731

Directed by: Rob Bowman

Internal dating: No dates given for any episode between late September (Clyde Bruckman) and early January (Syzygy). If the order of the episodes roughly tracks the order of the events in Mulder and Scully's lives, this two-parter should be set around late November 1995 / early December 1995. Internally, all we know for certain is that this is set after Paper Clip but before Piper Maru. (But see the notes on Piper Maru for the problems with this dating.)

Scully challenges X with what he knows, now that Mulder is obviously on the train. He tells her "You want to know what's on that train? Who killed your sister? You find out what they put in your neck.... It holds more than I could ever tell you. Maybe everything you need to know." He leaves her apartment.

Mulder makes it onto the train, entering the hallway to a car that has a quarantine sign and an electronic code lock. He comes upon a conductor and tells him to let him into the car, but the man responds that he can't - the train picks up these kinds of cars from time to time, but he doesn't have access. He admits that a Japanese man on the train by the name of Shiro Zama may know somerthing about it. Mulder has him unlock Zama's compartment, but it is empty except for a briefcase which contains handwritten notebooks in Japanese. He gives the briefcaase to the conductor for safekeeping, as well as an unloaded gun, telling him to hold Zama if he sees him.

Pendrell tests the implant from Scully's neck. He finds that the chip replicates the memory function of the brain, collecting information. "You could know a person's every thought!" exclaims Scully, horrified. The chip was destroyed in the testing but Pendrell did find out that the chip was manufactured in Japan and was part of a shipment sent to a Dr. Shiro Zama at a research facility in Perkey, West Virginia.

Scully drives to Perkey to the research facility in the dead of night. Beings flees from her in the dark, but she finds them hiding in the basement of a barracks. They are horribly disfigured and beg her not to hurt them. They emerge from the basement. Their spokeman, the watcher in the woods, explains that the research facility was abandoned by Dr. Zama and the other doctors, right before the death squads began coming. He says that's who they've been hiding from, that hundreds have been killed, all but the small band of people talking to her now. He takes her into the woods, explaining that he and his friends are lepers who received treatment too late to stop the disfigurement of their disease. The others - the ones who have been slaughtered by the death squads - began arriving several years before, but they didn't have Hansen's Disease. Dr. Zama used to take them for "treatment" but they always got worse, with terrible burns on their bodies. He takes her to the side of the trench. Recoiling in horror and from the stench of decay, Scully sees the bodies of the beings who were murdered. Suddenly, a helicopter appears overhead and the woods are full of soldiers.

Mulder finds the body of Zama, who has been murdered by the Red-haired Man, in a bathroom on the train. He finds the conductor and tells him to lock the bathroom, and to tell the engineer not to stop the train until he finds the killer. Passing through to the quarentine car, Mulder finds the door open. The car is divided into three sections - a large outer room, a smaller room partitioned by glass doors, and finally, the inner room of the train car - a metal door with an electronic code lock, and a small window. Peering in, he can just make out the form of an alien-looking creature.

Suddenly, he has the wire of a garotte wrapped around his throat. The conductor arives just in time to stop the Red-haired Man from killing Mulder by holding the unloaded gun on him. He waits until he sees Mulder get up and draw his weapon, then he runs from the car, locking the door behind him. He demands to know who the Red-haired Man is. The man claims to work for the NSA, and has an ID. He then says that there's a bomb on the train that was triggered when the quarentine car was opened. He warns Mulder that if he shoots, he may accidentally detonate the bomb. "I'll take my chances", replies Mulder.

Scully is brought back to the barracks by a soldier. One of the men we recognize from the Consortium is waiting for her. She demands to know what happened to the people she was with. He says somewhat apologetically that they had been exposed to the results of horrible medical experiments conducted by a man called Shiro Zama. "You mean Ishimaru", says Scully, guessing that the two are one and the same. He admits that Zama/Ishimaru was given asylum after the war, but broke his word by conducting experiments on his own, without the government's knowledge. Scully asks if she has been exposed, too. "I don't know," he replies. "But I'd like to show you something that will give you your answers."

Back in the train car, Mulder finds out that they are locked in and do not have the exit code. He doesn't know whether to believe the bomb story told by the Red-haired Man or not. They are startled by the ring of the man's cellular phone. The call, surprisingly, is for Mulder. The man from the Consortium puts Scully on. She tells him that whatever is on the train car, it's not alien. She explains that she is in another train car, like the one in the alien autopsy video, and claims that the thing on Mulder's train is one of the victims of Zama's experiments, subjected to diseases and radiation. Mulder, one eye on the Red-haired Man, goes through to the middle section of the car, pulling the glass door closed. Scully admits that a mysterious man has told her all of this, but she believes him because she recognizes where she is from her own abduction experience. She declares that there is no such thing as alien abduction, that the government has been using it as a smokescreen "to cover up the biggest lie of all". She feels she now has proof - that the President has apologized for radiation experiments performed on unwitting citizens up until 1974 - but that those experiments never really stopped. She tells him again that he has to stay out of the train car, because she has found out there's a bomb on board. If the bomb explodes, it will spread hemorrhagic fever to thousands - that's what the test subject has been exposed to.

Mulder breaks the news to her that he's locked inside the train car. With hints from Scully, he and the Red-haired Man find the bomb in a ventilation duct. The digital readout is counting down - they have just over an hour and forty minutes before the bomb will detonate. The man from the Consortium tells Scully to tell Mulder to instruct the engineer to stop at the next station do they can get a bomb squad and evacuate the train. Mulder is highly suspicious - of the man Scully is with, of the story she has told him, of all the lies that have surrounded the case. He claims to be having trouble with the phone connection and hangs up.

Mulder instructs the conductor to tell the engineer to reroute the train to an unpopulated area, unhook the car, and get the rest of the train as far away as possible because there's a bomb on board. The Red-haired Man is upset - he says if the engineer does that, that they'll never be found in time. Mulder is betting they will. While Mulder's head is turned, the man finds a scalpel and hides it away.

About thirty minutes later, Mudler calls Scully on the cellphone. She's now alone, speeding in her car back to Washington. He tells her that they'll be found, that the car is probably being tracked by satellite, but that if she's right about the hemorrhagic fever, he had to get the train car as far away from a populated area as possible.

The time is down to thirty eight minutes and counting. Mudler now feels that no one is going to come to rescue them. He quizzes the Red-haired Man about what the thing is that's on the train car with them. He admits that it is a weapon - a being immune to the effects of weapons - an alien/human hybrid.

Scully races to Mulder's apartment. Frantically she tries to find help, calling Senator Matheson and taping an X to the window. Finally, she remembers something. She slides the alien autopsy video into the VCR. Dr. Ishimaru is in the video, punching a code into an electronic code lock like that trapping Mulder with the bomb. She calls him and relays the code she sees Ishimaru punching in. Only six minutes are left before the bomb is to go off. Scully finally gives him the last number. As Mulder punches it into the lock, he is hit from behind by the Red-haired Man, who slashes him with the scalpel and beats him unconscious. As he is about to get off the train car, a shot rings out and he falls, dying. X enters the car. He discovers Mulder's bloodied body and goes to the rear of the car where the being remains locked inside the inner room. He seems torn, like he has a decision to make, and not much time to make it. Finally, we see him running from the train, Mudler's inert form slung over his shoulder as the train explodes and bursts into a ball of flame.

Back in Washington a week later, everyone is denying that the train car ever existed. The injured Mulder had been discovered by means of an anonymous phone call in Blue Earth, Iowa and has spent some time in a hospital there. They have what is supposed to be Ishimaru's briefcase, but the notebooks have been switched. Mulder is furious that once again proof has slipped though their fingers. He is certain that the being in the train was an alien/human hybrid. Scully is just as convinced that Mulder is buying into the government smokescreen about alien abductions, giving creedence to a theory that covers a far uglier truth. "What they can't cover up, they apologize for. Apology becomes policy," she declares. "I don't need an apology for their lies," replies Mulder. "I don't care about the fictions they create to cover their crimes. I want them held accountable for what DID happen. I want an apology for the truth." It seems that each of the partners is more entrenched in his and her personal beliefs than ever.

In the closing scene, an elderly Japanese man translates Ishimaru's notebook, his glasses reflecting the flare of a match, lighting the cigarette of his companion.

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