episode by Larry Barber and Paul Barber
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: No date given. Should be January 1994, if episode are in right order - although remember Mulder would need recovery time after "Beyond the Sea."
A young man is picked up by a woman in a bar and they go home and have sex together. After the event, she gets up from the bed and walks to the door where she stands watching as he clutches his throat and collapsed, froth coming from his mouth. Where the woman was standing there is now a man.
At the crime scene in Germantown, Maryland, the detective tells Mulder and Scully about the death. According to the security camera, he says, a woman entered the apartment but never left, while a man left but didn't seem to enter. The cause of death is a massive coronary. Scully wonders why anyone in this day and age would have sex with a stranger, and also wonders why they've been called in at all. Mulder reveals that he has come across four other similar deaths, and asked to be told about any new death with the same modus operandi.
Mulder tells Scully about the other cases, saying the deaths were of both women and men, and that they all had massive amounts of pheromones in their bodies. The pheromones contain human DNA, leading Mulder to call the killer "the ultimate sex machine." The four recent deaths have been on the East coast, gradually heading south, but a year earlier there was a similar one just outside a small town called Steveston, Massachusetts, the home of a reclusive religious sect called the Kindred. Mulder found some of the red clay particular to that area in scratches on the recent victim's body.
In Steveston, Mulder and Scully come across a group of the Kindred, who wear old-fashioned clothes and drive a horse-drawn cart. Scully tries to talk to the one left guarding the horse (Brother Andrew). He looks nervous and says he's not allowed to talk, but slowly takes her proffered hand. When he touches her, she stares at him as is suddenly attracted to him. The others return and the Kindred drive off, leaving Scully looking after them, clearly shaken. "There's something up there, Mulder?" she says, at last. "I've been saying that for years," he replies.
Mulder and Scully try to drive to the Kindred's settlement but the road runs out and they have to walk the last few miles. Mulder has an interesting wrestle with the map, which he holds upside down at first. After getting them completely lost, he crumples the map up and tries to kick it into the undergrowth. Scully catches it. Suddenly a crowd of the Kindred appear and surround them, insisting that they hand over their guns. "It is your weapons that are unwelcome here, not you," their spokeswoman, Sister Abigail says. She offers to bring them to the community so she can see that he don't believe in hurting people.
When they arrive at the Community they find its members involved in some very odd activities, such as hanging out the washing in the rain. They are led into the dining room and invited to partake of the meal. During the grace, Mulder looks round the table, and Brother Andrew looks at Scully. Mulder and Scully ask if anyone can help solve their case. "Has anyone left here recently?" they ask. Everyone looks tense, especially Brother Andrew, but one of the member, Brother Wilton, gets angry and interrupts their questions, saying the outside world doesn't interest them. Suddenly one of the members, an old and fat man, chokes and falls to the floor. Scully wants to tend to him but is kept away. "We take care of our own," she is told.
Back at the club, a woman is picked up by a man and led onto the dance floor.
At night, Mulder and Scully are shown to the path and told not to stray off it as they return to their car. Mulder doesn't trust the Kindred, and thinks they're hiding something. "Somehow they got us to answer their questions," he says, but avoided giving answers themselves. He also claims that he saw some of the same faces as were in photos dating from the 1930s that were on the wall of a store in town. He gives her the light and heads back the way they've come. "I'm going to go back for a little look-see," he tells her. She follows him.
Back at the Kindred's community, everything seems deserted. Then they see a row of torches heading out of the building into a barn of some sort. Peering through a crack, they see some sort of ceremony involving the man who collapsed at the dinner table. They carry him down into the cellar Mulder creeps in and follows them. Scully watches through the crack, but is grabbed by Brother Andrew who tells her he can give her information.
Mulder goes down into the cellar, along a long narrow passageway deep underground. The Kindred are still performing their ritual, smearing a gooey substance all over the dead man then putting him in some sort of vault carved out of the stone. After they've gone, Mulder creeps out. The man has been sealed in by some glowing substance, squishy but fairly resistant to touch. Suddenly some of the Kindred come back, talking about the intruders, and Mulder only avoids detection by leaping into another hole in the rock. The man is lying there, seemingly dead but with his face strangely changed and his hair longer. As Mulder stares in amazement, he opens his eyes.
Andrew leads Scully to his room. "I know who did it," he says. "I want you to find this killer. I want you to find him for me." The killer is called Brother Martin, he tells her, and was his best friend. "Marty was different," he says. Locking the door, he shows her some pornographic magazines that he was Marty had found once. Marty grew obsessed with them, he tells her. "He left us to become one of you." Scully asks more questions, but Andrew just walks over to her and takes her hand. "We're all different," he says, kissing her. She looks dazed and doesn't resist as they fall onto the bed. Mulder, who's overheard that Scully is with Andrew, bursts in. "Get off of her!" he shouts, helping Scully up and supporting her with an arm tightly round her shoulders. "What the hell were you doing back there?" he asks her, as soon as they're outside. "I don't know," she says, and is sick.
Back in the club, another man is picked up by the woman from the teaser, seemingly melting as soon a she gets close to him.
Back in the car, Scully tells Mulder she's feeling better, and a little embarrassed, even though she can't remember anything. Mulder tells her what he saw and thinks the Kindred can transform from male to female. "I know what I saw, Scully," he says, when she protests, "and I saw you about to do the wild thing with some stranger." She asks if Andrew was trying to kill her, and Mulder says maybe the sex kills.
The female Marty is in her car with Michael, the man she picked up in the club. A police officer interrupts them, but Michael starts choking, and Marty, who now looks like a man, knocks the officer over and runs away. In the hospital later, Michael tells Mulder and Scully what he saw, insisting it be off the record. Scully is still sceptical about the sex change thing, saying it must be a transvestite.
The killer is tracked to a hotel, where he used one of the previous victim's credit cards. Mulder and Scully rush there. The female Marty is standing over a dead man, saying the others will come for her soon because "the day is coming and they won't leave without me." Mulder and Scully burst into the room, but Marty hits Scully on the head and runs away. When Mulder gives chase, he is also knocked down, and watches as Marty changes into a male. Mulder reaches for his gun, for Marty kicks him in the face, then kicks the gun away and runs out of the hotel. Scully gets up first and gives chase. She holds him at gunpoint, but Brother Andrew jumps out of the shadows and asks her not to hurt him. As she stares at him, he knocks her over and knocks the gun from her hand. The kindred carry Marty away.
Mulder and Scully return to Steveston, but the place is deserted and the barn sealed up. "They have no means of transportation," Scully says, baffled. "No earthly means of transportation," Mulder says, as they stand in a corn circle.