SCULLY AND SKINNER BEGIN THE SEARCH FOR MULDER. BUT A NEW AGENT ASSIGNED TO FIND HIM INTERFERES WITH THEIR INVESTIGATION.
A man's naked body floats in honey-colored liquid. He is wracked by sporadic spasms. An umbilical-type cord is pulled from his mouth and he struggles for air. The man is Mulder. Scully's eyes immediately open, and she gasps in horror. She sits up in her hospital bed, realizing that the vision of Mulder was only a nightmare.
The next morning, she dresses for work but is paralyzed in front of the mirror. She stares at herself as if at an unfamiliar person. Later, she walks down the FBI corridors, lost in those same troubling thoughts, when she enters Mulder's office. Seeing the group of agents emptying the X-file cabinets wakes her. She is incredulous that they are even attempting to rummage for clues about Mulder's disappearance. She and Skinner go straight to the person instructing the manhunt - Kersh, newly promoted to the office of Deputy Director. He expects their cooperation as the two primary witnesses in making statements to Agent John Doggett, the leader of the search's task force. Kersh orders them not to mention anything about aliens because doing so will cost them their jobs. The two walk toward the task force operations office. Although Skinner is reluctant to lie, Scully convinces him that staying in the FBI is the only way to help Mulder. As Scully waits for her inquisition, the agent sitting next to her strikes up a conversation. After admitting that he previously knew Mulder, the agent tries to place doubt in Scully's mind about her partner and the secret life he hid from her. She figures out that the agent is Doggett, the task force leader himself.
Back at her apartment, Scully examines Doggett's bio on the FBI intranet. His career is marked with commendations as a Marine and Detective in the New York Police Department. While reading this information, her face is stricken with a funny look. Scully immediately darts for the bathroom to relieve herself of her nausea. While later leaving a phone message for her mother, she hears a clicking noise in the receiver and becomes suspicious when she notices a man watching her from the street. Scully dials Doggett to blame him for the surveillance, but he is confused by her accusations. Noticing the shadow of feet under her door, she grabs her gun to take chase but bumps into her landlord who had just seen Mulder in the building. Scully runs back to her apartment. Although he is not there, she realizes that her computer has been stolen off her desk. She then goes to Mulder's apartment, which is quiet and empty. His computer is, strangely, also missing. She picks up one of his wrinkled shirts, as if trying to make a connection with Mulder himself, and lies down on his unmade bed, still clutching it. In her melancholy, she closes her eyes. The image of Mulder reappears, but this time he is held in a chair with his head and limbs restrained. His cheeks are pulled taut. A two-pronged metal device telescopes down into each of his nostrils as another spinning drill bit pierces the roof of his upper palate. He fights helplessly against the torture, screaming out in pain.
Skinner, meanwhile, has a nighttime clandestine meeting with the Lone Gunmen under a trio of satellite dishes, to which they are plugged in. They have charted UFO activity across the Pacific Northwest, and while they attempt to pinpoint the spaceship's course after abducting Mulder, they unfortunately can not determine its next port of call. The next morning, Scully awakes in Mulder's bed to see Doggett standing over her. She reproaches him for following her, but he has really come there for evidence. He hands over car rental receipts that he found in Mulder's drawers and asks her where her partner might have been travelling to. Their conversation is interrupted by a call. Mulder has reportedly entered the FBI building the previous night.
Back at the FBI, Doggett's men question Skinner about Mulder's passcard entry. The agents open a crate to reveal a Mulder family tombstone. William, Teena and Samantha's dates are marked. However, a new addition has been added: "FOX MULDER 1961-2000." Scully is shaken, and stares at the headstone in disbelief and dull grief. Doggett reads from Mulder's medical records that abnormal brain activity (from #7X04) had been killing him. Mulder was seeing doctors for a year to treat his deteriorating health. Doggett presumes that, with his work and life threatened, Mulder stole the computers and files and then staged his disappearance to cover up his failure in the X-files. When Skinner argues that he witnessed the abduction, Scully begs Doggett not to report Skinner's tale. In Skinner's office, the Gunmen's maps show that the ship may now be in the Arizona desert, but provide no other answers. Langly surmises that perhaps the ship may be looking for the next abductee, and that remark triggers Scully with an idea. Next in line will be Gibson Praise (last seen in #6X01) because the aliens are gathering proof to cover up their existence. In another office at the same time, a folder is slipped under Doggett's door. Inside is Gibson Praise's file. Doggett rounds up his crew to revise the search. He thinks that Mulder is after Gibson. The way to find Mulder is to find the boy, last seen in Arizona.
Once again, Mulder lies bound on the exam table. A spinning blade descends into his chest. As he screams, Scully wakes from her nap. She is in a car with Skinner, driving aimlessly through the Arizona desert. They do not see the helicopter fluttering overhead. Inside the chopper, Doggett gets a radio alert from one of his agents that Gibson has been traced to the Flemingtown School for the Deaf. Meanwhile, Scully notices the air tremble in the Arizona heat. Although she thinks she's imagining it, she doesn't realize that what she is seeing is real and is the spacecraft. Skinner uncovers that a school for the deaf is nearby and they take off. The principal is notified that the FBI is looking for Gibson. Doggett lands at the school, but Gibson has disappeared. Scully and Skinner arrive, and are startled to see Doggett. She asks him what he is doing there, and Doggett replies, "I'm trying to find Mulder." Gibson sneaks out the back but is stopped by an unidentified man. Doggett follows the two sets of footprints in the sand, finding the man clutching Gibson. Doggett draws his gun and yells "Let him go!" The man holding Gibson turns around to face Doggett. It is Mulder.
TO BE CONTINUED
AS THE SEARCH FOR MULDER INTENSIFIES IN THE ARIZONA DESERT, GIBSON PRAISE LEADS SCULLY TO BELIEVE THAT SHE IS TRULY CLOSER TO HER TARGET. Continued from 8X01 -- In the Arizona desert, Mulder tugs at Gibson Praise, who cries for his release. Doggett follows the pair, warning Mulder that he is prepared to shoot. Mulder eyes him mysteriously, not saying a word, and Gibson breaks away from him. Mulder still doesn't comply with Doggett's command to stop. He steps backward to fall off the mountain's lip, just out of Doggett's grasp. The other field agents run up to the ledge as Doggett explains Mulder's actions. Although he lies motionless on the ground, Mulder coughs out a breath and opens his eyes. At the bottom of the ravine, Scully pulls up with Skinner and demands to know the location of her downed partner. Doggett has no answer. The body is gone and there are footprints showing he ran off into the dust. Scully is convinced that it wasn't Mulder. She tries to explain that what seems like a man is really an Alien Bounty Hunter looking to capture Gibson Praise because he is part alien and proof of alien life. He will be brought back to the ship where Mulder is being held. Doggett walks off, dubious and remarks, "You know, Agent Scully, you're starting to remind me a lot of Mulder yourself."
The children are evacuated from the school, as the FBI SWAT team reports no sign of Mulder. Doggett orders a search of the school, unaware that Mulder has entered a classroom. Mulder readjusts his twisted arm before morphing back into the Alien Bounty Hunter. Outside, Scully catches sight of Gibson's friend, Thea, jumping on her bike. Skinner distracts the other agents to allow Scully to follow the girl into the desert twilight. She is lead to a secret underground cavern where Gibson is hiding. "You shouldn't have come here," he warns Scully. "You'll lead them to me." He knows that the aliens took Mulder and are now after him.
After Doggett gets chewed out by Kersh for losing Mulder, Skinner laughs and tells the agent that Kersh has made him a pawn. He has ultimately been set up to fail. A frustrated Doggett asks his team to locate Scully, and she is spotted in the school's bunkhouse. The real Scully, however, walks toward Doggett and Skinner. They look at her incredulously. In the bunkhouse, what appears to be Scully is really the Alien Bounty Hunter, who chokes another agent. When Scully and Doggett run in, the Bounty Hunter morphs into an agent in the crowd. Thea notices blood on that agent's hand and recognizes him as the attacker. Once again, Mulder is seen on the alien table. Gibson is shuddered awake by this vision.
Scully attempts to take the car and is suspicious of Skinner when he stops her. The two hold their guns on each other in a standoff, ending only when Skinner admits to knowing her secret. She relents, afraid that they are not going far enough to find Mulder. "I can't take the chance that I'm never going to see him again," she says. Their only hope is Gibson Praise, and they drive out to the desert cavern to find him. He is suffering from a fever, but manages to persuade Scully that he can hear Mulder nearby. "You're so close now," Gibson says. As Skinner takes the boy to the hospital, Scully wanders the desert, calling for Mulder in the empty night. Suddenly, something catches her eye in the black sky. A light slowly descends and she is transfixed, believing it is a spaceship. Yet as it gets closer and lands, the light reveals itself to be the searchlight of a helicopter. Doggett gets out and questions Scully's truthfulness in the investigation. He knows that Skinner and Gibson are at the hospital because he had his men follow them. "How do you know that they are your men?" Scully demands before getting in the chopper herself. It flies off, within feet of the spaceship hidden by a force field. On the alien table, Mulder cries out for Scully.
At the hospital, Skinner watches the boy when Thea enters Gibson's room. Gibson knows that she is the Bounty Hunter. Scully and Doggett arrive to find Skinner and Gibson missing. They search the hospital. Doggett has located the real Skinner. The A.D. is blinded and trapped in the air duct. Scully sees who she thinks is Skinner. When he claims to be protecting the boy, she pulls her gun on him. Gibson shakes his head to warn her. All of a sudden, the man grabs Scully by the throat and throws her across the room. She manages to find her gun and shoot the Skinner look-alike in the back of the neck. Green ooze flows out of him, and the body dissolves into a puddle. Doggett hears the gunshot and comes to Scully's rescue, stepping over the puddle. She is weeping and bloodied. Back at the FBI, Doggett presents his report to Kersh. The Deputy Director is furious, asking for real answers to Doggett's elusive-sounding report and failure to find Mulder. Doggett accuses Kersh of intending for the report to sound like an X-file. Later, Doggett visits Scully in the hospital. He briefs her on Skinner's and the other agent's recoveries, as well as Gibson being remanded to the state's protection. She is astonished when he informs her that he has been assigned to the X-files. He is equally bewildered. "Whatever you and I may differ on," he says, "I'll find him, Agent Scully." Mulder lies silently on the alien table. Many Alien Bounty Hunters surround him.
WHILE TACKLING HIS FIRST X-FILE CASE ABOUT A SERIES OF GRUESOME MURDERS SURROUNDING A BAT-LIKE CREATURE, DOGGETT QUICKLY LEARNS THAT HIS INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES ARE SOMEWHAT DISSIMILAR TO SCULLY'S.
Lightning crashes as a car pulls up to an old house in Burley, Idaho. A man named George gets out and creeps inside the house. His wife bolts up in bed and yells at him for waking her. George, a mortician, is sent out to remove his clothes that are soaked with embalming fluid. As he changes, he sees something on the ceiling above him. It appears to be a large bat. The creature quickly leaps onto George. George's wife hears his cries and treads downstairs. She screams at the bloody sight of her husband, and the bat attacks her. At the FBI, Scully looks sadly at Mulder's desk nameplate when she is startled by voices in the hallway. Doggett walks in with two other agents, laughing. At her glare, he dismisses them. Doggett asks Scully about their lack of desk furniture in the basement. "This is my partner's office," she says, placing the nameplate back in its rightful spot. "You and I will just be using it for a while." She clicks on the slide projector with photos of the two homicides. Scully begins to describe the case, sliding easily into Mulder's role of the lecturer. The bites on the wife appear to have come from a human.
Scully and Doggett travel to the couple's home, and are met outside by Detective Abbott. The detective speaks directly to Doggett, turning his back to Scully. Although the footprints on the porch look neither human nor animal, Scully gathers that it may very well be from a human. The detective, believing that the prints came from an animal, doubts Scully's credibility. Inside the house, Doggett finds another print and suggests that the suspect is a deranged killer with a deformed foot. Scully quashes those thoughts. Two of George's fingers are in the attic, and their odor convinces Scully that they were regurgitated. The nail marks in the board above the fingers resemble the ones found on the porch. Scully says that it looks like someone was "hanging there." Meanwhile, at the McKesson residence, an elderly woman looks at a photo album in her attic as the monster watches. The creature jumps out from the cobwebs and kills her. Later, at the morgue, Scully details how the scratches on the previous victims' bodies match the nail marks on the wood. Enzymes found in the saliva from the bites suggest that a bat killed the couple. Doggett produces a Montana newspaper headline from 1956 about a human bat who was shot by hunters after it killed several people.
The next day, the agents investigate the McKesson murder. The woman's daughter, Ariel, was found dead, her body burned, a week before. This woman last saw her daughter in 1956 -- the same year as the newspaper clipping. Scully is convinced that Ariel is the connection to all the murders, while Abbott lashes out at her for her outrageous theories. After Doggett pulls Abbott aside, the detective agrees to follow Scully's order to exhume Ariel's body. She is angry with Doggett for humoring her, even though her notions are far-fetched. "Maybe I'm just an old fashioned cop," he says, "But I don't take leaps." She humbles him by pointing out that he is taking a leap himself by believing the article about a bat man.
Detective Abbott goes to the cemetery, but Ariel's casket has already been dug up. He orders the body to the morgue, but something catches his eye in a nearby tree. A man with the wings of a bat flies out from the tree and mauls Abbott to death. His bloodied body is later rolled into Scully's morgue, as Doggett looks on solemnly. The other policemen tell Doggett that they mistrust her theories and blame her for the Detective's death. Scully's autopsy of Ariel finds that, although her body had been burned, she died of natural causes. The bat creature had killed people who had come into contact with her body. Myron Stefaniuk, the man who had found Ariel's body, is still alive. Scully and Doggett, fearing for his life, rush to see him. Myron is not interested. His brother Ernie was one of the hunters who shot the bat creature over 40 years ago, and when Myron refuses their protection, they watch him from the car. Yet Scully begins to doubt herself, thinking she is trying too hard to act like Mulder. Doggett defends her judgement, and notes that "I'm no Fox Mulder, but I can tell when a man's hiding something." Oblivious to their surveillance, Myron loads up his truck as the bat creature lies in wait overhead. He loads a raft with supplies and pushes them out to Bird Island.
Later that night, a mysterious masked man goes to retrieve the supplies, but is caught by Scully and Doggett. They remove his mask to reveal he is Ernie Stefaniuk. He has been in hiding all these years, in fear for his life from the bat man. Ernie's wife was Ariel, the burned woman that Myron found in the water. The bat monster killed everyone who had the trace of Ernie's scent from the wife's body. Ernie is afraid for his brother's life, telling the agents that the creature has the habits of a bat and will only attack at night. Doggett runs off to save Myron, but is assaulted from behind by the bat man. Waiting with Scully, Ernie tells her that now she is a marked woman. They hear noises on the roof of the shack, and Scully shoots blindly toward the ceiling. She goes outside to investigate, but the creature charges at Ernie inside the shack. She runs in and shoots at the bat, but it takes off. Doggett stumbles in, bloody and scarred. He too, shoots at the bat. It flies into the night. Back at the FBI, Scully once again looks at Mulder's nameplate. Doggett brings in a fax from Myron, who has gone into hiding. She asks Doggett if he believes that this monster will now be hunting the two of them. "I'm pretty sure I hit it, Agent Scully," he assures her. "I'm pretty sure you hit it too." She is hesitant, but thanks Doggett for watching her back. "I never saw it as an option," he says. She tells Doggett she will make sure he gets a desk in the office, and she places Mulder's nameplate into the desk drawer.
SCULLY EVADES DOGGETT'S HELP IN PURSUING A RELIGIOUS CULT THAT WORSHIPS A SLUG-LIKE CREATURE.
Hank Gulatarski waits for what seems like hours at a Roadrunners bus stop on a deserted road in Juab County, Utah. The faint rumble of a bus in the night stirs him, but it nearly passes him until he flags it down. The unmarked bus stops and he walks on, past the passengers who eye him suspiciously. Their silence puts him off a little, but he plops down in a seat and shuts his eyes. All of a sudden, the bus stops and the people file out in an orderly fashion. Confused, Hank follows them. The Bus Driver and the other passengers begin to bash a disabled man's skull with rocks. They turn and approach Hank, who yells as they swarm over him.
Days later, Scully collects evidence from the desert crime scene. She calls Doggett from a pay phone to say that she is consulting on a murder case where a traveler with a deteriorated body was beaten to death. She asks Doggett for help in tracking down an old X-file that mentions mucus. Although Doggett is somewhat put off about being left behind, he agrees to do her research. Scully pulls into an almost abandoned filling station for some gas. The pumps are empty, but when she mentions that she is a doctor, the Gas Station Man kindly fills her tank with a reserve in a can. After Scully pulls away, the Gas Station Man walks into the nearby boarding house where the Bus Driver is tending to the ailing Hank. "Help is coming," he says. Further on up the road, Scully's car putters to a halt. She walks back to the gas station to find the can of gas was really full of water. The Attendant sends her to the boarding house to use their phone. There, Mr. Milsap greets Scully by telling her his phone is out of order. He offers her a room for rent, but she is dubious of his intentions. She storms outside, unconsciously touching her stomach as if trying to protect her unborn child. She sees a woman who ignores her calls and Scully notices people inside the houses holding religious services. With no other option, Scully takes Milsap's room for the night. She waits in her bed with her gun cocked at the ready. Back in Washington, Agent Doggett calls the local Juab sheriff's office, but Scully has not turned up there. He asks the local police to send out a cruiser to look for her.
The next morning, Milsap asks her medical help for another man. Scully finds Hank shaking with grand mal seizures and she notices a wound on his lower back that is bleeding badly. Thinking he is maybe diabetic, Scully tries to raise Hank's blood sugar, but this does not work. The Bus Driver sobs. Suddenly, Hank awakens and asks to speak with Scully privately. He doesn't remember who he is or how he got there. She tells him about the murder in the area and her suspicion of the townspeople to be part of a cult. When she tries to lift him, Scully finds that the hole in his back has something moving under his skin. She uses tweezers to pull out a part of a slug, but the remainder of the creature crawls over his spine. Suspecting that the people put the slug inside him, she fears for Hank's life. Leaving Hank her gun, she escapes through a window to find a car. Milsap and the Bus Driver enter Hank's room. Hank recounts Scully's diagnosis that he is dying. He tells them that they need another swap.
Doggett discovers that Scully's phone call was made from a payphone that Hank had used before his disappearance. Doggett goes to Utah with case files about others killed by stoning with the same wounds on their lower backs. Scully finds the bus inside a shed, but doesn't notice the townspeople following her. They surround her. Hank bends over and the others stone him, all the while shouting "Amen!" They remove the giant slug from his body and approach Scully. She screams for mercy, exclaiming that she's pregnant. They lift her shirt and bring the creature to the small of her back. After it enters her body, they return to the boarding house and tie her to a bed. Milsap softly says that she will soon be one with Him. A light shines through the window as Doggett pulls up in a car. Milsap and the Bus Driver greet him, but say that they haven't seen Scully. Scully manages to kick a gas lamp off the table to start a fire and the Gas Station Man kicks out the flame, but Doggett doesn't notice.
Doggett radios the sheriff, suspicious of the people, and goes back to the boarding house. He finds Scully, unties her and carries her to the bus. She screams in pain, begging Doggett to cut out the creature climbing up her spine. The townspeople find them and attack the locked bus. Doggett yanks the slug out of Scully's neck, throws it on the floor and shoots it. The mob quiets down and stares at the obliterated creature. Milsap asks "Why?" The people begin to cry. Doggett carries Scully out of the shed, as a hoard of police cars raid the building.
One week later, Scully packs her bag in a Salt Lake City hospital. Doggett tells her that all of the forty-seven cult members are sticking together in the face of a grand jury hearing. They believe that the creature was the Second Coming of Christ. Scully apologizes for leaving him out of the case, citing that it was nearly a fatal mistake. She promises not to do it again.
HAVING BEEN KIDNAPPED FOR TEN YEARS, A LITTLE BOY MYSTERIOUSLY REAPPEARS BUT HASN'T AGED ONE BIT.
September 21, 1990 - Dexter, Oklahoma Children play at Bethune Elementary's school carnival. Seven year-old Billy Underwood calls out to his mother, Lisa, from the swing set, but she is busy chatting with another woman. When she looks at the swing again, her son has vanished. Panicked, she searches the fair but cannot find her son. A dark-haired and mysterious young man who had been watching the swings stands to the side. He is clutching Billy's backpack.
Ten years later, Lisa Underwood arrives at the elementary school to pick up her other son, Josh. The principal brings her to the playground where a young boy is playing on the swing set. It is her missing son, Billy, who has not aged a day in the ten years he disappeared. Scully and Doggett discuss the case in the Oklahoma hospital where Billy has been checked out. The boy is healthy, but he refuses to speak. Doggett, believing this to be merely a case of kidnapping, attempts to interrogate Billy about his abductor. Lisa is incensed and pulls her son out of the room to take him home. Scully is convinced that this Billy is not the same boy who was taken, but his medical records prove her wrong. Doggett looks over the original case file and finds the sealed records of a young man who was questioned at the crime scene. Ronnie Purnell is the same dark-haired boy who was holding Billy's backpack. Doggett goes to Ronnie's trailer to investigate, but when he proposes that Ronnie see Billy face to face, Ronnie refuses. Alone in his car, Doggett pulls a photo of a boy out of his wallet. He stares at it and then drives off.
Back at home, the Underwood dog growls at Billy. That night, Lisa argues with her husband, Doug, about Billy not really being their son. Billy overhears his parents, and then enters his brother's room with a hunting knife. The next morning, Lisa is startled to find the knife wedged in Josh's bed. He is covered with blood, but has not been cut. Billy stands in his brother's room, motionless. Tests show that the fingerprints and the blood belong to Billy's, but he too is unharmed. Neither parent has ever seen the knife before. It has a five-pointed symbol on it that was identified by a police psychic in the investigation ten years prior. This same symbol matched a drawing that Billy made while being questioned. Lisa pleas with Billy to talk, but Doug insists on bringing him to a psychiatrist. He loads his son in the car, but the boy disappears from the back seat. He immediately appears in Josh's room.
Ronnie walks into the woods and begins to dig where a surveyor's stake is planted. He unearths a human skull. When Ronnie returns to his trailer, his mother's boyfriend Cal Jeppy comes after him. Cal threatens Ronnie about knowing what he did to that little boy and what is buried in the woods. Ronnie pulls away from him. Sharon Pearl, meanwhile, pays a visit to the Underwood home at the behest of Scully. She is the police psychic, and she senses forces flowing through Doggett because he once lost someone like Billy. Suddenly, she lapses into convulsions and begins speaking in tongues. The five-pointed symbol appears on her forehead in bulging subsurface veins. After she is taken away in an ambulance, Scully confront Doggett about the psychic turn of events. He thinks it is all an act, but Scully plays the tape of Sharon's voice backwards -- it is the voice of a child singing a lullaby. Later that night, Scully and Doggett sit in surveillance outside the Underwood house. Ronnie pulls up. All of a sudden and without warning, Billy appears in his front seat. When Doggett approaches the car and sees Billy, Ronnie panics and tears off. Doggett chases on foot, while Scully follows in her car. When they catch him, the boy is gone. Josh, meanwhile, waits for his father to pay at a gas station. A pony being loaded into a nearby trailer distracts the kid. He gets out of the car to see the animal, but his hand is sucked into the trailer. The five-pointed drawing on the trailer matches the symbol from the knife and Sharon Pearl's forehead.
The police question Ronnie, but he has no answer for them. He tries telling Doggett that he went to the house because he didn't believe that Billy was there. Doggett is sure that he saw Billy in the car, despite the fact that the boy was in his home. Ronnie says that he took care of Billy and sang to him so that he wouldn't be scared, but Doggett demands to know what the boy would be afraid of. Ronnie can only say that "He made me do it." The agents are informed that Josh has now disappeared, and they go with the police to raid the Purnell trailer where the horse trailer is stored. The five-pointed symbol makes up the shape of the pony ride used at the school carnival. Josh is found. He is bound, but safe. Cal runs out, chased by Doggett. Cal denies that he kidnapped Billy. Doggett sees Billy in the woods but the boy vanishes. At that same spot, Doggett sees the surveyor's stake in the ground and finds the remains of the body.
The next morning at the gravesite, Scully tells Doggett that the clothes and condition of the bones will prove that the skeleton belongs to Billy Underwood. Although Doggett won't accept the outcome and is not convinced that this was some kind of justice from beyond, Scully tries to persuade him that he saved Josh's life and has succeeded in more ways than he was meant to know.
AFTER HIS WIFE IS MURDERED, A LAWYER TRIES TO CLEAR HIS NAME OF THE CRIME BUT THE DAYS REGRESS BACKWARD.
A spider scurries over its web, as Martin Wells awakes beneath it. He glances around and is confused to be inside a prison cell with a deep gash over his right eye. He watches the spider, and then smashes it, as a radio voice announces that the day is Friday. A prison guard takes him out of the cage and Martin spots his good friend, John Doggett, in the corridor. He calls out to the Agent, but Doggett barely glances at him. Instead, Doggett, along with Scully, falls into step beside Martin, as he is led outside the jail into the throng of waiting reporters and cameras. Martin spots a familiar face in the crowd and looks hopeful upon seeing him. He shouts over the commotion to his father-in-law who pulls out a gun and shoots Martin. Doggett leaps for the weapon. As Scully tends to him, Martin can only hear the sound of his own heartbeat, echoing the ticking of Scully's watch. His eyes go blank and he passes out. The watch's second hand comes to a stop, and then ticks backwards. Martin wakes once again in the prison cell. The same spider crawls over the web, and the injury is still over his eye. Doggett and Scully bring him evidence, but Martin is confused by the whole situation. He doesn't understand why he is in jail. Doggett is furious, and accuses Martin of murdering his own wife. In the evidence file are photos of Vicky Wells' bloodied corpse. Martin is shocked and overwhelmed. While he is brought into court, his co-workers stare at him with scorn. As the bailiff proclaims that court for Thursday is in session, Martin seems confused. He thought it was Saturday, the day after he was shot. Martin is denied bail and ordered to transfer to another prison, but he approaches the bench to beg for a stay. He claims that his father-in-law will kill him on Friday.
Doggett and Scully talk to Martin in the holding cell, and he tells them that he may be having premonitions about the future. The last thing he remembers is visiting Washington three days ago, but he is adamant about not killing his wife. "If you truly don't remember, how do you know you didn't?" Scully asks him. Martin sees a vision of breaking glass, but is unsure of what his memory is telling him. Later, his two young daughters are brought into the jail, but they are cold to him. He gets another vision of broken glass, but this time it moves backwards. He sees his wife fall through a coffee table. Martin asks Trina, the children's nanny, to bring him a stuffed animal from the apartment. Hidden inside it is a camera used to spy on the nanny. Martin reviews the video footage with his lawyer to see who was in the apartment during the time of the murder. He is the only person on the tape.
Once more, Martin wakes in the jail cell. The spider is still there, but his face is unharmed. He is brought into a room to see his lawyers. When the female attorney introduces herself, Martin is already familiar with her from the trial the day before. They inform him that it is Wednesday, and Martin figures out that his days are regressing backwards. Later in the prison yard, the other inmates pick him out as the lawyer who once put them away. A prisoner with a spider web tattooed on his hand slices Martin's face over his right eye. Doggett and Scully come to see Martin, and Doggett is noticeably friendlier towards him. Martin tells them about his regression of time and Doggett is skeptical of the story. Scully asks Martin why he thinks this is happening to him. He assumes that it is something he is meant to understand, so he reviews his own case files to find the truth. He sees more flashbacks of the murder in reverse time. The arm of the killer has a tattoo of a spider web. "I know who did it," he whispers to himself.
In the morning, Martin wakes. Yet on this day he is in Doggett's apartment. He watches himself on the news, which marks the day as Tuesday. He describes the murderer for Doggett as someone already in prison, but when Doggett checks, the man hasn't been incarcerated. Although Doggett is confused by Martin's rationale, he goes with him to Baltimore to get the videotape from the stuffed animal in the apartment. Martin is again the only suspect on the tape, but Doggett notices that the sun is rising in the background. Since it would not match the timing of the murder, this would clear Martin of the crime. Doggett and Martin go to the nanny's house and find the man with the tattoo there. His name is Cesar Ocampo. Trina admits that he forced her to give him the keycard to Martin's apartment. Martin talks to Ocampo to find out why he killed his wife. Ocampo's brother Hector had been wrongly convicted by Martin and the boy hung himself in prison. Martin is arrested because his fingerprints are on the knife that killed Vicky Wells.
Martin awakes in a hotel in Washington, DC. It is Monday - the day of the murder. Still two hours before the crime was to have been committed, he tries to warn his wife. She doesn't answer the phone. He goes to Doggett's house for help and Doggett is surprised to see him. Martin believes that this is happening for a reason so that he will be given a second chance. He admits to Doggett that he suppressed evidence in Hector Ocampo's case and gets Doggett to call the police to his house in Baltimore. Martin returns home. The police are waiting, but neither his wife nor Cesar Ocampo is there so the police leave. Vicky Wells returns home, and Martin sends her into the bedroom when he hears someone coming in. Cesar attacks Martin and then tosses Vicky into a shattering coffee table. Cesar brings a knife to her throat and is about to kill her, when suddenly Doggett and Scully storm in. They shoot and kill him. Martin notices the second hand on Scully's watch tick forward.
Martin sits once again in jail. Yet this is a new day and a different prison cell. As he pays penance for breaking the law in Hector Ocampo's trial, he has been given a second chance to atone for his transgression.
WORKING WITHOUT SCULLY'S INPUT, DOGGETT AND SKINNER TRY TO AVERT THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER SPREE OF A DRUG-INDUCED, RELIGIOUS CULT LEADER WHO LEAVES NO TRACE OF EVIDENCE AT THE CRIME SCENES.
Agent Jim Leeds is fast asleep in his government sedan when his partner, Angus Stedman, raps on the window to wake him. There has been movement in the house they are watching. They quietly creep inside to find twenty slain bodies whose skulls have all been bashed in. Stedman senses a presence behind him, and turns to see a man holding a primitive axe. Leeds hears his cry and runs toward the hallway. Stedman lies in a pool of blood. His head has the same fatal wound as the other bodies. Leeds sees the man, who now has a third eye in the center of his forehead. The man hoists the axe and swings it over Leeds.
That same night, Doggett is awakened by Scully's phone call at 4:24 am. Skinner wants his help on a case. An agent was killed while on surveillance of a religious cult in Pittsburgh. She can not join him because "something unexpected's come up." Scully does not tell him that she is being admitted into a hospital. Early the next morning, Doggett arrives at the crime scene to meet Skinner. Agent Leeds' body is in his car, which was locked from the inside. The clues lead Doggett to believe that the murder did not occur in the car. "This is damn weird," he says. They take in the ghastly scene inside the house, where all twenty members of the cult were killed with a single blow to the head. The cult's leader, Anthony Tipet, is missing. Agent Crane reports that Leeds' partner has not been found. Doggett and Skinner break into Stedman's condo, but the agent has been killed with the same head blow as Leeds. Stedman's door was chain locked from the inside.
Back in Washington, Skinner and Doggett brief Deputy Director Kersh on the case. The perpetrator left no traces of evidence. Skinner proposes that perhaps Tipet's use of an Iboga hallucinogen drug may have allowed the man's consciousness to be removed from his body. This might have allowed him to attack unnoticed. Kersh assumes that this far-fetched theory belongs to Scully. Meanwhile, Tipet walks past a homeless man on a Pittsburgh street. He uses a payphone to call Andre Bormanis' lab. "You did this," Tipet says on the machine. Bormanis listens, petrified. Bormanis then takes a razor and slices a cross into his own forehead. Tipet walks past the homeless man again, but this time Tipet's third eye appears. Suddenly the sidewalk morphs into quicksand and the homeless man sinks. Tipet raises the axe and strikes him.
When Skinner tells him that Scully is taking personal leave from work, Doggett becomes angry. He believes that Scully and Skinner are hiding something from him. Skinner has news of the homeless man's death by the same head injury. Although Doggett is skeptical, Skinner asks him to suppose that this drug really does allow Tipet's spirit to be in one place while his body is in another. They trace the payphone's last call to Andre Bormanis, a convicted drug dealer. Skinner and Doggett go to Bormanis' lab and question him about Tipet. They notice that he has a scar on his forehead. According to Bormanis, Tipet was the only one able to take the drug in order to reach the depths of the soul. Bormanis screams for protection when he is thrown in a jail cell. Doggett finds bloodstained footprints in the jail corridor, and he follows them to a lotus-sitting Tipet hovering in the air. Tipet opens all three of his eyes and looks straight at Doggett. Doggett glances down to see that the footprints lead to his own shoes. He looks at his hands and realizes that he is holding the decapitated head of Scully. Skinner wakes him -- it was only a dream. Scully is on the phone to tell Doggett to trust his instincts. It hits Doggett that Bormanis was trying to not fall asleep.
Bormanis sees Tipet at his prison cell. Suddenly rats swarm over Bormanis and he is eaten alive. Doggett runs to the cell, but Bormanis has been killed from the same blow to the skull. Doggett finds the Lone Gunmen in Mulder's office. Scully sent them to help out on the case. They explain the idea that a third eye would bring one closer to God. Doggett formulates the theory that Tipet truly believes he has opened his third eye, and that by invading other people's dreams, he could make their worst nightmares come true. Doggett insists that Tipet would want more of the Iboga drug to continue killing. He smiles at the Gunmen. "That's what Mulder would think, right?" he says, before leaving for Bormanis' lab.
Doggett and Skinner arrive at the lab to find Tipet standing over a rotating table saw. They order him away from the blade. "I want this to end, but I just can't stop it," he bemoans. Tipet says that Doggett understands, and Doggett realizes that Tipet knows about his dream. Tipet leans over the table saw and the blade cuts into his skin. Doggett pulls him off and brings him to the hospital. While signing Tipet in, he sees Scully's name on the roster. She has been admitted for acute abdominal pain. Doggett reports to Kersh that Tipet made people's worst nightmares come true with the use of the drug. Since Tipet is in custody, Kersh closes out the case, but Doggett pleads for it to remain open. He explains that no evidence has been found. Yet Kersh wants nothing to do with an unexplained case and closes it. Confused by his own dreams, Doggett leaves a message on Scully's machine, telling her that he knows the case doesn't really add up.
While looking at a mirror, Doggett sees Tipet standing behind him. When he turns around, the man is gone. Doggett gets into bed and doesn't see Tipet waiting by the stairs with the axe. Doggett wakes in the morning and dresses for work. His reflection looking back at him shows the third eye on Doggett's forehead. His eyes widen with shock, and all three eyes blink with disbelief. Then the eye disappears. He goes to the FBI and walks into Skinner's office in somewhat of a daze. "I'm not sure I'm awake," he tells the A.D. Doggett recounts seeing Tipet in his house with an axe, and feels that the man can see inside his dreams. Skinner tries to convince him that he needs to go home and get some sleep. Doggett walks through a strangely deserted FBI hallway on the second floor. The ends of the corridor seem to disappear into infinity. The sound of echoing footsteps reveals Tipet, who whispers in reverse-speak "She's going to die." Doggett, who also speaks in reverse, tells him that he won't let him do that. Tipet replies that it is Doggett who will kill Scully. Doggett closes his eyes, bringing his hands to his face in great distress. He drops his hands to see that he is now in Scully's apartment building. His hands, stained with blood, hold the axe. A deep, blue light strobes in and out from the windows, and a baby's endless cry fills the room. Tears well in Doggett's eyes as he realizes why he is dreaming this. Scully is asleep in the bed and Doggett holds the axe over her. He makes a decision, and lets the axe fall. Then he raises it over his own head and swings it at himself. Before it strikes him, he is woken up by Scully in his house. He lets out a deep, ragged sigh and tells her that she just saved his life. She says that she merely woke him up to tell him that Tipet died. Doggett was scared by the violent images in his nightmare, but thinks that maybe someone else put them there. "It was a bad dream, Agent Doggett," Scully says. "But that's all it was."
A MARKSMAN WITH X-RAY VISION IS KILLING PEOPLE, AND ODDLY, TWO EXTERMINATORS ARE INVOLVED.
Carlton Chase runs up to a pay phone on a nighttime street in Worcester, MA. "Pick up!" he barks into the recording answering machine. "Call him off, give me chance to explain," he begs, before a shadow appears behind him. Afraid, Chase runs off and dashes into a nearby police station. The officers on duty stare at him strangely when he cries "Help me! Somebody wants to kill me!" Chase reaches for the cop's gun, and the police tackle him, tossing him into an empty cell. Chase pleads for his safety, saying that "He can get me." Suddenly, Chase's head explodes and his blood splatters against the small window of the cell.
The next morning, Scully examines the x-ray and determines that Chase was shot through the top of his head. A small dent in the air vent louver above proves this, but no one in the station heard the gunshot. Scully and Doggett climb into the air duct, where a small bullet hole leads a beam of light to a tiny hole on the roof. After Doggett finds a scrap of fabric that muffled the gun, they determine that the shooter fired once through two floors to reach his target. Yet they can't figure out how someone could make such a lucky shot. The agents search Chase's real estate office. The walls are rife with bullet holes, but the shells on the floor do not match the ones that killed Chase. On his desk are a stack of invoices from AAA-1 Surekill Extermination.
Tammi Peyton arrives for work at AAA-1 Surekill Extermination and plays back the answering machine's messages. Chase's frantic phone call from the previous night plays and she quickly erases it. She notices Chase's photo on the front page of the newspaper reporting his death. Tammi reaches for a lock box and is interrupted by her boss, Dwight Cooper. He ignores her questions about Chase's murder. Dwight confronts his brother, Randall, about the previous night's events. Randall defends himself by saying that Chase had been stealing from Dwight. Dwight warns him to ask first before he does anything else. Later that night, Dwight enters the warehouse of two drug dealers and demands their money and drugs. He points his finger at one of the gang members and calmly says "Bang." The guy immediately falls down, shot. Dwight does the same to the second one. Randall enters from outside. He is holding a smoking gun wrapped in a towel.
Scully and Doggett investigate the crime scene, finding that the shots came from behind a wall, landing perfectly on their targets. Scully theorizes that the killer could see through the wall and Doggett dismisses her claims. She conjectures that maybe this man's eyes are somehow different than normal. Doggett believes that it was merely a drug hit. Yet after finding sulfuryl fluoride, an exterminator's chemical, on the towel scrap, he suggests they go to the exterminators named on Chase's invoices. Meanwhile, Dwight takes Tammi into a back office and she begins to undress. She senses that Randall is always watching her, and Dwight laughs her off. "How's he watching you now?" he asks. Randall stares at the door to the office, but then turns away when he hears someone coming into the building. Doggett and Scully enter, and Dwight greets them. They show him an invoice from Chase's office, but Dwight is unable to read it because he has been legally blind since childhood. He calls for Tammi, and she comes out of the office buttoning her blouse. Doggett asks why Chase called their office 14 minutes before he was killed. Tammi looks away shamefully. Dwight seems surprised, but he tells them that no message was left that night. The agents leave and Dwight confronts Tammi about the message. She admits that there was a message that she accidentally erased.
Scully and Doggett research Dwight's criminal record. He was arrested for grand theft auto, but since he is almost blind, they assume he had used a partner. They search for Randall's record and find that the two brothers are twins. In her apartment that night, Tammi is frightened by her next door neighbor's shadow on the window outside. She can't see that it is really Randall, watching her undress through the walls. Early the next morning, Tammi rushes into the office. Dwight and Randall catch her grabbing the lock box, but Scully and Doggett storm in with a search warrant. Although the lock box is empty, Scully finds a ledger with Chase Realty information in it. They bring the brothers in for questioning. As Scully interrogates Randall, he stares at the wall behind her and reads his brother's lips in the room next door. Randall repeats Dwight's statement that he is just a "regular Joe, providing a public service." Scully opines that he can see through the walls. She says that she knows about him shooting drug dealers through walls to steal their money. As the agents bring in Tammi for questioning, Dwight nods toward the girl and tells Randall that they have a problem that needs to be "taken care of." In the interview room, Tammi offers that she only keeps the books for the brothers and doesn't know anything about the drug dealers. Surmising the case, the agents believe that Chase was Dwight's fence for the drugs and was killed because he had a relationship with Tammi. Her phone records indicate she called him late at night.
Tammi again sees the shadow outside her apartment, and it moves when she calls out to Randall. She tells him that she knows he protected her and that he snatched her secret ledger book so Dwight wouldn't find it. She still, however, needs his help. She asks Randall to meet her at the 3:00 bus, and he gives her the missing ledger that holds a key. Finding Tammi's apartment emptied out, Doggett hits redial on her phone and reaches the bus station. Tammi uses the key to grab a duffel full of cash in a safe deposit box at the bank. When she returns to her car, Dwight is waiting in the backseat. He forces her to drive to the office. Left at the station, Randall believes he's been stood up. At the exterminator's office, Dwight accuses Tammi of skimming from the books with Chase. He questions why Randall would kill Chase, and then figures out that his brother has a crush on Tammi. Randall enters, and Dwight orders him to kill her. Randall points the gun at Tammi as she pleads for her life. He fires, but the bullet sails inches from her head to hit Dwight, who is outside having a cigarette. Scully and Doggett arrest Randall, but he will not speak. He sits motionless in a cell, eyes focused on a blank wall. Randall stares at a computer monitor located many rooms away. On it is an all-points bulletin for the arrest of Tammi Peyton, with her image emblazoned on the screen.
A MAN MADE OF METAL ENACTS REVENGE ON THOSE WHO CREATED HIM.
Curt Delario comforts Nora Pearce as she mourns her husband. "How does a 41 year-old man just wither away and die?" she asks. Since no one can provide her an explanation for Ray's death, she is convinced that he suffered from Gulf War Syndrome, and she wants someone to pay. Leaving her house, Curt turns his car out of the driveway but skids when he sees something in his path. He plows right into a man, but instead of crushing him, the car splits around the man. Curt looks through the shattered glass to see his friend, Ray Pearce, standing in the middle of the hood, unharmed. Ray shoves his fist through the windshield to grab Curt, who screams out in terror.
The next morning, Doggett and Scully scan the crime scene. The car is torn in half and Curt Delario is missing. They find him in a trash can with five deep puncture marks in his head. The autopsy reveals that he was not killed by the impact, but rather by the wounds inflicted when he was pulled through the windshield. Blood and fingerprints on the car are from the recently deceased Ray Pierce. Ray wakes up at St. Clare's Halfway House, unharmed. He pulls shards of metal out of his face. Doggett goes to the Pearce house. Harry Odell, the owner of the Southside Salvage yard where Ray and Curt both worked, is there. Doggett asks Nora about Ray's cremation because no record of the event exists. He wonders if Ray might still be alive and is somehow involved in Curt's death. Nora rebukes this, insisting that Ray was so sick before he died that he couldn't even walk or lift his head. At the salvage yard, Harry is hurriedly feeding Ray Pearce's employee records into a shredder when Ray himself enters the trailer office. Harry grabs a gun from his desk and shoots. Ray is blown clear out of the trailer. Outside, Harry sees Ray's severed hand, which twitches. Small, interlocking metal pieces begin to repair the limb. Ray comes up behind him, unfazed by his bloody gut and missing arm. He grabs Harry's head and punctures the man's skull with his fingers.
In checking out the aftermath, Doggett notices blue paint on Harry's fingernails. He pulls a half-torn paper out of the shredder -- an invoice from Chambers Technologies. The person on the invoice, Dr. David Clifton, no longer works there. His successor, Dr. Puvogel, tells Doggett that Clifton was working on a smart metal that can regenerate itself. He also says that their company would have no use of any local salvage yards. Scully phones Doggett from the morgue, informing him that Ray's cell makeup was affected by exposure to a non-identifiable metal. Tests show that his blood has enough metal alloy to kill an elephant. At the halfway house, volunteer social worker Larina sees a news report on Harry Odell's murder, recognizes Ray and phones Ray's wife.
Ray pursues Dr. Puvogel, and the agents lure him to Chambers Technologies. Ray gets captured in a test chamber and his fists dent the four-inch metal doors. He escapes by ripping open the thick metal of the back wall. Blood left on the jagged wall begins to turn itself into metal. Remanding Dr. Puvogel to safety, Doggett notices that a row of stacked barrels are painted the same color blue found on Harry Odell's fingers.
Nora waits for her husband at the halfway house, and asks him why he didn't contact her. "I'm not me," he responds, before showing her that his body is a mix of flesh and metal. He tells her that the people who did this to him must pay. At Southside Salvage, Doggett uncovers blue barrels with the Chambers Technology logo underneath the paint. When he turns one over, a think river of silver liquid pours out with a human body made of metal. It is the missing Dr. Clifton. Scully and Doggett question Puvogel, who tells them that Clifton got poisoned from working on an alloy with genetic material in it. Puvogel was aware that Clifton was dying, but did not know how his body was sent to the salvage yard. Suddenly, Doggett sees Nora Pearce sneaking around the Chambers hallway. She is searching for the name of the person responsible for her husband's disfigurement, but is caught before she gave the name to Ray. A SWAT team is sent to the halfway house, but they are too late. Ray kills Larina and escapes. Scully and Doggett beg Nora for her help in preventing Ray from hurting anyone else, and she agrees to have her house watched by the police. Ray slips in and persuades Nora to tell him the name of the person from Chambers Technologies who made him inhuman. When he leaves, Nora rushes out of the house, hysterical. She tells the police that her husband had just been there and that he is going to kill a man named Owen Harris.
Ray intercepts Harris' car, pulls him from the driver's seat and says "You made me." The man's wife and child scream in terror. Harris doesn't understand because he's only an accountant and had waste transferred to Southside Salvage because he was told to do so. As Harris' son cries in the backseat, Ray's eyes blink with the last light of kindness left in him. He lets the man go.
Later, Doggett and Scully arrive at the scene. Harris is alive, being treated by a medic. The agents are puzzled as to why Ray didn't kill him, but Scully surmises that Ray's body had died, and what was left was a machine. Whatever bit of humanity was still in him may have saved Harris. At Southside Salvage, a car gets dumped into a compactor. Ray is inside the crushed car, calmly accepting his inevitable conclusion.
A MYSTIC SMUGGLES HIMSELF OUT OF INDIA AND PLAGUES TWO FAMILIES IN SUBURBAN WASHINGTON DC
American Hugh Potocki enters the airport in Mumbai, India on his way back home. A local beggar with no legs follows him on a wheeled cart into the restroom. Potocki is yanked out from under the bathroom stall by an unseen force. Later, Potocki arrives at his hotel in Washington, DC. A bellboy brings his luggage with the beggar's cart strapped on. Potocki sits on the bed and his eyes glaze over with blood. Another pool of blood flows from his body, staining the bedspread. Scully and Doggett investigate the crime scene at the hotel where Potocki's body was found. The agents spot a small, bloodied handprint, about the size of a child's, on the bed. An autopsy reveals Potocki suffered massive abdominal tissue damage. Scully is unsure whether something went in or came out of his rectal wall. There is no evidence that the man had been smuggling drugs, but a decay analysis does prove that he had already been dead before he left India.
Mrs. Holt, the principal of Fairmont Elementary in Maryland, interviews a normal-looking man for a potential job as a custodian. Yet she does not really see that the person sitting across from her is the legless beggar. A fight breaks out in front of the school between seventh-grader Trevor and the younger Quinton. Quinton's father arrives in time to break up the squabble. The mysterious new custodian watches from nearby. Meanwhile, Doggett traces a similar death in India several days earlier that involves another heavyset American businessman. Scully introduces the idea that a living being is using these victims to stowaway by freely entering the bodies. Doggett doesn't readily accept this notion.
Later that night, Quinton sees the beggar's reflection in his bedroom mirror, but his father dismisses the boy's fears as merely a nightmare. When the father goes back downstairs, the beggar man is there. Hearing a scream, Quinton runs down the stairs to find his father dead. The man's eyes are filled with blood. Scully and Doggett investigate and Quinton tells them that he saw a man with no legs. Finding the identical small handprints as in Potocki's hotel room, the agents suspect the same killer. Yet Quinton's father showed no sign of abdominal damage. At the autopsy, the man's stomach is distended. Scully slices into the body, and a tiny hand reaches out through the incision. Scully jumps back, and grabs her gun. Whatever was in the body has disappeared, leaving a trail of coagulated blood across the floor. Scully follows it to a closet, but sees nothing inside. However, the beggar man is in the closet. Somehow he hides his presence from Scully. When Scully and Doggett consult with Chuck Burks, he explains that there are siddhi mystics who have the power to manipulate reality. These Indian mystics, however, are religious and committing murder would endanger their souls. Scully shows him a report of an American chemical plant that killed many people in India, one of whom is the son of a holy man. Because siddhi mystics pass their skills from father to son, and his only son's death effectively ends his legacy, Scully questions whether this man is out for revenge.
Trevor tells Quinton that he may know who killed his father. As he walks down the street, Trevor hears the squeaking of the beggar's wheeled cart, but no one is around. His mother, meanwhile, sees her son's body floating in the backyard pool and dives in after him. As she gets closer, she realizes that it is not Trevor but the beggar man. Scully and Doggett later scrutinize the woman's blood-filled eyes and question how her death fits into the case. Trevor returns home and tells the agents that the "little man" followed him. They call the janitor in for questioning, but he does not speak. Chuck sets up a video camera and focuses it on the janitor. The camera shows there is no one sitting in the interrogation room. They realize their suspect may be anywhere.
Mrs. Holt sees the custodian at the school later that night, but he does not answer her when she calls out to him. The principal immediately calls Scully. Trevor and Quinton lie in wait in the school building. When the beggar enters the janitorial closet, Trevor tosses bottles of chemicals on him. Yet the shattered glass seems to have hit nothing and the beggar disappears. Instead, the beggar chases Quinton in to a classroom with windows that won't budge open. Trevor is outside the window, yelling to his friend that he will get help. Suddenly, Scully and Mrs. Holt enter the classroom but they can't see the beggar man. He has transformed himself into Trevor. Quinton pleads with Scully to shoot at what she thinks is Trevor, but she is unable to fire at a child. Doggett arrives outside and hears gunshots. He runs in the classroom, with Trevor following him. The little beggar man lies dead on the floor.
Later, Scully is still shaken by the experience. She tells Doggett that she was unable to trust her own eyes, but fired her gun because the boys saw the truth. She realizes that it is what Mulder's open mind would have seen. "Maybe if I could see through Mulder's eyes I could understand," she says. The beggar man, still alive, rolls his cart in an airport in pursuit of another passenger.
DOGGETT COMES UPON AN OLD CASE THAT MULDER KEPT SECRET FROM SCULLY
From the Timeline:
A car drives down a country road in the rain. It drives up to a rural home in Pennsylvania. A man gets out and enters the house. Another man and woman are there, as is another man who looks like a Neanderthal, with sores and wounds on his face. The first man fires at a monster, then leaves. The man with the gun is Mulder. He gets back in his car and drives off. The scene is a flashback. John Doggett drives in his car. He is remembering conversations about Mulder -- about Mulder's terminal sickness, and about Doggett's pledge to find Mulder. Doggett arrives at a Pennsylvania sheriff's office. The sheriff says Mulder was there in the spring, investigating a missing woman. It turned out to be a false report. The woman, named Marie, never left her house. Cell phone records show that Mulder was here the week before disappeared. Doggett and the Sheriff go to talk with Marie and her husband. the husband does most of the talking. Marie has kidney disease. Doggett knows that Mulder was investigating a statement Marie had made to her sister that she was about to disappear. She didn't want her sister to worry. The husband claims nothing happened. On Saturday May 6, Mulder came back, according to cell phone records. The husband denies that they saw Mulder again. There is a local folk legend about a creature that lives in the woods. Mulder twisted that into a theory that the creature was going to come and eat Marie alive.
Doggett sees three gunshot holes plastered over in the wall, but doesn't ask about them. Doggett searches Mulder's apartment and feeds the fish. He does a thorough search this time and finds a gun taped under the sink. Doggett and Skinner talk about the gun. The clip was three rounds short of being full. Mulder never filed a report on the case or on the discharge of his weapon. Tests done for Doggett have found micro blood spatters on the gun. Skinner is forceful that Mulder really did disappear. He denies that Mulder may have shot someone and them deliberately disappeared. Doggett feels that he can't ask Scully, because she signed case reports for Mulder, and thus could be implicated. Doggett, however, is not going to take it to OPR, i.e. the people who do internal FBI investigations. The sheriff has had a grave opened in the cemetery. The sheriff, with several other men, dogs and pickup trucks, drive up to a house where a blonde women lives. They give her two minutes to produce "it." As they wait, someone runs through the nearby woods. The men give chase and catch the man in a net. He struggles and makes sounds like an animal. The blonde woman pleads but they put the man into a cage on the back of a truck.
Doggett and Skinner arrive at the sheriff's office. They drove from Washington when they couldn't reach the Sheriff by phone. He misleads them and claims he was hunting. They ask about a death certificate of a unidentified transient, found on Sunday May 7. Doggett thinks everybody in the town is lying. The agents go the cemetery where the body was buried and find that the grave has been opened. Inside are the remains of a casket, but a hole in the bottom of the casket makes it appear that someone tunneled out of the grave. The sheriff goes to Marie's house where her husband is painting a circle and cross symbol in chicken blood. They agree that they have to move fast. Marie doesn't want to do that they want but is told she has no choice. The truck with the cage is outside and the man- animal is inside. Marie lies down on the floor and kisses her husband. He will be waiting for her. The sheriff opens the cage and we see the man-animal. It enters the house opens its mouth very wide and blood spatters. Later, Doggett and Skinner drive up to the house and interview Marie's husband. They speculate that the sheriff was there. Mulder came back here and shot someone, and they are all lying. They want to talk to Marie, but she is not there. Skinner finds blood on the floor. In a cave or underground passage, we see the man-animal on his knees, retching, and the vomit is shaped like a human body.
Police are now at Marie's house. Doggett is trying to understand what happened when Mulder returned. The man claims his wife coughed up the blood. Doggett concludes that Mulder was trying to protect Marie from the man who is supposed to be buried in the coffin. In UV light, officers they find the remains of the circle and cross symbol. Via Internet, the Lone Gunmen advise Doggett and Skinner that the symbol looks like a Native American medicine wheel. Legends date back for hundreds of years about a shaman who could be summoned by the wheel symbol to help the sick. Doggett sees a connection with Marie's kidney disease. He goes to see the blonde woman. She was the one who reported finding the body in the woods near her home in May. Doggett wants to know what the secret is that people are keeping. He recites his theory that Mulder thought it was some sort of soul eater. She tells him that he has it all backwards, and that there things have been this way for hundreds of years. He finds a cellar door and investigates. It leads deep underground to the caves and tunnels. Following them, he finds Marie's body, naked in a kind of goo. As he checks her, she awakes. He carries her out, wrapped in a blanket.
Doggett watches in the hospital as Marie's husband puts her wedding ring back on her. She is fine and her kidneys have healed. She is in perfect health. This "soul eater" actually took her to cure her, it seems. It is clear to Doggett that Mulder was not trying to protect Marie. Doggett returns to the blonde woman's home. She finally agrees to explain it to Doggett. This thing looks the way it does because it doesn't cure the disease, it consumes it. This is why it looks covered with sores and is in constant pain. Doggett realizes that Mulder came to try to save himself from his brain disease. First preparing to do the ritual himself, Mulder saw how it suffered and shot it to take its pain away. They buried it but it can't die. The blonde woman protected it in her home, but now that they know it's back, they will make it suffer again. The creature is there and Doggett begins to take it into protective custody, but the sheriff and his posse drive up. They won't let him take it. "We have sick people who need what he has," they say. In a confrontation, Doggett is shot through the chest and dies. The creature escapes and they bury Doggett's body. The blonde watches it all. The man-animal brings Doggett back to life in the cave, absorbing the gunshot would. The blonde is in the cave beside the prostrate creature when Doggett awakes. It took Doggett's death, she says, and died itself. Doggett finally freed it. Back at the office, Doggett tries to write his case report, but he can't figure out how to start. Skinner compliments him that he got inside Mulder's head and understood what Mulder was doing. Skinner encourages Doggett to not submit a report. It would open up a world of trouble for Scully and take months to prove that Scully was not involved. Skinner and Doggett both know what happened. Skinner says nobody else needs to. Doggett imagines Mulder standing in the office, watching him.
SCULLY AND DOGGETT RACE TO FIGHT OFF A CONTAGION LURKING UNDER THE SUBWAY TUNNELS OF BOSTON
A man is alone in a subway stop in Boston -- another man approaches, dressed in black. The first is an undercover cop, who describes the second into a hidden microphone. The second could be planning a mugging. The train arrives and the cop enters the car. The second man enters the car a few moments later from the rear. Suddenly, the train loses power and the breaks screech. The two men struggle and we hear screams. At the next stop, passengers find the body of the officer, his skull and portions of his body apparently eaten away, as if from acid.
At the Boston transit operations center, Scully and Doggett talk with authorities. The local transit supervisor is upset that one of the main subway arteries is closed and announces that the line must be open for the evening commute. One third of the dead man's body tissue was eaten away. Scully doesn't want the line reopened until they determine what caused the death. Transit police Lieutenant Bianco thinks it was an assailant, using acid or something. Doggett, Bianco, the man who was construction supervisor of the tunnel a few years earlier and a woman from the Centers for Disease Control don assault gear and enter the tunnel. Scully will remain in transit control and communicate by radio. Doggett also carries a small TV transmitter with a camera on his headset. Doggett acknowledges that Scully has the experience with this kind of matter. He is just tagging along. Ventilation was shut down, making the tunnel hot. The construction supervisor screams -- he has a burn on his neck. Liquid in a puddle a few yards back might contain acid. The woman from CDC does an instant test, but the puddle is only seawater that has seeped in.
The team sees movement -- there is someone else in the tunnel. They go find him. They pass a tunnel connection to an old, obsolete, about a mile from there the train lost power. Doggett has a hunch, and enters the tunnel. As the members of the team debate returning to the main tunnel, Doggett is attacked. Doggett is stunned, but soon wakes up. The assailant is the one responsible for the police officer's death and portions of his body apparently eaten away. Bianco pushes to leave, saying that they have found the man responsible for the death, but the Construction supervisor finds three bodies, wrapped in plastic. They have been there for some time and all show signs of the same tissue damage. There may be a contagion at work after all. The woman from CDC sees a shadow indicating that there is someone else in the tunnel, but they can't find the person. At Scully's direction, the team leaves the bodies and continues up the main tunnel. The construction supervisor screams again -- his arm is burning. Scully quickly orders them to pour fresh water on the burns, which is done from a canteen. Doggett and Bianco leave the woman from CDC to care for the construction supervisor, pending arrival of a quarantine team to be sent by Scully. Bianco sees a green glow on his hand, but does not report it.
Scully meets the hazardous chemical team as they remove the construction supervisor from the tunnels. The team also has the three bodies, and Scully prevents them from being taken away by transit workers. She suspects that the transit supervisor wants to cover up the problem, suspecting that he knew that the bodies were there. The bodies are taken to the CDC after all. Doggett and Bianco continue, and Doggett discovers the green fluorescent glow on the Bianco's face. It burns other people, but hasn't had any effect on Bianco yet. Doggett has to pull a gun on Bianco to keep him from leaving. They fight and Doggett is knocked down. A marine biologist comes to talk to Scully. She analyzed the salt-water sample. There are medusas -- a kind of microscopic jellyfish -- in the water. They glow with bioelectricity, but the bioelectricity does not burn people on contact. Something triggers it. In the tunnels we see that Doggett is unconscious and also has the green glow of the medusa on him.
Scully's repeated radio calls wake Doggett up. Lt. Bianco is not there. Doggett discovers the green glow on his skin. Scully wants to send a quarantine unit, but Doggett insists on stopping Bianco, in order to keep the medusa from spreading. The transit supervisor tells Scully that there are already passengers waiting on many platforms. They can't block the tunnels to keep Bianco in. Doggett finds Bianco, lying in the tunnel. Scully tells Doggett to get out, but Bianco asks him to stay. Doggett puts an arm under Bianco's shoulder and helps him walk. They see a shadow of another person. Doggett finds a child, a boy who points up the tunnel. He is uninfected. Scully thinks she has it figured out -- sweat may trigger the electrical burns. Sweat will conduct electricity and a child's sweat glands are not fully developed. Doggett follows the boy through a green glowing chamber that has a big leak of water seeping in from the bay. The boy is leading them to a nearby access point. Doggett and Bianco cross the chamber into another tunnel, but the trains are rolling and one is coming right toward Doggett. In moments it will splash through the seawater that contains the medusa, probably contaminating everyone on the train. Doggett has an inspiration – he uses his gun to short out the rail that carries the electric power for the trains, feeding a high electrical charge into the puddles of seawater. The electrical discharge kills the medusa, including wiping it off Doggett's and Bianco's skin.
At the hospital, Scully informs Doggett that his body is rid of the organism. He can be discharged. The boy is with social services. The others who are injured will be worked on by plastic surgeons. Doggett wants to charge the transit supervisor with reckless endangerment, but the organism can no longer be found. There is no evidence and the officials can easily claim that they were just doing their job by keeping the trains running. Doggett is frustrated, but Scully has experience with this kind of unsatisfactory ending to a case. Doggett recognizes Scully for figuring it out. He was just the eyes and ears.
WHEN SCULLY DIGS DEEPER INTO REPORTS OF ALIEN FERTILIZATION ON HUMANS, SHE QUESTIONS HER OWN PREGNANCY AND ITS CONCEPTION
Pregnant Kath McCready is in labor. She sweats in the delivery room as Duffy Haskell coaches her breathing. "You're in safe hands now," he says. The baby's heart registers unusually high on the monitor, and the doctor orders an emergency C-section. When Haskell goes out to scrub up for the surgery, a nurse locks him out of the delivery room. Through her drug-induced haze, McCready can barely see the baby being pulled out of her stomach. It is an alien.
In her apartment, Scully scans her own ultrasound image and strokes her growing belly. Later, she heads into the office to find Doggett talking to Duffy Haskell. The man had contacted Mulder eight years ago about his wife, who is now dead. "They killed her," he tells the agents. He says that Kath was a multiple abductee, and aliens had performed procedures on her that gave her cancer. Although she was subsequently cured, she was left barren. She was later implanted with an embryo and gave birth to an alien. All the doctors who were in cahoots with this procedure murdered Kath and stole her alien baby because it was proof. Although his story rings a bell with Scully, she dismisses Haskell. Doggett says that his tale sounds familiarly like Scully's case, "except for the pregnancy." Walking out of the office, she chastens Doggett and tells him to stay out of her personal files. Scully's head is spinning with fear and confusion when she enters the elevator. She thinks back to a prior conversation with Mulder where she acknowledged that she wasn't ready to accept that she will never have children. "There's something I haven't told you," Mulder confesses. He admits to having found her ova in a lab (seen in 4X15) and after taking them to a specialist, learned that they were not viable. Still in the elevator, Scully wakes from her daydream to find Doggett staring at her. She tells him that there is nothing to do about Haskell's case.
Scully roams the stark white interior of Zeus Genetics in Germantown, MD looking for somebody to assist her. Suddenly she hears screaming from an examination room. It is a woman begging for another opinion. Scully ducks into a door to prevent being caught spying, and finds herself in a room with scores of jars. The jars are filled with deformed fetuses. Dr. Lev startles her, and she tells him she is worried about her friend. "You're here with Mrs. Hendershot?" he asks, before ushering her out the office. Scully rushes back to her apartment to call her personal geneticist, Dr. Parenti. She asks him to compare her own ultrasound against the one that Duffy Haskell provided. Parenti assures her that she will be fine and hangs up, but Parenti is standing in Zeus Genetics' room of fetus jars. He unwraps a small alien corpse on a dissecting table. It is the baby that Kath McCready gave birth to. Flashback to the previous year: In his waiting room, Dr. Parenti notifies Scully that her ova can be successfully used to impregnate her. He asks if she has someone in mind as a donor, and Scully nods thoughtfully, saying that she has to figure out how to ask the person. Scully sits in the same waiting room, present day. After reviewing the images, Dr. Parenti certifies that both her ultrasound as well as the Haskell results are both normal. Yet he advises her to let the FBI know about her condition. When Scully returns to the office, Doggett says that Parenti's office called about an ultrasound she dropped off, and since Parenti was the doctor who Duffy Haskell consulted, Doggett questions Scully's investigating the Haskell case when she specifically told him not to. Later, Skinner and Doggett interrogate Haskell about his threatening letters to doctors. He tells them that Dr. Lev was the one who stole Kath's baby. The agents warn him not to keep up with the threats, and Haskell says "there are other women out there, just like Kath." Haskell leaves them and dials Dr. Lev at Zeus Genetics, revealing that he too is involved in the conspiracy. Regarding Mrs. Hendershot, the doctor tells Haskell that "it's time to let her go."
Scully returns to her apartment and remembers another Mulder discussion from the year before. She is nervously awkward when he arrives at her door with an answer to her request. "I wouldn't want this to come between us," Mulder says, in response to his being her sperm donor. "But the answer is yes." Scully cries tears of joy and hugs him. Scully resumes present day, when there is a knock on her door. It is a distraught Mary Hendershot from the genetic clinic. "My baby is in danger," she says. "So is yours."
Doggett pulls up to a diner in downtown Washington at 3:33 am where Skinner and Scully are waiting. Scully has asked for a leave of absence from the FBI, but is cryptic about her reasons. Smarting from the disrespect, Doggett gets up, saying offhandedly "Drop me a line if you get a chance." Mary Hendershot is in Scully's front seat, but neither Skinner nor Doggett know who she is. The women go to the Walden-Freedman Research Center and are met by Dr. Miryum. Scully explains that Mrs. Hendershot's life may be in danger and that she believes this baby is not hers. Mrs. Hendershot's conception dates do not add up and she is sure that her pregnancy was caused by an abduction. Dr. Miryum performs an ultrasound test on Scully that proves her child is normal and healthy, but to be sure she suggests an amniocentesis test.
Meanwhile, Doggett learns that Duffy Haskell has gone under a different first name and was buried as a Marine in 1970. He assumes that Haskell is really working for an underground conspiracy and he approaches an old friend, Knowle Rohrer, about Haskell's identity. Although Rohrer's job is not apparent, he assures Doggett that there is no conspiracy at work and he will look further into Haskell's files.
Dr. Miryum withdraws the amnio needle, warning Scully to be still. After the doctor leaves the room, Scully notices that her ultrasound image is being retrieved from a VCR. She removes the videotape and realizes she has been viewing someone else's fetus. Scully goes into the delivery room for Mrs. Hendershot, clutching the wound from the amnio needle on her stomach. "I have to get you out of here," she tells her, putting the woman's baby and her own health at risk.
That same night, Doggett rushes to the FBI, demanding Skinner to locate Scully. He believes that she may be in danger, knowing that Haskell can not be trusted. Scully and Mrs. Hendershot escape the research center and run right into Knowle Rohrer, who claims that Doggett sent him. A team of armed men described as experienced field medics throw the women into a black truck. When police cars intercept the truck, it travels off-road into the woods. Suddenly, Mrs. Hendershot goes into labor, and Scully orders the truck to stop so as not to endanger the pregnant woman's life. As the men lay down Mrs. Hendershot, Rohrer drugs Scully and prevents her from witnessing the birth. In her haze, she hears the distorted cry of an alien baby.
Scully awakes the next morning in a hospital room. Doggett is at her side, assuring her that she and her child are both healthy. He also tells her that Mary Hendershot is fine and delivered a normal baby boy. Scully contends that the men switched the babies, but Doggett thinks she has overreacted to everything. The tape that showed her ultrasound was recorded onto an old cassette, and Rohrer's men say that they saved her life. Scully insists that, from the minute Duffy Haskell walked into their office, they were set up to get Mary Hendershot's baby and cover it up. Doggett asks why she didn't reveal her pregnancy, and Scully reluctantly responds that she was afraid that the FBI would take her off the X-files. "Then I couldn't find Mulder," she says. Doggett comforts her, and promises that he will help her find Mulder.
Scully thinks back again to the previous year, finding Mulder in her apartment. She tells him that the artificial insemination -- her last chance to get pregnant -- did not work. "Never give up on a miracle," Mulder says, and gently kisses her forehead.
DOGGETT CALLS ON ANOTHER AGENT TO ASSIST THE MULDER CASE. BUT SCULLY'S FEARS ABOUT FINDING HIM COME TO A HEAD WITH THE SUDDEN RECOVERY OF ABDUCTEES SEIZED AT THE SAME TIME
A car chases a white light as it moves through the sky in Helena, Montana. The driver, Richie Szalay (last seen in 7X22), snaps photographs of the light until it comes to a halt. It is a UFO, hovering above the trees. Richie gets out of the car and is speechless. The craft gets away before he can take its picture, and Richie yells "This is not happening!" in frustration to himself. He notices a man walking toward the spot where the spaceship landed and Richie calls out to him. As the man runs away, Richie follows, but he stumbles over a woman's body lying naked on the ground.
Back at the FBI, Doggett opens up a desk drawer to find Mulder's nameplate inside. He is somewhat troubled, but is startled by Scully rushing in the office. He won't tell her why he called her, but instead takes her up to Skinner. Both men are reluctant to tell Scully whatever news they are hiding. Skinner finally reveals that there was a UFO encounter in Montana and the man who reported it is Richie Szalay, whom Mulder and Scully met the previous spring in Oregon. "Are you trying to tell me this has something to do with Mulder?" she asks. Richie found Teresa Hoese, the woman abducted the same time as Mulder. She was returned, but she is barely alive.
The agents travel to Montana to see Teresa. Her doctor describes her condition as if someone was performing torturous experiments. She has scars on her cheeks, and there is damage to her soft palette and abdomen, but there are no foreign implants in her body. Scully, Doggett and Skinner pay a visit to Richie, who had been trying to find his friend Gary. Gary was also abducted right before Mulder. Richie had followed UFO sightings to Montana where he came across the craft. Doggett shows Richie plaster castings of footprints from the scene. The prints are of Nike sneakers, and Doggett doubts that the man Richie saw was actually an alien. After the questioning, Scully confronts Doggett about his refusal to accept any explanations outside of the ordinary. Doggett says that she is the one who is afraid to confront the truth about what might have happened to Mulder.
Mulder lies bound in the alien chair, but no experiments are being done. His body has decayed so much that he appears to be dead. Suddenly Scully awakes from her sleep and realizes that it was merely a nightmare. She knocks on Skinner's motel room door, teary-eyed. "What if he's dead?" she cries. Skinner tries to comfort her, assuring her that they still might find Mulder alive. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Smith, the alien healer last seen in 4X01, walks into the hospital wearing Nike sneakers. When a nurse approaches him, he immediately morphs into Teresa Hoese's doctor and tells the nurse that he wants Teresa transferred.
The phone wakes Scully in her motel room. She is notified about Teresa Hoese being moved. Scully meets Doggett and Skinner in the field where Teresa was found. Doggett asks that they listen to another point of view, and introduces them to Special Agent Monica Reyes, who is standing alone on a cliff, smoking. Doggett thinks Reyes has some expertise that might come in handy. Reyes explains that she has been briefed of the case and describes it as "interesting." She characterizes Teresa's injuries as similar to what has been found in cult abuse cases, wondering if perhaps there was some kind of abduction group of followers that Mulder got caught up with. Much to the consternation of Scully and Skinner, Doggett insists that they go after the cult leader. Based on a hunch, Reyes believes that Teresa was meant to be left alive. Scully walks away, telling Doggett that Reyes makes no sense, but Doggett insists that he will not go on a wild goose chase after another Alien Bounty Hunter. Meanwhile, a man named Absalom walks into a small boarding house where Jeremiah Smith is treating the ailing Teresa Hoese. Absalom watches as the alien healer places his hand over Teresa's face. Her bruising magically disappears.
In the hospital, Scully catches Reyes examining Teresa's brain scans. Reyes admits that she is looking for alien implants. Scully questions why a disbeliever like her would be looking for such a thing. Reyes disputes the claim. "Let's just say I don't not believe," Reyes says. "I try to stay open." Reyes explains that she has certain spiritual notions, and although she doesn't have any feelings about Mulder she does sense Scully's fear. She advises Scully to try and stay open too. Later, Reyes drives along a Montana highway. Her car putters off and then immediately turns back on. She sees a bright light in the sky above her. "No freakin' way," she mutters and sets off after it. The light disappears over the mountain, and she sees Jeremiah Smith (wearing Nike sneakers) and Absalom pick up a body stranded in the field. Reyes pulls out her gun and orders them to halt. They manage to escape in a pickup truck, but Reyes sees another body lying on the ground. It is Gary Cory, Richie's friend who was abducted in 7X22.
Scully performs the autopsy on Gary, finding radial scarring on his ankles, wrist and face. This matches what she dreamed Mulder had been exposed to. Skinner and Doggett look on, but she becomes emotional and stops the autopsy. Richie is brought into the medical bay and is stunned by the sight of his friend's body. Scully breaks down. Waiting outside, Doggett is approached by Reyes. She senses that he is hurting for his partner. Reyes compares this to a past case where they unsuccessfully looked for Doggett's missing son. She believes that this is why Doggett is so determined to find Mulder. Reyes shows him a police wanted poster of Absalom, the man she saw in the field. He was the leader of a doomsday cult and the license plate on the pickup truck they were driving is registered to a nearby farm.
At the farm, Jeremiah Smith orders Absalom to move the legion of followers out. "They're coming," he says. "You can't let them find him." Federal agents swarm the farm and round up the people. Skinner, Scully, Doggett and Reyes are among the SWAT team. They find Teresa Hoese, fully healed, in one of the beds. While interrogated by Doggett, Absalom says that he can't explain why it happens. The spaceship drops off the injured abductees, and he comes to retrieve them with the sole purpose of helping them. Doggett doubts his intentions. Although there are cameras on the compound, there is no footage of Teresa being healed. Scully shows Absalom a photo of Mulder and asks if there is videotape of him. Absalom has no answer.
That night, Scully returns to the motel, but the lights in her room do not work. She is amazed to see Mulder standing by the window of her room. Reyes approaches and the image of Mulder disappears. Reyes brings her to see tapes from the compound. Scully recognizes the other man on the tapes as Jeremiah Smith, the Alien Healer. On the videotape recorded during the FBI raid, Smith morphs into Agent Doggett. The agents return to the farm compound to look for Jeremiah Smith. Scully pulls out one unrecognizable man who is wearing the Nike sneakers and he morphs into Jeremiah Smith. He tells her that by exposing him she is putting abductees in danger. "Where's Mulder?" she pleads with the healer, but before he can answer, Skinner asks her to come outside. "You must protect me," Smith says to her. Skinner tells Scully that they found Mulder and she takes off for the field. Mulder is lying on the ground, dead. She runs back to get Jeremiah Smith for his healing powers, but the lights of a spacecraft shine overhead. The ship hovers over the compound and the other agents watch as the light radiates the building. Scully rushes into the room where she had just interrogated Smith. He is gone. Scully cries out in frustration and horror: "This is not happening!"
TO BE CONTINUED
WHEN A FORMER ABDUCTEE AWAKENS FROM THE DEAD, SCULLY PINS HER HOPES ON RESURRECTING THE RECENTLY BURIED MULDER
White snow covers the cemetery ground in Raleigh, NC as mourners gather for the funeral of Fox Mulder. Scully stares straight ahead, seemingly lost in her thoughts, surrounded by Skinner, Doggett, Kersh and the Lone Gunmen. She is unaware of the many stolen glances her way. Three months later, Doggett is called into Kersh's office where Skinner is waiting. Doggett has been recommended for advancement and transfer off the X-files, but Doggett asks for more time to consider such a move. He goes back down to the X-files office where a noticeably pregnant Scully is poring over case files. She tells him to accept the transfer, noting that if he doesn't get out now he may never get out at all. Although he has found Mulder, Doggett feels he still has more questions about the case and is reluctant to leave. Meanwhile, a fishing boat in Wilmington, NC catches sight of a body in the water. The body has scarring that is reminiscent of the alien tests. When a coroner goes to examine the body, he is astonished to see the dead man's lips move. Skinner awakes Doggett to tell him that the body found in the water is Billy Miles, who was presumed dead for months and is now alive. Doggett advises Skinner not to relay this information to Scully. They go to the graveyard in Raleigh to unearth Mulder's body.
Scully runs into the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, MD distraught and full of wide-eyed emotion, demanding to see Mulder. "Tell me it's true," she pleads with Skinner. Although he has thin life signs and is clinically alive, Mulder's body is in a full state of decomposition. Scully is teary as she approaches Mulder, and she rests her head on his chest as it rises and falls with each breath. She then goes into the hospital room of Billy Miles, whose body begins to convulse. The heart monitor briefly shows two heartbeats, and Scully notifies the nurse that the equipment may be malfunctioning. Kersh summons Doggett to his office and orders him to drop the Mulder investigation. Doggett is wary of his superior's intentions. Walking down the FBI hallway, Skinner almost loses consciousness when the familiar black veins suddenly appear on his face and neck. He opens the elevator doors to find Krycek with the handheld device that controls the nanotechnology. "What do you want from me?" Skinner asks. Krycek says that he has the vaccine developed by Bill Mulder that will save Mulder's life. "You found him and you don't even know what you've got," Krycek says elusively before leaving Skinner empty-handed. Meanwhile, Billy Miles wakes up in his hospital bed. He pulls out the life support tubing and, still bloated, walks into the shower. As the water covers him, his hardened skin peels off leaving a perfectly fine human body underneath. Down the hall, Scully sits with Mulder while Doggett conveys his concern about reopening this case. She wants to know the truth about what caused this to Mulder. Suddenly, a nurse interrupts them. A healthy Billy Miles is walking naked in the corridor, looking like a recently hatched chick.
Doggett goes to see Absalom. "You ask for my help but you refuse to believe in me," the alien healer says to the skeptical agent. Back at the hospital, Skinner looks in on Mulder but finds Krycek lurking in the corner. When Skinner asks for the vaccine, Krycek tells him he only has to make sure that Scully doesn't come to term. Skinner refuses to sacrifice Scully's baby, but considers the deal. Doggett passes Krycek in the hospital hallway, but doesn't know who the man is. He stops to talk to Scully, who believes that Mulder was infected with a virus that transforms the body into an alien. Doggett notes that Absalom had said the same thing. They now believe that Billy Miles is somehow alien, and she asks Skinner to do whatever it takes to retrieve a vaccine. When Doggett returns to Mulder's room, the door is locked. He finds Skinner has pulled out all the life support tubes, intending to kill Mulder. An enraged Doggett attacks Skinner, who admits that he couldn't trust Krycek's claims of a virus if it meant jeopardizing Scully. With gun drawn, Doggett takes off after Krycek in the parking garage. He latches on to Krycek's moving car, grabbing for Krycek at the wheel, but lets go before the car narrowly escapes. Krycek puts the car in reverse and comes back. He holds up a vial and asks Doggett if he is looking for the vaccine to save Mulder. Doggett takes one step forward and Krycek drops the vial, splattering the brown-colored liquid on the ground. Doggett goes back upstairs and finds that Mulder was taken into the operating room. Dressed in scrubs and watching the procedure, Scully comes out to tell Doggett that they had been incubating the virus by keeping Mulder on life support. Skinner actually saved him when he pulled off the machines. She has faith that a course of anti-virals will work. Doggett is once again called to Kersh's office where he gets sent back to work on the X-files.
In the recovery room, Scully takes Mulder's hand and he flinches. His eyes flutter open. "Who are you?" he jokes. Scully laughs for the first time in a while and leans across his body, holding him. "Anybody miss me?" he says. Doggett sees this reunion through the window, and Scully looks up at him, not knowing what to say. Doggett relieves her of the trouble and walks away, alone.
WRANGLING HIS WAY BACK ONTO AN X-FILE, MULDER GETS IN OVER HIS HEAD TRYING TO EXPOSE FURTHER EVIDENCE OF COLONIZATION
Federal census worker Howard Salt hops over the fence at the White House, and a squadron of Secret Service agents ambushes him. "The aliens are taking over the United States!" he exclaims. Suddenly a gunshot goes off, and the agents realize Salt has accidentally shot himself. Before succumbing to death, he hands one agent a CD-ROM with the words "Fight the Future" written on it.
In his hospital room, Mulder puts his hand on his face and chest scars, seeing flashbacks of the alien torture he endured. Scully interrupts these visions when she tells him that he is completely healthy and miraculously healed of whatever brain disorder he may have suffered. She takes him back to his apartment, which is still intact. "I don't know if you'll ever understand what it was like," a visibly moved Scully acknowledges. Mulder, however, is still unsettled, not knowing how he fits in his newly restored life.
Skinner and Doggett are summoned to Kersh's office to be briefed about Mulder's reinstatement to the X-files. Because of Doggett's success rate of arrests, Kersh is prepared to deny Mulder's application. He orders the two to tell Mulder that he is off the X-files. Doggett resists and Kersh threatens to shut down the X-files altogether. Skinner and Scully come to Mulder's apartment to bring him the bad news. Mulder first learns of Agent Doggett's assignment to the X-files and realizes that they have all become pawns in some larger conspiracy. He gets up to get dressed, telling Scully and Skinner, "For the first time, I feel like getting back to work."
At a Federal Correction Facility in West Virginia, a trusty brings Absalom a book entitled "The Coming Apocalypse." Inside is a newspaper clipping about Howard Salt being killed when he jumped the White House gate. Later, as the prisoners work on a roadside gang, Absalom breaks away and escapes into the woods. That night, Doggett returns home to find Absalom waiting for him. Absalom checks the back of the agent's neck for traces of reptilian-looking alien vertebrae. "You're going to spread the word," he tells Doggett before kidnapping him. From the FBI, Scully tries unsuccessfully to reach Doggett while Skinner briefs his task force on the hunt for Absalom. Skinner tells the agents that the man's claims of alien invasion are to be taken seriously. He shows them a photo of the words "Fight the Future" scrawled on Absalom's cell wall. Scully and Skinner find Mulder in the X-files office. He has picked out Howard Salt's face in an Absalom cult photo and informs them that Salt was a multiple abductee. Mulder is convinced that the man was killed for what he knew. Mulder and Scully sneak into the FBI Evidence Room to discover Howard Salt's laptop computer has its entire memory filled with an encrypted program. Mulder removes the hard drive.
With a gun taped to the small of his back, Doggett enters the Federal Statistics Center. Absalom's hand is on the trigger. When passing the security guard, Doggett notices the x-ray scanner and warns Absalom that they will be stopped. Absalom pushes Doggett on, saying that he is looking for proof that aliens are "already here, among us." Security guards quickly surround them, and Doggett is shocked when they shoot Absalom, nearly missing Doggett's head. Later, when Doggett briefs Skinner on the previous events, Mulder bursts into the office. Doggett is about to introduce himself when Mulder attacks him. He blames Doggett for getting Absalom killed, suspecting that he is part of the conspiracy to hide the truth.
At Scully's apartment, the Lone Gunmen tap into Salt's hard drive and unearth file directories from the Statistics Center. Fifteen minutes after Salt's death, computer firewalls had gone up around the facility. Mulder is convinced that he is onto something in those files. However, even if they were to uncover a password, the firewalls would block them from opening the files. The pass code can only be used in the secured facility itself. Much to the consternation of Mulder, the Gunmen agree with Scully that they have hit a dead end. Meanwhile, Doggett secretly meets with his informant Knowle Rohrer (last seen in 8X08) to ask why Absalom was shot in cold blood. Doggett suspects that he was merely used to get the man killed. Rohrer tells him that there are three words he should know. Doggett meets Scully outside Mulder's apartment, asking her to give Mulder information he has recently learned. Salt was carrying a diskette that he wanted to give to the President. The password on it contains three words: Fight the Future. Scully goes back into Mulder's apartment but is hesitant to tell him what Doggett told her. She fears that he will get in over his head. Skinner rushes to Doggett's house that night with urgent news about Mulder having some kind of password to access names tracked by the government. When Doggett admits to giving Scully the password, Skinner begins to question whose side Doggett is on. He is even more concerned because he can't contact either Scully or Mulder. "You're gonna have to trust me on this," Doggett tells the Assistant Director and sets out after them alone. Doggett finds Scully outside the Statistics Center and orders her to leave. "I may have set you up," he pleads. He runs inside to get Mulder out. The Gunmen, meanwhile, have bypassed the security system to allow Mulder access to the building undetected. They lead him into the databank and Mulder types the words "Fight the Future" in the computer. Doggett bangs on the glass door, but Mulder ignores him. "Your life's in danger!" Doggett yells and blows out the window with his gun. Doubting Doggett's intentions, Mulder says that he believes the government is using the census to protect aliens in hiding. Armed military troops storm the building, and Mulder accuses Doggett of setting him up. Doggett tries to convince him that really they have both been set up and are in danger. The Gunmen direct Mulder and Doggett toward an air duct in the ceiling, and they escape.
Doggett again covertly meets with Rohrer and accuses the informant of manipulating him. "You need me worse than you know," Rohrer says emphatically. He tells Doggett that the truth lies in the X-files. An angry Doggett walks away. When Rohrer leans over to the water fountain, enlarged alien vertebrae pop up under the skin on his neck.
AGENT REYES ENLISTS MULDER'S HELP INVESTIGATING A KILLER'S CONNECTION TO THE UNSOLVED MURDER OF DOGGETT'S SON
Mild-mannered Jeb Dukes gets fired from his job in New Orleans, while his boss, Gary Garber, apologizes profusely. Jeb calmly strolls out of the office and out on to the street where, coincidentally, he witnesses a police chase that ends in a fatal auto accident. Jeb stays back, but is approached by a man awash in flames from the burning wreckage. The man seemingly walks into Jeb's body and then disappears. Suddenly, Jeb's eyes turn flaming red. That night, Jeb enters his office building and goes right up to his boss. He lifts a gun and fires at Garber.
Detective Franklin Potter is examining the crime scene when Agent Monica Reyes arrives. He shows her some artwork from Jeb Dukes' desk, but Reyes tells him that it is merely the insert from a popular rock CD. She dismisses the case as being satanic-based. Yet when she sees the victim's body, it appears to be charred from a fire. A second glance proves that it was only in her imagination. She is still unsettled by what she saw. Meanwhile, Mulder visits Scully and brings her a present. Before opening it, she doubles over in pain and Mulder rushes her to the hospital. Reyes calls Mulder on his cell phone, saying it is important she see him.
Jeb Dukes sits alone in a motel room, staring in fear at his gun. He raises it to his own head, but it gets hot and burns his hand. His face suddenly crackles. He rips at his skin, revealing flames underneath.
Mulder meets Reyes in an FBI file room. Showing him the file, Reyes asks if he is familiar with Doggett's son's case, which was the most emotional case she has ever worked on. When they found the boy, she had a vision of the body as ashes. Doggett also admitted to seeing the ashen body, but convinced himself that it meant nothing. Reyes once again saw the vision on a new case and senses that there is a reason for it happening a second time. At the hospital, Doggett checks in on a sleeping Scully. He envisions himself in a crime scene in a field, but a nurse enters the hospital room and shakes him out of it. Later, Mulder is in the FBI hallway when Doggett attacks him. "Stay out of my life!" he yells. Mulder tries to cool him down, saying that he was asked to investigate. Reyes approaches the men and explains about the recent case where she had a recurring vision similar to what they both saw in Luke Doggett's case. A suspect in Luke's case was killed in a car accident in New Orleans right outside of where the Jeb Dukes shooting took place. Doggett again warns her to leave it alone.
Reyes goes to the home of Jeb's sister, Katha Dukes, to plead for her help. Jeb calls Katha from South Carolina, claiming that someone else killed those people. A woman knocks on his phone booth door because she needs help with her flat tire. The next morning, Jeb wanders in a daze to a car pulled over with tire trouble. He is unaware of any events that may have taken place. He sees flames in the reflection of the car window, gets in and throws out the woman's purse. When he pulls off, the tire iron falls to the side of the road.
Scully awakes and sees Doggett in her hospital room. He asks her what changed her mind about not believing any of the paranormal on the X-files. She admits to being afraid to believe. Suddenly Doggett sees a vision of Reyes in a field at the familiar crime scene. She is surrounded by sheriffs and looking at a body on the ground. Meanwhile, Reyes comes to Mulder in the X-files office. He has found no connection to other cases with the same kind of visions. Reyes tells him he is wrong because she believes there are patterns.
Doggett arrives at a crime scene in Spartanburg, SC where Mulder is waiting for him. Reyes' case has another murder victim. Doggett's reoccurring hallucination turns into reality when he sees her standing over a body, surrounded by sheriffs. He looks at the woman lying on the ground and tells Reyes that he does not see the ashen remains. Reyes is insistent that there are connections and that it may be a thread of evil. Mulder asks her to leave Doggett alone if the man really doesn't see anything.
Later, Mulder stops by the hospital to see Scully. She had a partial abruption in the uterus wall but she will be fine. He places his hand on her belly and they smile. Scully tells him that she likes Agent Reyes. Mulder is surprised. "You're nothing at all alike." "Neither are you and I," Scully responds. He says that he can't help Doggett if he doesn't want to be helped. She is convinced that Doggett is worth the effort.
Jeb Dukes is at his sister's house. Although he claims he hasn't committed any murders, Katha sees blood on his face and doesn't believe him. Jeb asks her for help, but Katha's fears deepen over the safety of her daughter. Doggett, meanwhile, submits to investigating the Jeb Dukes case when Monica enters the office. She wants him to be honest with himself about what he saw at the Spartanburg crime scene, but he says that feelings don't solve crimes. "What are you scared of?" she asks. Reyes assures Doggett that he did everything he could to save his son. She receives a call from Katha who says that Jeb is at her house. Doggett wants to know what link Jeb may have to his son, and the agents race off to the Dukes home. When they arrive, Katha tells her brother that Reyes only wants to talk to him, but Jeb is scared and takes Katha's daughter as hostage. Doggett holds him at the stairs, but puts down his gun when Jeb threatens to kill the little girl. Reyes shoots Jeb from the other side and Doggett calls for help.
Jeb is transported to Washington Memorial Hospital and the agents follow. Reyes surmises that perhaps saving the little girl was the connection to Doggett's son. She tells Doggett that there is nothing more for him to do, and he goes down to Scully's room. Watching her sleep, he again sees the vision in the field where Reyes is surrounded by the sheriffs. The men back away to reveal that Luke Doggett is the unseen body lying at their feet. The body turns to ash. Mulder interrupts him and asks if he thought there really was a connection to his son's death. Mulder wonders whether evil is like a random disease: while most people have immunity, others may catch it at a weak moment. In the ICU, Katha witnesses her brother's body seizing. The doctors try to revive him but his heart stops, and Jeb Dukes is declared dead. Katha stands crying over him, accusing Reyes of killing him. An invisible spirit floats from Jeb to Katha, causing her body to convulse and her eyes turn to flame red. She strikes Reyes and grabs the agent's gun. Doggett arrives in time to capture Katha. "It's over," he tells Reyes. "It's never over," she says.
Mulder comes once again to Scully's house and reminds her to open his gift. It is an heirloom doll from his family. She thanks him for the other gift he gave her -- the courage to believe. "I hope it's a gift I can pass on," she says, tearfully.
Back at the hospital, Katha Dukes is alive and strapped to her bed. Doggett stares intensely at the woman, wanting to believe that this will prevent the evil from spreading again.
MULDER AND DOGGETT ARE BEGRUDGINGLY THROWN TOGETHER TO INVESTIGATE SEVERAL DEATHS ABOARD AN OIL RIG. BUT MULDER IS CONVINCED THAT THE SHIP IS REALLY CARRYING THE ALIEN BLACK OIL
On an oil-drilling platform at sea, the workers are in a bar/lounge/restaurant area. The TV goes out and the drill rig boss, Bo Taylor, hits the TV, causing it to work again. One of the workers, Simon do le Cruz, goes off by himself to a shop where another man is repairing a radio. Simon carries a knife from the kitchen. In the lounge, the TV goes out again and pounding on it doesn't fix it. Taylor goes to find the rig's communications officer. He finds Simon battering the radio. The Communications man is dead. Simon is there, and is clearly frightened. Taylor's body begins to glow and Simon screams.
At FBI Headquarters, Doggett finds the door to the X-Files office locked. He unlocks it and enters to find Mulder looking through the file drawers, researching the recent death of an oil worker. Doggett understands that Mulder is interested, but points out that he is not assigned to The X-Files. Simon's body washed ashore with serious burns. The oilrig's communications officer is also reported as missing. The medical examiner said the burns are consistent with radiation burns. Doggett is well aware of the files on the Black Oil that is radioactive and can allegedly take over human bodies, but he is not convinced about it. The phone rings - it is Scully in Kersh's office. There is an oil executive there who says somebody in the X-Files office contacted him. It was Mulder, working unofficially.
Mr. Ortega is waiting in Kersh's office, and Kersh is unhappy that Mulder has been investigating the case. They have a sensitive situation - the company has located what appears to be a huge new oil reserve, which may spread into Mexican territory. In order to diffuse the possible international situation, Kersh reluctantly agrees to have the case investigated. He sends Doggett, who arrives at the platform by helicopter, 150 miles out to sea. A new communications specialist also arrives. Doggett discovers that Mulder is already there. Taylor tells the two agents that Simon went crazy and tried to blow up the rig, causing a gas valve to explode, also killing the communications chief. When Mulder and Doggett aren't looking, viewers see that Taylor has black oil in his eyes. Later, in private, Mulder and Doggett argue. Mulder isn't supposed to be there. Both agree that Taylor is lying.
Scully does an autopsy on Simon's body. In his brain, she found evidence of the alien virus, but it is dead. What killed it? Scully demands an evacuation of the oilrig, in case the virus is loose. The new communications specialist is working on the radio, which is still nonfunctional, when Taylor enters. There is some sort of high frequency interference being received over a large range of channels. Taylor knocks the man out and black oil drips out of Taylor's eyes and mouth, infecting the communications man. Later, Scully uses the now working radio to send a message to the oilrig and is surprised to learn that Mulder is there. He suggests that Kersh doesn't need to know that he is there. She confirms that the virus was in the body but is dead. Could the radiation have killed it? It seems unlikely, since the black oil is radioactive itself. Everybody in the rig is in danger. Scully wants to evacuate the rig and quarantine the people. Mulder counters that Scully needs to find what killed the virus. Doggett overhears part of the conversation and demands from Mulder to know what is happening. Later, the news is announced to the workers that Doggett has ordered the rig has been quarantined - nobody can leave or arrive at the rig. The workers all grumble.
Mulder has reviewed the crew manifest. There is one other crewmember missing, Diego Garza. He is a deck hand and was a friend of Simon. Nobody has any idea where he might be. Scully shows Simon's body to Ortega. He says there is no evidence of any disease and if they can't give him any, he'll call in the crew and rotate a fresh crew to the platform. Mulder is looking for Diego but Doggett thinks Mulder isn't giving straight answers. Mulder claims he doesn't know what the oilrig workers are hiding. Mulder has seen how this substance can take over a man's body. It body jumps from man to man and it's not in all oil. Mulder thinks the new oil complex is already being pumped and that the oil is filled with the virus, ready to infect the planet. Maybe Diego is hiding because he knows what is going on. As they talk, an alarm goes off. It's the radio room, on fire. Mulder grabs a fire extinguisher and as Doggett runs down the hall to get another, Diego knocks him unconscious.
Kersh and Skinner visit Scully in the morgue. The body should have been well on its way back to Mexico by now. Kersh got a call from Martin Ortega about the rig being shut down. Kersh intends to order the quarantine lifted. Scully counters that communications is out so the order lifting the quarantine can't be delivered. Kersh threatens Scully and Skinner that they are running out of mistakes. As the sun sets on the platform, Mulder concludes that the fire that damaged the radio equipment was arson. Doggett wakes up to find Diego holding a knife on him. Diego pokes him to see if his blood is red. Doggett doesn't speak very good Spanish and their conversation is halting, in English and Spanish. Diego set the fire to keep the others from using the radio. "They" have to be stopped before it is too late. "They" are coming. Who? The flying ships are coming. Scully finds a large number of T-Cells in Simon's blood, cells used to fight virus. Simon may have had a genetic immunity to the virus because he is from a rare group of indigenous Mexican Indian people. Scully thinks the rest of the rig workers killed him because he was a threat. It could actually put Mulder and Doggett in danger if they did get word to them.
Doggett and Diego continue to talk. Doggett says if Diego stays there, the other workers will find him. Doggett promises to help Diego get home. Later, Doggett crawls out of the space where Diego was holding him, apparently having reached agreement with Diego. Taylor intercepts Doggett, knocking him down and beginning to drip oil, but Mulder arrives and knocks Taylor unconscious, saving Doggett. They head for the radio room and lock the door. Doggett will try to get the radio working while Mulder barricades the door. Outside, the oil workers gather can begin to break down the door.
Mulder piles furniture against the door as Doggett gets the radio working. Scully is on the other end. Scully thinks she knows why they killed Simon. The choppers are on the way to evacuate the platform, but Mulder orders that the helicopters not land. Doggett tells Scully that only three of them on the platform are uninfected. Mulder abruptly breaks the radio, and when he does, the hammering on the door stops. He had to prevent the oilrig workers from using the radio, because apparently they would use it to signal their flying ships. The oilrig workers are no longer outside the radio room. Mulder and Doggett cautiously leave the room to find out why, Doggett calling to Diego as they go. They find Diego's body, burned. They hear the chopper arrive and continue making their way up to the deck of the platform. Mulder thinks that the workers are about to blow the rig. Flames break out as the two agents run over catwalks and through equipment rooms. In one area, Taylor and his men block their way. Explosions rock the platform. Ultimately, they come to a catwalk and jump into the water as the platform explodes, to soon be rescued by a hovering helicopter.
Back at the FBI office, Doggett again finds Mulder in the office. Doggett has been called to Kersh's office. The oil company has lost the right to drill on that undersea oil complex. Mulder wants the oil to stay where it is. Mulder tells Doggett that the blame will be properly fixed - on Mulder. He is out of the FBI. Mulder is taking a fall for Doggett, for the X-Files. Doggett has seen the oil for himself. Doggett is in charge now of The X-Files now. Mulder walks out the door as the episode ends.
TEAMED WITH A NEW PARTNER WHILE SCULLY'S ON MATERNITY LEAVE, DOGGETT INVESTIGATES THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF TWO MEN. AFTER HE DISAPPEARS AS WELL, MULDER DEFIES ORDERS AND SEARCHES FOR HIM
On a stormy night in Ellicott, NY, Gary Sacks drives up to a house and enters. An older man, his father named Arlen, is in a wheelchair in the house. They discuss whether Arlen should be in a hospital, and about how the locks have to be checked every night. Gary says his father doesn't owe "Stytes" anything. When Gary leaves the room we see that a window is open. Arlen's heart monitor begins beeping faster and faster. Gary, in the kitchen, hears the heart monitor beep flatline. Arlen's wheelchair is overturned and Arlen is missing. Some sort of reptilian creature the size of a man jumps Gary.
Scully is in the X-Files office, cleaning out Mulder's desk, looking at memorabilia from past cases. Doggett enters. She's not staying – her doctor told her to begin her maternity leave. She gives Doggett her medallion commemorating the Apollo 11 space flight. Mulder once gave it to her, symbolizing teamwork and partnership. She thanks Doggett, saying she wouldn't be here without him. They hug. Doggett wants to be sure that this pregnancy leave is just a leave, and that Scully will be coming back. She just smiles at him. Another agent enters, a young woman named Harrison. She has a murder in up-state New York to be investigated. She has been assigned to work with Doggett on The X-Files. In Ellicott, they see Arlen's body being removed. It was found in the woods near the house. Arlen was the groundskeeper of an estate. His son, Gary, is missing and is a suspect. On the frame of the open window, and on the floor, Doggett finds traces of slime. Harrison is young and enthusiastic, but clearly inexperienced. It's her first time in the field. Kersh gave her the job. Doggett says she is being used, but Harrison counters that she begged for the assignment. She was in accounting and processed Mulder and Scully's expense vouchers. She is excited to be part of this case. She knows about liver eating mutants and aliens shedding skins. More slime is found where Sack's body was found.
Mulder picks up Scully to go to the hospital. She is feeling strange about everything, especially leaving work. She feels like a deserter. Mulder senses that she is concerned about Doggett. He "watched her back," but Mulder says Doggett can take care of himself. Doggett is looking through the woods and approaches a large mansion. It appears deserted, with cloths over light fixtures and furniture. By a computer Doggett finds a book by Robert Leakey, The Sixth Extinction. Something moves down the hall and Doggett draws his gun, but it is Harrison. He hushes her and tells her to draw her gun. He sends her outside to the front door – whatever it is in the house, he will try to flush it out. She goes outside and discovers the reptilian creature on the wall above her. Doggett hears gunshots and rushes outside. Harrison is gone. Walking through the grounds, he steps in a trap door in the ground and falls in.
Other agents are searching the woods, lead by Skinner. Scully phones and asks if it the report of Doggett being missing is true. She wants to come and help, but Skinner tells her to stay put. Doggett wakes up in an underground passage. He picks up his gun and draws a flashlight. His cell phone reports no service. Mulder and Scully are at the morgue. Arlen Sacks died of heart failure after being blinded by some kind of substance. Mulder says it is venom, based on the sample Doggett and Harrison sent back. Doggett breaks through a metal gate across the passage. He finds a wine cellar, then hears a noise. The reptile jumps him,. But he fires his gun and drives it off. Harrison comes into the room. Both of then had their eyes sprayed and their vision is blurry. She has also found Gary, who is comatose nearby. Doggett thinks somebody provided the trapdoor to provide meals for the reptile. Bootleggers probably built the tunnels during the depression. Mulder drives up to the search location and talks to Skinner. Police found Doggett's car parked at a convenience store some distance away and the search is being moved.. Mulder decided to do his own search in the woods. Doggett is trying to climb out of a manhole , even though his vision is blurry Mulder approaches the mansion Herman Stytes, who says he owns the property, approaches Mulder. Mulder asks if Herman has seen any dangerous animals. Mulder gives his name as Alvin Kersh. Herman says he is a biologist. Mulder thinks that the reptile is a man, using some kind of reptile venom. Mulder walks away. Doggett gets to the top of the manhole shaft, but Stytes steps on his hand, causing him to fall back.
Doggett thinks that the man is some kind of scientist. Doggett tells Harrison to stay with Gary while he looks for a way out. Harrison, however, discovers that Gary is gone. Did the thing take him? Mulder is watching the mansion when Scully calls. She says Stytes called and complained about Mulder impersonating Kersh. Scully thinks this is some sort of reptile attack. Mulder found his Apollo medallion on the grass on Stytes' estate, so he knows Doggett is nearby. The bacteria in the slime is breaking down the dissolving the body of the victims, according to lab tests. Doggett and Harrison are making their way through the tunnels. She is completely blind. Doggett catches a glimpse of the reptile and shoots as it crawls along the walls. Gary is in the same room with them, his body largely dissolved. Scully reports to Mulder that Stytes is a cryptobiologist who published a monograph last year claiming to be on the verge of creating a new species of reptile. Mulder sees something slithering around the grounds and chases it. It climbs the mansion wall and disappears. Mulder pounds on the mansion door, which is locked. The reptile is just inside, and transforms in to Stytes. Stytes opens the door. Mulder wants to know where it is. Mulder and Stytes find Doggett and Harrison in the tunnels. Doggett reports that Stytes is protecting the reptile but Harrison claims that Stytes IS the reptile. Stytes locks them in, then transforms in to the reptile and stalks them. Doggett can't see but Mulder directs him how to fire his gun to kill the reptile. When it is dead, the reptile transforms back into Stytes.
At Washington DC Memorial Hospital, Doggett is recovered, having received anti- venom treatments. Harrison is recovering, but she has decided that she will not return to the X-Files. Mulder wants to return the Apollo 11 medallion to Doggett, but Doggett wants to give it to Harrison. Mulder and Scully visit Harrison, who asks a typical fan question – when Mulder went to Antarctica to save Scully from the alien spaceship, and his snowcat ran out of gas, how did they get home. Mulder and Scully don't answer, but begin quibbling over whether it was really a spaceship, enjoying themselves.. Doggett listens at the door briefly, and walks off, alone.
A SECRETIVE INVESTIGATION BY MULDER AND DOGGETT LEADS TO NEW EVIDENCE ABOUT THE NATURE OF SCULLY'S PREGNANCY AND THE PLOT AGAINST HER UNBORN CHILD
The episode begins with a narration by Mulder about the miracle of life – or is it just nostalgia for something commandeered by science. How did this child come to be? Is it a miracle or a product of technology?
Scully's mother, Maggie, is helping decorate Scully's apartment for a baby shower. Lizzy Gill arrives, a baby nurse Maggie has asked to help Scully. While the shower is going on, Lizzy replaces the pills in Scully's prescription bottle. At Zeus Genetics, Dr. Lev is working late when Billy Miles enters. He's there to verify that Dr. Lev's work has been fruitful. It has, but his work is done. Billy kills Dr. Lev, dousing the body with a chemical and setting it on fire.
Doggett is cleaning his gun on a Saturday morning when Mulder comes to his door. The Zeus Genetics building has burned and Mulder wants to be involved because it's the place where Scully thought they were creating alien babies.
The two visit the FBI evidence analysis facility which is sifting through the debris from Zeus. Doggett's friend, Gene, resents that it was Mulder who initiated the search. All of the Zeus staff is accounted for but Dr. Lev. Lev's co-founder of Zeus Genetics was Dr. Parenti, who was Scully's obstetrician for the first two-thirds of her pregnancy. Mulder and Doggett go to question Parenti. They gain access to the office, believing that nobody is there. Parenti actually is there, meeting with a patient. In Parenti's office Doggett finds many glass containers with preserved fetuses. Parenti says they are babies with birth defects. Scully takes her prescription pills as Lizzy is about to leave. Outside, Lizzy is picked up to Duffy Haskel. She tells him that Scully trusts her and Haskel replies, "Good, we're almost at an end."
Dr. Parenti is packing the things in his office when Billy enters. When Mulder and Doggett arrive to further question Parenti, they find the doctor's head in one of the glass canisters. Mulder finds Billy in the office, who tosses Mulder through a glass panel. Doggett fires his gun at Billy's chest, but Billy keeps coming. Doggett ducks into an office, and when he looks out again, Billy has disappeared. Doggett and Mulder go to Scully's apartment, where she cleans a cut over Mulder's eyebrow. Mulder thinks Billy is an alien "human replacement." Doggett counters that Billy bled red blood when he was shot, and the X-Files show that aliens bleed green. Mulder speculates that Billy is something new. Lizzy arrives while they are talking and from another room calls Haskel to report that there is trouble – that the agents are asking all the right questions. While on the phone, Haskel is attacked by Billy.
Doggett arrives at the crime scene where Haskel's head has been found, severed from his body. Skinner and Mulder are there, too. Skinner says the building has been determined to be an illegal medical facility for the purpose of human cloning and that prenatal records indicate that Lev and Parenti were monitoring Scully's pregnancy.
Skinner asks Mulder about the fatherhood of Scully's baby. Mulder has no idea and Skinner stresses that he needs answers. Mulder phones Scully, who has to leave the shower to answer. She catches Lizzy substituting more prescription pills. Scully is checked out at the hospital, and everything is fine. The replacement pills were just vitamin supplements. Skinner, Mulder and Doggett gather at Skinner's office to question Lizzy, who says that for ten years she has been a scientist working on a secret human cloning project. They were funded with government money from men who are all dead now. They were successful with a clone combining human and alien DNA. The babies only survived a couple of days, but they provided tissue and stem cells for other work, which Lizzy claims to have no knowledge of. Lizzy says Scully's child is very special – a perfect human child with no human frailties. Mulder storms out. Doggett's friend, Gene, tells Doggett that Billy has called in from Dr. Parenti's office, offering to give himself up. Doggett takes a SWAT team to Parenti's office, but Billy is not there.
Mulder arrives at Scully's apartment and tells her to pack a bag quickly because she is in danger. He is going to do everything he can to protect her baby, but he can't do that at her apartment. Doggett phones to report that Billy is not where he said he would be. The lights go out in Scully's apartment and Mulder and Scully run. As they head down the hall, Billy approaches from the other end of the hall. Scully's car is blocked in by two other cars. As Billy approaches, he is struck by another car, driven by Krycek. Although Krycek's car completely passed over Billy's body, Billy is recovering rapidly. Krycek calls out that they don't have much time and in a split second, Mulder and Scully decide to go with Krycek. They all gather again in Skinner's office. Krycek says that there are others just like Billy and that they are virtually unstoppable. They are working to end the resistance to the alien's return to the planet. Why do they want Scully's baby? They are afraid of it, because they realize that it could be greater than them. Krycek asked Skinner to kill Scully's baby (a few episodes ago) because he wanted to destroy the truth.
Mulder leaps to the conclusion that this truth is that there is a higher power, a God. Krycek says that there is no hospital that is safe enough for Scully.
Doggett calls in help, including agent Monica Reyes, who is on her way to the airport in a taxi. She diverts to the FBI building. Doggett waits for her in the parking garage and phones to Skinner and Mulder to bring Scully down when he sees Reyes' taxi pull up. As Monica drives up, however, Billy is seen in the parking garage and Doggett tells Skinner and Mulder to take Scully back up in the elevator. Billy heads up the stairs. Skinner and Mulder leave Scully with Krycek and head out to intercept Billy. Krycek gets her to the garage and Reyes drives off with Scully, slowly negotiating the curves of the parking garage. Gene stops them at the parking garage exit to the street. On the roof of the building, Skinner encounters Billy. Mulder runs up and knocks Billy over the edge of the building. Billy falls into a garbage truck, several stories below. Gene waives Reyes on and she drives off with Scully. Viewers see that Gene has a bump on the back of his neck.
To be continued.
WITH OTHERWORLDLY FACTIONS IN PURSUIT, MULDER AND THE AGENTS RACE TO SAFEGUARD THE BIRTH OF SCULLY'S CHILD
PART 2 OF 2
A pathologist is called in late at night to examine the gnarled body of Billy Miles (crushed in the garbage truck in 8X20). The doctor pulls from the remains a piece of metallic vertebrae and, thinking it is most likely trash, places it on a nearby lab tray. He leaves the office with plans to continue the autopsy in the morning. The metal magically spins on the tray and reproduces itself, progressively growing larger.
At the FBI, Mulder produces a video grab of a healthy and re-formed Billy Miles walking out of the morgue the previous night. Krycek explains to Skinner and Doggett that Billy is a human replacement -- a new kind of alien created to repopulate the planet. Although Billy may not find the hiding Scully, Krycek warns that others like him will. Agent Crane interrupts to tell Doggett that Knowle Rohrer is in the building to see him. Rohrer fabricates a story to Doggett that his investigation is military in nature and stemmed from a plan to create a super soldier. He explains that Billy is a prototype who is now after Scully because she was abducted by the military and impregnated with such a prototype. The chip in her neck was used to monitor her. When Rohrer asks where Scully is, Doggett claims ignorance. Meanwhile, Billy Miles enters the FBI hallway, unnoticed by everyone but Krycek. When Krycek bolts out of Skinner's office, Skinner follows him into an elevator to flee Billy. As the doors shut out Billy, his hand penetrates the metal and goes straight into the elevator chamber. Billy swings his arm and cuts into the top of Skinner's head, which knocks out the A.D. While Skinner later recuperates in the hospital with a concussion, Doggett tells Mulder that his informant Rohrer tipped him off that this would happen. Doggett is concerned that his knowledge of Scully's whereabouts may eventually catch up with him.
Scully and Reyes drive through the night into Democrat Hot Springs, Georgia. Although it was once the city where Doggett was born, it is now a deserted ghost town. They set up camp in an abandoned house of worship that has no running water. That evening, Reyes goes outside to have a nerve-settling cigarette, when a light in the sky catches her eye. While too low and bright to be a star, it is unidentifiable. She ignores it and goes back inside. Seeing the newly cleaned building, Scully thanks Reyes for her kindness and tells the agent that she reminds her of her late sister, Melissa. Reyes sees someone lurking outside and draws her gun. A truck driven by a female game warden comes barreling toward her. The agents explain that Scully's life is in danger and that they are in hiding. The warden kindly gives them her first aid kit and a camp stove before leaving. Reyes admits to Scully that her vibrations are inclining that "something feels off" about the abandoned place. When she goes outside to get more water, she again sees the light in the distant sky. While she is watching it, Billy Miles appears and throws her against a wall. Before he can attack her, a gunshot blows a hole through his chest. The game warden stands aside, her rifle still smoking. Reyes sees the alien vertebrae on Billy's neck, and she and the warden carry his limp body to show Scully that he's dead. Scully, still worried that he can never be killed, announces that she is going into labor. Sitting in the FBI garage, Doggett asks Mulder when his quest is going to end. Mulder responds that perhaps it never will. They see Krycek pulling into the garage. His passenger is the ubiquitous Knowle Rohrer. Doggett follows Rohrer into the FBI building, finding him surreptitiously meeting with Agent Crane. Hiding from them, he meets up with Skinner, and they call Mulder with news about Crane. Mulder, still in the garage watching Krycek, says that Krycek, Rohrer and Crane are all in it together, fooling the agents into believing that they are protecting Scully. Mulder tells Doggett to get out of there and asks him to reveal where Reyes took Scully. Suddenly, the car window smashes and Krycek holds Mulder at gunpoint. Krycek says that he tried to stop the aliens but it is now too late. Although he has protected Mulder's life in the past, Krycek explains that he is forced to kill him now because the conspiracy goes deep into the FBI. Krycek cocks his gun trigger and aims at Mulder, but Skinner shoots him in the arm. Krycek pleads with the A.D. to kill Mulder, insisting that he can save more lives that way. Skinner listens, but then shoots Krycek squarely between the eyes, killing him. Mulder takes off to the airport in pursuit of Scully. Upstairs in the building, Doggett pulls his gun on Rohrer and Crane, and they chase him. Doggett runs into Skinner, and the two break for their car. They run over Crane, but he is still alive, hanging onto the side of the vehicle. Crane smashes through the window, while Rohrer follows in another car. Skinner sideswipes a concrete pole, ridding him of Crane. When Crane gets up, Rohrer's car hits him and swerves out of control. Rohrer crashes into a wall, and his car explodes.
Reyes is preparing for Scully's birth when she notices the alien vertebrae on the game warden's neck. She throws boiling water on the warden, screaming "Who are you?" Suddenly, a number of cars pull up to the abandoned town and a perfectly healthy Billy Miles gets up off the ground. "This baby will be born," the replicant game warden says. Scully screams in pain, watching as a crowd of aliens walk into the building and surround her. "This is my baby! Please don't let them take it," she pleads to Reyes. The aliens watch silently as Scully gives birth with Reyes' assistance. Mulder flies overhead in a helicopter and the aliens pull away in their cars. He lands, and runs toward the building, calling out for Scully. Reyes orders him to take Scully to the hospital.
Back at the FBI, Kersh reprimands Doggett and Reyes for the report they have filed. Doggett has personally assigned Reyes to the X-files because the Deputy Director's office is under investigation. Doggett accuses Kersh of meeting with two missing men who were presumed dead -- Crane and Rohrer. Later, Mulder comes to Scully's apartment where the Lone Gunmen are bearing gifts. They learned from Doggett that he never told Mulder exactly where to find Scully. "There was a light. I followed it," Mulder says. The Gunmen depart, and Scully shows Mulder the baby, whom she named William, after Mulder's father. Although the baby is completely human, they comment that he is still a miracle. Mulder believes that the aliens did not take him because they thought he would be otherwise. "I think we feared the possibility," he tells Scully. "The truth we both know." And as he cradles their son, he leans in and kisses her.