aboard the plane. He telephones Scully and instructs her to meet him at Dulles airport. Suddenly, Mulder's wrist watch stops running. A UFO intercepts the aircraft and, during the commotion, Garrett escapes from the lavatory. He grabs a knapsack containing the third stolen alien segment. As a bright light from the UFO engulfs the plane, Mulder instructs Garrett to drop the bag. But Garrett refuses to do so. When the plane lands at Dulles airport, Garrett is not on board. Mulder tells Skinner that Garrett "caught a connecting flight."
March 1997 4X19 Synchrony	Jason Nichols and Lucas Menand, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, become embroiled in an argument as they walk down a city street. They are approached by an elderly man, who warns Menand that he will be run over by a bus at exactly eleven forty-six that evening. Menand tells a campus security cop that the old man is harassing him. The guard places him in the back seat of a sedan and drives away. A few moments later, Menand is run down by the bus at exactly eleven forty-six. Mulder and Scully review the facts of the case. Nichols was taken into custody after the bus driver told police that he pushed Menand into the path of his vehicle. But Nichols tells authorities he was attempting to save Menand-as an unidentified old man had forewarned of his colleague's impending death. The security guard who arrested the old man is found frozen to death. Scully concludes guard was somehow exposed to some sort of chemical refrigerant, as weather conditions are too warm to explain the corpse's frigid internal temperature. Mulder interviews Nichols at the police station. Nichols explains that he and Menand had been arguing because Menand threatened to go public with a claim that he had falsified data on a research paper. A short time later, the elderly man kills Dr Yonechi, a Japanese researcher, by pricking him with a metallic stylus. Mulder and Scully examine Yonechi's frozen corpse. Lab tests reveal that the doctor was injected with an unidentifiable chemical compound. The agents approach Nichol's girlfriend, Lisa Ianelli, who is also a researcher. She recognises the chemical compound as a rapid freezing agent that Nichols had been engineering for years. But she points out that the chemical has not yet been invented. Lisa tells the agents that if Yonechi was injected with the chemical, he may not be dead. With Lisa's help, Scully and a team of medical personnel successfully resuscitate Yonechi. But his body temperature suddenly and rapidly begins to increase, until finally, he bursts into flames. Lisa realises she made an error when she recommended that doctors remove Yonechi's body from a tub filled with yellowish fluid. Lisa confesses that it was she who falsified the data to get the research grant, Nichols is in jail because he is covering for her. Those who would have figured out the truth, Menand and Yonechi, are now dead. Police receive a tip that the elderly man is living at a nearby hotel. Inside the elderly man's room, the agents discover a faded colour photograph picturing Nichols, Yonechi and Lisa toasting champagne glasses inside the cryology lab. Mulder realises the photo was taken five years in the future, on the day the researchers successfully synthesised the freezing compound. The elderly man is attempting to alter that future: when he failed to save Menand from being killed by the bus, he killed Yonechi. Mulder also realises the elderly man is none other than Jason Nichols. Lisa locates the elderly man and confronts him. The elderly man gathers the courage to inject her with the chemical. But Scully successfully resuscitates Lisa, and remembering the girl's words, immediately returns her body to the tub, to prevent the fire that killed Yonechi. Nichols confronts his elderly self in the computer mainframe room at the cryogenic lab, where the old man has erased all of Nichols' files from the computer. Nichols lunges at the old man, choking him. Mulder, unable to open the lab door, yells to Nichols. He tells him that Lisa is alive. The old man tells Nichols that "it's better that we never were." Wrapping his arms around his younger self, the old man bursts into flames. The fire consumes them both. Later, Lisa sets to work at cryonics lab, attempting to reconstruct the chemical compound.
March 1997 4X20 Small Potatoes Mulder's drivers license gives his home address as 42-2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, VA 23242.	Doctors in Martinsburg, West Virginia, attend to a woman, Amanda Nelligan, as she goes into labour. When a nurse asks about the baby's father, Amanda tells her that the child's father is from another planet. When the baby is delivered, those in attendance gasp in horror when they see that the crying new-born has a four-inch tail. Word of the strange birth is spread by newspaper tabloids, and Mulder and Scully travel to Martinsburg to investigate. During the drive, Mulder notes that five babies were born with vestigial tails over the course of three months, all within a city of less than 15,000 people. Scully hypothesises that the abnormalities may be attributable to ground water contamination or prescription drug interaction. At the hospital, Amanda, a Star Wars fan, tells the agents the baby's father is Luke Skywalker. She recounts the tale of how Luke Skywalker came to her home and romanced her. With the assistance of a Health Department doctor, Scully determines that each of the five children born with tails share the same father. Mulder notes that all five women also shared the same fertility specialist, Dr Alton Pugh. When the agents arrive at Pugh's office, they discover several angry couples confronting the doctor about the births. As Mulder looks around the doctor's office, he encounters a janitor, Eddie Van Blundht, fixing a leaky sink inside an exam room and notices above his sagging pants a faint, roughly triangular scar at the base of the man's spine. Eddie tries to run, but is quickly apprehended and taken into custody. All of the women present swear that the only person they have had sex with has been their husbands. Later, a paternity test reveals that Eddie is the father of all five children. Scully hypothesises that he may have used the tranquilliser Rohypnol to incapacitate his victims. Eddie, a homely man, responds defensively at the inference that the only reason a woman would have sex with him is if she was coerced. While a sheriff's deputy is filling out his arrest record, Eddie suddenly changes form, metamorphosing into an exact duplicate of the deputy. Eddie strikes the astonished deputy on the head and makes his getaway. After questioning the deputy, Mulder concludes that Eddie impregnated four of the five women by making himself look like their husbands. The fifth woman, Amanda, was tricked into believing she was making love to Luke Skywalker. The agents travel to the Van Blundht residence, where they meet Edward Senior. He claims he once performed as "Eddie the Monkey Man" and still has his tail intact. As they talk to him they realise the old man is, in fact, Eddie Junior in a different form. Eddie suddenly runs out of the house and disappears into the neighbourhood. After searching the house, they discover the mummified body of the real Edward Senior inside the attic. Scully's autopsy reveals an anomalous muscular structure beneath the surface of the corpse's skin. Essentially the man's skin was also a muscle. Mulder speculates that if Eddie inherited this same trait, it would explain his ability to change form. Meanwhile, Eddie metamorphoses again, this time into a duplicate Mulder. The real Mulder tracks him to a locker room at the hospital where Amanda Nelligan is staying. Suddenly, Eddie bursts through the ceiling, knocking him to the ground. He ties up the real Mulder and locks him inside the hospital's boiler room. Pretending to be Mulder, Eddie returns to Washington with Scully, files a report with Assistant Director Skinner and closes the case. Later, the fake Mulder shows up at Scully's apartment with a bottle of wine. After spending the evening having relaxing conversation and relating in a personal rather than professional manner, Scully tells the fake Mulder, "I really feel like I'm seeing a different side of you tonight." The fake Mulder leans in close, and prepares to give her a kiss. Just as their lips are about to meet, the real Mulder kicks in the front door and interrupts them. Eddie slumps back on the couch, thwarted, transforms back to his normal appearance and is taken into custody.
April 1997	Researchers publish the results of research in which a frog is levitated by a strong magnetic field. The electrons in the frog's body respond to the magnetic field uniformly, as if the frog is weightless. Researchers say the frog suffered no harmful effects from the experience, and that it would be equally possible to levitate a human. (From scientific journals) Is this the technique used to levitate people, as has been seen from time to time in the X-Files? Eddie Van Blundht is incarcerated, and kept on muscle relaxants to prevent him from shape changing. He accuses Mulder of choosing to be a loser for not courting Scully. (Small Potatoes) Operatives for the Conspiracy ship seven packages for the Conspiracy to South Carolina to test. One package is damaged and sent to a shipping house in Virginia for inspection. Some of the bees, carrying smallpox, escape and build a colony in a wall. (Zero Sum)
12 April 1997 4X23 Demons This episode contains a significant inconsistency in dates. Act one is clearly labelled as happening on 12 April, which was a Saturday. However, Scully tells Mulder that 12 April is a Sunday. Other episodes this season have clearly included the 1997 date, leaving the inconsistency impossible to resolve.	Mulder experiences a dreamlike vision, apparently a memory from childhood, in which he sees his mother and father reacting as if some terrible tragedy has entered their home. Mulder awakens in a motel room, sweating profusely, his hands and shirt stained with blood. He telephones Scully, who drives to the motel to offer assistance. Suffering from a mental blackout, Mulder cannot recall how he got to the motel. Scully discovers that two rounds were fired from his gun. She also traces a car parked outside Mulder's room to a David and Amy Cassandra. The agents travel to the Cassandra residence, where they speak with a housekeeper. Inside the home are dozens of paintings of a white clapboard house. Mulder realises he was inside the home, but cannot remember why. The housekeeper gives the agents the address of the home depicted in the painting. As Mulder approaches the dwelling, he is suddenly struck by a flashback in which he encounters a young CSM inside his parent's home. When the seizure subsides, the agents walk inside the cottage, where they find the dead bodies of David and Amy Cassandra. Blood from both victims is found on Mulder's shirt. Detective Curtis places Mulder under arrest. But a toxicology report reveals traces of the anaesthetic Ketamine in Mulder and Amy Cassandra's blood. Scully realises the drug could account for Mulder's memory loss. A short time later, Michael Fazekas, an admitting officer, steps inside a bathroom at the police station and shoots himself in the head. Scully discovers a small scab on the man's scalp, similar to one found on Amy's hairline. Detective Curtis reveals that Fazekas was a believer in UFOs. Inside Fazekas' apartment, Scully discovers a UFO magazine featuring a photograph of Amy, who believed she was an alien abductee. A forensics report reveals that the blood spatter pattern on Mulder's shirt does not correspond to the point of entry detail. Curtis concludes the Cassandras died as the result of a murder-suicide. Further research reveals that Amy had been seeing Dr Charles Goldstein, a psychiatrist, in an effort to recover suppressed memories. Goldstein admits he used unconventional therapy to stimulate electrical impulses in the brain. Mulder suffers another seizure. During the attack, he experiences a vision in which a young CSM pulled Mrs Mulder close to him, as if to kiss her. Mulder and Scully drive to Mrs Mulder's Greenwich home. There, Mulder confronts his mother. He accuses her of lying to him about having been forced to choose Samantha over him. He also accuses her of being unfaithful to his father. Mrs Mulder angrily denies the allegations. Mulder storms out of the house and drives off. Mulder pulls a gun on Dr Goldstein and forces him to finish his treatment, to make him relive what he believes to be his past. Goldstein drugs Mulder, then slowly lowers a spinning needle towards his hairline. Police arrive at the scene and place Goldstein under arrest, but Mulder's whereabouts are unknown. The psychiatrist tells Scully that Mulder left his office "to exorcise his demons." Scully finds him at the house in Quonochontaug, balled up on the floor, a gun in his hand. Jolted by seizures, Mulder aims his gun at Scully. She attempts to convince him that the powerful hallucinogen injected into his body has affected his mind and that his visions, his apparent memories, cannot be trusted. Mulder fires a shot, but the bullet shatters a wall mirror behind Scully. Breaking down into tears, Mulder lowers the weapon. Scully's fear changes to sympathy as she comforts her partner.
27 April 1997 4X21 Zero Sum Date from evidence log.	Jane Brody, a mail sorter at an overnight delivery company, sneaks into the female employee's restroom to smoke a cigarette. Without warning, hundreds of bees creep into the stall where Jane is sitting. When the young woman attempts to swat the insects so she can escape, the bees swarm and attack, stinging her to death. An e-mail file containing photographs of the victim is sent to Mulder, but Skinner intercepts and deletes the file. Skinner then covertly erases evidence of the bee attack, and incinerates Jane Brody's body. Identifying himself as Fox Mulder, Skinner visits a police forensics lab in Virginia where he switches a vial containing Brody's blood with another identical container. As he is leaving, Skinner is approached by Detective Ray Thomas, the man who e-mailed Mulder photographs of Brody's body. Skinner tells the disappointed Thomas, who thinks he is talking to Fox Mulder, that the evidence does not warrant his further involvement in the case. Mulder pays Skinner an unexpected visit. He states that someone has gone to great lengths to keep news of the bee attack from reaching him. He also reveals that Detective Thomas was found dead, the victim of an execution-style shooting. With Scully undergoing tests at a hospital for the treatment of her cancer, Mulder asks Skinner for his help in solving the mystery. Later that night, Skinner is approached by CSM. Skinner accuses him of murdering Detective Thomas. CSM counters that Skinner "failed to neutralise a potentially compromising situation." Mulder discovers that someone stole Brody's body from a morgue and switched her blood sample at the police station. He also discovers that Thomas was murdered by someone using a government issue gun. Shortly after, Skinner realises his own weapon is missing. Skinner revisits the women's restroom where Brody was killed. He discovers part of a massive honeycomb inside the restroom wall, and brings a piece of the honeycomb to entomologist Peter Valdespino for analysis. Mulder discovers that a bank surveillance camera captured a blurry image of someone talking to Detective Thomas shortly before he was murdered. He hopes the Bureau's Photo Unit can produce a clearer image of the man who he suspects is Thomas' killer. Using larvae taken from the honeycomb, Valdespino hatches more bees to identify the species. The insects unexpectedly swarm the entomologist, killing him. Mulder later discovers that Valdespino died from smallpox. He hypothesises that someone has engineered a method of spreading the contagion using the insects. Skinner questions Brody's co-worker, Misty Nagata. She reveals that a damaged overnight package was confiscated by other investigators working on the case. Students at an elementary school in South Carolina are attacked by a swarm of bees. Skinner tells doctors at a hospital emergency room that the children should be treated not for bee stings, but for smallpox. Working from surveillance camera footage, the FBI photo unit produces a clear image of Skinner talking to Thomas shortly before his death. Outraged, Mulder accuses Skinner of working in conjunction with CSM from the very beginning. But Skinner insists he was framed. Skinner again confronts CSM, firing several shots in anger. Afterward, CSM instructs Marita Covarrubias, in the company of Syndicate members, to tell Mulder whatever he wants to hear.
May 1997 4X22 Elegy While it was not mentioned in this episode, this was not the first time Scully has seen a vision of a dead person. Bill Scully appeared to his daughter shortly after he died, trying to say something to her, in Beyond the Sea. This was before her first abduction, as seen during the series. Does this mean she already had cancer during the first season, as the result of even earlier abductions?	Angie Pintero, the working-class owner of a bowling alley, tells one of his employees, a mentally disturbed, compulsive man named Harold Spuller, to go home for the evening. Shortly after, Angie discovers a badly-injured blond girl wedged inside a pinspotter carriage. The girl attempts to speak, but no words come out of her mouth. Angie notices police in a nearby parking lot and rushes outside to get help. He realises a crowd has gathered around the dead body of the same girl he saw only moments earlier in the bowling alley. Angie relates his bizarre tale to Mulder and Scully. Mulder suspects that Angie encountered the dead girl's ghost, a spirit that was attempting to communicate with the living for reasons unknown. Three similar encounters, and three similar murders, were reported in the area in as many weeks. The agents discover the words, "She is me" written on the bowling lane where Angie saw the spirit. But its meaning remains a mystery. Detective Hudak tells Mulder and Scully that an anonymous caller phoned 911 with a message regarding Penny Timmons, one of the killer's victims. The caller claimed that Timmons' last words were "She is me." But Hudak notes the victim's larynx was severed, making it impossible for her to utter dying words. The agents trace the source of the 911 call to a payphone at the New Horizon Psychiatric Centre. Mulder notices one of the patients, Harold Spuller, avoiding his gaze. After viewing photographs of the murder victims, Scully concludes that Spuller fits the killer's profile: a compulsive person consumed with the desire to organise, clean and reorder. Scully uses a restroom to attend to a nosebleed. There she encounters the spirit of another blond girl. Moments later, Mulder relays word that the body of yet another victim was found nearby. Mulder discovers Harold holed-up in a dimly lit room accessible from the bowling alley. The walls of the room are covered with score sheets, including those of the victims. Mulder realises that Harold met each of the murdered women at the bowling alley. Suddenly, Harold lapses into a strange seizure. From his point of view, he sees Angie's ghost standing behind Mulder. He rushes out of the room and makes his way to the bowling alley, where Angie lies dead, the victim of a heart attack. Mulder tells Scully that every person who saw the apparitions was about to die, implying that Harold may be next. Scully, who also saw a victim's ghost, is struck by the implication. Harold is transported back to the psychiatric centre. There, he is tormented by Nurse Innes, who ridicules his intellect and physique. Later, Mulder finds Innes lying on the floor, half-conscious. Innes claims Harold went berserk and attacked her. One of the other patients, Chuck Forsch, tells Scully that Nurse Innes was trying to poison Harold. Scully slowly realises that Innes, not Harold, was responsible for the murders. When Innes attacks Scully with a scalpel, Scully draws her weapon and fires, striking her in the shoulder. Afterward, Scully tells Mulder that Innes has been ingesting Harold's medication, triggering violent and unpredictable behaviour. She hypothesises that Innes was out to destroy the love Harold felt towards the young women. Later, Harold's body is discovered in a nearby alley, the apparent victim of respiratory failure. But Scully suspects Harold died from what Innes took away from him. Scully admits to Mulder that she saw the ghost of the fourth victim shortly after she was murdered. Later, Scully sees Harold's spirit sitting in the back seat of her car. After trying "for years," Bill and Tara Scully conceive a child. (Christmas Carol)
July 1997 It was said that Modell's awakening and Linda's learning of him happened about six months before the episode. The dates for the trial are unclear, but Modell could not have been tried while in a coma, so the assumption is made that it is after his regaining consciousness.	The sister of Robert Patrick Modell, Linda, learns that she has a fraternal twin brother, from whom she has been separated since infancy. She locates him in a hospital, where he is in a coma as the result of being shot by Fox Mulder. She visits him, using her "Pusher" powers to masquerade as a nun. At about this same time, Modell awakens from his coma. The implication is that she uses her power to awaken him. Upon learning about his life, Linda is consumed with the desire for revenge against the law enforcement officers who apprehended Modell. Following Modell's awakening, the state tries him for murder, and he is convicted. The prosecutor is Nathan Bowman. (Kitsunegari)
October 1997 4X24 Gethsemane As always when The X-Files uses flashbacks, it is difficult to determine what actually happened, and what is based on imperfect memories and/or Scully's fabrication as part of her lie.	Scully enters Mulder's apartment, where a group of detectives and forensic technicians are waiting. Detective Rempulski introduces himself, then pulls back a sheet draped over a body lying on the floor. Scully positively identifies the victim. Later, Scully appears before a group of FBI officials led by Section Chief Scott Blevins. During the meeting, Scully recounts how, four years earlier, Blevins assigned her to a project known as The X-Files. She states that the purpose of the current meeting is to report on the illegitimacy of Mulder's work. In flashback, a pair of anthropologists, Arlinsky and Babcock, are flown by helicopter to a snowbound camp at the base of a mountain. Accompanied by a guide, the pair make their way up the steep terrain. Upon reaching the summit, the men enter a cave where the body of a grey alien is perfectly preserved in ice. A group of guests gather at Mrs Scully's house for a dinner party. Amongst the attendees are Dana's brother, Bill Scully Junior, and a Catholic Priest, Father McCue. Scully realises McCue was invited by her mother for the purpose of discussing her faith at a time when Scully's health is at great risk due to her cancer. After dinner, Father McCue and Scully briefly talk about her drifting from the church before their discussion is interrupted by a phone call from Mulder. He has received information about a something that was discovered in Canada. Mulder arranges for Scully to meet he and Arlinsky at the Smithsonian. Arlinsky claims that, based on ice core samples taken from the scene, the alien body is some two hundred years old. He asks for the agents' assistance in verifying the alien remains. Mulder and Arlinsky fly to the base camp, which is eerily deserted. Unknown to them, a mysterious assassin armed with a shotgun pistol has murdered the Summiteers. Upon reaching the summit, the men discover the bodies of Babcock and a foreman. Inside the cave is a rectangular hole where the alien body had been entombed. Later, Babcock, injured but alive, tells the pair that he buried the alien body beneath his tent. Meanwhile, Scully and lab scientist Vitagliano examine ice core samples taken from the cave. Later that night, Scully returns to the Bio Lab, where she is assaulted and thrown down a flight of stairs by an unidentified attacker. Agent Hedin matches fingerprints found on the stairwell to a Michael Kritschgau, who works for the Pentagon's research division. After viewing a personnel file, Scully positively identifies Kritschgau as her attacker. Later, she confronts Kritschgau inside a parking garage and places him under arrest. But Kritschgau warns that if he is taken to jail, the same people who gave Scully cancer will kill him. Mulder and Arlinsky transport the alien body to a warehouse where an autopsy can be performed. Scully contacts her partner at the warehouse and arranges a meeting so he can hear Kritschgau's story firsthand. Soon afterward, the assassin, Ostelhoff, shoots and kills Arlinsky and Babcock at the warehouse. Meanwhile, Kritschgau, who claims to have run the Department of Defence’s agitprop arm, tells the agents that the government has been orchestrating an elaborate hoax to divert attention away from itself. The alien corpse, Kritschgau claims, was forged from bio-materials and frozen into place over the course of a year. He insists Mulder was only meant to see the alien, to make him believe the lie. Mulder counters that it is Kritschgau who is the liar. But when Mulder returns to the warehouse, he discovers the dead bodies of Arlinsky and Babcock, and the alien specimen missing. Later, Scully tells him the men behind the hoax gave her cancer all in an effort to make him a believer in their lies. Mulder is stunned by the revelation. Back in the current day, Scully tells FBI officials that she received a phone call from the police department asking her to identify a body inside Mulder's apartment. Struggling to maintain composure, Scully reveals that Mulder died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
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