On a Russian boat sailing off the coast of New Jersey, an engineer notes that the toilets are overflowing with water. Suspecting a blockage, a young man named Dmitri is sent to clear out the bilge; his boss tells him he always gets the dirty work because he's young. Braving the sewage smell, Dmitri calls into the water tank, when he is suddenly yanked under the water by an unseen creature. In a panic, the engineer flushes the tanks out.

Back in Washington, the X-Files are still closed and Mulder is still bored senseless working on a wiretap. An agent comes in to relieve him, and he is told that he's being sent to Newark, NJ for a murder investigation on the orders of Assistant Director Skinner. Mulder travels to Newark and meets up with the local police running the case; he dons boots and descends into a smelly old sewer, where the body lies, partially eaten away and floating in the water. Mulder returns to Washington, incensed with Skinner for putting him on what he thinks is a simple drug-related homicide. Determined to find answers, Mulder forces his way into Skinner's office and interrupts an important meeting; he explains why he thinks the case is worthless. Skinner says that Mulder's previous work on the X-Files puts him in no place to determine what is and isn't a waste of manpower, and hastily dismisses Mulder.

That evening, Mulder meets with Scully at a park bench on the Washington waterfront. Mulder expresses his displeasure with his work, and says that he has contemplated leaving the Bureau. Trying to find a way to help (and to raise Mulder's spirits), Scully asks about Mulder's current case (which he summarizes as "a zero"). Scully has the body from the case transferred to Quantico, and she performs an autopsy on it. Her examination turns up a tattoo on the body's right forearm, but more alarmingly, finds a bizarre and hardy worm crawling through the corpse.

Back in Newark, NJ, a public water crew heads into the sewer where the body was found to repair some broken grating. Suddenly, the man in the water is attacked and yanked into the sewage. He surfaces and screams for help and is successfully rescued, but he is badly injured. Taken to a local hospital, the worker is treated for tetanus and infection and reports a bad taste in his mouth. Mulder meets with the doctor, who explains the situation to Mulder. The man has a strange-looking circular wound on his back; the worker thinks that he was attacked by someone's pet snake that got flushed down the toilet.

Mulder gets a phone call from Scully, who reports her discovery of the strange parasite in Mulder's murder victim; the two agree to meet when Mulder gets back to Washington. Mulder immediately gets another phone call, but instead of Scully, a mysterious voice--Mr. X--tells Mulder that he has "a friend at the FBI" and then hangs up. Mulder heads down to Quantico and meets Scully. Scully shows Mulder the massive flukeworm she recovered from the body, where it was feeding off the victim's liver. She says the fluke attaches itself through an organ called the scolex; this leads Mulder to show Scully a picture of the injured worker and his bite mark. Scully immediately discounts the bite mark as far too large to have come from a flukeworm, but the shape of the bite mark is correct. Changing tacks, Mulder asks Scully not to start a campaign for him, explaining the mysterious phone call, but Scully says she never told anyone about their conversation from the previous night.

Back in New Jersey, the sanitation worker returns home, washing his mouth out with copious amounts of toothpaste to get rid of the horrible taste. Stepping into his shower, he begins coughing and choking, and eventually vomits up a large flukeworm. Meanwhile, Mulder heads to the Newark sewage treatment plant and speaks with a sewage engineer, who explains that the section of tunnel Mulder was in was quite old; he also says that all the city's waste flows through this treatment plant. When shown the flukeworm, the engineer doesn't recognize it, but says it wouldn't surprise him to find one in the sewer system. Elsewhere in the plant, a worker notes something swimming in one of the sewage tanks. With the engineer's help, they manage to trap the creature in one of the tanks. When it becomes visible, to everyone's shock, the creature appears to be a bizarre half-flukeworm half-man.

Back in Quantico, Scully does a little digging on the computer which confirms her initial assessment: the shape of the wound is correct for a flukeworm attachment, but is far too large. While she's working, someone slips a copy of a tabloid under her door; the headline on the front page reads "Monster on Board!? Bizarre accident on Russian cargo ship has officials suspicious." The article sparks a memory, and Scully re-examines the tattoo on the murder victim's body--and it turns out to be Cyrillic characters. Just then, Mulder calls Scully and tells her about the capture of the flukeman.

Scully travels up to New Jersey and is overwhelmed by the size of the flukeman. She shows Mulder a photo of the tattoo, and says she made the connection by the anonymous tip provided through the tabloid aritcle. "I guess you really do have a friend in the FBI," says Scully. She strongly encourages Mulder not to quit the Bureau when he hands in his report.

Mulder travels back to Washington, where he hands his report to an nonplussed Skinner. Skinner explains that the oddity of the case is not lost on him, but the government wants to transfer the flukeman for psychiatric evaluation and possible prosecution; Mulder counters that the flukeman is a monster and cannot be institutionalized. Skinner argues that the thing can't just be put in a zoo--it has now killed two people, since the attacked sanitation worker later died. Mulder argues that he and Scully could have handled the case until they were shut down, and Skinner concedes, "It should have been an X-File."

The flukeman is loaded into an ambulance for transfer. Along the way, the US marshal driving the ambulance notices the flukeman has escaped his restraints. He pulls the ambulance over to search for the flukeman; unfortunately, the flukeman is a little smarter than suspected and manages to overwhelm and kill the marshal. The flukeman flees from the scene and crawls away to a nearby portable toilet to hide out for a while.

The following morning, a septic company worker arrives to flush out the toilets, and in the process, pumps the flukeman into his truck. Mulder and the police arrive nearby shortly thereafter to look into the marshal's death. While on the scene, Mulder gets another phone call from the mysterious Mr. X, who tells Mulder that he must succeed in his current case because "reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable." Going back to the case, Mulder overhears something on the radio about portable toilets, and realizes the flukeman might be on the septic tanker he saw driving away.

Mulder races to the Newark sewage processing plant, where all tanker trucks deposit their sewage loads. The sewage engineer Mulder talked to earlier tells him that everything eventually goes out to sea, but that gratings and filters would effectively trap the flukeman, giving hope that he will eventually be found. While waiting, Mulder gets a disturbing phone call from Scully; she thinks the worms found in the previous victims may have been a larval stage for the larger creature--it is trying to reproduce and find hosts for its young. Just then, the engineer reports that a worker spotted something in an old section of tunnel, very near where the first body was found. Seeing that the system is an overflow drain, Mulder figures the flukeman is trying to get back out to sea.

Mulder and the engineer head into the sewer to locate the flukeman. The engineer heads further in to close off the outlet pipe that leads to the sea, but the control lever has rusted into place. In his efforts to move the lever, the engineer slips into the sewage and is promptly attacked by the flukeman. Mulder dives into the sewage to help, and pulls the frightened engineer out of the water. Mulder sees the flukeman trying to escape through a drain pipe, and quickly moves to close the pipe off. He hits the control lever, and a metal sheet slides into place, slicing the flukeman in half.

Mulder returns to Washington and meets with Scully on the park bench again. He tells her that their "friend in the FBI" is insistent upon re-opening the X-Files. Scully goes over the biological tests done on the flukeman, stating that it really is half-man, half-flukeworm, but is still able to spontaneously regenerate like all flukeworms. She also says that the creature is probably wrought by man, the product of intense radiation; a little digging shows that the questionable Russian freighter where the flukeman came from was used to haul radioactive waste from the Chernobyl accident. Back in Newark, in the harbor, half of the flukeman's body floats to the surface--and its eyes snap open.

In New York City, Dr. Saul Grissom is seen stretched out on his couch, watching television. Suddenly startled he looks up to see smoke rolling under his door. Opening the door and finding fire behind it, Grissom hurriedly calls 911. He then tries to put out the growing flames with his fire extinguisher, but he fails and ultimately finds himself cornered. The fire department arrives, passing a strange man with a wound on the back of his neck; when they reach Grissom's apartment, they find Grissom dead on the floor, but there are no signs of a fire.

The following day, Mulder finds an article pointing to Grissom's death circled in his morning newspaper, along with a tape. The tape contains a recording of Grissom's 911 call. Curiosity piqued, Mulder takes the information to Skinner; he is puzzled by the fact that the newspaper article never mentioned a fire. Skinner says he will see what he can do to get Mulder assigned to the case. Meanwhile, with the X-Files closed, Mulder is returned to transcribing wire tap recordings. He is interrupted by Special Agent Alex Krycek, who informs Mulder that Skinner has authorized his request to investigate Grissom. Unfortunately, Krycek opened the case before Mulder did, and Skinner has assigned the two to work together; this irks Mulder, who insists that he works alone. He roughly brushes off Krycek, who explains a spent fire extinguisher was found at the scene, even though there were no traces of fire. Krycek insists that it's his case; Mulder finally relents and plays along.

In the meantime, Mulder contacts Scully at Quantico, interrupting her pathology class; he says he wants her to do the autopsy on Grissom, and arranges to have the body sent to her. Mulder travels up to the sleep disorder center that Grissom ran in Stamford, CT, leaving Krycek behind. A nurse at the facility says that Grissom himself occasionally experienced bouts of insomnia. The nurse shows Mulder around the facility, and even shows him a case where electrical impulses are being used to treat a disorder--by literally altering someone's dreams. Leaving the facility, Mulder bumps into an incensed Krycek, who has finally caught up. Krycek says that he admired Mulder at the FBI Academy, even though most people made fun of him; he doesn't appreciate being ditched. Just then, Mulder gets a phone call from Scully, who has turned up some odd things in Grissom's autopsy.

Mulder and Krycek head to Quantico to meet with Scully. Seeing that Mulder has a new partner, Scully is polite with Krycek but ignores his handshake and overtures to be friendly. Turning to the autopsy, she says that Grissom's body has a pronounced rigidity to it that is seen only when a body is exposed to extreme heat--like fire. But at the same time, none of the primary burn symptoms are evident--Scully says it looks almost like Grissom believed his body was burning.

That evening, a man named Henry Willig, who also has a strange scar on his neck, is visited by the man firefighters saw leaving Grissom's building. The two are clearly old friends, and Willig refers to the other man as "Preacher." The two talk about old torture they were put to and have been suffering from for the last 24 years. Willig suddenly realizes that Preacher is responsible for the death of Grissom, having seen the incident on TV. Looking up, Willig sees his apartment full of innocent Vietnamese that he killed years ago; they raise machine guns and blow him away. "It's all over now," says Preacher.

Mulder and Krycek look into Willig's death the following morning. Krycek reports that the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death--internally, it looked like gunshot wounds, but there was no external trauma. Mulder notes in a photo the scar on Willig's neck, and Krycek suggests he may have had surgery while in the Marines in 1970. With a quick flip of his notes, Mulder finds that Grissom was in the Marines at the same time, and both were stationed at Parris Island, NC. A computer search shows that Willig was in the Special Forces, and the only surviving member of his team is a man named Augustus Cole.

Mulder and Krycek turn up Cole at a mental hospital in New Jersey; a staff psychiatrist says that Cole was isolated from other patients because he "disrupted their sleep cycles." But when the agents reach Cole's cell, it turns up empty. The doctor returns to the ward nurse, who insists she personally saw the doctor sign Cole out of the hospital days ago, and shows him a signature to prove it. Looking at a picture in Cole's file, we see that he is the man who was present at Grissom's death, the man that Willig called "Preacher." Just then, Mulder gets a phone call from the mysterious Mr. X, who says he has information on the case.

Mulder leaves and meets X at an empty stadium; X hands over a folder of data from a top secret military project, saying that the idea was that "sleep was the soldier's greatest enemy." Mulder thinks that the Marines were conducting experiments in sleep deprivation, but X tells him it's more like sleep eradication--all in an effort to build a better soldier; Augustus Cole hasn't slept a night in 24 years. The effort seemed successful: Cole's 13-man special forces unit accounted for over 4,000 kills. X also gives Mulder an address of Sal Matola, another member of the unit who was reported killed in action, but actually survived. X tells Mulder that the closing of the X-Files and his separation from Scully was just the beginning. "The truth is still out there," he says, "but it's never been more dangerous." He also says he's unwilling to sacrifice himself the way Deep Throat did.

Mulder goes to pick up Krycek, who reports that a man matching Cole's description just held up a drugstore, but apparently didn't steal any money. The police descend on the hotel where Cole is holed up, and just as Mulder and Krycek arrive, gunshots are fired. The agents bust into the hotel room to find that Cole has shot two officers; he then slid down the fire escape. But then Krycek drops a surprise: it appears that the two cops shot each other.

Back at Quantico, Scully mulls over the secret report given to her by Mulder. Apparently, Cole and the others had surgery on their brain stems to produce a permanent waking state. They were administered drugs to boost serotonin levels (the primary chemical produced during sleep) in their blood; this is consistent with the drugs that Cole stole from the drug store he held up. Scully get a call from Mulder; she says that the project still can't explain the weird autopsies, nor why two cops would shoot each other. Mulder speculates that Cole has developed the ability to project his unconscious on others, causing hallucinations. Scully still recommends profiling Cole to guess his next move; she then asks Mulder how Krycek is working out as a partner. Mulder says Krycek is a little green and needs some fashion advice, but is quite open to extreme possibilities--"more than I was?" wonders Scully, who thinks it must be nice not to be constantly questions. Mulder quips, "Oh yeah, it's great. I'm surprised I put up with you for so long."

Mulder and Krycek head off to speak with Sal Matola, who is working a menial job as a diner busboy. Matola is cagy, expecting Mulder and Krycek to shoot him; he is entirely aware of Cole's recent activities. He said not having to sleep was initially great; his unit could run 24-hour patrols and never get tired. But after a while, the whole squadron went AWOL, following its own lead, going on its own missions. They killed anything they could find, including innocent civilians. Matola says that Cole was known as "Preacher" because he always read from the Bible and said that one day the unit would have to pay for its sins. He also identifies Dr. Grissom's partner in the project, a man named Dr. Girardi. Cole has them marked because they made the sleepless men what they were.

Stuck in traffic, Mulder explains to Krycek that Cole has probably become active recently to mark the 24th anniversary of the massacre at Phu Bai, which the sleepless soldiers participated in. Mulder gets a phone call from Scully. She has tracked down Dr. Girardi, who is now a professor of neuroscience at Harvard--but he's coming to New York this evening for Grissom's funeral. Mulder and Krycek head to the train station to get a photo of Girardi and meet him there, hoping to get to him before Cole does. Girardi's train arrives, and just as Mulder spots Girardi stepping off, Cole guns him down--and then shoots Mulder.

Mulder awakens to find himself unhurt. Krycek says that Girardi never showed up, and that Mulder was waving his gun around at nothing. Mulder has the station police review security camera tapes to try and find Cole and Girardi. Under pressure from the ever-ready-to-believe Krycek, Mulder finally spills his theory that Cole can create illusions so real they can kill. Just then, the police turn up an oddity on the security camera, and Mulder and Krycek go to check it out.

Down in the train yard, Cole has taken Girardi hostage; Girardi insists he was just doing his job and following orders, but Cole seems intent on killing him anyhow, quoting Biblical prophecies of revenge. Cole induces Girardi to have a vision of soldiers picking up surgical instruments to kill him. Mulder and Krycek arrive just in time to hear Girardi's scream. They find Girardi alive but apparently subjected to the same sleep-depriving operation that Cole had. Krycek goes to get help, and Mulder chases after Cole. Mulder corners Cole, but drops his gun, and only wants to talk. Cole is distraught to tears, missing his old life and regretting what the military did to him; he is restless. Krycek suddenly appears, weapon drawn. Cole moves to retaliate, and Krycek shoots Cole twice and kills him. Mulder heads to his car to ditch Krycek again, but finds that Krycek has taken the keys.

Mulder returns to Washington, where he meets with Scully. Both of them had their offices broken into and their copies of the military project files removed. Mulder tells Scully about his meeting with Mr. X, and reiterates his warning that their lives are in danger. In New York, the Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM) becomes displeased upon learning that Mulder found the military file and apparently has a new source. We then see that CSM is getting his information from Krycek; Krycek says that splitting up Mulder and Scully has only strenghthened them, and that Scully was an underestimated problem. "Every problem has a solution," says CSM, smashing out his cigarette.

Pulaski, VA, 1986: Duane Barry lies resting in bed with the TV on, when suddenly, the television signal is lost. Barry snaps awake, unable to breathe; a strange white light fills the air, and alien forms are seen surrounding Barry's bed. "No, no, not again," he cries. Outside the house, we see a strange UFO shooting a shaft of light into Barry's house; the only noise is Barry's scream.

We shift to a correctional center for mentally ill people in the present day. Duane Barry is brought into a doctor's office in restraints for his refusal to take his medicine. Barry insists he hears voices in his head and that "they" are coming again; he continually speaks of himself in the third person. The doctor moves to give Barry a shot, and in the confusion, Barry escapes, overwhelms a guard, and takes his gun. Barry takes the doctor as a hostage and runs.

In Washington, Agent Krycek catches up with Mulder swimming laps at a pool; Mulder has been called in to negotiate a hostage situation. Barry has taken four people hostage at an office building in Richmond, and claims he's being controlled by aliens. At the scene, Mulder and Krycek meet up with Agent Lucy Kazdin, who's running the negotiations; she quickly brings everyone up to speed. Barry apparently is bent on going with the doctor he took hostage to an alien abduction site, but he couldn't remember where it was and so stopped at a travel agency; without his medication, Barry is lucid but manic. Kazdin seems slightly taken aback by Mulder's belief in the abduction story, but needs him in the negotiations to help save lives. Mulder asks for more information on Barry's previous alien abductions, but Kazdin essentially ignores his request, only interested in keeping Barry on the phone.

Inside the office building, Barry keeps his hostages cowed with force, and tells the doctor (Doctor Hakkie) he's going to take and show him that his abductions are real. Mulder calls him on the office phone; he says he understands Barry's problems, but Barry knows the negotiation drill and doesn't buy Mulder's story. Realizing that Barry knows a little too much about negotiation, Mulder suspects (and Kazdin confirms) that Barry used to work for the FBI. He was kicked out in 1982 and has been in and out of institutions; Kazdin admits the FBI wants the mess cleaned up quietly to minimize the bad press. Mulder insists that a change of approach is in order to understand Barry's fear. Meanwhile, Krycek asks for something to do, and Kazdin sends him for coffee. Seeking information, Mulder calls Scully, who has been watching the proceedings on TV. Just then, the power fails all over the block in Richmond; there is a bright white flash of light, and several gunshots are fired by an alarmed Barry.

Kazdin finds out that power was lost at a substation; on the phone, Barry tells Mulder that "they" were trying to get him. Barry has shot one of the hostages, and Kazdin decides to send Mulder in disguised as a paramedic; a real paramedic is sent in, which will hopefully give Mulder time to talk to Barry. Mulder is also set up with a tiny ear receiver and a microphone wire. Mulder and the paramedic head inside, only to be taken at gunpoint by Barry, who is convinced they work for the FBI. Mulder lies and says that he is not FBI, and also that he isn't wearing a wire. After patting them down, Barry seems more relaxed and allows them to work on the injured man.

Mulder asks Barry to release all the hostages except the doctor, and then just the women, but Barry is unrelenting. Mulder then questions Barry about his abduction, asking him about the white light and about time stopping; this causes Barry to have painful flashbacks to his 1986 abduction. Barry says he's always been told it's in his head, but Mulder says he believes the story and his fear. The paramedic cuts in and says that the shot man will die unless taken to a hospital, and Barry agrees to release the shot man--in exchange for Mulder as a new hostage.

Barry demands to know how Mulder could possibly understand his abduction, and Mulder says that his sister was abducted; Barry, of course, thinks Mulder is lying. Mulder accurately describes the light, the loss of breath, the paralysis, and Barry begins to regard Mulder in a new light. When asked where he's taken, Barry has painful flashbacks to being on board an alien ship. Barry, suddenly much calmer, recalls that the aliens possess a kind of telepathy. Mulder tells Barry (at his prompting) that he was taken for testing, and we see eerie scenes of Barry having tiny holes drilled into his teeth with a laser, while he cries in agony. Back at the FBI negotiation area, Scully calls in for Mulder and speaks instead to Krycek. When she learns that Mulder traded himself for a hostage, she insists that Mulder has to get out immediately; Barry is not what he seems, and Mulder will be killed.

Back in the office building, Barry asks Mulder about his sister, and says that he's seen young girls being tested and hurt by the aliens. While Barry talks, the FBI begins drilling a hole into the room's wall to mount surveillance equipment. Mulder offers himself in exchange for all the other hostages, but Barry declines, insisting he has an "appointment" to make. With a camera in place, Kazdin now knows where Mulder and Barry are in the room. Meanwhile, Scully has flown in from Washington and talks in a flurry until she gets Kazdin's attention. She tells Kazdin and the others that Barry was really taken out of the FBI because he was shot in the line of duty; the bullet destroyed the frontal lobe of his brain, leaving him incapable of moral judgment, and likely to be violent and prone to acting out fantasies.

Scully hops on the wireless radio and relays the information to Mulder on his receiver. Meanwhile, Barry continues to talk about his abduction experience, saying that the government and the aliens are working in tandem in a massive deception. He says he just wants to return to the first place he was taken, a mountain; he's going to offer up Dr. Hakkie instead of himself. Barry also says that he's located through implants in his sinus cavity.

On word from Scully that the FBI is ready to exercise a tactical solution, Mulder steps up the negotation and convinces Barry that the FBI will deal if he releases the two women hostages; one of them tells Barry they believe him before she leaves. Outside, the FBI prepares to strike. Inside, Barry insists on transportation, but doesn't know where to go until "they" tell him. Realizing Barry is about to be shot, Mulder directs him out of the line of fire to pump more information out of him. When Mulder questions Barry's story, Barry becomes enraged and begins shaking Mulder. Attempting to divert Barry's attention and regain his trust, Mulder reminds Barry that he didn't lock the office door when he released his hostages. When Barry steps in front of the door, he is shot in the chest by an FBI sniper.

Barely alive, Barry is taken away in restraints on an ambulance. Mulder meets up with Scully, and assures her that he is feeling alright. Mulder is shaken up because he believes Barry's story. The next day, Mulder meets Kazdin at the hospital where Barry was taken; she thanks Mulder for a good job, and they go in to check on Barry, who is still in critical condition. Kazdin tells Mulder that before his injury, Barry was an exemplary FBI agent, but that afterwards, he lost everything, including his family and his home. She then reveals the real reason for calling Mulder down: surgeons found pieces of metal in Barry's sinus cavity, gums, and abdomen, exactly where he said they'd be. Tiny holes were also found in Barry's teeth which could not have been made with available technology.

Mulder meets with Scully; Scully thinks that the implants (one of which was removed for study) may simply be shrapnel from Barry's tour in Vietnam. However, when Scully has an FBI scientist examine the metal, it reveals fine tooling and etching--clearly not shrapnel. While at the supermarket that day, Scully looks at the grocery bar code scanner and gets an idea. She runs Barry's implant over the scanner, which causes the cash register to go crazy, spitting out strange numbers and symbols.

Back at the hospital, Barry suddenly regains consciousness, only to be surrounded by a white glow. In a panic, he rips the monitors and IVs off of his body, overwhelms his guard, and escapes the hospital. Elsewhere, Scully returns home and calls Mulder's answering machine, where she explains what happened at the supermarket; she thinks someone may have been trying to "catalog" Barry in some way. Her musings are interrupted by a tapping at her window. Looking outside, she sees the face of Barry. Barry smashes his way into Scully's apartment, and Scully screams on the telephone for Mulder's help.

To be continued...

We open with a dreamy recollection by Mrs. Scully of a Scully childhood memory. As a young girl, Scully was given a BB gun as a present. Despite her father's warning, she and her brothers shoot up a garter snake until it begins to bleed and dies. The young Scully is brought to tears, realizes for the first time that things can die. Cutting to the present, Mulder tries to tell Mrs. Scully that it's too soon to give up, but she just says that she knows now how Scully felt that day. The two go forth to look at Scully's freshly ordered tombstone, which bears the Bible scripture 1 John 5:6, "The Spirit is the Truth."

That night, an insomniac Mulder receives a desperate phone call, saying that Scully has mysteriously turned up at a hospital in Washington; Mrs. Scully is already at her side. Enraged, Mulder interrogates the floor nurse and a doctor, demanding to know how Scully arrived. When he begins throwing papers around to find her admission report, he is dragged away by security, all the while screaming that he will wreak revenge on those responsible. Later, Mulder and Mrs. Scully meet with Dr. Daly, who says that Scully is comatose and unresponsive; he cannot accurately gauge her condition or the cause of her illness, because of her recent disappearance. He then says that Scully left a living will, indicating that she did not want herself to be kept on life support; Mulder is all too aware of the conditions, because he signed the will as a witness.

Mulder returns to Scully's bedside, where he finds Scully's sister Melissa divining with a crystal over Scully's body; she insists that Scully's soul is speaking to her, and that her soul is trying to decide whether to stay or move on. Playing along, Mulder puts his hand over Scully to "feel" her soul. We cut to a dreamy image where Scully, dressed in black, sits in a boat. The boat is tenuously tethered to a dock, where Mulder and Melissa are looking back on her. Back in the real world, Mulder leaves, insisting that he needs to do more than wave his hands. He returns home, taping an X in his window to contact Mr. X. The entire night passes, and X fails to contact Mulder.

That morning, Frohike (of the Lone Gunmen) shows up in a suit to deliver flowers to Scully; Mulder is greatly surprised to see him there. Looking at Scully's chart, Frohike notices some odd things. He manages to sneak a copy back to the offices of the Lone Gunmen. Upon a closer look, Byers tells Mulder that there are strange proteins in Scully's blood. He has sent Scully's medical data to a new Lone Gunman, a hacker known only as The Thinker; The Thinker reports that the proteins are a product of branched DNA, a biological technique at least 50 years from practice. The DNA turns out to just be a leftover from experimentation on Scully, which now seems to be over; but the DNA is acting as a biological poison to her system. Byers says that Scully's weakened immune system has no chance of fighting off the invader; he tells Mulder there's nothing he can do.

Returning to the dream images, a nurse named Owens speaks to Scully from the dock; Scully's soul remains tethered in a boat. Owens says she's here to help Scully find her way home. In the real world, Mulder returns to Scully's bedside to find Owens leaving her. Another nurse comes in to draw blood from Scully, but is interrupted by an emergency, when the patient next to Scully goes into cardiac arrest. Mulder looks down and notices that Scully's drawn blood has just been taken; he sees someone leaving the area and goes chasing after.

The man heads into an elevator, and Mulder is forced to take the stairs all the way to the parking garage. In the garage, Mulder is startled to run into Mr. X. X points his gun at Mulder and insists that Mulder end his search for Scully's abductors, because the course is too dangerous and threatens exposure. X has no desire to wind up like Deep Throat--or Scully. Mulder insists that he has to do something, and X tells him he's just a schoolboy; he suggests that Mulder just grieve for Scully and move on. Their conversation is interrupted by approaching footsteps. Mulder approaches the man and is fired upon. Mulder eventually finds the man hiding and captures him. Mulder takes Scully's blood sample, but the man refuses to answer any questions about it. In a flash, the man tries to jump Mulder, but he is grappled away and shot in the head by Mr. X. X tells Mulder that kind of killing is the price for knowing the truth.

Scully's family and Mulder meet with Dr. Daly, who says that Scully's condition is unlikely to improve and that she is below the criterion in her living will for termination of life support. Mulder espouses his branched DNA theory, but Daly dismisses it, and Melissa is vehement that her sister not be treated like a piece of evidence for study. Mrs. Scully says that Scully has made her decision; she appeals to Mulder, saying that Mulder and Scully's friendship was built on respect, and that Mulder should respect her wishes now. Mrs. Scully says that it's a family moment, but Mulder can join in; he declines. In the dream images, with Nurse Owens standing on the dock, the rope tethering Scully's soul snaps and begins to drift away.

At FBI headquarters, the Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM) meets with Skinner and tells him to sit on Mulder--or he will. In an act of defiance, Skinner tells CSM not to light up a cigarette in his office, where the no-smoking rule is enforced; CSM lights up anyway, but then quickly smashes out the cigarette. As CSM leaves, Mulder walks in. Skinner questions him about the execution in the hospital basement, of which no police record was made, but Mulder professes his innocence, saying he was with Scully the whole time. Mulder demands justice, saying he will forsake his job and the X-Files in exchange for CSM's location. Skinner tries to tone Mulder down, saying that these were the risks that came with the job. Mulder wonders about his culpability if he never really warned Scully of the danger, and Skinner says that he's just as liable as CSM is.

Back in the dream images, we see Scully lying on a wooden table; her dead father steps forth in full Navy dress uniform. He says that he always thought life went at the proper pace, until he could no longer have the chance to tell his daughter that he loved her--"then my life felt as if it had been the length of one breath, one heartbeat." He would have traded everything to spend one more second with her; he says they will be together again soon--but not now. Back in the hospital, Nurse Owens sits over Scully and says that even though death is close, now is not her time. In the cafeteria, Mulder and Melissa have coffee and wait for news. Melissa says that even finding everyone responsible will not bring Scully back, and that horror awaits for those responsible; Mulder wonders if that includes himself.

Their conversation is interrupted by a woman asking for change for cigarettes; she points out that a pack of Morleys is already in the machine. Mulder grabs the pack and finds a note with an address stuffed inside. Mulder chases down the address and finds CSM at home; in a rage, he points a gun at CSM's head and demands answers. "Don't try and threaten me, Mulder. I've watched Presidents die," he says cooly. He says that Scully was taken because he "likes" Mulder, and he "likes" Scully too--which is why she was returned. CSM defends himself by saying that he only plays the game because he thinks he is doing what is right; Mulder asks him why he presumes to know what is right. "Who are you?" counters CSM, saying that the information he knows would cause chaos in the general public. He told Skinner that Mulder killed the man at the hospital, but didn't really believe it; now, with a gun to his head, he finds new respect for Mulder. "You can kill me now, but you'll never know the truth." Realizing CSM is right, Mulder backs off.

Out of options, Mulder writes up a letter of resignation and submits it to Skinner. As he is packing his things, Skinner comes down and tears up Mulder's resignation, saying it's unacceptable. He knows Mulder is only doing it to punish himself for his perceived guilt. Skinner recounts one of his experiences as a Marine in Vietnam where he killed a young North Vietnamese boy--after that he lost his faith in everything. He then recalls being out on patrol, being wouded, having an out-of-body experience, and then waking up in a hospital. He admires Mulder's courage to look into the unknown. He tells Mulder that every day is full of danger--"that's just life."

In the parking lot, Mulder bumps into X, who hands him plane tickets. He's convinced those responsible for Scully's abduction that Mulder has important evidence in his apartment, and that he will be out of town. X tells Mulder the exact minute the men will arrive to search his apartment, and warns him to be waiting to defend himself--"with terminal intensity." Mulder returns home to wait, but shortly before the appointed time, Melissa shows up. She says that Scully is weakening and could die at any moment, and that she thought Mulder would want to come to the hospital. Mulder says he can't leave, and Melissa says that walking further into darkness can't help Scully. Mulder becomes incensed at Melissa's "harmonic convergence psychobabble," but Melissa tells him that Scully would expect him to just express his feelings--not go on a manhunt.

Giving up his only chance for revenge, Mulder relents and goes to Scully's bedside. He takes her hand, and says that he thinks she's not ready to leave. "I don't know if my being here will help bring you back, but I'm here." Mulder stays the night, and returns home in the morning to find his apartment ransacked. Finally overwhelmed by his loss, Mulder sinks to his knees and begins to cry.

In the dream world, Scully's hospital bed floats between a forest scene and the hospital. A nurse comes over, and to her surprise, Scully has opened her eyes. At home, Mulder gets a phone call, expecting the worst. But then, a smile breaks on his face. He goes to the hospital and reunites with a groggy but conscious Scully, who has no memory after her abduction by Duane Barry. He passes her a gift: a video of Superstars of the Superbowls. "I knew there was a reason to live," quips Scully. But she quickly turns serious and tells Mulder, "I had the strength of your beliefs." Mulder returns Scully's cross to her, which she accepts with a smile.

Later that afternoon, Scully asks to see Nurse Owens. But the shift nurse tells her that no one named Nurse Owens has ever worked at the hospital.

We open on the tearful memorial service being held for a young girl in a funeral home. The service concludes and the family files out; in the background, mortuary assistant Donnie Pfaster watches with delight. That evening, in the mortuary's morgue, Donnie's boss catches him by the girl's coffin. Looking inside, he sees that Donnie has chopped off locks of the girl's hair. Donnie says he was just "working"; when his boss sees what he's done, he calls Donnie a freak and fires him.

Mulder and Scully are called out to Minneapolis, MN to investigate a case of grave desecration with Agent Moe Bocks. Bocks has a reputation for getting strange cases, and when he called MUFON to check the possibility of graves being disturbed by aliens, Mulder's name was given. Bocks thinks the classic alien abduction signs (hair and fingernails missing, like in cattle mutilation) are present, but Mulder thinks that it's the work of a fetishist, possibly someone who's worked for a mortuary. He recalls a similar case from when he worked for the Violent Crimes section. Scully is visibly shaken by the sight of the desecrated body, but insists that she feels alright.

Leaving Bocks behind, Scully wonders why Mulder came all the way to Minnesota when he knew the case wasn't related to UFOs. His real motivation, it seems, was a football game: he bought tickets so that he and Scully could watch the Redskins play the Vikings. Elsewhere in Minneapolis, Donnie Pfaster applies to get a job as a deliveryman. During his interview, he says his previous work was in "cosmetology" (with appropriate comments thrown in about the interviewer's appearance), and that he is in school working towards a degree in comparative religions. Donnie says he's a very religious person. Meanwhile, Bocks calls Mulder and Scully into the Minneapolis field office, causing them to miss their football game. More dug-up graves have been found, and the bodies all had hair cut off and fingernails removed. Looking at the evidence, Scully becomes sickened and has to leave the room. Mulder tells Bocks to warn law enforcement of an "escalating fetishist" on the loose, and to release a less-gruesome version to local papers. Bocks thinks that will cause a panic--people still leave their doors unlocked here. But Mulder is concerned that the fetishist's compulsion is growing, and that he will soon resort to murder for new victims. Bocks says he will try, but it will take him several days to pool together the manpower.

Mulder tells Scully he's going to cancel their flight home so that they can keep working, but Scully remains quietly upset about staying. That evening, Scully works on profiling the fetishist, who is likely to be a white male in his 30s. She says that people often overlook the real reason that fetishists kill; "it is somehow easier to believe, as Agent Bocks does, in aliens and UFOs, than in the kind of cold-blooded inhuman monster who could prey on the living to scavenge from the dead." Elsewhere, Donnie Pfaster picks up a prostitute and takes her back to his apartment; the prostitute immediately notes that Donnie's apartment is freezing cold. Donnie draws a bath for the prostitute, asking her, "Is your hair treated?" The prostitute thinks Donnie is a little bizarre but plays along--until she steps into the bath, which is ice cold. Donnie is interrupted briefly by a phone call, informing him that he got his delivery job. The prostitute runs out in a towel and sees Donnie's bedroom, which is full of flowers and other artifacts taken from funerals. She tries to run, but Donnie overpowers and kills her.

Her body is found dumped in a vacant lot; Mulder, Scully, and Bocks are on the scene shortly thereafter. Another prostitute identifies the body. Hair, fingernails, and some fingers, are all missing from the body. Mulder goes to look at the body, but Scully is so sickened that she cannot approach. The next day, Donnie begins his delivery job. He stops into his first house and scopes out the wife and the family's young daughters. He excuses himself to wash his hands, and while in the bathroom, rummages through the trash and lovingly caresses a hairball to his face. When he leaves, the wife tells him that the family always leaves their back door unlocked--in case he needs to get in while they're not home.

Meanwhile, Scully works to perform an autopsy on one of the victims. She talks (on voice-over) of how autopsies can clearly define the beginning, middle, and end of death. She concludes that the victim was murdered for the sole purpose of hair and fingernail extraction; time of death was indeterminate due to immersion of the body in cold water. She also comments about how dehumanizing such a murder is. At the police station, the prostitute's friend tries to pick the killer out of a lineup, but can't find anyone. Mulder speculates that the killer's psychosis runs very deep, indicating a total hatred of all women, possibly reaching back to his mother. He suggests calling psychiatric institutes to find people with a similar history.

That night, Donnie attends an evening college class, and when it breaks up, he stalks one of the women in his class. Donnie's moves become too bold, and the woman knocks him down and screams for help. Donnie is arrested and taken to jail. Elsewhere, Scully dreams that she is doing an autopsy on herself, only to be awakened by a phone call from Mulder: a suspect has been arrested. Mulder, Scully, and Bocks interrogate a man who was beaten up by a frightened prostitute--and in the cell across, Donnie watches Scully with intense fascination. Questioning quickly reveals that the man is innocent, and the agents give up. When they leave, Donnie asks the man for the agents' names, and he drops Scully's name. Shortly thereafter, the woman Donnie was stalking drops charges against him, and he is released after a visit with a social worker.

In private, Scully tells Mulder she wants to focus on the evidence of the case: she wants to take a body back to Washington for a fingerprint analysis. Becoming concerned, Mulder asks if Scully can still handle the gruesomeness of the case, and she insists that she can. Returning to Washington, Scully has her body taken to the fingerprint lab for analysis, hoping that a trace print will be left. While waiting for results, Scully hesitantly goes to see the FBI psychologist. Scully speaks of her training to be detached from death, and her recent paralysis from looking "into the face of pure evil." When asked, she says that Mulder is not the problem, but she doesn't want him to know how much the case bothers her, so that Mulder will not need to feel protective. The psychologist thinks Scully's strong personality, coupled with the death of her father and her recent abduction, has made her vulnerable. She wants and needs her faith back, but cannot find it.

Back at the fingerprint lab, the technician has managed to pull some partial fingerprints; the tech also says that an agent in Minneapolis called for her, but it wasn't Mulder. The tech only told the agent that Scully was flying back to Minneapolis in the evening. Scully calls Mulder and brings him up to speed, and is insistent on coming back to Minneapolis to help; Mulder also says, when asked, that neither he nor Bocks called for her during the day. That night, the FBI raids Donnie Pfaster's apartment, but finds only his bedroom death shrine--he's not at home. Meanwhile, Donnie waits for Scully at the airport, and shortly after spotting her rent a car, he runs her off the road and kidnaps her.

After hours elapse, Mulder becomes concerned at Scully's absence. Just then, her car turns up; Mulder sees traces of white paint on Scully's car and tries to have a make and model determined. Elsewhere, Donnie has gone to another house and begins drawing a bath for a bound and gagged Scully, who sees Donnie's face constantly shift to images of evil. Back at the FBI field office, the paint trace turns up to belong to several very common cars. Back to square one, Mulder wonders where Donnie would go. "Anywhere but his mother's, right?" quips Bocks. This gives Mulder an idea, and a white car is found registered to Donnie's deceased mother; the FBI moves to raid his mother's house.

Meanwhile, Donnie begins to cut the bonds off of a writhing and terrified Scully. He drags her into his bathroom and asks, "Is your hair normal or dry." In a moment when Donnie turns his head, Scully knocks him over and runs. Donnie grabs a gun and begins chasing Scully around the house, saying that he knows it well and that "there's nowhere to hide." Donnie ultimately catches up to Scully, and the two tumble in an enormous struggle. Just as Donnie gains the upper hand, the FBI beats the front door down, with Mulder in the lead. Donnie is disarmed and taken into custody. Finally overwhelmed by the ordeal and unable to hold her emotions back, Scully bursts into tears and collapses in Mulder's arms.

While photographs of Donnie's family are shown, Mulder (on voice-over) remarks about how ordinary Donnie's life was, growing up with his mother and four older sisters. "Our fear of the everyday, of the lurking stranger, and the sound of footfalls on the stairs, the fear of violent death, and the primitive impulse to survive are as frightening as any X-File, as real as the acceptance that it could happen to you."

At a parent teacher committee (PTC) meeting in Milford Haven, NH, the members present discuss some normal matters. At the end of the meeting, the group agrees to close with a prayer; they light a red candle and begin praying to the lords of darkness and "die Hand die verletzt"--the hand that wounds. As they continue to chant, an eerie white glow arises in the room.

That evening, a group of four teens head into the woods of Milford Haven to an old tree stump rumored to be used as a witches' altar. The two boys are really just trying to scare their dates, but when they begin chanting words from a book of black magic, the candle they light is mysteriously blown out. Strange demonic voices rise from the depths of the woods, and suddenly the ground is crawling with rats. Suddenly freaked, the teens begin to run. Fires leap up all around them, and one of the boys feels himself being choked to death by an unseen hand.

Mulder and Scully are on the case the next day, where Sheriff John Oakes brings the agents up to speed--including the spooky history of the town. The boy's body was found in the woods with his eyes and heart cut out. When shown the altar, Mulder quips, "I think with a few turquoise chips, a picture of John Wayne, and three cans of shellack, it'd make a pretty nice coffee table." Scully finds two six-packs of beer, a good indication that the boy wasn't alone; she also turns up a small shred of a library book with a demonic chant on it. Oakes says he called the FBI in precisely because he's not used to handling such large and strange cases. Privately, Mulder tells Scully that the body was carved up in a ceremonial manner and that the place feels odd. Just as Scully is saying that there's nothing odd at all, toads rain down from the sky onto the agents. "So," says Mulder, "lunch?"

Visiting the local high school library, Mulder uses the shred of book Scully found (which had a partial title) and matches it up to a book on the history of witches and the occult, checked out to one Dave Duran. Duran and the two girls are sitting in biology class with their new substitute teacher, Mrs. Phyllis Paddock, when the agents walk in to speak to Duran. Duran immediately bolts, but Mulder catches him. When questioned, he says he was never into the occult but just went along with the stunt in order to score with their girlfriends. "I never thought that it would work," he says. In an adjoining room, the PTC members say that the boy was killed according to the rites of the demon Azazel, but none of them will admit to the killing. One of them things an angry presence has entered the town.

The PTC becomes upset when Mulder and Scully let Duran go for lack of evidence. The PTC says that pop culture has infused the kids with the occult; Scully counters with a study that indicates there is no mass media occult conspiracy. Mulder breaks up the brewing confrontation by leaving. When he takes a drink of water from a fountain, he is disturbed to see the water swirling down the drain in the wrong direction. "Something is here, Scully," he says with certainty. Elsewhere, as biology class ends, the two girls taken out to the altar are stopped by the substitute, Mrs. Paddock, who says she is there if they want to talk. When the girls leave, Paddock opens her desk drawer to reveal a heart and two eyeballs in a tray full of blood.

Later, Mulder talks with school psychologist Pete Calcagni, one of the PTC members. Mulder is concerned about the high incidence of headaches and depression, and notes the signs of repressed memories. Calcagni, however, is not concerned, thinking it's just normal for high schoolers; there is no evidence of ritual abuse. Mulder's request to speak to some students is denied on grounds of patient confidentiality. Meanwhile, Scully has hopped onto the Internet and turned up a similar murder case--from an anti-Semitic web site quoting a 1934 Nazi newspaper. Mulder says that nearly all pagan religions are peaceful and do not condone murder, so they cannot explain the deaths. "If not witches then what?" Scully wonders.

Back in biology class, Mrs. Paddock passes out fetal pigs for dissection as a final exam. During the dissection, one of the girls from the woods, Shannon Ausbury, begins seeing her pig embryo squealing on the tray. She freaks out and runs screaming from the room. Later, Paddock and Calcagni try to calm Shannon down, but when they suggest calling her father, Jim (another PTC member), she runs screaming from the room. Mulder and Scully chase after her. A tearful Shannon tells the agents of her repressed childhood memories. She says that Jim Ausbury is her stepfather; Jim raped her at a pagan religious site at age 4. Jim practices satanic rituals in the family's basement. She says she and her sister were both tortured; she has ritually borne three now-deceased babies, and says her sister, age 8, was murdered in a sacrifice. Everything has been quietly covered up for years.

Mulder and Scully go to speak with Shannon's parents, Jim and Barbara. When the agents tell her parents Shannon's story, Jim is enraged, thinking that pop culture has filled up his daugther's head with ideas. Privately, Barbara tells Scully that perhaps her recent marital problems with Jim have been reflected by not giving Shannon enough attention. She cannot believe Shannon was ever pregnant. She says she did have another daughter, but she died a crib death at 8 weeks--not 8 years. Mulder, meanwhile, wanders into the kitchen; Mulder asks Jim if he's guilty, and he flatly denies everything. When Mulder pokes his head into the basement, an unseen force yanks the door shut; Jim becomes enraged and forces Mulder to leave the house.

After school, Shannon meets with Mrs. Paddock to make up her dissection final exam. Paddock holds on to Shannon's bracelet to prevent it from becoming dirty. In her office, Paddock begins a ritual chant, holding her hand and the bracelet over an open flame. She then makes stroking motions across her wrists, and in the lab, Shannon has slashed her wrists with her dissection scalpel. Later, under questioning, Paddock professes her innocence, unsure of what happened; meanwhile, Mulder snoops around and finds Shannon's bracelet in Paddock's office. Outside the school, the PTC meets, saying that a dark force is demanding sacrifice. Jim Ausbury is becoming doubtful, especially when the rest of the PTC wants to blame everything on Shannon to get rid of the police.

Speaking to Scully privately, Mulder says he noticed the scent of incense in Paddock's office, a common component of black magic ceremonies. Scully is also perplexed at Paddock's very presence in the building; the man she's substituting for has only taken 2 days off in 15 years, and he's just come down with rare flesh-eating bacteria. Furthermore, there are no records of Paddock ever being hired. Suddenly, the power fails, and in the darkness, Paddock steals Scully's pen from a table.

Scully continues to check on Mrs. Paddock, but can find no prior arrest record--or anything, for that matter. Mulder obtains a search warrant for the Ausbury house, and heads over to check out the basement. He finds the setup exactly as Shannon described it. Suddenly, he hears a noise, and finds Jim Ausbury behind him. Ausbury explains his strange religion, which has been in his family for seven generations. When the PTC agreed to make his dead stepdaughter take the fall, he was revulsed, realizing the fallacy of his beliefs. He admits some blood was taken from his daughters, but that no one was ever killed; the errors in Shannon's story are cobbled together from truth and tabloid crap. Children were not brought into the religion until age 18. But he and the others did not kill Shannon. "Did you really think you could call up the devil and ask him to behave?" asks Mulder.

Meanwhile, Paddock performs her ritual again, this time using Scully's pen. She calls Mulder on the cell phone, and using Scully's voice, pleads for help. Mulder handcuffs Ausbury to a railing in the basement, and goes to check on Scully. Meanwhile, the python from Mrs. Paddock's biology lab snakes down the stairs and strangles Jim Ausbury; Mrs. Paddock, now with dark black cat eyes, is controlling the whole thing. Mulder arrives at the school to find Scully completely well; realizing he was duped, the agents head back to the Ausbury house. They find no sign of Jim, except for his skeleton, but they turn up a giant shedded snake skin; Scully is at a loss to see how a snake could digest a human being so quickly. "You really do watch the Learning Channel," quips Mulder.

Remembering the python from Mrs. Paddock's room, the agents race back to the school. At the school, the remaining PTC members collectively decide that a sacrifice is in order, before they too are killed. When Mulder and Scully arrive, the PTC is waiting. They are, however, unable to hide, because Calcagni's keys are gone--unbeknownst to them, stolen by Mrs. Paddock. The agents find Paddock on the floor bleeding, saying the PTC beat her up and took her python; Mulder wonders if it's too late to stop them. The PTC jumps Mulder and Scully in the school conference room. The agents are bound and gagged, then dragged to the gym showers--to make the blood cleanup easier. As one PTC member begins a chant and prepares to plunge a knife into Scully, Calcagni levels a shotgun at the agents, but instead shoots the rest of the PTC, then himself--under Paddock's direction. "You were right. It already is too late," says Paddock, blowing out her ceremonial candle.

Returning to the biology lab, the agents find Paddock gone. The lights snap back on, and the agents find writing on the chalkboard: "Goodbye. It was nice working with you."

We open with Mulder (on voice-over) explaining his vague belief in his sister's abduction by aliens; but he says that he stuck it out, often making great sacrifice to do so. He says that even if he dies now, he can rest assured in the knowledge that we are not alone. We pan to a host of military emergency units hauling a body on a stretcher. Bursting into a hospital, we see that it's Mulder. Seeing that Mulder is suffering from hypothermia, he is placed in a water bath. Just then, an alarmed Scully bursts into the ER, saying that Mulder needs to be kept cold or he will die; and as she does, Mulder's heart stops.

We back up two weeks earlier, where a US research vessel traversing the Beaufort Sea sees a UFO plunge into the icy cold water. The ship's captain decides to try and go after the wreckage. Meanwhile, at an abortion clinic in Scranton, PA, Dr. Landon Prince sees a TV report of the crash; the TV news reports that instead, a Russian fighter pilot was recovered and taken to Alaska. But when the doctor sees the face of the "pilot," he becomes alarmed and runs. Prince makes it only a few feet before he runs into the "pilot," who grabs the doctor by the throat and demands to know where "he" is. Prince professes innocence, and the "pilot" (really an alien bounty hunter) produces a strange ice-pick device and jabs the doctor at the base of the skull. Strange green fluid oozes out of his neck. The bounty hunter then rips the cover off of a nearby circuit breaker panel and starts a fire.

In Washington, Mulder and Scully are tipped off by three obituaries (including Prince's) anonymously e-mailed to Mulder. All three were cases of abortion doctors who died in an apparent arson; the three are scattered geographically over the northeast. Mulder, with a little detective work, has turned up pictures of the three dead doctors: they all look identical. Furthermore, the men are in no way related, and Mulder can find no prior evidence of their existence. The agents travel to Scranton and meet with Sergeant Dixon from the local police. Dixon has arrested a Reverend Sistrunk, who is a militant right-to-lifer found carrying a newspaper ad with Prince's face and the words "Do you know this man?" Sistrunk is brought in for questioning, but says he is not a killer and has no connection to the other two murders.

Mulder and Scully go to Binghamton, NY, to determine who placed the newspaper ad. Apparently, the man who placed the ad left no record of himself and refused to sign anything. Scully is not convinced the case has any merit, but Mulder looks at a map of the northeast and realizes that the killer is moving steadily north, looking for more identical men. The desk clerk is reluctant to help until Mulder agrees to pay the rest of the bill for the advertisement. He then gets access to the ad's voice mailbox, and checks the replies. The agents thus track down Dr. Aaron Baker of Syracuse, NY. Mulder calls ahead to Agent Weiss in Syracuse and asks to provide Baker with protection until he and Scully arrive.

Weiss drives to Baker's residence, finding Baker (a dead ringer for the other three men) in an argument with the bounty hunter. The bounty hunter kills Baker with the alien sticker just as Weiss busts in through the back door. Weiss sees the green goo of Baker's body on the floor and fires several shots at the bounty hunter, who oozes green fluid but is unharmed otherwise. Suddenly, Weiss begins to choke and convulse uncontrollably. Mulder and Scully later arrive at Baker's house to find a quite well Agent Weiss waiting; "Weiss" says that no one is home, goes to his car, checks on the real Weiss' body in the trunk, and then morphs into the bounty hunter.

The agents return to Washington, and Mulder meets with Skinner. Skinner is furious that Mulder has gone off to Syracuse without authorization, especially since Weiss was found dead. A shocked Mulder insists he spoke to a very alive Weiss, but Skinner doesn't care: both Mulder and Skinner are in trouble, and Skinner orders the case shut down. He demands a full report by the next morning. Mulder returns to his office to get a phone call from Scully at home; Scully is just as shocked to hear that Weiss is dead. Scully reports receiving some disturbing e-mail, a scanned photo of Dr. James Dickens of Washington, D.C..

Mulder goes to pick up Scully at her apartment, but is intercepted outside by Ambrose Chapel, who works for the CIA. Going inside, Chapel tells Mulder and Scully an incredible story: all of the men are clones, created by Soviet science in a secret project at the beginning of the Cold War. The "Gregors," as they are called, were smuggled into the country with a fake German passport; in the event of a war, their purpose was to internally cripple the US medical community. Chapel says he thinks that forces within the government are allowing a Russian spy killer to knock off the Gregors, in exchange for the program's technology and for continued silence about the Gregor project. He says the Gregors have been trying to contact Mulder to save themselves. He shares Mulder's sentiments on government conspiracy, and says they need to find the surviving Gregors to bring the truth to light.

In a Germantown, MD warehouse, another Gregor is seen growing something alive in vats of green fluid. After one more quick check, he heads outside and departs the warehouse with a woman in a van. Returning home, the Gregor, Dr. Dickens, gets a knock at the door from Mulder and Scully. Dickens is hesitant, but when he sees Chapel with the agents, he panics and leaps out of his window. After plunging to the ground, he miraculously gets up and runs away. Mulder and Chapel give chase, and in the process, Mulder is slowed after being hit by a car. Chapel (now morphed to the bounty hunter) successfully corners Dickens, produces an alien sticker, and kills him. When Scully catches up, Chapel says that Dickens got away by scrambling up a fire escape. Looking around the scene, Scully accidentally steps into a strange bubbling green goo.

The next day, the agents meet up again at their office. Mulder has survived his car crash with only bumps and bruises. Scully wonders if the case should be dropped, and questions the oddity of everything about it--including Ambrose Chapel. Mulder, however, has done digging on Chapel and has found that he is a real CIA officer with a long and distinguished career; this just makes Scully more suspicious, wondering why Chapel would need their help. She also notes that Dr. Dickens seemed to be running from Chapel. The two begin to argue when Scully thinks the case has reached the point of insanity, and Mulder refuses to back away, saying that the risks are acceptable. Scully then changes tacks, showing Mulder one of her new shoes that she got the green goo on--and the shoe has a hole eaten clean through it. She takes the shoe for analysis, and Mulder then has a surprise: he wants her to do autopsy work on Agent Weiss, since no cause of death has been determined.

Examining the body, Scully finds that Weiss was clearly not shot or strangled, but his blood workup was odd: excessive red blood cell production, to the point of coagulation and clotting. Mulder thinks that a coagulant developed by the Gregors may have been used to kill Weiss. Mulder is hauled before Skinner, expecting the worst, but Skinner says he called Mulder in because Mulder's father reported a "family emergency." After speaking to his parents on the telephone, Mulder travels up to his father's house on Martha's Vineyard.

Meanwhile, examining available evidence, Scully hunts through Dr. Dickens' medical bag and finds the address of his warehouse lab. Scully travels to the warehouse and finds Chapel inside, knocking over the green vats and squishing the living things growing inside. Scully manages to slip away before she's caught, but she is followed. She calls Mulder from her apartment and leaves him a message, saying she thinks her life is in danger. Elsewhere, Mulder has arrived at his father's house, and is much surprised to see both of his divorced parents there. Mulder's father, Bill, is very aloof, only offering Mulder a handshake. Inside the house, Mrs. Mulder is seen talking to a strange woman (the same woman seen in the company of Dr. Dickens)--whom Mr. Mulder identifies as the long-lost Samantha.

The reunited Mulders stay up most of the night; early in the morning, Mulder puts his mother to bed, and reassures her that it really is Samantha. Mulder goes to talk to Samantha alone. She says she was "returned" at age 9 or 10 to a foster home; all of her earlier memories were blocked, but they slowly came back to her with the help of regression hypnotherapy. She then says that her life is in danger, as are the lives of her adoptive parents--the Gregors. The Gregors are really visiting aliens trying to establish a colony of human-alien hybrids, and they are being hunted down by a bounty hunter to maintain a sort of racial purity.

Meanwhile, Scully leaves her apartment, missing a phone call from Mulder by seconds. He warns Scully that Agent Chapel is not to be trusted, and that her life is in danger. Samantha tells Mulder that the bounty hunter can shape-shift, and that only she can recognize him. Back in Washington, Scully travels across town by bus, not knowing that the bounty hunter is only two seats away from her. She leaves Mulder another phone message saying she'll be at a hotel, and the bounty hunter overhears everything. Scully returns to Dr. Dickens' warehouse lab and finds the place a wreck; she does turn up a sack of something that appears to have a moving embryo inside it. Scully then encounters not one Gregor, but four--the last four left alive. They insist on Scully's protection.

Scully has the Gregors taken into protective custody, with the bounty hunter watching from a distance. Mulder, meanwhile, has returned home with Samantha and gets Scully's messages. He calls Scully's hotel, but she hasn't registered in yet. Right after Mulder gets off the phone, Scully arrives at the hotel and checks in. Scully heads into the shower, missing yet another phone call from Mulder. Meanwhile, at a maximum security federal prison, the Gregors are killed off by the bounty hunter, who disguises himself as a federal agent.

That night, Scully gets a knock at her hotel door, and it's Mulder. At the same time, she gets a phone call--and it's Mulder as well. To be continued...

We open on a night scene in Gibsonton, FL; two children are playing and splashing each other in a swimming pool. Suddenly, a man with strange alligator-like skin dives into the water and grabs the boys. They are momentarily startled--but the man turns out to be their father, a sideshow performer (the Alligator Man). He tells his children to go to bed, and while he's swimming laps alone, another strange creature attacks him.

Mulder becomes interested in the case not because the man has icthyosis (explaining his skin), but because the wound that killed him is identical to dozens of other victims in nearly every state in the US. Yet, there is no known motive or pattern. The agents travel to Gibsonton and attend the Alligator Man's funeral, which proves a very odd event: the minister turns pages with his feet, Alligator Man's wife is the Bearded Lady, the guy next to Scully (Lanny) has an enormous bulge in his stomach. To top it all, the irreverent Dr. Blockhead appears in the middle of the ceremony, burrowing up from the ground, knocking over the coffin, and performing a small feat: driving a nail into his chest. As the scene breaks up into confusion, Mulder deadpans, "I can't wait for the wake."

At a local diner, the agents meet with Sheriff Hamilton. He tells them the town was founded in the 1920s by circus performers, and says that the town is home to one of the very few traveling sideshows left in the country. Scully thinks that the isolation of sideshow performers and their frequent traveling could explain the identical murders, but Hamilton is quick to come back, defending the sideshow freaks as true artists and as human as anyone else. Flipping through the diner menu, Mulder notes a strange figure drawn by a local artist, Hepcat Helm. Hamilton takes the agents to meet Helm, who is an artist specializing in making creepy displays for the local fun house--or "tabernacle of terror," as Helm insists it be called. Helm identifies the figure in the menu as the Fiji mermaid: it was an act put together by P.T. Barnum as a real mermaid, but in actuality was just a dead monkey sewn onto a fish tail. Helm was impressed by Barnum's genius: he billed the mermaid as a fake, and that just drew ever more people to see it. Helm also speculates that the Fiji mermaid may have been real, fueling the curiosity.

Having noted drag marks at the crime scenes, Mulder begins to think the Fiji mermaid is responsible. The agents check into a local trailer court, which is run by a midget, Mr. Nutt. When Mulder asks Nutt if he was a circus performer, the articulate hotel manager counters that circuses are like a prison; he chastises Mulder at length for judging him based on his appearance, and then offers his own first impression of Mulder: an FBI agent. He is annoyed to no end to discover his first impression was correct. The agents are taken to their trailers by the man with the bulging belly deformity, Lanny. Lanny says that he loved circus work because it was so easy; all he had to do was point at the bulge and introduce his brother Leonard, who was "a little quiet." Nutt convinced him that the work was degrading, and he's now the trailer court's bellhop. Lanny seems a little unstable, but it may be due to his reliance on an ever-present liquor flask.

When Lanny leaves, Scully asks Mulder where he's going with "this Fiji mermaid business." Mulder counters that he's just considering all the possible suspects. Elsewhere, artist Hepcat Helm is working in his basement studio when something vaguely human crawls in through the window and attacks him. The following morning, Mulder is out running by a river, when he happens upon The Conundrum, a man with jigsaw puzzle tattoo patterns covering his body, who is in the process of eating a raw fish freshly plucked from the water. Scully awakens to see a man mysteriously falling outside her window; she leans forward and sees acrobats practicing on a trampoline. With a knock at the door, Lanny informs Scully that there has been another murder.

At the crime scene, Mulder has noted blood on the outside of the tiny basement window, which has him suspicious. Sheriff Hamilton wonders why the attacker didn't just use the open door. The agents leave the crime scene and are stopped when they see Dr. Blockhead escaping from a straight jacket, suspended upside-down over a pot of hot water. He says that he's a master of "body manipulation and pain endurance," and demonstrates by hammering a nail up his nose. He claims to have learned his techniques from various Eastern sages, as Mulder extracts the bloody nail from his nose. Their conversation is interrupted when The Conundrum surfaces from the pot of hot water. Blockhead explains that The Conundrum doesn't talk much, and that he's a geek: a person who will eat anything. Blockhead feeds The Conundrum live insects, and then offers some to the agents; to Mulder's shock, Scully takes one and pops it into her mouth. As they walk away, Scully reveals that she really palmed the insect, a small sleight-of-hand her uncle showed her. Mulder says that he's going to have the blood on Dr. Blockhead's nail checked against that at the crime scene, and then magically produces the nail. "Everyone's uncle's an amateur magician," he quips.

Scully goes to the local Museum of Curiosities to look for clues. She finds a pamphlet on the Siamese twins Chang and Eng, and the deformed museum curator tells her that their death was a curious story. Chang died first, and Eng several hours later: but Eng, realizing that half of his body had died and knowing that his own death was inevitable, died of fright. The curator says that blockheads are skilled performers, like sword swallowers, but that geeks are just unsightly, not even on par with gaffes: fake acts. Realizing Scully is an investigator, the curator passes on a leaflet of Jim-Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy, and also says he has another interesting exhibit of P.T. Barnum's. For another five dollars, he allows Scully to see it. She walks into a back room, opens up a plain-looking trunk, and finds it empty; simultaneously, an exit door swings open. Realizing the swindle, Scully leaves.

That evening, Mulder returns to the trailer court to find Mr. Nutt working under Scully's trailer. Mulder is suspicious of Nutt's intentions, but he swears he was fixing the plumbing and defends his size again, saying he wasn't stooping low for a cheap thrill. Scully emerges from her trailer and confirms that Nutt was indeed fixing the plumbing. Mulder tells Scully the blood on Dr. Blockhead's nail was the same type (O-positive) as that on the window, and has been sent for further analysis; he also has learned that Blockhead's outrageous claims of being born in Yemen and holding a Ph.D are untrue. Scully, meanwhile, has learned of a wild child found in 1943 who was covered with fur and treated by locals like a wild animal. He became Jim-Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy in a US sideshow, before taking up a career in law enforcement: Jim-Jim is Sheriff Hamilton.

The agents go to check on Hamilton, and find him burying something in his backyard under a full moon. When he leaves, the agents go to check it out the burial, and find nothing but a potato. An annoyed Hamilton then pops back onto the scene and demands an explanation. Scully tries to give a line about many serial killers working in law enforcement, but Mulder cuts the charade short and aks Hamilton about his days as Jim-Jim. Hamilton gave up his career when he began to go bald in mid-life; he says he was burying the potato as a superstitious was to remove warts on his hands.

Back at the trailer court, The Conundrum is seen chasing after Mr. Nutt's dog, eventually losing him at the manager's office. An annoyed Nutt opens the door, but it turns out The Conundrum was just paying his rent check. Hearing continued banging at the door, Nutt warns The Conundrum to go away; but instead, a bizarre, mangled, vaguely-human creature pops through the tiny "doggie door" and attacks him. That night, Scully is awakened by Lanny, who has blood on his hands and says that he found Nutt dead. Strange traces of blood are found outside the door. Lanny becomes distraught to tears, and Hamilton takes him to the drunk tank to dry out. Mulder, meanwhile, has found a needle stuck in Nutt's palm, and decides to take Dr. Blockhead into custody. Blockhead is found hanging hooks into his chest, and is uncooperative when Scully tries to arrest him. Scully attempts to put handcuffs on Blockhead, but being an escape artist, he worms his way free and runs. He doesn't get far, as Hamilton is waiting for him outside.

That night in prison, Lanny awakens to see something at his jail cell window, and he screams out "No!" Questioning of Blockhead is just beginning when the agents hear Lanny moaning. Mulder suspects another attack, but Scully thinks something got out. She thinks that Leonard, the misshapen bulge of a brother attached to Lanny's stomach, has been detaching himself and killing people. Her theory seems borne out by the gaping hole now seen in Lanny's side. Lanny doesn't know why Leonard attacks other people; he merely seeks another brother due to his hatred of Lanny.

Looking out the jail cell window, Scully sees the deformed twin crawling away. The agents chase the twin to the local fun house. They enter, and after spending time getting seriously lost, the twin manages to evade them. The twin, meanwhile, crawls back to the trailer park and attempts to attack The Conundrum. When the agents arrive on the scene, the twin is gone, and The Conundrum is seen with a very full belly.

The following morning, the search for the twin continues. Scully, who sees Dr. Blockhead and The Conundrum leaving town, tells Blockhead that Lanny died last night from liver cirrhosis. She's fascinated by Lanny's biological anomalies, but Blockhead tells her that very soon, genetic engineering will eradicate the freaks of the world. "Nature abhors normality," he says. Noticing that The Conundrum seems to be languishing, Mulder and Scully ask about his health. Blockhead doesn't know. And then, the silent Conundrum speaks the truth: "Probably something I ate."

We open on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, where a quiet morning is disturbed by a violent earthquake. The grandson of one of the elders goes out riding on his motorcycle, and in a deep canyon, turns up a boxcar unearthed by the quake. He finds a body and drags it back to his house for his grandfather to look at. Hosteen says that the body should be returned, because "they" will be coming. From all appearances, the body is alien.

Story note: During the credits, the closing tag line reads "Éí 'Aaníígóó 'Áhoot'é," which is "The Truth is Out There" in the Navajo language.

In Dover, DE, the mysterious fourth Lone Gunman known as "The Thinker" accidentally succeeds in hacking into a top secret Department of Defense database and downloads data onto a digital tape. At the United Nations in New York, various foreign diplomats learn that the MJ documents have been cracked. Also informed is the Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM), who says he has "already taken care of it." Back in Dover, a commando team busts into The Thinker's home, but finds him gone.

In Washington, the Lone Gunmen show up unannounced at Mulder's apartment, who tries to shove them out, complaining he's not feeling well. His opinion changes when the Gunmen tell him The Thinker gained access to the MJ files; the government has tightened down the screws to find him. A communication to the Gunmen names a place and time for Mulder to meet The Thinker. Their conversation is interrupted by a gunshot down the hall, where one of Mulder's neighbors has just shot her husband of 30 years. Mulder meets The Thinker at a Washington botanical garden, and The Thinker passes the MJ files to Mulder on digital tape. The Thinker fears for his life, since he didn't take security precautions; he never expected to succeed. He only wants the truth exposed, and he feels Mulder can do the job.

At the X-Files office, Mulder begins looking at the tape, and excitedly tells Scully what he has just uncovered. He quickly becomes enraged and throws papers off his desk when the files appear to be nothing but gibberish. Scully, however, recognizes the "gibberish" as an old code used by the military during World War II--it's written in Navajo. Mulder tells Scully to find someone to translate it and storms out of the office; when Scully asks how he's feeling, he says he hasn't been sleeping. Mulder goes to meet with Skinner; Skinner wants to question Mulder about having potentially received classified documents. Mulder becomes snappy, and when Skinner tries to stop him from walking away, he strikes Skinner.

The next day, Scully is called before Skinner and a panel of others to discuss Mulder's behavior. She says that Mulder does confide in her, but lies and says she knows nothing about Mulder receiving classified files. Despite the group's warning that Mulder has been summoned to a disciplinary hearing and that if Scully is found to be lying she could be dismissed from the FBI, she holds her tongue. Meanwhile, in Massachussetts, Bill Mulder is paid a visit by CSM. The two sit down to have a drink, and CSM explains that "the files" have been leaked; he knows that Mulder has the files because The Thinker has been captured. Mr. Mulder says his name is in the files, and CSM says that the encryption has bought them time, so that the facts will never come to light. CSM insists that he won't harm Mulder, having protected him for so long, and not willing to create a martyr. He also encourages Mr. Mulder to deny his role in "the project" to his son if asked.

Scully, meanwhile, finds Mulder at home sleeping on his couch. He continues to complain of poor health. Scully recounts her meeting with Skinner, and Mulder says he'll just apologize at the hearing. Scully remains concerned that the FBI already knows that Mulder has the secret files and is going to hang him out to dry. Mulder becomes increasingly agitated and demands that Scully find someone to break the Navajo code. Scully wants assurance that she's doing the right thing, and Mulder tapes an X into his window and says he'll find out. When questioned, he says he doesn't know why he attacked Skinner. Later, Scully travels to speak with a woman at the Navajo Nation offices; the woman says that a code talker is needed to translate the files, and promises to put Scully in touch with someone. The woman does recognize a few odd words (due to their modernity), such as "merchandise" and "vaccination."