First, I want to comment a little on the episode. This is the kind of episode that has been missing from the show for awhile. It’s one of the shows that after it has finished, you just stare at the screen and are like "Huh?"
While Skinnercentric, this episode was very good and suspenseful. The majority of the episode takes place in 24 hours, and a time is frequently shown on the screen so as to know how much time Skinner has left. The episode also shows the strength of the friendship between Skinner and Mulder and Scully, and how even though Skinner may want to help, it seems that his hands are tied.
*NOTE: V.O. is Voice Over.*
She tells him to call the FBI and talk to an Agent Scully. She tells him that the man in the hospital is an Agent at the FBI, and that he is going to die.
The camera pans to show Skinner in a bed in a hospital room. His skin is completely covered with large, pulsing, bluish purple veins.
The head doctor leans down as Skinner whispers a name in her ear.
Skinner goes into cardiac arrest and the doctors go to save him, until the head doctor tells them to let him go.
Skinner’s eyes turn lifeless.
Skinner wakes up in a hospital room. The nurse talks to him, giving him the 'one ear boxing joke.' She leaves the room.
He sits up looking a little disoriented. Suddenly his cell phone rings. It is a computerized voice that tells him, "Walter Skinner. Have you heard the news? It's in you. You have 24 hours to go. You are already dead."
The doctor comes into the room and tells Skinner he will be fine, and makes another ear joke. Skinner remembers about the boxing match, but not the big bruise on his ribcage. The doctor releases him, but tells him he should rethink the boxing, he's not 20 anymore.
Mulder sees Skinner walking past him with obvious discomfort. He follows him into his office to find out what’s wrong.
Skinner is lying on the couch in his office looking very sick. He tells Mulder that he was having trouble seeing so he didn't want to drive home.
Scully starts asking Skinner questions, starting with wanting to know what he ate. She thinks he has been poisoned, however at the hospital they checked his blood and it checked out all right.
Skinner wants to know why someone called him at the hospital. Mulder thinks that they wanted to scare him, to see who he'd turn too. Mulder thinks it has to do with the X-Files. Skinner tells him that they are off the X-Files, but Scully counters that he (meaning Skinner) isn't, he is still over the department.
Scully tells him anything could have done it, the slightest touch or handshake.
Skinner tries to remember exactly what happened, starting with him coming to work. The only thing different from any normal day he can remember is a man grabbing his arm and asking what time it is.
Scully says that it wouldn't necessarily leave a mark, some poisons are absorbed through the skin.
Mulder asks him what time it was and they go to look at the bureau surveillance tape. They see the man - Kenneth Orgel, an advisor to a senate subcommittee on ethics and new technology, a physicist. However, he signed in as a visitor coming to see Skinner.
Mulder tells Skinner to go around back, and then pulls out his gun. When Orgel opens the door again after Mulder knocks, he tells him to leave, and Mulder tries to push through, however he fails.
Around back, Skinner has gotten into the house. Inside, a man is taking Orgel away. The other man hits Skinner over the head.
Mulder chases after them, but the one man gets away with Orgel. (*Note, during this music from The X-Files movie is playing!*)
The bluish purple veins have started up Skinners neck.
The doctor tells her that his blood hasn't even been checked yet. She decides to do it herself, but he tells her that he would need a written permission from the patient. She tells him that there might not be enough time for that.
The doctor tells her that Skinner had no symptoms of poisoning.
Mulder is in Orgel's house looking around. In the garbage he finds pictures of Orgel with Senator Matheson.
Scully processes the blood and they find it to contain pure Carbon. They have no idea how it could get into his bloodstream, or how it could work as a poison.
Scully and the doctor look at the screen. All of a sudden the Carbon starts multiplying. As they watch, it continues to multiply. They zoom in on the picture and have no idea what the cells are.
Suddenly a shot comes through his window from the man with the diplomatic papers.
When the man comes over to Skinner's window, he sits up and fires at him. Skinner gets out of the car to look around. He is holding his gun out in front of him. His sight is blurry again and he has trouble walking.
Lazreg is behind Skinner, who hadn't shot him enough to kill him. A car suddenly comes out of nowhere and hits Lazreg. The camera shows a glimpse of who was driving the car - a man with long hair and a beard. Skinner sits down against a car trying to catch his breath.
A nurse comes in telling them that they found Skinner in the parking garage, and that he's been taken to D.C. General.
At the hospital, the doctors are looking at Skinner saying that he has an extreme vascular event happening. The doctor doesn't even know how he's staying alive.
The doctors are preparing to remove his arms, thinking it will help.
Thankfully, Scully gets there in time. The doctors try to throw her out, but being Scully, she doesn't give up. She tells him that his arms have nothing to do with it, it's his blood. Dr. Plant is there and tells them that she is a doctor. Scully tells the doctor that she needs to get a scope into him, it's the only way to save him. Finally they listen to her. The female doctor pulls her mask down. It's the doctor from the teaser that had let Skinner die.
As Skinner is being moved to another room, Scully is trying to comfort him, telling him that they are going to do everything possible.
Skinner starts seeing flashbacks, first of the boxing match. Then, he sees Orgel grabbing his wrist. Next is the scene in the parking garage. He tells Scully he can't remember.
Ignoring her, Mulder finds an envelope on her desk. He opens it and starts to read.
Back at the hospital Scully is looking at Skinner's charts when Mulder comes in. Scully tells Mulder that Skinner is stable, but that he's not good. He has extreme vascular trauma and distension. His blood has become a weapon against his body. He asks if they can fight it, but she says that they don't know what it is. The best that they can do is keep lasering his arteries open, but that will only work for so long. It's building walls in his vessels faster than they can tear them down, and they just don't have the technology to combat it.
Mulder says that maybe they do. He shows her the package he had been looking at before in Skinner's mail. It was from Matheson. Skinner was doing a security check on a Senate bill for violation of trade laws involving sensitive technology. Scully tells him that it's just a routine procedure, that the bureau does dozens of them every year. Mulder tells her that the bill had gone above the Senate, it was only waiting for Skinner's review and an analysis by Dr. Kenneth Orgel. Scully wants to know if he thinks that Orgel poisoned Skinner to cover up his analysis. Mulder tells her that Orgel didn't poison anyone. He came to warn Skinner about what was going on, that there was a violation of export laws involving new technology. He asks her if she knows what that means. She says that she thinks she might.
A cell phone rings. It's Skinners. The computer voice from before says, "Might as well give up. You can't stop it. Walter Skinner, your time is almost up."
A man is shown holding a little computer screen displaying the message as he writes.
Mulder sees him and runs over. It's the man with the long hair and beard. The man runs and Mulder follows him. (If you've seen the pictures on the Internet, you probably know by now who it is he is chasing.)
After scaring a nurse, Mulder sees the man's car drive out. He follows it as far as he can, but it is too fast. He goes up a level and tries to cut him off. When he gets to where the man went, he sees a smashed car and a woman yelling to a guard in Spanish.
Senator Matheson is driving when he gets a call from a very familiar voice telling him that the bill is in danger, a new threat has emerged. He tells him he shouldn't have called, and the man on the other end replies then that it is in his hands. Matheson tells him that he doesn't buy his threats. The man says that Dr. Orgel does, that he can ask him. The bearded man is shown. Matheson asks what he's done with him. The man says he can tell him where to find him, and then he hangs up.
MULDER: Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful.
Mulder asks what else they found. The doctor says that they scraped the tire treads and found something odd. He holds up a vial and says that it's full of polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs. More than 500 parts per million, amounts that were seen in the seventies before the EPA 'got fangs.' The PCBs were saturated evenly in the clay, from maybe an old power plant.
From up above, the bearded man is shown with the computer screen. He holds it up and Orgel starts screaming in pain. On the screen is a chart that the man is making go up with the pen. The senator backs away.
He tells her that he owes her and Mulder and apology. Their quest, it should have been his. If he dies now, he dies in vain. He thinks he has nothing to show for himself or his life. He says that he always played it safe - he wouldn't take sides. Wouldn't let her and Mulder pull him in. She tells him that he has been their ally so many times, but he thinks it wasn't enough, not the kind of ally he could have been.
Scully touches his hand and his mind flashes back again to when Orgel grabbed his wrist. He tells her he remembers.
In his mind he sees the boxing match, and there is the bearded man, but he can't see his face. Then he sees him at the hospital, and in the parking garage where he killed the man. He also sees him when he was at the FBI, when Orgel approached him. The man was following him. Suddenly, Skinner says:
SKINNER: The tape. He's on the surveillance tape.
Scully goes to find out.
Back in the hospital, around 9:30, Skinner is getting worse. The same scene takes place as in the teaser. Skinner goes into cardiac arrest, but the doctor tells them not to try to save him. They mark the time of death 9:33, and pull a sheet over his head.
The bearded man is shown with his computer screen again. He moves the levels shown on the chart back down.
Skinner's heart starts beating again and he coughs and wakes up. He sees the man. In a second he is gone again.
Mulder shows him the pictures and Skinner says he doesn't know who it is.
Mulder tells him that SR: 819 was withdrawn by committee late the night before without explanation. Skinner says simply, "Good," that the man failed. Mulder says [only] if that was his motive. If he wanted to poison Skinner from investigating SR: 819 then why did he call him to tell him that? The man worked for the government that was to receive the technology, and he killed one of his own to save Skinner.
Skinner asks Mulder if he still thinks it was about him, about the X-Files. He does, and he has an idea who is behind everything, but he needs Skinner's authority to continue the investigation, which unfortunately, is the one thing Skinner can not give him.
Skinner walks through the bureau parking lot and gets in his car. He starts to talk to someone sitting in the passenger seat beside him. Skinner says he had been expecting him to show up. The man closes the computer device as the camera pans to show an unmistakable face in the dark. Without the beard he is easily recognizable.
He says to Skinner, "You know I can push the button any time." Skinner wants to know what he wants from him. "What do you want, Krycek?" he asks. He replies leaning out of the dark, "All in good time." With that, Krycek leaves. Skinner starts the car and pulls away as the screen fades to "Executive Producer Chris Carter."
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