MULDER: You think he's responsible for what happened?
PIERCE: Whatever there is between, me 'n Trepkos, I pray that he isn't. We've got $20 million tax dollars in this project. If word of it were to get out, it could destroy years of work. I'm afraid to go through proper channels.
MULDER: We're not exactly proper channels.
LUDWIG: (almost whacks MULDER in the head with a bat) This isn't what it looks like.
MULDER: Just about took my head off... do you always greet people this way?
MULDER: What do you make of Mr. Trepkos' neighborhood?
SCULLY: What do you mean?
MULDER: Don't you think their behavior's a little bizarre? Almost paranoid?
SCULLY: Based on what?
MULDER: Based on when Ludwig tried to play T-Ball with my head. He knew I wasn't Trepkos.
SCULLY: Now, Mulder, you're sounding paranoid.
MULDER: I'm going to go find Trepkos.
SCULLY:What if he's already dead?
MULDER: Then he'll have a tough time answering my questions.
SCULLY: Will you at least let me go with you?
MULDER: No.
SCULLY: Look, I know what you're thinking, but you have to get past that, we both do. I'm *back*, and I'm not going anywhere.
TREPKOS: If my intense desire to find the truth hasn't finally eclipsed the truth itself, our meddling intellect misshapes the beauteous forms of things.
My mind is a tangled knot I can no longer untie. Daily I fight the urge to sever it completely to stop this dissent.
I say the Earth holds some truths best left buried.
You still believe you can petition heaven to get some penetrating answer. If you found that answer, what would you do with it?
In a single moment, everything that science held sacred suddenly turned on its head.
MULDER: Scully and I are in the third day of a month-long quarantine, undergoing level 4 decon procedures. We are so far without symptoms of fungal contamination. All our specimens and field notes were confiscated by the military biohazard corps prior to our evacuation. Their presence has delayed for an indefinite period the arrival of the USGS data retrieval team. I suspect, though, that there will be little left for them to retrieve. There are no plans at present to explore further any of the hundreds of volcanically active mountains in the Cascade Range, including Mount Avalon. All access points to that volcano have been sealed off by army engineers. Of the members of the Firewalker descent team, only Trepkos and O'Neil remain unaccounted for. They are presumed dead, and the search for them has been abandoned. Firewalker, however, was recovered, though its sensory and locomotive systems were found to be irreparably damaged. The data it collected from the earth's interior will never be known. And of the events that occurred at Mount Avalon between the 11th and 13th of November, 1994, mine stands as the only record.
