Season 8: Essence (8X20)

Written by: Chris Carter
Directed by: Kim Manners

Mrs. Scully sets up decorations in Scully's apartment in preparation for a baby shower. She pesters her secretive daughter about whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Yet Mrs. Scully has a surprise of her own - she has hired Lizzy Gill, a baby nurse, to tend to the reluctant Scully. During the party, Lizzy goes into the bathroom undetected. She opens one of Scully's prescription bottles and dumps its contents down the toilet. Then she removes a packet of pills from her pocket and pours them into the bottle.

Dr. Lev (last seen in 8X08 ''Per Manum'') is working late at night in the Zeus Genetics lab, clutching an alien baby when Billy Miles (last seen in 8X15 ''Deadalive'') enters. Your work here is done, Billy says. He beheads the doctor with his hand and sets fire to the body. The next day, Doggett is home when Mulder pays him a surprise visit. He shows Doggett a news report on television of a fire at Zeus Genetics. Mulder believes that somebody is covering up whatever was going on in that lab, and Doggett sends Agent Crane to sift through the ashes at the crime scene. The only person not accounted for is Dr. Lev, a partner in Zeus with Dr. Parenti, Scully's former obstetrician. Mulder and Doggett break into Parenti's office and are surprised to see the doctor there. When Doggett finds racks of specimen jars with abnormal fetuses, Mulder accuses the doctor of experimenting with alien embryos.

Lizzy Gill leaves Scully's apartment and is picked up by Duffy Haskell. I think she trusts me, Lizzy tells him. In his office, Dr. Parenti packs up the specimen jars when he hears someone come in. It is Billy Miles. Parenti tells him that the office is closed. Mulder and Doggett sneak into Parenti's office in the middle of the night, suspecting foul play when the doctor does not answer their calls. Amid the fetuses, Doggett finds the head of Dr. Parenti in a specimen jar.

Suddenly, Billy Miles surprises Mulder and throws him through a glass window. Doggett, seeing the alien vertebrae on Billy, shoots at him but Billy escapes. Later, Scully tends to Mulder's injured head at her apartment. He tries to explain that Billy has transformed into an alien, but that he himself was somehow prevented from this through Scully's procedure in the hospital. Yet Billy is no ordinary alien, because Doggett saw red blood when he shot at him. Mulder determines that Billy is now a hybrid, and fears for the safety of Scully's baby. Lizzy, overhearing their conversation, phones Duffy. Duffy, however, is face-to-face with Billy Miles, and the alien slices off Duffy's head with one clean chop of his hand.

Duffy's body is found in an illegal medical facility used for cloning. There, Skinner locates prenatal records on Scully, as monitored by Dr. Lev and Dr. Parenti. Skinner takes Mulder aside and asks about the nature of Scully's conception, but Mulder, surprisingly, doesn't have any answers. Mulder calls Scully and says it is important that he immediately see her regarding interference with her pregnancy. Yet she hears a noise in her apartment and catches Lizzy tampering with her prescription bottle. Who are you? she demands. Later, after a checkup, the doctor assures Scully that the pills she had been taking were only harmless vitamin supplements.

Doggett interrogates Lizzy, who recounts how she worked as a research scientist on human cloning. Her research team had been successful at birthing an alien egg in a human mother. Mulder is outraged. What did you do to Scully? he screams. Lizzy tells them that there is nothing wrong with Scully's child. In fact, it is perfectly human, and she had tried to protect it. Agent Crane informs Doggett that Billy Miles phoned in and offered to give himself up.

A SWAT team storms Dr. Parenti's office, but Billy is not there. Sensing danger, Mulder orders Scully to quickly pack and leave her apartment. Doggett calls with news of Billy's disappearance, and mysteriously, the lights go off in Scully's apartment. Billy misses Mulder and Scully as they escape outside. Their car, however, is blocked in, and the approaching Billy Miles traps them like sitting ducks.

Suddenly, another car screeches from out of nowhere and plows over Billy. Mulder and Scully watch in shock as its driver - Krycek - orders them to get in. Billy Miles gets up, unhurt, and watches the car speed off. At the FBI, Krycek informs the assembled agents that the aliens are afraid of Scully's child because it is greater than they are. Doggett is suspicious of Krycek and calls Agent Monica Reyes, who has flown into Washington, for help.

Skinner and Mulder take Scully into the elevator, but as they approach the garage, Doggett calls to say that Billy Miles is down there. They put Scully back in the elevator, and Billy goes up the stairs. Krycek takes Scully while Skinner and Mulder proceed in the elevator, with Billy in pursuit. Doggett puts Scully in a car with Reyes. On the roof, Billy is about to strike Skinner when Mulder comes up from behind to push Billy off the roof. He lands in a garbage truck and its compactor crushes him. As Scully and Reyes speed out of the garage, Agent Crane blocks their path. He watches as the garbage truck rids of Billy, and then waves the women safely by. They do not see that Agent Crane too has the alien vertebrae on his neck.

Quotes:
Mulder: (voiceover) We call it the miracle of life. Conception: A union of perfect opposites — essence transforming into existence — an act without which mankind would not exist and humanity cease to exist. Or is this just nostalgia now? An act of biology commandeered by modern science and technology? God-like, we extract, implant, inseminate... and we clone. But has our ingenuity rendered the miracle into a simple trick? In the artifice of replicating life can we become the creator? Then what of the soul? Can it, too, be replicated? Does it live in this matter we call DNA? Or is its placement the opposite of artifice, capable only by god. How did this child come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of a union? Or the work of a divine hand? An answered prayer? A true miracle? Or is it a wonder of technology — the intervention of other hands? What do I tell this child about to be born? What do I tell Scully? And what do I tell myself?

Margaret Scully: You know, it would be a whole lot easier for everyone if you would just tell us the sex, Dana. Did you hear me?

Scully: Yes, I heard you, Mom — for about the thousandth time, you can wait. Didn't you have to wait with us?
Margaret Scully: Well, I know it's a boy. I can just tell by the way you're carrying. It's a boy.
Scully: Well, see, you obviously don't need me to tell you because you already know.
Margaret Scully: Then it's a boy? Oh, it's the least you could tell your mother considering everything else you're keeping a secret. (There is a knock at the door)
Scully: We told people noon, right?
Margaret Scully: Mm-hmm.
(Scully opens the door. Lizzy Gill enters, carrying two bouquets of flowers, one pink one blue)
Lizzy Gill: Hi. Your mom said to cover all the bases. I'm Lizzy Gill.
Margaret Scully: Hi, Lizzy. Let me give you a hand with that. I asked Lizzy to help out today.
Scully: Oh. Hi.
Lizzy Gill: These are going to need some water. Congratulations, by the way.
Scully: Mom... what do we need help with?
Margaret Scully: I don't know. It's just, well you shouldn't have to worry. You have to let people do for you. She's a very highly recommended baby nurse, by the way.
Scully: Oh, Mom.

Mulder: Knock, knock.

Doggett: Right. We get caught in here, what are you going to say then?
Mulder: I'll just say I'm with you, Agent Doggett. It's Saturday anyway, right? We're just having a look around.
(Doggett enters a room lined with jars of foetuses)
Doggett: Hey, Mulder.
(Mulder goes to join Doggett, but is intercepted by Dr Parenti)
Dr Parenti: Who are you?
Mulder: Me?
Dr Parenti: Yes, you, sir. What do you think you're doing in this office?
Mulder: I'm with an FBI agent who would like to ask you the exact same question. Dr Parenti, isn't it?
Dr Parenti: I'm in the middle of a very delicate medical procedure. Whatever you want, you don't just come barging in here. I don't care who you are.
Doggett: This medical procedure... it have anything to do with this?
Dr Parenti: Please...
Doggett: Why don't you tell us what we're looking at here, Dr Parenti?
Dr Parenti: You people have no right to be here. I want you to leave.
Mulder: What is this? Some kind of showroom?
Dr Parenti: Do you know what I've been through in the past 24 hours? Close friend and colleague is missing. Much of my life's work has been destroyed.
Doggett: How about you explain what you are doing? What these things are.
Dr Parenti: They are what we are all working so hard to prevent — children with non-survivable birth defects.
Mulder: Does that work include experimentation with alien embryos? Work that you would destroy to cover up such allegations?
Dr Parenti: Where do you get these ideas?
Mulder: From a friend of mine — a former patient of yours — Dana Scully.
Dr Parenti: If I'm such a Dr Frankenstein how is it that Ms Scully is carrying a perfectly healthy child? In her own medical opinion.
Mulder: Is she?
Doggett: I'd say this man's suitably pissed off. Why don't we let him get back to work. Let's go, Mulder.

Mulder: Ahh! Scully.

Scully: Sorry.
Mulder: I see why you gave up a career in medicine for the FBI, Scully. You've got manos de piedra.
Scully: Sorry.
Mulder: Imagine if he'd really connected.
Scully: Who?
Mulder: Billy Miles.
Scully: Billy Miles? He did this?
Mulder: Ask Agent Doggett. He saw him.
Doggett: If you ask me, the kid was whacked out on something. Whatever it was, he's feeling no pain.
Mulder: Ask me, the kid isn't a kid.
Doggett: Oh, don't tell me he's an alien.
Mulder: He is a type of alien. A human replacement. One who looks human. Look at his strength. The way he took those slugs.
Doggett: I've seen plenty of guys whacked out on chemicals, keep on coming.
Mulder: Well, then, you're ignoring who Billy Miles is. You, of all people, Agent Doggett who's supposedly running the X-Files.
Doggett: You're ignoring the fact that he bled red blood. Now, every single X-File I read — and I read them all, Mulder — what you call 'aliens' bleed green, right?
Mulder: Well, Billy Miles is a whole new deal. He's an alien abductee who was returned after hideous procedures were performed on him. And who miraculously returns to so-called perfect health when his body completely sheds its skin.
Doggett: Same thing happened to you.
Mulder: Same thing would have happened to me if I'd been left alone. If Scully hadn't treated me.
Scully: What I want to know is what Billy Miles was doing at that medical office.
Mulder: Same as when he torched Zeus Genetics and destroyed their experiments with alien biology and the doctors performing them.
Scully: And what were you doing there... Mulder?
Mulder: Looking for answers.
Scully: To what?
Mulder: One of those doctors was your doctor.
Scully: Mulder...
Mulder: Listen, Scully, I'm sorry, but I just need to know that this baby of yours is going to be all right.
Scully: My baby is fine, Mulder. I've had it checked over and over again with my new doctor that I trust implicitly.

Lizzy Gill: I knew people would kill for what I know but... not like this.

Doggett: Not going to let that happen. Just what you told me and Agent Crane.
Lizzy Gill: For the past ten years I've been working as a research scientist trying to produce human clones — long before the media circus with sheep and cows. The work was painstaking, largely unsuccessful, but there was a lot of interest and a lot of money.
Mulder: Money from who?
Lizzy Gill: Orders came from government men. But they're all dead now.
Mulder: But the work continued.
Lizzy Gill: We were surprisingly successful with a clone from a human egg and alien DNA. DNA that the government had since 1947.
Skinner: What do you mean by success?
Lizzy Gill: Alien babies. Birthed by human mothers desperate to conceive. They didn't live more than a couple of days, but tissue and stem cells is what we were after for other experiments.
Mulder: What other experiments?
Lizzy Gill: I don't know anything about that. But I know it was something good.
Mulder: What did you do to Scully?
Lizzy Gill: We were trying to protect her.
Mulder: What did you do to her?
Lizzy Gill: No, you don't understand.
Mulder: Tell me what's wrong with her! Tell me what's wrong with her baby!
Doggett: Listen to her. What she's saying.
Lizzy Gill: There's nothing wrong with her. That's what I'm trying to tell you. The child she is carrying is very special. One could only hope to create that in a lab. A perfect human child, but with no human frailties.

Krycek: You should all know exactly what it is you're up against... what Agent Scully's up against.

Doggett: You realise you're all listening to someone who tried to kill me. He left you for dead.
Mulder: Tell us about Billy Miles.
Krycek: There are others just like him. You can call them what you want. They're human replacements, alien replicants. They're virtually unstoppable.
Skinner: What do they want?
Krycek: They want to knock out any and all attempts by us to survive the final days — when they come back to retake the planet.
Doggett: So, what, they're wandering around among us... looking for trouble? Some kind of alien lawmen?
Krycek: You saw what they did to those doctors. They're fearless. And they answer to no one, except their own biological imperative... to survive.
Mulder: What about Scully? What do they want with her?
Scully: They want my baby. Why?
Krycek: They didn't even know about it. I don't know exactly how they could have found out just how... how important it is... how special.
Scully: My baby is normal.
Krycek: Your baby was a miracle. Born of a barren mother's barren womb.
Mulder: Are you saying that they're afraid of it?
Krycek: They're afraid of its implications. That it could somehow be greater than them. Something... more human than human.
Scully: I don't believe this.
Skinner: You wanted to destroy her child.
Krycek: I wanted to destroy the truth before they learn the truth.
Mulder: That there's a god... a higher power.
Doggett: I don't believe this crap; I don't believe you're all sitting around here listening to it even when you know this man's a liar. Worse than that.
Krycek: You can believe what you want, but I don't think you can take the chance that I'm wrong. There isn't hospital that's safe enough. She may never even make it out of this building.
Doggett: Why don't you just shut up?
Mulder: Agent Doggett. Get on the phone. If we're going to get Scully out of here we're going to need some help.

Episode Number: 181
Season Number: 8
First Aired: Sunday, May 13, 2001
Production Code: 8X20