“Trust No 1” is episode six of season nine of The X-Files.
Scully is talking about the truth, the search for it and that truths are out there, but one is not found alone, through science or on an unseen plane. The truest truths are found by looking into your heart, those that hold us together or keep us painfully apart. During this, there are surveillance photos and videos of Scully and Mulder, culminating in Scully beside a railway line and next to a body.
Perhaps apropos, the opening words are ‘THEY’RE WATCHING’.
A CCTV camera is focused on Scully at night at a train station.
Scully heads into an internet cafe with William. She checks her email; one, from trust_no1, is presumably from Mulder. He wants to come home to her and William. Another woman enters with a pram and Scully starts typing a response, saying it’s still not safe. She hears a baby crying and looks up to see the mother has gone. Scully speaks to the girl from behind the counter; the latter thinks the mother is outside. She is, arguing with a man it looks like before coming back in.
Back at the academy, Scully is reading a printout of the email when Doggett and Reyes arrive. They want to talk about Mulder; a guy is contacting them through intelligence channels. He wants to talk to Mulder and always covers his tracks. This morning, he said he had access to highly classified military files on the supersoldiers, the same ones that threaten Mulder’s life. He wants to gives the names of supersoldiers, but Mulder is the only person he will talk to. Scully claims she doesn’t know how to contact him. She heads to teach a class but Doggett follows. If they know who the supersoldiers are, they can go after them and make it safe for Mulder to come home. Scully doesn’t want to risk Mulder’s life any more than it currently is. Doggett asks how long she’ll refuse to trust him, or anybody, because how else will Mulder come home?
Scully arrives outside her building and sees an argument between a man and a woman holding a baby. The man takes the baby and drives off. They are the same ones who were arguing outside the coffee shop. Scully takes the woman to her apartment and she, Patti, says the man is her husband. Scully offers to let her stay the night.
Doggett is sat in his car in Bethesda when Reyes arrives. Doggett tracked the cell phone the contact rang from to a node, and the building they are outside is the only thing in the area. Reyes is concerned about spooking the source. A car arrives and Patti’s husband gets out. He goes into the building; Doggett plans to look in his car.
Patti’s husband enters a room full of monitors showing surveillance feeds. He is talking awkwardly to another man, the latter currently watching Doggett and Reyes search the car.
Scully is at the railway again. Reyes is there, too.
In the morning, Doggett sees Patti’s husband leaves. He wakes Reyes and they follow. At Scully’s, Patti gets up, checks on Scully then unplugs the baby monitor, picking William up. Scully is woken by her phone; Doggett says they tailed a car to her street and watched a guy go into her building. Scully hears William cry and confronts Patti. Outside, Patti’s husband is picking the lock; Doggett tackles him then knocks on Scully’s door.
Inside the apartment, the man won’t talk, saying they’re watching. Scully pulls down the blind. He says he works for the NSA and they have a daughter. There’s something different about her, just as there is about William. He says he knows everything about her, including that William spun his mobile as if with his mind. The same happened to them. He says his supervisor is the one contacting them. And then said supervisor rings. He claims he can only listen now; he’s lying.
The man knows that Scully is in contact with Mulder and wants her to contact him. Whether that is truthfully to tell him details about the supersoldier program, or to draw him out, is another question. He knows an awful lot about Scully. Scully decides to trust him, though when Doggett said she had to trust someone, he likely wasn’t thinking of mysterious NSA agents.