When they reached the portal, Scully was going to walk right through it without question, but Mulder thought better of it and stopped Scully just short of the opening. He held her back with his arm.

"Wait."

Mulder stuck his arm through the portal and the same effect happened to him just like in his dream with William. Mulder's arm was caught in a force field that was ferociously jerking and bouncing it around like it was made out of rubber, at a speed that was extraordinarily too fast to even calculate. He quickly pulled his arm back out.

Scully swallowed hard. "You mean to tell me we have to walk through...THAT?"

"You see any other way out of here, Scully?"

She let out the breath she was holding. Mulder extended his hand to her, and she answered him by grasping his hand with hers. Now hand in hand, the two bravely walked through the portal together. They quickly got caught up in the force field. Their bodies were lifted up and shaken and twisted to the extreme. They both briefly passed out from the sensation, but awoke again when the force field spit them back out and dropped them to the ground on the other side of the portal.

"Well! Wasn't that fun?" Mulder smirked to Scully as he got up from the ground. Scully was on her hands and knees, struggling to get up. "You okay, Scully?"

He yanked on her arm to pull her up but abruptly stopped the motion when she screamed in pain, "NO, WAIT!"

He was startled by how much pain she was in. But then he realized that she had still to recover from her bruising she received at the hands of the Super Soldier, and with the force field wracking her body all over again...

Mulder stared at her wide-eyed, waiting for her to say something, wanting to help her but not knowing how.

The beating from the force field had knocked the breath out of her and also rekindled the pain from her broken ribs. "I...just...need a...minute," Scully courageously told Mulder, trying to hide the true pain that she felt to ease his mind.

"Okay," Mulder quietly said as he sat back down and rubbed her back. "Just breathe, Scully. Nice and slow, in and out." He continued to rub his palm in a circular motion across her back.

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on his soothing massage rather than the sharp pain that was ricocheting throughout her chest cavity. Even though it hurt to breathe, the few deep breaths that she took by Mulder's gentle prompting helped her to calm down from the overall shock that her body had just received.

After a few minutes, she said, "Okay, I think I'm ready to get up."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Mulder helped her to her feet. "Okay?" he asked, still concerned as she held on to him for support.

"Yeah," she repeated and even flashed him a slight smile. "That WASN'T fun, Mulder."

Mulder nodded and smiled back at her. Seeing that she was feeling better, they finally set out to look around and see where they were at. They walked a ways down a narrow corridor.

"This is just like in my dream, Scully. I think I know what we're going to find."

Scully stopped walking. "Do you smell that, Mulder?"

Mulder sniffed the air. "Smells like something is burning."

"This just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?"

"Come on. Let's keep going."

When the reached the end of the corridor, they were stricken with horror at the sight before them. The vastness of the sphere-like place that they now entered into was overwhelming. There was smoke and fire everywhere, and the shrieks and shrills echoing throughout the expanse were haunting and chilling. Through the smoke rising they could see thousands upon thousands of glass capsules standing upright, encasing humans who had aliens growing inside their now-transparent stomachs. This whole scene was remarkably familiar to them; it was just like in Antarctica, but something else had happened here. Most of the capsules near them seemed to be destroyed. The thick glass of the capsules had been penetrated and the bodies of both the humans and their alien "parasites" who were enslaved in them were lying everywhere on the ground in pools of green goo. Some were still alive, gasping and writhing from the pain of imminent death. The fires, the smells, the sounds, the bodies...it was like this place had recently been under attack. But by whom?