In the conference room at Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C., Agt. Scully met with high Bureau officials to report on the validity of Agt. Mulder's work on the X-Files. The meeting was conducted by Section Chief Scott Blevins, who four years earlier had assigned Agt. Scully the task of analyzing Agt. MulderÆs work. At the meeting, Agt. Scully stated her belief that Agt. MulderÆs work was fundamentally illegitimate. She explained that Agt. MulderÆs investigations of paranormal phenomena had been revealed to her as one element in a larger government conspiracy to perpetrate falsehoods regarding public policy. Agt. MulderÆs personal desire to believe in such phenomena had made Agts. Mulder and Scully unwitting tools of that conspiracy. Agt. Scully stated her purpose now as exposing the larger lie. Agt. Scully then went on to describe the process whereby she had learned of the duping of Agt. Mulder.
According to Agt. Scully, some time earlier she had attended a dinner party at the home of her mother. That party was also attended by Agt. ScullyÆs brother, Naval officer Bill Scully, and a Roman Catholic priest identified as Father McCue. Agt. Scully had been interrupted during a conversation with Father McCue, the subject of which was Agt. ScullyÆs lapsed Catholicism and her need for spiritual strength in fighting cancer, by a phone call from Agt. Mulder. Agt. Mulder informed Agt. Scully that he had been contacted by a Smithsonian forensic anthropologist identified as Dr. Arlinsky. Though Dr. Arlinsky had been discredited because of his involvement in a UFO photo-enhancement hoax, Agt. Mulder requested Agt. ScullyÆs immediate presence in Dr. ArlinskyÆs office at the Smithsonian.
Agt. Scully proceeded to the Smithsonian, where she met with Agt. Mulder and Dr. Arlinsky. Dr. Arlinsky showed the agents an enlarged photograph of a body found frozen in ice at the summit of Mt. Elias in the Yukon Territory, Canada, by a Canadian geodetic survey team. The body appeared to be that of an extra-terrestrial biological entity (EBE). Dr. Arlinsky stated that ice core samples revealed the body to be more than 200 years old. He added that geological conditions on Mt. Elias were consistent with the rapid freezing necessary to have preserved it in its immaculate state. Dr. Arlinsky insisted that his having previously been deceived by a hoax had made him particularly circumspect about such findings; he expressed certainty that the body was irrefutable proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Agt. Mulder and Dr. Arlinsky agreed that to reveal the existence of such evidence would only invite its suppression. Dr. Arlinsky requested Agt. MulderÆs help in secretly removing the body from the ice and authenticating its origins. Privately, Agt. Scully told Agt. Mulder that she had no opinion as to the veracity of the evidence. She declined to travel to the site of the finding. She did not reveal to Agt. Mulder the fact that her cancer had metastasized. Agt. Mulder asked Agt. Scully for her assistance in verifying the age and nature of the ice core samples.
At the Paleoclimatology lab at American University, Agt. Scully and a scientist identified as Vitagliano studied the ice core samples. Vitagliano confirmed the age of the ice, the strong likelihood of its having frozen rapidly, and the absence of any tampering. He also noted the presence of unidentified hybrid cellular material in the ice and asked Agt. ScullyÆs permission to study the sample using an electron microscope. Agt. Scully consented.
Meanwhile, during an operation to retrieve the body from the site at the summit of Mt. Elias, a guide identified as Rolston discovered Dr. ArlinskyÆs colleague, a man identified as Dr. Babcock, loading a handgun. Dr. Babcock stated that his purpose in so doing was self-protection while Rolston was away from the site. The foreman of the retrieval team then showed Rolston and Dr. Babcock an unusual round spot in the ice. Rolston suggested that the spot might represent a casting channel or pour hole, indicating tampering and a possible hoax. That night a man armed with a shotgun entered the camp and shot the team.
When Agt. Mulder and Dr. Arlinsky arrived at a base camp below the summit of Mt. Elias, they found the camp abandoned and lacking power or radio contact. Approaching the summit, Agt. Mulder and Dr. Arlinsky discovered Rolston dead of a gunshot wound. They continued to the site. There they found the frozen body gone and all members of the team except Dr. Babcock shot dead. Dr. Babcock was wounded. He informed Agt. Mulder and Dr. Arlinsky that he had buried the body. They dug beneath his tent and found the body frozen in its block of ice.
At Washington University, Agt. Scully sought Vitagliano in his office. There, she encountered a man identified as Michael Kritschgau leaving VitaglianoÆs office with one of the core samples. Agt. Scully followed Kritschgau to a staircase where he attacked her, knocking her down the stairs before fleeing. After Agt. Scully was treated for abrasions at a hospital, Bill Scully arrived at the hospital, having received the call from the hospital intended for Mrs. Scully. Bill Scully informed Agt. Scully that he was aware of her cancer. He asked her why she continued to subject herself to stress and physical danger. He pointed out that she had responsibilities to other people and asked whether she felt responsible only to Agt. Mulder. He further asked where Agt. Mulder had been during her ordeal.
At the Bureau lab, Agts. Scully and Hedin checked the fingerprints of Agt. ScullyÆs assailant, who had no criminal record. Agt. Scully suggested that they check the federal employee records. There the agents matched the prints to Kritschgau, who was attached to the research division of the Department of Defense. Agt. Scully proceeded to the Pentagon and pursued Kritschgau in her car to an underground parking garage. Kritschgau fled. Agt. Scully identified herself as federal agent and pursued the suspect on foot. Kritschgau attempted to flee by car, but Agt. Scully cut off his retreat and arrested him. Kritschgau then claimed that the people who had given Agt. Scully cancer would kill him if he revealed what he knew.
Agt. Mulder, Dr. Babcock, and Dr. Arlinsky meanwhile moved the frozen corpse from the summit of Mt. Elias, first by helicopter and then in a refrigerated truck, to a warehouse in an industrial park near Washington, D.C. There they uncrated the body and lowered it into a bath. Dr. Arlinsky suggested that a detailed examination would remove any doubt as the bodyÆs age and origin. Citing the Piltdown Man hoax, Agt. Mulder stated that certainty could result only from carbon dating. Dr. Babcock insisted that the deaths of the retrieval team and his own wounding suggested that some person or persons were certain that the body was not a hoax. Dr. Arlinsky then X-rayed the body and performed an autopsy, which indicated that the body did not correspond to human physiognomy.
During the autopsy, Agt. Mulder received a phone call from Agt. Scully. Agt. Scully convinced Agt. Mulder to meet with her and Kritschgau. Mulder was observed leaving the warehouse by a man identified as Ostelhoff, who carried a shotgun pistol. Ostelhoff then entered the warehouse and shot Dr. Arlinsky dead. Ostelhoff asked Dr. Babcock whether Agt. Mulder was now a believer. Dr. Babcock replied in the affirmative.
In Agt. MulderÆs apartment, Agts. Mulder and Scully met with Kritschgau. Kritschgau stated that Agt. Mulder had been expertly manipulated by elements in the federal government who wanted Agt. Mulder, and other "passionate adepts," to believe in the fallacy of extraterrestrial life and its cover-up by the government. Kritschgau further stated that the purpose of the deception was to divert attention from an actual network of government conspiracy and cover-up. Kritschgau described himself as having operated the Defense Department agitprop division for ten years and claimed to be aware of disinformation campaigns dating back to the Korean War. He asserted that he was coming forward now because his son had become ill during the Gulf War. He described Agt. Mulder as having been "invented," through a meticulous deception of which false regression hypnosis sessions, the story of his sister Samantha Mulder's abduction, and lies fed to Agt. MulderÆs father, William Mulder, were just a part. Kritschgau stated that the body found in the ice at Mt. Elias had been created through the hybridization of differentiated cells, and that the ice had been made to appear old by adding certain materials to it through a small, drilled channel. The body had been intended to give Agt. Mulder an unshakeable belief that irrefutable evidence of extraterrestrial life exists; the body would never have been subjected to carbon-dating tests. Kritschgau informed Agt. Mulder that the body had no doubt already been removed.
Agts. Mulder and Scully proceeded to the warehouse where the autopsy had taken place. They found Drs. Arlinsky and Babcock shot dead and the body gone. The agents then engaged in a passionate disagreement. Agt. Scully argued that the hybrid cells referred to by Kritschgau had been identified in the ice by Vitagliano. She insisted that Agt. Mulder was choosing to believe a lie he found more acceptable than the truth. Agt. Mulder asked Agt. Scully why she was inclined to believe KritschgauÆs story. Agt. Scully revealed that Kritschgau had informed her that she had been given cancer as part of the attempt to make Agt. Mulder believe the lie.
In his apartment that night, Agt. Mulder wept while watching a television broadcast from the late 1970Æs in which eminent scientists discuss the strong probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The next morning, Agt. Scully was summoned by Detective Rempulski of the Alexandria, Virginia, police department to Agt. MulderÆs apartment. There, she provided a positive identification of the deceased. Agt. Scully then proceeded to the Bureau conference room for her meeting with Section Chief Blevins and other Bureau officials. She concluded her report by informing those officials that Agt. Mulder had died the night before of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.