06x11 - Two Fathers

[bunniefuu]

Dr Openshaw, congratulations.

Your work... it's completed.

You should see her.

25 years.

She must seem like an old friend.

Yes.

We're, uh... going out to celebrate. If you'd like to come...

No. You go on ahead.

This is the end.

I never thought I'd hear myself say those words after all these years.

You put your life into something. Build it, protect it.

The end is as unimaginable as your own death.

Or the death of your children.

I could never have scripted the events that led us to this.

None of us could.

All the brilliant men. The secret that we kept so well.

It happened simply, like this.

We had a perfect conspiracy... with an alien race.

Aliens who were coming to reclaim this planet and to destroy all human life.

Our job was to... secretly prepare the way for their invasion.

To create for them a sl*ve race of human/alien hybrids.

They were good plans.

Right plans.

Kept secret for over 50 years, ever since the crash at Roswell.

Kept secret from men like Fox Mulder.

Plans that would've worked. had not a rebel alien race come to destroy them.

Had not my own son chosen betrayal.

Or chosen to betray more wisely.

AD Skinner, I... I didn't hear the elevator. I was workin' here.

Working on what, Agent Spender? Progress report on the X-Files.

Progress report to who? Just a file.

I wasn't aware that you'd made any progress. I've received but one memorandum.

Are you planning to hit me all at once? Uh, it's been slow going.

Truth is, your purpose is not to make any progress, isn't it?

Truth is, you have no interest in the X-Files.

Beyond a certain... personal case.

Your mother's abduction. Alleged abduction.

That's what I'm here about.

What happened here? No one knows yet.

A group of people were b*rned alive here.

Another man's on life support. Only your mother survived.

Where is she? Where is she?

They've got her outside.

Mom.

Mom...

It's me, Jeffrey.

Mom, what happened to you?

It's been so long, I thought I'd never see you again.

Oh... don't cry, honey.

Where have you been?

What did they do to you?

I need to talk to someone.

You can tell me.

I need to speak to Agent Mulder.

I don't want him talking with her. Why?

He's forbidden from the X-Files.

She's asking for him. She's my mother.

What are you afraid of?

Mulder filling her head with alien abduction nonsense.

Are you afraid of the truth?

I wanna know who did this to her and why. That's all.

Then why not use every resource available to you?

I'll send you a progress report.

My son refused to believe that his mother had been abducted, though it had been going on for years.

Even after I had him put in charge of the X-Files, where Fox Mulder had amassed so much evidence of our secret plans, he still couldn't bring himself to accept the possibility of alien life.

When he did... come to believe, when the facts became so glaring... he turned.

Not to me, his father, but to the man I'd ruined.

The man I'd chosen for him to replace.

Hey, Milk. Let's play ball.

Yo, homestyle, cough up the rock.

Wanna rotate in? Yeah. Yeah, I got next.

Game. Oh, no, no, Ike, it don't work like that.

Hey, homegirl. Word up?

Mulder, it's my distinct impression that you just cheated, and that you're not coming in again today. I got game.

I'm wondering if you have any work left in you.

Oh, no, I'm ready to j-o-b. Just not on some jag-off shoeshine tip.

No jag-off shoeshine tip?

No background-checking jag-off shoeshine tip.

About your j-o-b, somebody's been trying very hard to reach you.

Somebody who wants you back at the FBI ASAP.

About what? About an X-File.

Lookin' for work, Agent Spender?

I got a whole pile in that middle drawer that I'd love to shove down someone's throat.

I think you know why I'm here. They found your mother.

She wants to talk to you.

I didn't hear the magic word. I'm not going down on my knees.

Are you asking me, Agent Spender?

My mother turns up in a train car, where she's been operated on by doctors who were b*rned alive.

I just want the truth.

The truth is out there, Agent Spender. Maybe you should find it for yourself.

I expected you sooner. I've been at the train yard.

Trying to tidy things up.

The overkill will be hard to divert attention from.

But not as hard as from Cassandra.

You have no idea, do you?

Cassandra is a success.

No. She can't be.

Not now.

I had prepared a syringe for her, as agreed. But the rebels came.

They saved her to expose us.

She is the key to everything. I won't let her out of our hands.

They will run medical tests on her.

It's only a matter of time.

Cassandra must be terminated.

They will come and question me.

I know.

I'm sorry.

A man should never live long enough to see his children... or his work destroyed.

Hello? Have you heard the news?

No. The rebels have struck.

Where? In Virginia.

During one of our medical procedures.

They k*lled the project doctors. b*rned them.

All of them? Yes.

Dr Openshaw d*ed in the hyperbaric chamber this evening.

My God.

I've called an emergency meeting of the Syndicate.

Only the future rides on our response.

I'll be on a plane.

Dr Openshaw. I've come to see you.

I didn't expect to find you here. Where'd you expect to find me?

Agent Spender offered you an X-File assignment.

It wasn't exactly an offer.

Isn't it the opportunity you've been waiting for?

It is an opportunity made to order for the powers that be.

It's a setup?

This is the kind of mistake they've been waiting for to come down on me full force.

But Agent Spender asked you. Like I said, not exactly.

We've seen this before. Bodies set aflame with no conclusive cause of combustion.

Mulder...

I know.

I was with Cassandra Spender when she disappeared.

You sat with me while I was under hypnosis when I spoke of just these sorts of details.

I am sure that what she would tell us would expose more than just what happened to her.

I was taken to one of those train cars. I was tested just like Cassandra.

What if what she tells us could expose who did this to me?

Mulder, Agent Spender doesn't have to know.

Oh, my God.

My God.

Cassandra. Oh, Dana. Oh, my God.

It's so good to see you.

We're old friends.

If, uh... if I can get a hold of a wheelchair, you wanna go out for some fresh air?

I don't need a wheelchair.

But I am dying for a cigarette.

It feels so good to walk.

The doctors don't know what to say.

I told them they wouldn't believe how it happened, and they wouldn't.

No, I'm not gonna tell anybody this time, cos nobody believes you anyway.

They want to hear it, but they just think you're crazy.

Guess I wouldn't believe it either, except that it happened to me.

No...

I'm only gonna tell somebody I can trust and who can do something about it.

I was hoping when I saw you that Agent Mulder was gonna be coming in behind you.

I've got a surprise for you, Cassandra.

Agent Mulder? Shh, shh, shh.

Oh! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

I think I'm gonna pee the floor.

Don't... don't do that.

Look at you.

I told you about their power. You said you didn't believe it.

I had reasons for doubt when I met you, Cassandra.

You just doubted yourself.

You were just doubting you'd ever see her again, weren't you?

Your sister.

Agent Mulder told me he believed he saw his sister... last year.

That wasn't her, Agent Mulder.

Then where is she? Out there. With them.

The aliens.

Cassandra, you were found in a train car.

You'd been operated on by doctors.

Yes, that's right.

And these are the doctors who cured you? No, the aliens cured me.

The doctors were working with them. That's what I wanted to tell you.

What?

I told you that the aliens were here to do good and that I was being used as an oracle to spread the word.

Only now I know what the aliens are here for, and it isn't good.

What are they here for?

To wipe us off the planet.

They're taking over the universe.

They're infecting all other life forms with a black substance called Purity.

It's their life force. It's what they're made of.

It's the virus. The Black Oil.

But, Cassandra, the doctors weren't infected. They were b*rned.

By another race of aliens.

A rebel force, that are mutilating their faces so that they won't be infected.

This is what I couldn't tell my son Jeffrey. Why couldn't you tell Jeffrey?

Because he doesn't believe me.

Even though his life is in danger by these same rebel aliens.

Spender's life's in danger?

He's in with the men that have been working with the alien colonists for 50 years.

Working to do what?

Whatever it is they did to me, and to you, Dana.

And you know who these men are?

Oh, sure. One of them's my ex-husband.

Jeffrey's father.

Cassandra was starting to realize her role in the greatest science project ever known.

She was the center of 50 years of work.

The key to all of our plans.

Something even my colleagues didn't realize yet.

I k*lled to keep them unknowing.

I k*lled Dr Openshaw so they wouldn't discover her, when it's Cassandra I should've k*lled, Cassandra who needed to die.

I couldn't do it.

With all the blood on my hands, I couldn't k*ll the mother of my own son.

The woman I never even loved.

My colleagues never knew, focused as they were on the new thr*at, the faceless alien rebels who'd b*rned our doctors alive.

But my colleagues had become old men, blind to the fact that the faceless rebels already held the upper hand, that they'd used their powers of disguise to infiltrate our group.

Rebels have att*cked and b*rned facilities in New Mexico and the Southwest.

The medical staff at our Arizona research facility has been slain.

The train-car deaths cost us.

Work on the human/alien hybrids will suffer the death of Dr Openshaw.

What do they want?

To expose our enterprise, everything we've worked for.

While some hotshot reporter's gonna put the pieces together.

Not to mention law enforcement. We have our control on the federal agencies.

Our new man at the FBI is very capable of diverting attention.

Why not side with the rebels?

Join their alien resistance.

It's an option.

It's an option you declined long ago.

Resistance was futile then. Why would it be less so now?

That's why you voted against it. Against men like Bill Mulder.

Collaboration has allowed you to prepare, to stall colonization.

How close are you to developing a human/alien hybrid?

That alone ensures your survival.

As sl*ve labourers for the aliens.

What about your vaccine?

By collaborating, you bought time to secretly develop a way to combat the aliens, to fight the future. Alex, enough!

For 50 years, we've worked on this project.

50 years since Roswell.

We can't sacrifice ourselves for every new thr*at, can we, now?

Why risk getting caught? They'll monitor any work on our machines.

We need access to files, a name that'll raise flags.

Maybe she was making it all up.

Smokey's got a name.

Get up from the desk.

Get up, turn the computer off. Grab whatever you took, or print it out and give it to me.

Let's go, Agents. They're coming.

Who? Just go.

Assistant Director.

I'll assume you came to apprehend these agents for unauthorized entry into my office.

I'll make sure it's duly noted in the report at their dismissal.

I've done as you've asked. Mulder's gone up to his superiors.

He and his partner will be processed out of the FBI.

I've done as you've asked. Now I would like you to do for me.

Do for you?

I think I'm entitled.

To? The truth.

The truth about my mother.

She won't tell me. Because you won't believe her.

Maybe you won't believe me.

Maybe it's better not to know. I need to know!

You need to show me you're capable of handling the responsibility.

Don't try me, old man!

I gave you responsibility. I gave you a position!

I gave you things you couldn't get. You can't do the job!

Keeping Fox Mulder down is not a job! It's your dirty work!

You pale to Fox Mulder.

Bet you're curious about CGB. What's that?

CGB Spender. His name. Cigarette-Smoking Man.

What's it stand for?

It's an alias, as far as I can figure. One of hundreds.

Scully, wanna go one-on-one?

We got time now that we're on administrative leave.

Aren't you curious what I've got in the box?

Everything I could find on him.

Nothing you could ever find would be accurate or credible.

Maybe.

But there's a picture you're gonna wanna see.

That's CGB Spender... and my father.

It was taken in 1973.

The connection was something they worked on for 25 years at the State Department.

A highly classified project.

There's more, if you're ready.

Cassandra Spender is indeed the mother of Agent Jeffrey Spender and the ex-wife of CGB Spender.

But there's something that you're gonna be surprised to find out.

She was first abducted in 1973, on the night of November 27th.

That's the same night as my sister.

There are other names connected to CGB Spender and your father.

PhD's, doctors...

One, a Nobel winner for early works in genetics. A Dr Eugene Openshaw.

He was found amongst the burn victims, clinging to life beside Cassandra Spender.

He d*ed the next day in the hospital, before he was questioned.

The project is still going on. Yeah.

If Mulder hadn't known of his fathers history with me, he was fueled now with names and dates and... certainties.

I couldn't stop him any longer.

Stop him from learning our sins.

His father's and my own.

The truth was out there, fatally exposed.

I had one last hope.

One chance to preserve my legacy.

I waited like you asked. Good.

I'm pleased.

I was doubtful after our last meeting.

You have a new job for me?

Yes.

I may have been unduly harsh.

You deserve a fighting chance to prove your father wrong.

What is it? A w*apon.

A man has infiltrated the group that I work with. That's to k*ll him.

I don't understand.

He's pretending to be a member of our group, disguising himself as a man he's already k*lled.

You will greet him as that man, engage him in conversation, then put that in the back of his neck.

You can do it, Jeffrey.

Watch where you point that.

Sir, my name is Jeffrey Spender. My father sent me to see you.

I have a message from the group. They've changed their minds?

That's what I'm here about.

Sit, please.

What have you to tell me? Something I've been entrusted with.

It's, uh... it's a name, actually.

One that will have meaning for you.

I'm sorry.

Thanks for coming. I know it's late, and you're forbidden to have any contact with us.

Sir.

Cassandra Spender's life is in danger?

Her life's been in danger goin' on 30 years. Just not the way I think it is now.

In danger from who?

Men who've conducted experiments on a secret government project, that is now the most private global enterprise.

Enterprising to do what? To develop alien/human hybrids that will survive the viral apocalypse when aliens colonize the Earth.

I suppose you have proof of this.

Files that Agent ScuIIy dug up that make connections to Dr Eugene Openshaw, to my sister, to my father, to Agent Spenders father.

Agent Spenders father? The Smoking Man.

What? It's true, sir. We have documented evidence.

You believe this, Agent ScuIIy? This whole account?

I know she has doubts about the purposes of these experiments, but she believes she was a test subject when she was abducted four years ago.

If Cassandra's life was in danger, why not Scully's?

Cassandra represents the final stages of these experiments.

She may very well be the first successful alien/human hybrid.

What I don't understand is, if she was a success, then why is her life threatened?

Because... the men who created her would rather k*ll her than let her expose the enterprise.

She’s under 24-hour guard.

Assigned by Agent Spender?

You've never seen one before, have you?

It's shocking at first.

The acceptance of the idea, it's... it's something you thought only children and fools believed in.

It undermines your beliefs, in yourself and the world.

But then you come to understand. Understand what?

Well, the responsibility that this knowledge demands by the men who have it.

The great sacrifice, by great men like... your father.

What sacrifice? The sacrifice of your mother.

What do you know about that?

Just that she's been the subject of an experiment for 25 years.

My father's involved in that?

Is he? Your father directs the experiments.

So... I'm protecting her now so the experiments can continue?

That's... why he put you on the X-Files.

That's why your father sent you here tonight.

You're protecting the project, Jeff.

Making the sacrifices.

So that you can be a great man, too.

I'll be my own great man.

I've trusted no one.

Treachery is the inevitable result of all affairs.

Every man believes he has his own good reason.

I have little doubt of my son's disloyalty to me.

Certainly, he led Mulder and Scully to us.

His mother must know by now her central role in the grand plan, that she's as much alien as human.

Do you wonder why I've chosen you?

You've never betrayed me. Now I need someone to trust.

I'll help you.

It's not too late.

Cassandra?

Ms Spender?

Where's my mother? You tell me, Agent Spender.

Where's the guard? I had a guard posted here...

I got here and she was gone.

He took her. Who?

Agent Spender?

Cassandra? I can't believe I found you.

How did you find us? Cassandra?

How did you get here?

How'd you get out? How'd you get your clothes?

Agent Scully, Agent Mulder, you cannot let them find me!

You cannot let them have me! You have got to k*ll me! Now!

If you don't k*ll me, it all starts! There won't be any stopping it!

I am the one!

You have to sh**t me! Please!

Mulder, what are you doing?

Stay out of the way, Scully. Mulder!

Mulder, we have to protect her!

Mulder! Mulder!

I made this!