XFC: The Sixth Extinction II

Mulder dreams about a young couple teaching their son to walk on a
beach. In reality, Mulder is still in the hospital, lying in a coma. His
mother tries to speak to him and receives no response. Mrs. Mulder
doesn't hear her fully-alert son calling out to her in his head. But the
Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM) knows Mulder can read his thoughts.
He injects Mulder's head with a serum that allows Mulder to move
and speak. CSM offers his hand. Mulder again envisions the toddler
on the beach as the words of CSM lull him: "Take my hand because I
am your father."

Scully is working round-the-clock to find the cause of Mulder's
illness, when Kritschgau sneaks into the office. He explains that
exposure to the spacecraft's energy has activated the alien virus
injected into Mulder two years ago. Kritschgau demands Scully's
research, but they are interrupted by a phone call from Skinner:
Mulder has disappeared from the hospital. She hurries to the hospital
and learns that it was Mulder's mother who has checked him out.
Skinner tells Scully that he must remove himself from the case and
from knowledge of the agents' whereabouts. Skinner's position has
been compromised. Mulder again sees the boy on the beach, and
awakens to find himself in CSM's car. CSM tells him that doctors
have worked on him, and the only way he can be saved from death is
to disappear into a kind of witness protection program. CSM pulls up
to a suburban street and points out Mulder's new life. CSM offers him
the chance to return to his previous existence with the X-Files, but
Mulder is curious about this new home. He is pleased to find a
refrigerator stocked with his favorite sunflower seeds. As he pops one
into his mouth, he is startled by the presence of an old ally -- Deep
Throat (killed the first season in "The Erlenmeyer Flask"). Deep
Throat boasts about his peaceful life in this neighborhood and
encourages Mulder to join him. But Mulder is overwhelmed with guilt
for his causing this man's supposed death. Deep Throat tells him not
to feel responsible for his death or the deaths of Mulder's father,
Scully's sister and Duane Barry. Deep Throat explains that they the
two of them are merely puppets in a master plan. He coaxes Mulder
to relax and enjoy his new life.

Scully finds the Navajo elder Albert Hosteen (last seen dying in
"Biogenesis") in her apartment. Hosteen warns her that she must
save Mulder for the sake of mankind. Scully returns to the hospital.
She reviews a surveillance tape of Mulder's room where she can see
through the mostly covered monitors that Mulder's mother is talking
to someone with a cigarette. This convinces Scully that CSM is
behind Mulder's disappearance. At the FBI, Scully receives an
inter-office envelope containing a book on Native American practices.
The symbols on the book's cover match the ones she had been
studying on the spaceship in Africa. She reads a myth foretelling a
mass extinction with a man who can save the world from this
tragedy. She calls Skinner to question him as the source for this
clue. Scully deduces that they took Mulder because they think his
illness is protection against a coming plague. An apprehensive
Skinner hangs up on her. Scully runs up to his office and sees
Skinner doubled over in pain, while a bearded man escapes. Scully
goes to Kritschgau and admonishes him for revealing the secrets
about Mulder's illness. Kritschgau has hacked into her computer files
and explains that her research will prove that Mulder has biologically
transformed into an alien.

Mulder has another vision of the beach. The boy is sad that his sand
sculpture has been washed away by the tide. Mulder comforts him
and encourages the boy to build it again. Mulder is awakened by
Diana Fowley who comes to his bed, convincing him of the joys of
marriage. They make love. The next morning, Diana tries to persuade
Mulder that he should become a father. She brings him to CSM's
house nearby and points out CSM's daughter, Samantha Mulder.
Suddenly we are in an operating theater. CSM tells Diana that men
like Mulder have dreams of a simpler life. He says this about the real
Mulder, who lies on a table with his head strapped in a surgical
device. This is where Mulder really is. The illusion of domestic,
suburban bliss is only in his mind.

At the FBI, Scully tries to appeal to Diana for help, causing Diana to
question CSM's motivation for using Mulder in the experiments.
Albert Hosteen reappears in Scully's apartment. He tells her to look
inside her heart for Mulder. The two pray together.

Still in his dream, Mulder's life progresses with Diana. He physically
ages as he goes through their wedding, her pregnancy and children,
and then her death. Mulder slips back into his subconscious where
the sand sculpture has become a spaceship. The boy starts to
smash the sculpture, telling him that it is really Mulder's spaceship
and he is the one destroying it. A now aged Mulder wakes up to
CSM at his bedside. CSM tells him that he should let go. As Mulder
closes his eyes, the world outside is in full apocalypse. Yet in real
life, Mulder and CSM are side-by-side on a medical table for some
kind of procedure transplanting Mulder's alien genetic material into
CSM.

The bearded man from Skinner's office kills Kritschgau and torches
all his research. Only now is his identity revealed: it's Alex Krycek.
An envelope is slid under Scully's door with a key card that leads
Scully to the surgical facility where Mulder is being held. In Mulder's
dream he is ready to give up, but Scully forces him to persist with
their mission. In reality, Scully does come to the surgery room to
save Mulder. She wakes him up and he draws strength from her
presence. She helps him escape.

Scully checks up on the still weakened Mulder is in his apartment.
He wears bandages on his head from the operation. He informs her
that Albert Hosteen has died in New Mexico. This upsets Scully. She
doesn't believe that her experience was imagined. Then Scully
breaks her bad news to Mulder: Diana was murdered because she
helped save him. Mulder is emotional, and reveals his dreams about
another life without the X-Files. He admits to Scully that she was the
only one who told him the truth in his dreams and that "even when
my world was falling apart, you were my constant, my touchstone."
She tells her partner that she feels the same way, then leaves. One
more time, Mulder dreams of the boy on the beach. This time they
are rebuilding a huge sandcastle spaceship together.