Hallway of Confrontations. Skinner chases Scully until she turns around and shoots him an eyebrow. He stares at her for a second before asking why she even came in, since he'd told her previously that she didn't need to be present for the briefing. "I just had to see this for myself," Scully spits. Skinner sighs that she ought to go home. "To what?" Scully wonders, sharply. Skinner looks at his toes and finally offers that she doesn't need to put herself through this, and reminds her that he's got everyone in the FBI on this case. "And [DPB], leading the charge," Scully spits bitterly, before telling Skinner that she's pretty sure DPB is nothing more than Kersh's bitch. "You see a task force in there? I see a whitewash," she says. Skinner grits that Kersh and DPB are clean. "How many people have to be taken out for you to open your eyes to it?" Scully finally asks. "My son? Agent Doggett? Mulder?" Skinner does some more staring and tells her that Kersh is only looking out for her best interests, as evidenced by his "protecting" her by not telling her of the reports of Mulder's death: "As did [DPB]. As did I." Whatever. I don't understand how keeping that news from her is protecting her. It reminds me of those old movies wherein the ingenue has, like, six months to live, and the doctor tells her boyfriend instead of the ingenue, and the doctor and the boyfriend both stand there in the waiting room and gaze off into the distance, and the boyfriend bites his fist and the doctor is like, smoking, and then the boyfriend will grit out, "She can never know," and the doctor will nod all solemnly, and then pat the boyfriend on the back and go in and tell the ingenue that she's just fine, and then the boyfriend will marry the ingenue and then she dies in his arms on their wedding night, but not after exhaling that she knew all along. It's irritating and sort of sexist of Skinner to think that he has to keep bad news from Scully, in case it kills her. Because, hello, at this point, how likely is it that the reports of Mulder's death are true anyway? The man's been buried alive, people. "You can call it protection. I call it a systematic effort inside the FBI to eliminate us," Scully tells him. Skinner retorts that if she's accusing Kersh and DPB, she'll have to accuse Skinner, too. Scully just stares at him and slowly raises her brow. Skinner looks down at the ground. When he looks up, Scully's almost gone. "Scully! Where are you going?" he yells after her. "To find my son," she says, almost to herself, and stalks out of the FBI.