episode by Howard Gordon
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: No date given, but "Blood" included the date August 2nd 1994, and "Duane Barry" starts on August 7th.
New York City, 11.23 pm. A man sees smoke under his door and opens it to see a raging inferno. He calls 911 but the fire gets worse. When the fire fighters arrive a black man passes them on the stairs. He has a scar at the back of his neck, and he smiles enigmatically. When they burst into the apartment they find no fire, but the man is dead, a fire extinguisher in his hand.
Mulder finds the tape of the man's 911 call inside his newspaper, and the article about the man's death is circled. This reveals him to be a doctor, Dr Grissom, prominent in sleep disorder research. Mulder requests the case from Skinner, as the police won't talk to him until he has permission, who asks who told him about it. "My source - the only one I've ever trusted - is dead," Mulder says. Skinner says he will look into it, but reminds Mulder of his wiretap duty.
Mulder is working on the wiretap (and there are lots of pictures of him and Samantha pinned up beside him) when a man comes in bringing his 302, which gives permission to do the case. Mulder sees that another agent is assigned too, and the man introduces himself as Alex Krycek, saying he asked for the case first. "Technically it's my case," he says, but Mulder says, " I work alone". "I may be green," says Krycek, "but I had the case first and I'm not going to give it away so quickly." Mulder asks Krycek to requisition a car and he'll meet him outside.
At the Academy, Scully is giving a lecture on electrocution when Mulder (calling himself George Hale) calls her, asking her to come to New York and do an autopsy. She can't come but he says he will send the body. Scully doesn't look too happy but agrees.
Mulder goes to the Grissom Sleep Disorder clinic in Stamford, Connecticut, where he sees an experimental technique by which the occipital lobe is stimulated electrically to alter dreams and cause hallucinations.
Krycek storms up, angry at being ditched like somebody's bad date. "You don't know a thing about me!" he says, accusing Mulder of judging him unfairly. "Exactly," says Mulder, walking away. Krycek says how everyone used to laugh at him at the Academy, but "some of us followed your work, believed what you were doing because we knew there was more out there than they were telling us." Scully calls then, telling him to come back to see the autopsy. Krycek has the car keys, so Mulder has to bring him too.
Scully talks Mulder through the autopsy, utterly ignoring Krycek, who seems squeamish. She says there were no burns, but the man still suffered all the secondary effects of death by fire. "It was as if his body believed that it was burning."
In Brooklyn, a man (later revealed as Henry Willig) watches television in a seedy apartment. He has the same scar as the black man seen in the teaser, who suddenly appears in the apartment. They greet each other as old friends, though there is a lot of tension. "I can't get it out of my head," Willig says. He says they're all going to hell, but the black men, addressed as preacher, says they've been there for 40 years. Willig accuses him of killing Grissom, but then he sees visions of injured Vietnamese people staring at him accusingly. Then they shoot him, and he dies.
Krycek tells Mulder about this latest death, saying the autopsy revealed 43 internal haemorrhages though no external wounds. Mulder notices the scar on the back of his neck, and Krycek says Willig was a marine in Vietnam, and he would have trained at the same base as Grissom was stationed at that time.
They discover that the unit Willig was in has only one survivor, Augustus Cole. They go to see him in the VA Medical Center, where he's been for years. Cole had been in isolation after disrupting other inmates' sleep patterns, though the doctor can't say how he could do that. When they get there, however, Cole is gone, and the nurse tells the doctor that he himself discharged him two days ago. From his picture, we see that Cole is the black man seen earlier.
Someone calls Mulder, arranging a rendezvous in which he will pass on some information on the case. This is Mr X, in his first appearance. "Who I am is irrelevant," he says. "I don't want to be here." He gives Mulder top secret information on sleep eradication experiments, designed to build a better soldier. Lack of sleep heightens aggression, he says. The 13 man unit, on which the tests were carried out, killed over 4000 people. He also leads Mulder to another member of the squad, reported dead in action. Mulder asks how he can contact X again. "You can't" says X. "Closing the X-Files - separating you and Scully - was only the beginning. The truth is still out there, but it's never been more dangerous. The man we both knew paid for that information with his life - a sacrifice I'm not willing to make."
Krycek meets Mulder as he returns, saying someone answering Cole's description just robbed a drugs store. When they get there they hear gunshots and find that the two police officers first on the scene have killed each other.
Scully reads the secret report from X and learns about Grissom's project, by which part of the brain stem was cut in order to end the need for sleep. Drugs were then given to replenish the organic deficits caused by prolonged lack of sleep. These drugs, which maintain serotonin levels in the blood, were similar to the drugs Cole robbed from the pharmacy. She fells she has no evidence yet on whether the technique was successful.
Mulder calls her, and they discuss the secret reports. Mulder thinks Cole has developed the ability to project his subconscious, in a similar way to the electrical stimuli inducing hallucinations which he'd seen at the Sleep Disorder Clinic. Scully urges him to work up a profile instead, and try to find Cole in an ordinary fashion. "I'll sharpen my pencils," says Mulder with a smile. Krycek tries to attract Mulder's attention. "Sounds like your new partner's working out," Scully says. "He's alright," says Mulder. "He could use a little more seasoning and some wardrobe advice, but he's a lot more open to extreme possibilities than...." "Than I was?" she says. "Than I assumed he would be," he says, firmly. "It must be nice not having someone questioning your every move, poking holes in all your theories," she says. "Oh yeah,,, it's... it's great," he says, unconvincingly "I'm surprised I put up with you for so long.". They both smile, then there's a silence. She says she'd better go, and puts the phone down, and then sits there staring into space, lost in thought.
Mulder and Krycek go to a cafe see the other surviving member of the unit, as directed by X. He's anxious and assumes they've come to kill him, as he's heard about the other deaths. He also has the scar at the back of his neck. He agrees to talk. He says that at first it was great not to sleep, but then the whole squadron went AWOL and went on a killing spree. Cole was the one who opposed what they were doing, saying they had to pay one day. Grissom and a Dr Girardi were the men who made them what they are.
Mulder works out Cole sees himself as an avenging angel, and will go after Girardi next. He's choosing now because it's the anniversary of the worst massacre performed by the squadron. As they're stuck in traffic, Scully calls to say Girardi's due to arrive in New York on a train that evening, to go to Grissom's funeral.
At the station, Mulder and Krycek wait for Girardi, and Cole is also waiting. Mulder sees Girardi get off the train, closely followed by Cole, and draws his gun and shoots at him, but is shot himself. It all turns out to be a hallucination.
Mulder insists Girardi and Cole were really there and they study the security video over and over. Krycek takes Mulder aside and asks what's happening, saying he had the lie to cover for the fact that Mulder started shooting in a public place for no cause. "There are things you're not telling me that I need to know," he says. Mulder says it's because his ideas aren't usually popular. "I told you, I want to believe," Krycek says, "but I need a place to start." Mulder tells him his theory on the case, and Krycek says it is a good explanation. Then the security video shows something suspicious in a deserted part of the yard, and they prepare to go there.
Cole is preparing to kill Girardi, who says he was only following orders, and the other men volunteered anyway. Girardi sees the whole squadron approach and, as Cole quotes the Bible, they all pick up knives.
Mulder and Krycek drive up and hear a scream. They search around and find Girardi, badly wounded in the back of the neck. Krycek calls for help, while Mulder finds Cole. Cole is standing on the edge of a high drop, as if to jump. Mulder calls on him not to jump, and puts his gun down to talk. Cole says he's so tired and wants to sleep. "They made me into somebody else," he says. Krycek then arrives and points a gun at Cole. While Krycek sees Cole aiming a gun at Mulder, Mulder sees only a Bible. Krycek kills Cole, and the thing in his hand is revealed to be a Bible after all. Krycek seems distressed, and Mulder assures him he did the right thing, although he seems not to believe it. Back at his car he finds the secret report gone.
Mulder and Scully talk in secret in the FBI HQ. Scully's copy of the secret report is gone too, and they're left with nothing. Mulder tells Scully about X. "Do you trust him?" Scully asks. Mulder says nothing.
Cancerman is seen looking at the report, and asks where Mulder got it. A man standing before him says that Mulder's found another source, or another source has found him. This man is then revealed to be Krycek. He says he's outlined several counter-measures. "Reassigning them to other sections seems only to have strengthened their determination," he says. "Scully's a problem - a much larger problem than you described." "Every problem has a solution," Cancerman says.