Special Agent Fox "Spooky" Mulder was on a fast track in the FBI when he took a detour into the paranormal. Convinced through hypnotic regression that his sister was abducted by some unknown power when they were children, he is now obsessed with discovering the truths hidden in the X-Files, a repository for the extraordinary, the unexplained and the supernatural.
Recruited into the Bureau after studying psychology at Oxford, Mulder showed an inclination toward the off beat from the beginning of his career. His early monograph on serial killers and the occult led to the capture of a notorious murderer. But far from pursuing what could have been a stellar career within the Bureau, Mulder chose "the basement office with no heat" where the FBI hides the X-Files. Only his network of contacts in Congress and other halls of power has allowed him to continue his investigations in the face of official indifference and covert opposition. Opposed by enemies within the Bureau itself and beyond, the only person he can trust absolutely is his partner, Dana Scully.
Cancerman
The man behind the cloud of smoke has been involved in the affairs of the X-Files since the day Section Chief Scott Blevins assigned Dana Scully to "assist" Fox Mulder. His silent presence in Skinner's office is always a warning that the shadowy government attempting to discredit Mulder is again keeping an eye on the nonconformist agent. When not in Skinner's office, he can be found in the basement of the Pentagon, secreting evidence in a vast storehouse of classified materials. The tension between Mulder and The Cigarette-Smoking Man has increased steadily as the nameless man with the pack of Morleys increasingly involves himself in Mulder's work. In "One Breath," Mulder blamed The Cigarette-Smoking Man for the abduction of Dana Scully, and came within a trigger-pull of killing him. In "Anasazi", we learned that his involvement goes back to the beginning, all the way to Fox Mulder's father. He may be responsible for Bill Mulder's murder, and he is certainly responsible for several attempts on the life of the X-Files agents. His menace may be fading, however, as both the Well-Manicured Man he answers to and Alex Krycek, his tool who has turned against him, threaten to bring upon him a justice Mulder and Scully cannot.
Handsome, charming, and well-spoken, the perfidious Agent Alex Krycek (Nick Lea) worms his way into the confidence of Fox Mulder in the second season episode "Sleepless", where he plays his role of worshipful junior FBI agent to the hilt. He even adopts some of Mulder's wry wit ("Well, it puts a whole new spin on 'virtual reality'.") to try to get closer to Mulder. But his true allegiance emerges when he warns The Cigarette-Smoking Man that separating Mulder and Scully has not stopped their partnership, and that the Cigarette-Smoking Man has underestimated Agent Scully as a danger to their secrets.
The darker side of the traitor (whom Internet fans have dubbed "Ratboy" for his faithlessness) appears even more clearly in the dual episodes "Duane Barry" and "Ascension", where he is instrumental in the abduction of Agent Scully and the silencing of Duane Barry. His treachery exposed, he disappears from the Bureau, only to become a greater threat than ever as he goes underground. At the end of the second season, in "Anasazi", he murders Fox Mulder's father and frames Mulder for the killing.
The bodies mount in the third season, as his ties to the Cigarette-Smoking Man's cadre begin to unravel. He is an accessory to the murder of Melissa Scully in a botched attempt on Agent Scully's life. When he ambushes Assistant Director Skinner and recovers a vital digital tape, the Cigarette-Smoking Man repays him by trying to have him killed. Krycek escapes the trap and vows revenge on his former mentor, while fleeing the country with the tape that reveals the extent of US government coverup in alien visitations. It is not until Fox Mulder goes to Hong Kong in pursuit of another turncoat that he finds Krycek again, but this time Krycek is possessed by the very alien whose secrets he has been selling. The alien uses him to cut a deal with the Cigarette-Smoking Man, which returns the off-worlder to his ship but leaves the ragged, terrified Alex Krycek trapped in an abandoned missile silo in North Dakota, begging to be released.
After feeding tips to Mulder on the activities of a militia group in "Tunguska," Krycek resurfaces once again to join Mulder in his pursuit of a mysterious rock. This leads them both to Russia in "Terma" where they are captured and thrown into a gulag. Mulder discovers during their captivity that Krycek may not be who he is. Krycek is more than friendly with his captors, who seem to know him rather well. Their captors are performing experiments on the prisoners injecting their arms with a strange substance that has do with the mysterious rock that brought them to Russia. Mulder escapes from the gulag and forces Krycek come along, but they are soon separated when Krycek escapes from Mulder once again and flees into the forest. While running away he encounters a group of one-armed men that live in the woods. He tells them he is an American fleeing from the soldiers that run the gulag, and they take him in. That night, while Krycek sleeps, the men grab Krycek and cut off his arm so that the soldiers cannot experiment on him.
Krycek is next seen with a prosthetic limb in the company of a Russian assassin who had been ordered to dispose of those in America involved with the mysterious rock. Krycek had ordered the assassin's mission and he is indeed not just the renegade agent he appears to be, but much more. His on again / off again relationship in the assistance of Mulder and his team wore out quickly. His final move led to his un-timely death. He not only betrayed Mulder and the gang, but he completely betrayed his country, his planet, and ultimately his masters.
Short, unshaven and clad in combat boots, Frohike is the Frog Prince of the Lone Gunman editorial board. Next to Langly and Byers, he looks like the proverbial dirty old man. From his first leering appearance in "E.B.E.," he has made no secret of his attraction to Agent Dana Scully. The photographic and surveillance specialist in the group, he once loaned Mulder a pair of night-vision goggles only after extracting Scully's phone number from him. Yet he has shown a tender side as well, being the only person to bring Scully flowers when she lay dying in "One Breath." Not a great talker, Frohike grows loquacious only when Mulder teases him; he succinctly summarized the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia in Mulder's apartment during "Anasazi" with one bon mot: "weirdness." The military and information systems expert of the Lone Gunman cabal, Byers looks like a professor who has wandered into a CIA rendezvous by mistake. His neat beard and dapper suits seem out of place among his grungier colleagues, but his sharp mind and no-nonsense demeanor attest to an encyclopedic knowledge of conspiracy theory and current speculation on everything from the Kennedy assassination to the latest in DNA research. In "One Breath," Byers unerringly recognizes and describes the bizarre recombinant chemistry that lies at the heart of Dana Scully's disease, and quietly expresses sympathy to Mulder. He occasionally indulges in a wit as sardonic as Mulder's, as when he tells him, "That's why we like you, Mulder: Your ideas are weirder than ours." Unlike co-conspirators Langly and Frohike, he is the least liable to crack a joke or even a smile, but his calm intelligence lends authority and believability to the unlikely trio's offices. One wonders just how much of life this man takes seriously. Sporting black-rimmed glasses, long blond hair and T-shirts from a dozen hard-rock bands, he is not the picture of a conventional conspirator. Langly is the communications expert of the Lone Gunman editorial collective, the one most likely to joke with Mulder or invite him to "hop on the Internet to nitpick the scientific inaccuracies" of a new science-fiction show. But he's also a little bent; in "Fearful Symmetry," his colleague Byers explains Langly's absence in a meeting as a philosophical aversion to having his image bounced off a satellite. He automatically records every incoming phone call, and is evidently as conversant with current conspiracy theory as his two compadres. But he is ready with a laugh any time Mulder's theories get a little "out there," such as the idea that UFOs started the Gulf War. Nevertheless, when Mulder insists that Langly turn off the recording device in "E.B.E.," Langly does not hesitate to lie to him. Among the Lone Gunmen, truth is as rare as trust.
