Note: I made CSM's quotes in yellow/italics for a reason. I thought that since he was kind of telling the story it was appropriate.

TEASER
The show starts out in a boxcar, with someone lying on an operating table, doctors surrounding the table. One doctor makes a slice on the person’s stomach with a laser, and green blood spurts out. Suddenly the cut disappears.

POTOMAC YARD
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
A car pulls up and Dr. Eugene Openshaw gets out. One of the doctors comes out of the boxcar and congratulates Openshaw, telling him his work has been completed. He tells him he should see her. They go inside, and the man tells Openshaw that after twenty-five years she must seem like an old friend to him.

The doctor leaves the boxcar. When he emerges, some faceless rebels are waiting for him. They torch him. Some people in a nearby car go to get out, but they are torched as well. The rebels torch the boxcar too.

One of the rebels looks down at the person on the table. It’s Cassandra Spender.

ACT ONE
Cigarette-Smoking Man is sitting with someone telling them what has been going on.

"This is the end. I never thought I’d hear myself say those words after all these years. You put your life into something. To build it, protect it. The end is as unimaginable as your own death. The death of your children. I could never have scripted the events that lead us to this. None of us could. All the brilliant men. The secret that we kept so well. It happened simply, like this: We had a perfect conspiracy, with an alien race. Aliens who were coming to reclaim this planet and to destroy all human life. Our job was to secretly prepare the way for their invasion. To create for them a slave race of human-alien hybrids…They were good plans. Right plans. Kept secret for over fifty years, ever since the crash at Roswell. Kept secret from men like Fox Mulder. Plans that would have worked, had not a rebel alien race come to destroy them. Had not my own son chosen betrayal. Or chosen to betray more wisely."

At the bureau, Skinner comes into Spender’s office. Spender tells him he’s working on a progress report of the X-Files. Skinner asks for who. Spender tells him it’s just to file. Skinner says that he has only sent one report to him in the past, and wants to know if he’s going to drop everything on him all at once. That he doesn’t think Spender has made any progress on the X-Files, that he has no interest in them, only on his personal case, his mother’s abduction. Spender cuts in with that it is an alleged abduction. Skinner hands Spender her case file, and tells him that that is what he is there about.

Spender and Skinner go to the scene. Skinner tells Spender that they found his mother. Spender goes over to her asking her where she had been. She tells him she needs to talk to somebody, but obviously, it’s not him. She wants to see Mulder.

Spender tells Skinner that he doesn’t want his mother to talk to Mulder, and also uses the excuse that Mulder is off the X-Files. Skinner just tells him that his mother asked to talk to him, and that he would think that he would want to use every resource available to him.

Back to Cigarette-Smoking Man:

"My son refused to believe that his mother had been abducted, though, it had been going on for years. Even after I schemed to put him in charge of the X-Files where Fox Mulder had amassed so much evidence of our secret plans. He still couldn’t bring himself to accept that 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."

At the gym, Mulder is playing basketball when Scully arrives. When Mulder sees her, he turns to the hoop and shoots – nothing but net. They have some cute dialog:

MULDER: Hey home girl! What’s up?
SCULLY: Mulder, it’s my distinct impression that you just cheated. And that you’re not coming in again today.
MULDER: No, Scully. I got game.
SCULLY: Yeah, you got so much game, I’m wondering if you have any work left in you.
MULDER: No, I’m ready to J.O.B. just not on some jag-off shoeshine tip.
SCULLY: No jag-off shoeshine tip?
MULDER: No background checking, jag-off shoeshine tip.
SCULLY: Well, about your J.O.B., Mulder, somebody’s been trying very hard to reach you by phone. Somebody who wants you back at the F.B.I. A.S.A.P.
MULDER: ‘Bout what?
SCULLY: About an X-File.

FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mulder goes over to Spender’s desk, knowing that his mother has been returned. Spender doesn’t exactly ‘ask’ Mulder for his help. Mulder remarks to spender, "I didn’t hear the magic word."

ST. MARK’S MEDICAL CENTER
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Dr. Openshaw is severely burnt, lying in a protection chamber. CSM is talking to him. Openshaw tells him that the work is finished, that Cassandra was a success. CSM says she can’t be, at least not now. Openshaw tells him that he prepared a syringe for her, but the rebels came. They came to save her to expose them. Openshaw knows CSM must kill him because he knows too much. He seems to maybe even welcome it. He says, "A man should never live long enough to see his children, or his work destroyed."

One of the elders of the Sydicate (I think the 2^nd Elder?) gets a call from CSM telling him that the rebels struck in Virginia during a medical procedure and killed all of the doctors, including Dr. Openshaw. He tells him that he has set a meeting of the Syndicate. The elder tells him he will be there.

Dr. Openshaw shows up at the elder’s door. Having just heard that Openshaw was dead, he grabs at the man’s face pulling down his skin. It is an alien rebel. The rebel torches the elder as the camera pans out and the screen fades to black.

ACT TWO
9:42 p.m.
Mulder is sitting at his desk looking at some crime scene photos of the victims of the burnings. He tells Scully what happened to him while talking to Spender. Scully asks him if this is not an opportunity for him, Spender has given him an X-File. Mulder thinks he’s being set up. Scully looks at the photos and tells him that they have seen something like this before – bodies set aflame with no conclusive cause of combustion. Mulder tells her that he knows Cassandra would expose more than just what happened to her. Scully asks:

SCULLY: What if what she tells us could, could, expose who did this to me?"

Scully tells him that Spender doesn’t have to know.

Scully goes to see Cassandra, who’s happy she’s there. She hugs Scully and they go to leave the room to talk. Scully tells her she will get a wheelchair for her, but she tells her she doesn’t need one any more. Cassandra gets out of bed and walks out of the room with Scully.

Cassandra tells Scully that the doctors can’t figure it out. She had told Scully before that they were great healers. She tells her though, that this time she isn’t going to tell anyone what happened, because no one would believe her. She’s only going to tell the one person she knows will.

The two of them walk into a room when Cassandra turns to Scully and tells her that when Scully showed up she expected Mulder to be with her, and that she had hoped he was. Scully tells her she has a surprise for her.

Before Mulder gets a chance to come out of hiding, Cassandra starts calling for him, and he tries to quiet her.

CASSANDRA (laughing): Oh my God, I think I’m gonna pee the floor!
MULDER (laughing): Don’t, don’t do that!

He looks at her standing, and she tells him that she told him that they had the power. (During this she lights a cigarette) He just didn’t believe. He doubted himself, and doubted that his sister would ever return.

Scully looks to Mulder and tells Cassandra, that Mulder told her that he believes he saw his sister last year. Cassandra tells Mulder it wasn’t her. When he asks where Samantha is, she tells him that she’s with the aliens.

Scully tells her that they found her (Cassandra) in the train car, operated on by doctors. Cassandra tells her, however, that they are not who cured her, the aliens did. The doctors were working WITH the aliens, which is what she wanted to tell Mulder. Before, she had told him that the aliens were there to do good, and that she was just to spread the word. Now she knows though, that what they are there for isn’t good. They came to wipe off the planet, to take over the universe. She tells them that they’re infecting all other life forms with a black substance called "Purity." Purity is their life force; it’s what they’re made of. Mulder guesses that it’s the virus, the black oil.

Scully tells her though, that the doctors weren’t infected, they were burned. Cassandra tells her that they were burned by another race of aliens, a rebel force, that are mutating their faces so they won’t be infected. She says that this is what she couldn’t tell Jeffery, because he wouldn’t believe her, even though his life is in danger by the same alien race. She tells them that Spender is in with men that have been working with the alien colonists for fifty years, to do whatever they did to Scully and herself. Mulder asks her if she knows who the men are. She tells him she does. One of them is her ex-husband, Jeffery’s father.

Back to Cigarette-Smoking Man:

"Cassandra was beginning to realize her role in the greatest science project that man had ever known. She was the center of fifty years of work. The key to all of our plans. Something even my colleagues didn’t realize yet. I kill to keep them unknowing. I killed Dr. Opensaw so they wouldn’t discover her, when it’s Cassandra I should have killed. Cassandra was who needed to die. I couldn’t do it. With all the blood on my hands, I couldn’t kill the mother of my own son. The woman I never even loved. My colleagues never knew, focussed as they were on the new threat. The faceless alien rebels who’d burned our doctors alive. But my colleagues had become blind to the fact that the faceless rebels already held the upper hand. That they’d use the powers of disguise to infiltrate our group."

At the Syndicate meeting, Krycek is talking about what happened. The train cars would cost them.

When asked why, CSM says that they burned the doctors, because they want to expose everything they’ve (meaning the Syndicate) worked for.

The elder (who is actually dead, now a rebel) asks why they just don’t side with the rebels, join with the resistance. Krycek says that he (the elder) declined before and that resistance was futile. He wants to know why it would be less so now. That the elder voted against it, and against men like Bill Mulder because collaboration (with the aliens, not the rebels) has allowed them to prepare, and to stall colonization. Krycek asks how close they are to developing a human-alien hybrid. That alone would ensure their survival. The elder cuts in saying that they would survive as slave laborers to the aliens.

KRYCEK: What about your vaccine? By collaborating you’ve bought yourself time to secretly develop a way to combat the aliens. To fight the future.

CSM tells them that they have worked on the project for fifty years, since Roswell. That they can’t sacrifice themselves for every new threat.

Mulder and Scully sneak into their old office. Scully wants to know why they are risking going in there. Mulder tells her that their computers would be monitored.

Mulder goes to the computer and searches the database for Spender. He finds files on Spender, and his mother. When Mulder types something into the computer, another profile comes up, this one of CSM.

MULDER: Smokey’s got a name.

Under CSM’s picture is the name "C.G.B. Spender." When Mulder tries to get more information, the computer says that none is available.

Suddenly Skinner comes in the room, yelling at them to get out, that they are coming. They rush out of the room, but they are too late. Spender catches them and tells Skinner that he’s assuming he was apprehending them, and that he’ll have it noted in the report for Mulder and Scully’s dismissal from the bureau.

ACT THREE
Spender comes into talk to CSM. He tells CSM that he has done what he asked him to do – Mulder and Scully have been processed out of the F.B.I. Now, he wants some answers. He wants to know about his mother, because she won’t tell him anything. CSM says that it’s because he wouldn’t believe her, and that he might not believe him. He tells Spender that maybe it’s better if he doesn’t know. He first needs to show he’s capable of handling the responsibility that comes with the knowledge.

SPENDER: Don’t try me old man!

CSM slaps Spender on the face! He tells Spender that he gave him responsibilities and a position he couldn’t have gotten on his own, and that he can’t do his job. Spender tells him that keeping Fox Mulder down isn’t a job, that it’s his (CSM’s) dirty work. CSM slaps him again!

CSM: You pale to Fox Mulder!

Mulder is in the gym again playing basketball, this time alone. Scully comes in.

MULDER: Scully, you wanna go one on one? We got nothin’ but time, now that we’re on administrative leave.

Scully asks him if he’s not even curious as to what she found out about C.G.B. Spender, a.k.a. CSM. He tells her that nothing she could find would be accurate or credible. She tells him that that may be true, but that she found a picture he is going to want to see. It’s of CSM and Mulder’s father. The picture is from 1973. She traced it to a connection that they worked on a highly classified project together in the state department for twenty-five years.

Scully also found out something important about Cassandra Spender. Not only is she Spender’s mother and CSM’s ex-wife, but she was first abducted on November 27^th, 1973, the same date Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted.

Scully also found other connections to CSM and Bill Mulder’s names – to doctors. Particularly one who worked in genetics - Dr. Opensaw. They found him near Cassandra alive, but he died in the hospital before he could be questioned. Mulder realizes that the project is still going on.

Back to CSM:

"If Mulder hadn’t know of his father’s history with me, he was fuelled 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."

CSM tells Spender that he will at least give him a chance. He gives Spender a gimlet (that kills the rebels in the back of the neck) and tells him to kill the elder that is already dead.

Spender gets in the car with the gimlet, and Krycek, who is driving again, says:

KRYCEK: Watch where you point that.

Spender goes to the elder’s house with an excuse that he was sent with information. He goes to stab the elder, but he is faster and grabs Spender. Before he can kill him though, Krycek jumps out and stabs the rebel in the base of his neck, killing him. Spender looks on, stunned.

ACT FOUR
Skinner comes to Mulder’s apartment. Mulder tells Skinner that Cassandra is in danger. The men who conducted medical experiments and what began as a secret government project was now the most private global enterprise. Skinner wants to know what they were trying to do. Mulder tells him that they want to develop an alien-human hybrid that will survive the viral apocalypse when aliens colonize the earth. Mulder tells him he has proof in everything Scully dug up. It all makes the right connections to Dr. Opensaw, his sister, his father, and Agent Spender’s father. Mulder explains to Skinner that CSM is Spender’s father. Scully, although doubting the purpose of the experiments, believes that she was a test subject as well years ago when she was abducted.

Skinner wants to know why Cassandra’s life is in danger, but not Scully’s. Mulder explains that he thinks Cassandra represents the final stages of the experiments, that she is very likely the first successful alien-human hybrid. Even though she was a success, her life is being threatened because the men who created her would rather kill her than have her expose their enterprise.

Skinner tells them that Cassandra is under twenty-four hour guard – by agents assigned by Spender.

Krycek and Spender stand looking down at the body oozing green blood and melting (not affected whatsoever from the blood, and I have no idea why). Spender is still in shock. Krycek guesses that this is the first time he was ever see this. He tells him that the first time is shocking – the acceptance of the idea. Something that he probably thought only children and fools would believe in. But he will come to understand the responsibility that the knowledge demands. The sacrifices that they have to make. Spender doesn’t know yet what the sacrifices are, so Krycek tells him, thinking he should already know. The sacrifice he (Spender) is making is his mother, so he can become a great man like his father. Spender asks what he knows about her, and he says that he only knows that she’s been the subject of an experiment for twenty-five years. Spender asks if his father is involved, and Krycek tells him that his father directs the experiments. Spender realizes then that he is protecting his mother only so that the experiments can continue. Krycek tells him that’s why he was put on the X-Files, why he was sent to kill the elder. By protecting the project he’s making sacrifices so he can be a great man too. Spender says he’ll be his own great man, and he rushes out.

Back to CSM:

"I’ve trusted no one. Treachery’s the inevitable result of all fears. Every man believes he has his own good reason. I have little doubt of my son’s disloyalty to me. But 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 chose you?"

The other person is silent.

"You’ve never betrayed me and now I need someone to trust."

The camera pans to show Diana Fowley who says, "I’ll help you. It’s not too late."

Cassandra is missing from the hospital. Spender goes to find her knowing where she had to have gone.

Cassandra arrives at Mulder’s frightened, saying that they are after her. She tries to grab Mulder’s gun and tells him that he has to kill her, it’s the only way. Mulder points the gun at Cassandra as Scully yells at him not to shoot. Someone is pounding at the door. He has to make his decision.

TO BE CONTINUED…

*Shippiness rating is based on a scale from 1 to 10, "Redux II" being a perfect 10 and Triangle being above the scale*

Images from Two Fathers

This episode is part 1 of 2. The second episode is called "One Son."

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