“The Pine Bluff Variant” is episode eighteen of season five of The X-Files.
Mulder is jogging in Folger Park in Washington. Cameras are watching him, and there are other agents. Scully and Skinner are with more inside a surveillance van; Scully points out a bus arriving. A man, Jacob Steven Haley, referred to as Target Alpha, gets off. Haley goes and sists at a bench with someone, Target Beta. They are talking, though Haley seems to be looking at Mulder. He hands an envelope over to Beta, who opens it and puts it in his pocket. Then coughs and collapses to the ground.
Haley leaves as others gather and the watchers move in. One says that something is eating away at Beta’s flesh. Mulder isn’t answering and Scully leaves the van to find him. She sees Mulder as Haley drives off. Mulder, when asked what happened, says he lost Haley. Scully seems astonished.
In Mulder’s office, Scully is looking at a surveillance video of someone interacting with Haley when Mulder comes in. She asks what happened; they had 12 agents and ownership of the suspect. But Mulder let him get away, maybe even aided his escape. She can’t prove it’s Mulder on the tape but she knows what she saw. She wants the truth. She doesn’t get it.
At the Joint FBI-CIA Counter-Terrorism Council, Skinner is briefing them. Haley is with the New Spartans militia, who were buying automatic weapons for domestic terrorism and to overthrow the federal government. The arms dealer died at the scene. His cause of death, according to Scully was a highly toxic biological agent not found in nature, probably a genetically engineered bioweapon. It’s suggested it could have come from the Siberian vector lab. The toxin is not contagious. U.S. Attorney Leamus asks how they know. Because they are not all dead, according to Mulder.
Haley eluded them because he had an accomplice they have yet to identify. The members of the task force were chosen due to their lack of exposure. Haley is number two in the New Spartans, and the number one, August Bremer, is more dangerous. Though there are reports the two of them are vying for control.
In Gables Corner, Ohio, Bremer enters a movie theatre. He asks for fresh popcorn to be made and the usherette goes to make some. When she leaves, Bremer puts gloves on and takes out an aerosol can.
Mulder arrives at a motor court in Delaware. Scully has followed. Mulder gets a call from Haley in his room; Haley accuses Mulder of setting him up. Mulder denies it; he only found out about the operation a half hour before and did what he could. He believes in Haley’s ideals and goals, but the only reason he tolerates their methods is because the government’s are worse. Mulder reminds Haley they came to him and hang up.
Two teenagers sneak into the cinema in Gables Corner. When one checks behind to see if they were noticed, everyone is extremely dead, no more than bloody skeletons.
Haley calls Mulder back and says they will proceed as planned. Mulder comes out of the room and gets in a car. Scully follows, with her lights off, then cars pull over in front of and behind her. She’s escorted to see Skinner and Leamus and is told that Mulder is in deep cover. Only they were aware of his mission until now. Why use Mulder? Because the New Spartans approached him after what Mulder said at the UFO conference in Boston in “Patient X”. One of the agents from the park enters and tells them there’s been another use of the bioweapon.
Mulder is taken somewhere wearing a hood and his hands are tied to a table. Haley is there and he wants to question him. Another starts bending Mulder’s finger back. Mulder headbutts him at one point. Haley orders Mulder’s finger broken, then tells Mulder he thinks he’s telling the truth.
Only the teenagers survived the attack in the cinema, so they have to try and figure out how it happened. Even Scully, a forensic pathologist, is disturbed by the state of the victims. There is a group planning a domestic terrorism attack with a horrendous bioweapon, and as bad as that sounds, there may be even worse things going on. And Mulder is hardly safe.