Season 8: Medusa (8X13)

Written by: Frank Spotnitz
Directed by: Richard Compton

A man waits alone on the Clay Street train platform in Boston. He is an undercover transit cop who, speaking into a microphone on his lapel, describes a gangbanger that has jumped the turnstile. The train arrives, and the cop steps in the empty car as it moves into a tunnel. The gangbanger enters from another car. Suddenly, the train lurches to an abrupt stop and loses its power. Strobes of bright light fill the car, and a man's scream is heard. The gangbanger jumps down on the tracks and runs off into the tunnel. At the next stop, incoming passengers see the officer's body on the floor of the car. Huge chunks of his face and body have been eaten away, revealing sections of skull and skeleton.

At the Boston Transit Operations Center, Scully and Doggett talk with Deputy Transit Police Chief Karras, who wants to reopen the line in time for the afternoon rush hour. Scully insists on keeping the train closed until the man's cause of death can be determined. Armed and wearing a flak jacket, Doggett proceeds into the tunnel, joined by Police Lieutenant Bianco, Center for Disease Control pathogen expert Hellura Lyle and transit engineer Steven Melnick. Scully, manning the expedition from above ground, communicates with Doggett by radio and video camera. As they venture into the tunnel, they find it to be unusually hot because ventilation was shut down. Suddenly, Melnick screams, indicating a burn on his neck. Dr. Lyle does a sample analysis on a puddle that the group had passed, but finds that the liquid is only seawater.

In the darkness, Lt. Bianco sees a figure move. Doggett chases after it into an unused and obsolete tunnel, and gets attacked by a man with horrifyingly decayed features. The man is the gangbanger who previously ran off into the tunnels. Lt. Bianco is ready to end the search when Melnick spots three bodies wrapped in plastic. Dr. Lyle sees a shadow run off, but, upon investigation, the team can't find anyone. Scully, believing a contagion is still a risk factor, directs them to leave the bodies and continue into the main tunnel. Melnick screams again, this time with burns on his arms and hands. Scully orders them to pour fresh water on Melnick from their canteens. She guesses that they may be facing some kind of bio-chemical agent. While Dr. Lyle stays with Melnick, Doggett and Bianco start into a side tunnel. No one notices Lt. Bianco's hand glowing faintly green. Scully meets the hazmat team as they bring out Dr. Lyle, the deteriorating Melnick and the three dead victims. She orders that the bodies be taken to the CDC and accuses Karras of hiding dead bodies that he knew were down there.

Doggett and Bianco trudge into the next tunnel. Bianco's face and hands begin to glow green, but it has no other effect on him. He tries to leave, but Doggett pulls a gun on him. Bianco kicks him in the face, knocking Doggett out, and he escapes. Doggett now has the green fluorescent glow on his skin. Scully, meanwhile, gets a visit from Dr. Kai Bowe, a marine biologist. She has analyzed the water from the tunnel, and has found that it contains a sea creature, called a medusa, which is why the CDC missed it when they inspected the liquid. The medusas glow with bioelectricity, but do not burn people on contact. Something triggers it. Scully fears the worst for her partner.

Doggett wakes up and speaks to Scully on the radio. If he is to stop the spread of the contaminant, he needs to find Lt. Bianco. Karras tells Scully that he has reopened the subway and there are already passengers on the platform. It is now becoming urgent to protect the thousands of passengers. Doggett locates Bianco, lying in the tunnel. Scully tells Doggett to get out, but Bianco begs him to stay. Doggett helps Bianco walk, and they see a child's shadow. The boy, who is unaffected, points to a wall. Scully figures out that sweat triggers the electricity. Since the boy's sweat glands aren't fully developed, he has not been affected. The boy motions Doggett toward a big leak in the ceiling with water running from the bay. He leads him to a main track, where trains from the reopened system are about to cross. Doggett is faced with a train heading towards him. He places Bianco's gun on the third rail, which triggers a spark when the train hits it. The electricity charges into the puddles of seawater, killing the medusa. It vanishes from Doggett's and Bianco's skin.

Doggett is later treated at Boston General Hospital. Scully tells him that he is rid of the organism and is perfectly fine. The boy is with social services. Plastic surgeons are working on Melnick and Bianco, and the three bodies' deaths are being attributed to an unknown pathogen. Since there is no proof that Karras endangered people's lives, he can't be criminally charged for keeping the trains running. He was merely doing his job. Scully congratulates Doggett for saving all those people's lives. You figured it out, he tells her. I was just your eyes and ears.

Notes:
In the teaser, the undercover cop refers to "a possible ten-thirteen" in his radio call. This is a common X-Files in-joke. Many episodes make reference to "ten thirteen" or "1013" in some fashion. This is because 10/13/56 is Chris Carter's birthdate. His production company is also "Ten Thirteen Productions".

David Duchovny does not appear in this episode.

Quotes:
Doggett: Do you need some help with that?
Scully: No. You're going in without me.
Doggett: What?
Scully: I don't know what kind of games are being played, but I'm going to be much more effective analysing the situation from up here.
Doggett: Yeah, but I'm just tag along here. This is your thing. You've got all the experience.
Scully: You've got capable people with you, Agent Doggett. What I need down there are eyes and ears.
Doggett: Okay. I'll be your eyes and ears. But I wish somebody would tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be looking for.

Scully: (on radio) I want you to leave those bodies where you found them and go after whoever it is who's in that tunnel. We need to know whether he is causing this or if he's infected himself. Either way, he may kill more people. I'm sure Dr Lyle will agree.

Doggett: All right, we just got our order. We're going to continue on.
Lieutenant Bianco: Says who?
Doggett: Says the boss.
Lieutenant Bianco: Agent Doggett. This agent you work with deals with weird stuff, right?
Doggett: She works on something called the X-Files — FBI cases dealing with unexplained phenomena.
Lieutenant Bianco: You know her at all?
Doggett: Yeah, I know her. We've worked together for a short time.
Lieutenant Bianco: I wonder why she sent you down here instead of coming herself.
Doggett: It's the right call. You got a problem, Lieutenant?
Lieutenant Bianco: Yeah. A problem when somebody I don't know keeps me down here in the dark looking for jack squat when we've already found our man.
Doggett: It's a question of contagion.
Lieutenant Bianco: It's a question of who's in charge.

Deputy Chief Karras: Agent Scully, we are on a deadline here, which is fast approaching.

Scully: These bodies need immediate examination and diagnosis.
Deputy Chief Karras: And that is being arranged.
Scully: By whom? I already arranged it. You knew those bodies were down there, didn't you?
Deputy Chief Karras: I'd watch yourself, Agent Scully.
Scully: Look at the way they're wrapped. Somebody sealed them in plastic, hoping they wouldn't be found. Look, if I find out you sent my partner and those others down there knowing about this...
Deputy Chief Karras: You are way out of line here.
Scully: I want to see inspection reports. I want to know who was down there in that tunnel and what they saw.
Deputy Chief Karras: I'll get you anything you want.
Scully: Good. Now, let's get these bodies to the CDC where they're supposed to go.

Scully: (on radio) Agent Doggett? Agent Doggett, can you hear me? Agent Doggett?

Doggett: (on radio) Yeah. I'm here. I hear you.
Scully: (on radio) Oh, you had me. I... I started fearing the worst.
Doggett: (on radio) No, I... I got blindsided by... I don't see Lieutenant Bianco. He's infected with something. I saw it glowing on his skin.
Scully: (on radio) And what's your condition, Agent Doggett?
Doggett: (on radio) I'm going to assume it's not good. (He is covered in the green glowing substance)
Scully: (on radio) I'm going to send a quarantine unit down to get you, Agent Doggett, okay? I want you to stay right where you are.
Doggett: (on radio) I appreciate it, Agent Scully, but I can't do that. If we're going to stop the spread of this thing I got to stop Lieutenant Bianco.
Scully: (in Control Room) Dr Bowe, I need you to get on the phone with the CDC. Tell them everything we know. We have to learn as quickly as possible what sets this thing off. (to Deputy Chief Karras) Look... I need you to blockade any and every exit from the system. You've got a possible outbreak situation here.
Deputy Chief Karras: (in Control Room) No, no. That's not going to happen.
Scully: (in Control Room) No, you listen to me. Your lieutenant is infected and at large in the system and he is looking for a way out.
Deputy Chief Karras: (in Control Room) I hear you. It's just that there are already passengers waiting on the platform.

Doggett: Nurse! Nurse! (He gets out of bed)

Scully: Where do you think you're going?
Doggett: Find the nurse. She said she was going to talk to the doctor about me going home. I could be dying in here for all she knows.
Scully: Well, you're not... Agent Doggett. Your skin and body have been rid of the organism. Simple alcohol bath cleaned you right up. I was just down talking to the nurse and... I told her I'd come and give you the news.
Doggett: Well, can I get out of here?
Scully: Yes.
(Doggett heads for the bathroom, then, remembering he's wearing nothing but an open backed hospital gown, backs towards the bathroom instead)
Doggett: What about the others?
Scully: Well, the kid is with Social Services, and plastic surgeons are working on Melnick and Bianco, and Dr Lyle has been discharged.
Doggett: You know, I'd like to think that this was over, but there's going to be hell to pay for these guys.
Scully: No. It's over, Agent Doggett.
Doggett: Excuse me? This guy Karras, put a train back on the tracks. He recklessly endangered peoples lives.
Scully: But there is no proof of that.
Doggett: What do you mean, there's no proof?
Scully: What I'm saying is that the organism is no longer extant. It's destroyed.
Doggett: By what?
Scully: I'm guessing by the electrical charge that you set off.
Doggett: We have victims. Dead bodies.
Scully: Infected by a pathogen of unknown aetiology. Look, Agent Doggett, not a criminal charge is going to stick. These guys were just doing their job — keeping the trains running. But they've got you to thank. And not just for saving their butts.
Doggett: No. You figured it out. I was just your eyes and ears. Agent Scully...
Scully: Let's go home.

Episode Number: 173

Season Number: 8
First Aired: Sunday, February 11, 2001
Production Code: 8X13

Season 8: The Gift (8X11)

Written by: Frank Spotnitz
Directed by: Kim Manners

In a flashback, a car drives up to a semi-rural house in the middle of a rainstorm. A man gets out and enters the house, which is marked with a strange symbol in blood. Inside are Marie and Paul Hangemuhl, hiding a creature with ruined skin and cataracted eyes. The unseen man raises his gun and fires at the mysterious creature. It falls to the ground. He goes back to his car and drives away. The man is Mulder.

It is present day when Doggett arrives at the Sheriff's Station in Squamash, Pennsylvania to dig up clues about Mulder's disappearance. Sheriff Frey tells him that Mulder had been there the past spring to investigate the disappearance of Marie Hangemuhl, who was later found to have never been absent from her house. Although Mulder left no trace of this investigation in his files, Doggett uncovered cell phone records indicating he had been to the town the week before his abduction. The Sheriff brings Doggett to the Hangemuhl home, where they find a sickly Marie Hangemuhl suffering from kidney failure. She admits to meeting Mulder the previous spring, when he had asked about her disappearance. Her husband, Paul, quickly interjects that nothing out of the ordinary had gone on and that they never saw Mulder again. He claims that Mulder had been interested in an Indian folk legend about a creature from the woods that eats people. When they leave, Doggett mentions to the Sheriff that he spotted patches in the wall of the Hangemuhl house that could be bullet holes.

Returning to Washington, Doggett searches Mulder's apartment. He overturns every drawer and finds a pistol underneath the sink. He later asks Skinner about the mystery case, as well as an unreported three rounds discharged from the gun. Test results show that blood had splattered back, meaning Mulder had fired at close range. Although Skinner tries to defend Mulder and dismiss Doggett's claims, the paperwork proves that Scully had signed off on the falsified report. Doggett pledges that he will not take the situation to a review board, but will investigate further.

Back in Pennsylvania, a lynch mob converges on a rundown house in the woods. Paul Hangemuhl is among them. The leader of the group, Sheriff Frey, demands that it be sent outside. An old woman in the cabin tells the men that it is dead. Suddenly, a side door bursts open and a figure bolts out of the house into the woods. The men chase it, capturing what appears to be a deformed man. Later, Doggett and Skinner confront the Sheriff about the body of an unidentified transient found the day after Mulder's visit to the Hangemuhl home. The Sheriff is resistant to their charges, but they discover that the transient's grave has been unearthed. The casket is empty, and it appears that someone dug themselves out of the grave. Doggett becomes even more suspicious of the townspeople.

Paul Hangemuhl is painting the strange symbol on his front door with chicken's blood when the Sheriff arrives, inquiring about Marie's readiness. The deformed creature is taken from a cage and brought into the house, where Marie lies naked on the floor. It unhinges its jaw and rips into her body. She screams, as her husband silently prays in the next room. Doggett and Skinner return to the Hangemuhl home, looking for the missing Marie. Skinner spots a pool of blood seeping from under the couch. Doggett suggests that Mulder had been trying to protect Marie from whoever was buried in that coffin. Meanwhile, in a secret cave, the creature regurgitates a murky liquid into an outline of a human figure dug in the ground.

The remnants of a blood symbol are found on the Hangemuhl home. The Lone Gunmen analyze the symbol, via an internet feed, and tell Doggett and Skinner that it may summon a shaman to the house to aid the sick. Legend has it that a soul eater consumes illnesses. Doggett thinks that maybe it was connected to Marie's kidney disease and that maybe there wasn't really a transient buried in that coffin. The agents visit the old woman in the cabin because she had originally found the transient's body. Doggett tells her his theory that Mulder tried to kill the creature to protect Marie Hangemuhl, but the woman says he's got it all backwards. Doggett sees a cellar door in her house and goes down. He finds a fully-formed Marie on the ground, naked, covered in a gooey substance. He wraps her up and takes her to the hospital. She successfully recovers, and her kidneys have spontaneously healed. The soul eater actually took her to cure her, and Doggett realizes that Mulder was not trying to protect Marie when he shot at the creature.

Doggett returns to the home of the old woman, and she explains that people do not understand the creature's gift. It looks deformed because it takes on people's sicknesses. Mulder had come to Pennsylvania to try to save himself from his own illness. When he saw the creature's suffering, he couldn't go through with it. Mulder decided to shoot the creature to take its pain away. It was then buried, but didn't die. The townspeople know it is still alive and want it to help their sick, causing the creature to continue to suffer. Doggett carefully puts the creature in his car when the Sheriff and other townspeople show up.

They demand the creature be given back because there are sick people who need to be healed. The Sheriff shoots Doggett in the chest and the creature escapes. The townspeople bury Doggett's dead body and leave. Later, the creature brings Doggett back to life in the cave. He awakes in the human outline, covered in goo. The old woman is tending to the dying creature that took away Doggett's death.

Back at the FBI, Doggett sits at his computer. He's at a loss on what to write in his case report. He tells Skinner that he's not any closer to finding Mulder. You got inside his head, Skinner says, advising him not to write up a report. Doggett, however, wants the truth to be told. You and I both know what happened out there, the A.D. says. No one else needs to. As Skinner leaves, Doggett imagines that Mulder is standing in the office, watching him.

Notes:
Mulder is mentioned as having a Walther PPK as a second weapon - the same gun he used to kill John Lee Roche in "Paper Hearts".

Mulder and Scully both briefly return in this episode, albeit in flashbacks.

Quotes:
Sheriff Frey: Shame to have you drive all the way up here on a Saturday. Hate to say you're wasting your time.
Doggett: Not if you confirm what you told me before.
Sheriff Frey: Yes, sir. Agent Mulder was here, all right... last spring.
Doggett: You said on the phone Agent Mulder was investigating a missing woman, Marie Hangemuhl.
Sheriff Frey: Well, she wasn't exactly missing. He wasn't exactly investigating, either.
Doggett: I'm not following you.
Sheriff Frey: It was a false report. Marie never even left the house. The only reason Agent Mulder found out about it was because Marie's sister got all excited about nothing. There. See for yourself. Say, I've got some hot coffee and a danish here if you're interested.
Doggett: No thanks.
Sheriff Frey: You know, if you don't mind me asking, Agent Doggett, what's your interest? I mean, I was actually surprised that one FBI agent gave this case a thought.
Doggett: It's not so much the case as it is the agent. Agent Mulder disappeared last May.
Sheriff Frey: Sorry to hear that. I still don't see what that has to do with us.
Doggett: Did Agent Mulder have a personal connection here — something that might not be in your report?
Sheriff Frey: No, I don't think he'd ever been to Squamash before, as far as I know.
Doggett: I have cell phone records showing that Agent Mulder came back here the week before he disappeared.
Sheriff Frey: What for?
Doggett: That's what I want to know. It's my job to find him.

Doggett: Three shots were fired in a house where Mulder investigated a case last May. He never filed a report on the case or the discharge of his weapon. Do you know any reason why?

Skinner: If Mulder did these things, he would've reported them.
Doggett: Mulder submitted case reports, all right but they indicate he was here in Washington on days his cell phone records prove he was in Pennsylvania.
Skinner: Are you calling Mulder a liar?
Doggett: This is the muzzle of Mulder's pistol. You see that there?
Skinner: It's blowback.
Doggett: Macrospatter of dried blood in a semicircular pattern. Which indicates Mulder fired close-range at something or someone.
Skinner: I've heard enough.
Doggett: Where are you going?
Skinner: It's where you're going, Agent Doggett. Trying to build a case, that what? Mulder killed a man and then made himself disappear? I told you before — he was abducted. I saw it!
Doggett: Agent Mulder signed falsified case reports.
Skinner: Oh, come on, John, this isn't about Mulder — it's about you! Your career. You give the FBI a narrative for Mulder's disappearance, you're off the X-Files and back on the fast-track to the directorship.
Doggett: I'm just trying to find the truth.
Skinner: You want the truth? Then ask Agent Scully!
Doggett: I can't do that.
Skinner: Why not?
Doggett: Because she... she signed those case reports, too.

Rustic Woman: To understand what this thing is, you have to understand what it can do — its gift. People hate it because they need it. It looks the way it does because of their sickness.

Doggett: You care for this man.
Rustic Woman: Someone always has.
Doggett: Because you believe it? That it can cure people's sickness?
Rustic Woman: Not cure. Consume.
Doggett: Mulder came to see you last year. Not to save Marie Hangemuhl. To save himself. Mulder was dying, but he kept it a secret. He had an undiagnosed brain disease. He was a sick man, desperate to find a cure.
Rustic Woman: They all are.
Doggett: Mulder didn't do it.
Rustic Woman: Agent Mulder saw how it suffered. He saw it in its eyes. I knew what needed to be done. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
Doggett: Mulder killed it.
Rustic Woman: He couldn't bear to add to its pain.
Doggett: So he came back here that night to take its pain away.
Rustic Woman: They buried it. It wanted to die. It still does, but it can't. All these months I've kept it here in secret. But now that they know it's back, it'll keep suffering.

Episode Number: 172

Season Number: 8
First Aired: Sunday, February 4, 2001
Production Code: 8X11

Season 8: Badlaa (8X12)

Written by: John Shiban
Directed by: Tony Wharmby

American Hugh Potocki enters the airport in Mumbai, India on his way back home. A local beggar with no legs follows him on a wheeled cart into the restroom. Potocki is yanked out from under the bathroom stall by an unseen force. Later, Potocki arrives at his hotel in Washington, DC. A bellboy brings his luggage with the beggar's cart strapped on. Potocki sits on the bed and his eyes glaze over with blood. Another pool of blood flows from his body, staining the bedspread. Scully and Doggett investigate the crime scene at the hotel where Potocki's body was found. The agents spot a small, bloodied handprint, about the size of a child's, on the bed. An autopsy reveals Potocki suffered massive abdominal tissue damage. Scully is unsure whether something went in or came out of his rectal wall. There is no evidence that the man had been smuggling drugs, but a decay analysis does prove that he had already been dead before he left India.

Mrs. Holt, the principal of Fairmont Elementary in Maryland, interviews a normal-looking man for a potential job as a custodian. Yet she does not really see that the person sitting across from her is the legless beggar. A fight breaks out in front of the school between seventh-grader Trevor and the younger Quinton. Quinton's father arrives in time to break up the squabble. The mysterious new custodian watches from nearby. Meanwhile, Doggett traces a similar death in India several days earlier that involves another heavyset American businessman. Scully introduces the idea that a living being is using these victims to stowaway by freely entering the bodies. Doggett doesn't readily accept this notion.

Later that night, Quinton sees the beggar's reflection in his bedroom mirror, but his father dismisses the boy's fears as merely a nightmare. When the father goes back downstairs, the beggar man is there. Hearing a scream, Quinton runs down the stairs to find his father dead. The man's eyes are filled with blood. Scully and Doggett investigate and Quinton tells them that he saw a man with no legs. Finding the identical small handprints as in Potocki's hotel room, the agents suspect the same killer. Yet Quinton's father showed no sign of abdominal damage. At the autopsy, the man's stomach is distended. Scully slices into the body, and a tiny hand reaches out through the incision. Scully jumps back, and grabs her gun. Whatever was in the body has disappeared, leaving a trail of coagulated blood across the floor. Scully follows it to a closet, but sees nothing inside. However, the beggar man is in the closet. Somehow he hodes his presence from Scully.

When Scully and Doggett consult with Chuck Burks, he explains that there are siddhi mystics who have the power to manipulate reality. These Indian mystics, however, are religious and committing murder would endanger their souls. Scully shows him a report of an American chemical plant that killed many people in India, one of whom is the son of a holy man. Because siddhi mystics pass their skills from father to son, and his only son's death effecetively ends his legacy, Scully questions whether this man is out for revenge.

Trevor tells Quinton that he may know who killed his father. As he walks down the street, Trevor hears the squeaking of the beggar's wheeled cart, but no one is around. His mother, meanwhile, sees her son's body floating in the backyard pool and dives in after him. As she gets closer, she realizes that it is not Trevor but the beggar man. Scully and Doggett later scrutinize the woman's blood-filled eyes and question how her death fits into the case. Trevor returns home and tells the agents that the "little man" followed him. They call the janitor in for questioning, but he does not speak. Chuck sets up a video camera and focuses it on the janitor. The camera shows there is no one sitting in the interrogation room. They realize their suspect may be anywhere.

Mrs. Holt sees the custodian at the school later that night, but he does not answer her when she calls out to him. The principal immediately calls Scully. Trevor and Quinton lie in wait in the school building. When the beggar enters the janitorial closet, Trevor tosses bottles of chemicals on him. Yet the shattered glass seems to have hit nothing and the beggar disappears. Instead, the beggar chases Quinton in to a classroom with windows that won't budge open. Trevor is outside the window, yelling to his friend that he will get help. Suddenly, Scully and Mrs. Holt enter the classroom but they can't see the beggar man. He has transformed himself into Trevor. Quinton pleads with Scully to shoot at what she thinks is Trevor, but she is unable to fire at a child. Doggett arrives outside and hears gunshots. He runs in the classroom, with Trevor following him. The little beggar man lies dead on the floor.

Later, Scully is still shaken by the experience. She tells Doggett that she was unable to trust her own eyes, but fired her gun because the boys saw the truth. She realizes that it is what Mulder's open mind would have seen. "Maybe if I could see through Mulder's eyes I could understand," she says. The beggar man, still alive, rolls his cart in an airport in pursuit of another passenger.

Notes:
'Badlaa' is a word in Urdu (a language spoken in India) for exchange/retaliation/revenge.

Even though David Duchovny is credited in the title sequence, he does not appear in this episode.

Quotes:
Doggett: Hugh Potocki. Importer/exporter from Minneapolis. Laid over in DC on his way home, when all this blood drains from his body.
Scully: Did the ME see it? The body?
Doggett: Yeah. Tox test ruled out haemorrhagic fever, Ebola, anything exotic. Something killed this man but it doesn't seem to be any foreign disease.
Scully: No sign of forced entry?
Doggett: No. No one was seen coming or going from this room. The maid found the body 20 minutes after a bellman left Mr Potocki here. Whatever happened, happened fast.
Scully: So, basically what you're saying is that nobody knows anything.
Doggett: But then I guess that's why it's in your inbox. So, what do you think, Agent Scully? Haunted hotel room? Alien invaders? Sloppy vampires? There is one small thing. The cops missed it their first time around.
(He pulls back the covers of the bed to reveal a small bloody handprint)
Scully: A child's print.
Doggett: Yeah. That's what it looks like. You know there was a ring of thieves when I was back in New York, they used kids for B&E jobs.
Scully: Mmm...
Doggett: Squeezing in through cracked windows, that kind of thing. But this, this is beyond.
Scully: Well, from what I see, Agent Doggett, from the way this man died... I doubt it was a kid who did this.
Doggett: Thanks. I'm not quite ready yet to lose all my faith in humanity.
Scully: But regardless, I'd say it's wise you keep an open mind.

Doggett: The first dead body I saw, I was 19 and a marine. This boy... criminy.

Scully: Yeah. That's not all he claims he saw.
Doggett: That's what the cops told me. That's why I thought we should come down here.
Scully: He said he called his dad in, because there was something in his room. I asked him to describe it. He said that it was a munchkin. That it had no legs. And that it was keeping itself up with its arms.
Doggett: Well, that's a pretty good trick considering what I just found upstairs. Palm prints in the boy's bedroom. They match the one's we found in Potocki's room. And that's the good news. It just doesn't serve your theory because this thing didn't get in here in anybody's body. It came in through the bedroom window.
Scully: How can you be sure?
Doggett: There was another print on the sill outside the locked window. And somebody must have closed it after this thing got in.
Scully: Right. Which is exactly what the boy said that his father did. But it's the father that I have a problem with here. I mean he had none of the massive haemorrhaging that we found in Mr Potocki. In the coroner's initial report, he makes it sound like the guy died of a cerebral embolism. The one salient detail in the external exam were the eyes... in which only the blood vessels are broken. Unless that's just the first stage.

Scully: (to medical recorder) This is Special Agent Dana Scully. I am a medical doctor about to perform an unauthorised procedure on a body. The, uh... the subject is a Caucasian male. Age, uh... I don't remember at this particular time. His height is about six feet. And his weight is... quite possibly subject to change. I suppose distension could be due to decomposition gases... but that seems unlikely.
(She makes an incision, starting at the base of the distended abdomen and going up to the sternum. Something in the abdomen begins moving. Startled, Scully backs up and knocks the equipment cart over, everything crashes to the floor, including her gun) Oh.

(A small bloody hand reaches out of the incision)

Scully: Are you questioning my integrity?

Doggett: No, I'm questioning the whole damn case. From your so-called expert, to the evidence you've chosen to ignore, to the fact that your approach has got us no closer to seeing a pattern or a motive or even catching this killer than we were when we started.
Scully: I asked you to keep an open mind.
Doggett: Yeah, well, I try to keep an open mind but it tends to shut my eyes.
Scully: There is something here, Agent Doggett. And I'll admit that it's hard to accept. But there is a motive and there is a pattern and there is a reason and we will see it... but not working like this.
Doggett: Yeah, well... I hope somebody sees it.
(He starts to leave. Scully turns at the sound of Trevor climbing over the wall into the yard)
Scully: Trevor. Trevor, I'm Dana Scully...
Trevor: What happened?
Scully: Your father's in the house. I'm going to take...
Trevor: Where's my mom?
Scully: Trevor.
Trevor: He was here. The little man. I saw him. He... he followed me.

Doggett: You going to be okay, Agent Scully? I got a drift of what happened in there... to you. I mean, sort of.

Scully: I shot a young boy.
Doggett: The good news is, you're wrong.
Scully: But it's what I saw. With my eyes, anyway. Do you know what it's like not to be able to trust your own eyes?
Doggett: Then why'd you shoot him?
Scully: Because it's what the boy saw. And in an instant I realised that it's what Mulder would have seen or understood. Because that's just how he came at things... without judgement and without prejudice and with an open mind that I am just not capable of.
Doggett: It's been a long night. Give yourself a break. This whole thing doesn't make any sense.
Scully: No... it did. In some way, it did.

Episode Number: 171

Season Number: 8
First Aired: Sunday, January 21, 2001
Production Code: 8X12

Season 8: Salvage (8X10)

Written by: Jeffrey Bell
Directed by: Rod Hardy

Curt Delario comforts Nora Pearce as she mourns her husband. "How does a 41 year-old man just wither away and die?" she asks. Since no one can provide her an explanation for Ray's death, she is convinced that he suffered from Gulf War Syndrome, and she wants someone to pay. Leaving her house, Curt turns his car out of the driveway but skids when he sees something in his path. He plows right into a man, but instead of crushing him, the car splits around the man. Curt looks through the shattered glass to see his friend, Ray Pearce, standing in the middle of the hood, unharmed. Ray shoves his fist through the windshield to grab Curt, who screams out in terror.

The next morning, Doggett and Scully scan the crime scene. The car is torn in half and Curt Delario is missing. They find him in a trash can with five deep puncture marks in his head. The autopsy reveals that he was not killed by the impact, but rather by the wounds inflicted when he was pulled through the windshield. Blood and fingerprints on the car are from the recently deceased Ray Pierce. Ray wakes up at St. Clare's Halfway House, unharmed. He pulls shards of metal out of his face.

Doggett goes to the Pearce house. Harry Odell, the owner of the Southside Salvage yard where Ray and Curt both worked, is there. Doggett asks Nora about Ray's cremation because no record of the event exists. He wonders if Ray might still be alive and is somehow involved in Curt's death. Nora rebukes this, insisting that Ray was so sick before he died that he couldn't even walk or lift his head. At the salvage yard, Harry is hurriedly feeding Ray Pearce's employee records into a shredder when Ray himself enters the trailer office. Harry grabs a gun from his desk and shoots. Ray is blown clear out of the trailer. Outside, Harry sees Ray's severed hand, which twitches. Small, interlocking metal pieces begin to repair the limb. Ray comes up behind him, unfazed by his bloody gut and missing arm. He grabs Harry's head and punctures the man's skull with his fingers.

In checking out the aftermath, Doggett notices blue paint on Harry's fingernails. He pulls a half-torn paper out of the shredder - an invoice from Chambers Technologies. The person on the invoice, Dr. David Clifton, no longer works there. His successor, Dr. Puvogel, tells Doggett that Clifton was working on a smart metal that can regenerate itself. He also says that their company would have no use of any local salvage yards. Scully phones Doggett from the morgue, informing him that Ray's cell makeup was affected by exposure to a non-identifiable metal. Tests show that his blood has enough metal alloy to kill an elephant. At the halfway house, volunteer social worker Larina sees a news report on Harry Odell's murder, recognizes Ray and phones Ray's wife.

Ray pursues Dr. Puvogel, and the agents lure him to Chambers Technologies. Ray gets captured in a test chamber and his fists dent the four-inch metal doors. He escapes by ripping open the thick metal of the back wall. Blood left on the jagged wall begins to turn itself into metal. Remanding Dr. Puvogel to safety, Doggett notices that a row of stacked barrels are painted the same color blue found on Harry Odell's fingers.

Nora waits for her husband at the halfway house, and asks him why he didn't contact her. "I'm not me," he responds, before showing her that his body is a mix of flesh and metal. He tells her that the people who did this to him must pay. At Southside Salvage, Doggett uncovers blue barrels with the Chambers Technology logo underneath the paint. When he turns one over, a think river of silver liquid pours out with a human body made of metal. It is the missing Dr. Clifton. Scully and Doggett question Puvogel, who tells them that Clifton got poisoned from working on an alloy with genetic material in it. Puvogel was aware that Clifton was dying, but did not know how his body was sent to the salvage yard. Suddenly, Doggett sees Nora Pearce sneaking around the Chambers hallway. She is searching for the name of the person responsible for her husband's disfigurement, but is caught before she gave the name to Ray. A SWAT team is sent to the halfway house, but they are too late. Ray kills Larina and escapes. Scully and Doggett beg Nora for her help in preventing Ray from hurting anyone else, and she agrees to have her house watched by the police. Ray slips in and persuades Nora to tell him the name of the person from Chambers Technologies who made him inhuman. When he leaves, Nora rushes out of the house, hysterical. She tells the police that her husband had just been there and that he is going to kill a man named Owen Harris.

Ray intercepts Harris' car, pulls him from the driver's seat and says "You made me." The man's wife and child scream in terror. Harris doesn't understand because he's only an accountant and had waste transferred to Southside Salvage because he was told to do so. As Harris' son cries in the backseat, Ray's eyes blink with the last light of kindness left in him. He lets the man go.

Later, Doggett and Scully arrive at the scene. Harris is alive, being treated by a medic. The agents are puzzled as to why Ray didn't kill him, but Scully surmises that Ray's body had died, and what was left was a machine. Whatever bit of humanity was still in him may have saved Harris. At Southside Salvage, a car gets dumped into a compactor. Ray is inside the crushed car, calmly accepting his inevitable conclusion.

Notes:
The 4-door 1973 Ford Torino destroyed in the episode is the same vehicle owned by The Dude in ''The Big Lebowski''. The car was used in the film before use in The X-Files.

Agent Doggett comments that you can only see metal men in movies; a reference to him playing the liquid-metal T-1000 in ''Terminator 2 - Judgement Day''.

Quotes:
Doggett: Car's registered to a Curtis Delario, local address. So far, he's been unreachable.
Scully: Well, it's highly unlikely that wherever he is he feels like picking up the phone this morning.
Doggett: Muncie PD ran some calculations. Based on the distance travelled, the length of the skid marks, they estimate the car was going at least 40 when it impacted the object, which, according to their math would require something 4300 times the density of steel to cause the damage we're looking at"
Scully: Hmm. It's interesting, isn't it? I mean... in light of the evidence.

Doggett: Sorry I'm late.

Scully: It's all right. I just got the blood test back on Ray Pearce, and it was indeed the same Ray Pearce who was pronounced dead three days ago. But that's not all. By all medical standards he should still be dead. His blood has enough metal alloy in it to... poison an elephant.
Doggett: Except that he's still a man, Agent Scully and he's going to act and think like one even if he is more powerful than a speeding locomotive.
Scully: But then the question is, why kill his friends? I mean, if he was wronged somehow wouldn't he go to them for solace? I mean, to his wife, at least?
Doggett: That's why I was late. I asked myself that same question. Ray was an outpatient at the VA. He had a history of substance abuse. Did some time for a couple of DUIs.
Scully: This was ten years ago.
Doggett: Cleaned up his act. He met Nora and married her in 91, checked himself into a rehab and got straight. This was a guy to root for, Agent Scully. This was a guy that overcame adversity and made a life for himself.
Scully: Until three days ago.
Doggett: I've busted a lot of killers, Agent Scully, and dollars for doughnuts, they fit a profile. But the Ray Pearce in this file is no murderer, let alone a guy that would hunt down his friends and crush their skulls.
Scully: Agent Doggett, the man that we're speaking about withstood impact from a speeding car, and two shotgun blasts at short range. Even if we can find him, who's to say we can stop him?

Scully: Ray Pearce.

Doggett: He came here to kill this man but something stopped him, didn't it?
Scully: This man, Owen Harris? He begged for his life. It might just have saved him. His attacker got up and ran away.
Doggett: Makes no sense. Ray Pearce was a determined killer looking for someone to blame. Why stop here?
Scully: Wherever Ray Pearce went, the answer to that question went with him but I can tell you why he came after Owen Harris. It was his name Nora found in the file. He was the accountant who authorised the shipment of hazardous materials to Southside Salvage.
Doggett: But if Owen Harris is the guy Ray holds responsible, why'd Ray let him live?
Scully: Well, I think that Nora Pearce may have been right. Her husband died, or at least his body did. Whatever killed those people, was an abomination of a man. It was a machine.
Doggett: A machine? Come on, a machine doesn't know blame, Agent Scully.
Scully: Nor mercy. Unless what drove Ray to kill is also what saved those people. Some flicker of humanity.

Episode Number: 170

Season Number: 8
First Aired: Sunday, January 14, 2001
Production Code: 8X10