"What is it you find incredible?" Scully asked coolly.
Jana Cassidy suppressed a smile. "Well, where would you like me to start?"
As she spoke, a black-clad figure moved silently through the Dallas Field Office hun-dreds of miles away. Gray light filtered down through small windows set high above the floor, the only illumination until a flashlight beam suddenly pricked through the darkness. The beam swung back and forth, momentarily igniting jars, shattered plastic, twisted bits of wreckage. At last it settled on a table set up with microscope and magnifying glass, where several small vials were nestled in a cardboard box.
The man holding the flashlight moved quickly, silently, purposefully to the table. He was tall and gaunt-faced, his hair close-cropped. When he reached the table he extended one gloved hand and without hesita-tion picked up a vial, a tiny glass bottle con-taining fragments of petrified bone. The man glanced at the contents, then pocketed the evi-dence. As quickly and quietly as he had arrived, he disappeared, and the room was dark once more.
"—Antarctica is a long way from Dallas, Agent Scully," Jana Cassidy continued without a beat. "I can't very well submit a report to the Attorney General that alleges the links you've made here."
She picked up the file, then dropped in pointedly in front of her. "Bees and corn crops do not quite fall under the rubric of domestic terrorism."
Somewhere in the wilderness west of Dallas, a seemingly endless field of corn began to blaze as a phalanx of men wielding flamethrowers began to walk slowly and purposefully along the rows.
• • •
In the FBI Office of Professional Review, Scully shook her head, once. "No, they don't."
"Most of what I find in here is lacking a coherent picture of any organization with an attributable motive—"
Cassidy paused and stared directly at Scully—the first sympathetic look she'd given her since the proceedings had begun. "I realize the ordeal you've endured has clearly affected you—though the holes in your account leave this panel with little choice but to delete these references from our final report to the Justice Department—"
In an anonymous cul-de-sac, three unmarked tanker trucks sat beneath the blazing sun. A man in dark clothes, eyes masked by sunglasses, moved slowly alongside first one and then another of the trucks, painting bright green words and a gleaming ear of corn on the tanks: nature's best corn oil.
• • •
"And until a time," Jana Cassidy finished smoothly, "when hard evidence becomes avail-able that would give us cause to pursue such an investigation."
As Cassidy spoke, Scully's hand slipped into her coat pocket. When the Assistant Director grew silent, Scully stood and approached the conference table. She removed something from her pocket and placed it in front of Jana Cassidy.
"I don't believe that the FBI currently has an investigative unit qualified to pursue the evidence at hand," said Scully.
Jana Cassidy frowned and picked up what the agent had set there: a tiny glass vial con-taining a dead bumblebee. She studied it as, without asking permission, without another word, Agent Scully headed for the exit.
As the door closed behind her, Cassidy fur-rowed her brow and turned to Walter Skinner, her expression unreadable.
"Mr. Skinner?" she asked, and waited for his reply.
• • •
CONSTITUTION AVENUE WASHINGTON, D.C. NEAR FBI HEADQUARTERS
Fox Mulder sat on a park bench near the Mall, reading that morning's Washington Post. When he reached a small item in the national news his eyes widened.
FATAL HANTA VIRUS OUTBREAK
IN NORTHERN TEXAS REPORTED CONTAINED
He looked up. A figure was approaching him. When it grew closer, he saw it was Scully.
He stood and handed her the newspaper. "There's a nice story on page twenty-seven. Somehow our names were left out."
Scully took the paper without looking at it. Mulder went on, "They're burying it, Scully. They're going to cover it all back up and no one will know."
In a state of great agitation, he spun on his heels and began to walk away. Scully followed him.
"You're wrong Mulder," she said. "I just told everything I know to OPR."
Mulder stopped and looked at her dubi-ously. "Everything you know?"
Scully nodded and they began to walk again. "What I experienced. The virus. How it's been spread by bees from pollen in trans-genic corn crops—"
"And the flying saucer?" he broke in mock-ingly. "With the infected bodies and its little unscheduled departure from the polar ice cap?"
Scully looked at him grudgingly. "I admit I'm still less than clear on that. On what exactly I saw. And its purpose."
Mulder halted and turned to her. "It doesn't matter, Scully," he said. "They're not going to believe you.
Why would they? If it can't be programmed, catalogued, or easily ref-erenced—"
"I wouldn't be so sure, Mulder," said Scully.
Mulder's anger had turned to intense impa-tience. "How many times have we been here? Right here.
Grasping at the unbelievable truth? You're right to leave. You should get away from me. As far as you can."
"You asked me to stay," Scully said chal-lengingly.
"I said you didn't owe me anything," coun-tered Mulder. "Especially not your life. Go be a doctor, Scully."
Scully shook her head. "I will. But I'm not going anywhere." Mulder's eyes narrowed as she went on,
"This illness, whatever it is, has a cure. You held it in your hand—"
She took his hand and gazed up at him "—if I quit now, they win."
They stood without speaking. In the dis-tance, the Cigarette-Smoking Man sat in a nondescript car, his grim, dread stare focused on them. He took a last puff on his cigarette and flicked it onto the street.
The car's electric window rolled up, and he drove off.
FOUM TATAOUINE, TUNISIA
Early morning heat shimmered above the rows of corn stretching endlessly towards the hori-zon. In the near distance, a man in traditional Arab garb led a second man in a dark suit through the green and golden stalks.
"Mister Strughold!" the Arab shouted. "Mister Strughold!"
Conrad Strughold emerged from the rows of corn. At sight of the man behind the Arab, Stughold's eyes narrowed very slightly.
"You look hot and miserable," said Strughold evenly. "Why have you traveled all this way?"
The Cigarette-Smoking Man stared at him coolly. "We have business to discuss."
"We have regular channels," said Strughold.
"This involves Mulder," said the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
Strughold winced almost imperceptibly. "Ah, that name! Again and again—"
"He's seen more than he should," said the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
Strughold made a dismissive gesture. "What has he seen? Of the whole, he has seen but pieces."
"He's determined now," insisted the Cigarette-Smoking Man. "Reinvested."
"He is but one man. One man alone cannot fight the future."
The Cigarette-Smoking Man held something out to Strughold. "Yesterday I received this—"
Strughold took it from his hand: a telegram. He read it, then stared at the horizon without actually seeing what was there. Then he dropped the telegram. In silence he turned and headed back towards the cornfield.
On the ground the telegram rustled slightly in the wind. The words showed stark black against yellow paper.
X-FILES RE-OPENED. STOP. PLEASE ADVISE. STOP.
The wind rose, lifted the telegram and sent it spinning into the air. The telegram fluttered and swooped, rising higher and higher, until finally it disappeared into the sky. As far as the eye could see, row and rows of cornfields stretched. Acres of cornfields; miles. Extending across the Tunisian desert until they reached the horizon, where two immense white domes reared up against the horizon.