Season 1

S1E1 · Pilot

Outside the Oregon town of Bellefleur, teenager Karen Swenson is seen fleeing through the forest at night. When she falls, a dark figure approaches, and they both become enveloped in light. Swenson's body is later found by Bellefleur detectives, with two small marks on her lower back.

Later, in Washington, D.C., FBI Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is summoned to a meeting with Division Chief Scott Blevins (Charles Cioffi). She is reassigned from her teaching position to work with fellow Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) on the " X-Files ", an obscure FBI section covering unexplained phenomena. Blevins makes it clear to Scully that he expects her to discredit Mulder, regarded by his superiors as a gadfly.

Scully introduces herself to Mulder, who shows her evidence from the Swenson case. He notes that Swenson was the fourth member of her high school class to die under mysterious circumstances. He also notes an unknown organic compound found in the tissue surrounding the marks on her body, as well as similarities between her death and others from across the country. Mulder believes that Swenson's death is due to extraterrestrial activity. However, the skeptical Scully expresses disbelief in Mulder's theory.

When Mulder and Scully's plane flies over Bellefleur, it encounters unexplained turbulence. As they drive through the woods near the town, the agents' car radio goes haywire; Mulder marks the spot of this event by spray-painting an "X" on the road. Mulder arranges for the exhumation of the third victim, Ray Soames, despite the protests of Dr. Jay Nemman, the county medical examiner. When Soames' coffin is opened, a desiccated, malformed body is found inside, which Scully concludes is not Soames, but possibly an orangutan. She finds a grey metallic implant in the body's nasal cavity.

Mulder and Scully visit the psychiatric hospital where Soames was committed before his death and meet two of his former classmates—the comatose Billy Miles (Zachary Ansley) and wheelchair-using Peggy O'Dell. O'Dell suffers a nosebleed and is seen to have marks similar to Swenson's. Outside the hospital, Mulder explains to Scully that he believes Miles, O'Dell, and the victims to be alien abductees.

That night, the agents investigate the forest; Scully discovers ash on the ground, leading her to suspect cult activity. However, a local detective arrives and orders them to leave. Driving back to their motel, Mulder and Scully encounter a bright flash of light, and their car loses power at the same spot where Mulder had earlier spray-painted the "X." Mulder realizes that nine minutes have disappeared after the flash, a phenomenon reported by alien abductees.

At the motel, Mulder tells Scully that his sister, Samantha, suddenly vanished when he was twelve years old, which has driven his efforts to investigate paranormal cases. The agents receive an anonymous call to inform them that O'Dell has died. At the scene, they are informed that she was killed running into traffic and realize that she was killed at the exact moment they had experienced the flash on the road. Mulder is informed that the desiccated body has been stolen from the morgue. The agents return to their motel to find it ablaze, and all their evidence destroyed.

Nemman's daughter, Theresa, contacts the agents for help. She tells them that she has awakened in the middle of the woods several times, fears for her life, and admits to having the same marks; she also develops a nosebleed. Nemman and the detective, revealed to be Billy's father, arrive and take her away. The agents wonder about the bodies of the first two victims and return to the cemetery; they find the graves already dug up and the coffins missing. Mulder realizes that Billy is responsible for bringing the victims to the woods. There, they again encounter Detective Miles but hear a scream. Mulder and Detective Miles find Billy nearby with Theresa in his arms. There is a flash of light, and Billy and Theresa are recovered unharmed.

A couple of weeks later, Billy is put under hypnosis. He recalls how he and his classmates were abducted in the forest as they celebrated their graduation. The teenagers had been subjected to tests by the aliens and were killed when the tests failed. Scully provides Blevins with the metal implant, the only remaining piece of evidence. She later learns from Mulder that Billy's case files are missing.

The episode ends with an unnamed agent (William B. Davis), seen at the beginning in Scully's briefing with Blevins, storing the implant amongst other identical ones in a vast evidence room within the Pentagon.

S1E2 · Deep Throat

In southwestern Idaho, near Ellens Air Force Base, military police raid the home of Colonel Robert Budahas, who has barricaded himself inside after stealing a military vehicle. The authorities find Budahas trembling and covered in rashes.

Four months later, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) meet at a Washington bar to discuss the case. Mulder explains that Budahas, a test pilot, has not been seen since the raid and the military will not comment on his condition; the FBI has refused to investigate. Mulder claims that six other pilots are missing at the base, which is subject to rumors about experimental aircraft. While using the bar's restroom, Mulder is approached by a mysterious informant named " Deep Throat " (Jerry Hardin), who cautions him to avoid the case. He claims that Mulder is under surveillance, which later proves to be true.

Mulder and Scully travel to Idaho and meet with Budahas' wife, Anita, who claims her husband exhibited erratic behavior before his disappearance. She tells them about a neighbor–whom the agents visit–whose husband is also a test pilot who has been behaving oddly. Scully makes an appointment with the base's director, Colonel Kissell, but he refuses to talk when they visit his home. They are subsequently approached by Paul Mossinger, who identifies himself as a local reporter and refers them to a local UFO -themed diner; there, they discuss UFOs with the owner, who believes she has witnessed several nearby.

Visiting the base that night, the agents witness a mysterious aircraft performing seemingly impossible maneuvers in the sky. They flee when a black helicopter approaches, seemingly in pursuit of Emil and Zoe, a trespassing teenage couple. As Mulder treats Emil and Zoe to a meal at the diner, they tell the agents about the lights and how they believe the UFOs are launched from another nearby base. Meanwhile, Budahas is returned to his home with no memory of what happened. After leaving the diner, Mulder and Scully are confronted by black-suited agents, who destroy the photographs they have taken and order them to leave town.

An indignant Mulder sneaks onto the base with help from Emil and Zoe. He sees a triangular craft fly overhead and then is captured by soldiers who tamper with his memory. Meanwhile, Scully re-encounters Mossinger, whom she discovers is actually a security operative for the base. At gunpoint, she forces him to guide her to the base and exchanges him for Mulder. Having been denied the truth about the base, Mulder and Scully return to Washington. Days later, Mulder encounters Deep Throat while jogging at a local track. Mulder asks if "they" really are present on Earth; Deep Throat responds that "they have been here for a long, long time."

S1E3 · Squeeze

In Baltimore, businessman George Usher arrives at his office building. He is watched from a storm drain by someone who then infiltrates the building by climbing through the elevator shaft into the ventilation system, kills Usher and removes his liver.

Usher's murder, the latest of three, is assigned to careerist FBI agent Tom Colton (Donal Logue), who turns to Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) for help. Colton is baffled by the lack of entry points at the crime scenes and by the apparent removal of the livers with bare hands. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) notes their similarity to earlier murder sprees from 1933 and 1963. At the scene, he notices an elongated fingerprint on the air vent, which he finds to be similar to some documented in the X-Files. He concludes that because five murders occurred during the earlier sprees, the investigators should expect two more.

Because Scully believes that the killer will return to the scenes of his earlier crimes, she and Mulder wait in the parking garage of the office building. There, they catch a man named Eugene Victor Tooms (Doug Hutchison) climbing through the air vents. Tooms is given a polygraph test, which includes questions written by Mulder linking him to murders dating as far back as 1903. Tooms passes most of the test, but crucially fails Mulder's questions placing Tooms at the historical murders. However, Colton dismisses Mulder's queries and lets Tooms go. To prove his assertion to Scully, Mulder digitally elongates and narrows Tooms' fingerprints, showing that they match the prints at the crime scene. He believes that Tooms is able to stretch and squeeze his body through narrow spaces. That night, Tooms demonstrates this ability by squeezing down a chimney to claim another victim.

Mulder and Scully find no documentation on Tooms' life. They visit retired detective Frank Briggs (Henry Beckman), who recounts his investigation into the 1933 murders. Briggs brings out old photographs of Tooms—who has not aged in sixty years—and gives them the address of Tooms' former apartment building. There, Mulder and Scully find a "nest" constructed out of newspaper and bile in the building's crawl space, as well as several trophy items taken from past victims. Mulder suspects that Tooms is a mutant who can hibernate for thirty years at a time after consuming five human livers. As the two leave, Tooms, who is hiding in the rafters, stealthily takes the necklace Scully is wearing as a new trophy.

Mulder and Scully put Tooms' apartment under surveillance, but Colton has them taken off the job. Mulder finds Scully's necklace inside the apartment and tries to call his partner, but her phone line has been cut. Tooms breaks into Scully's apartment through a tiny air vent to kill her, but Mulder rushes there and apprehends him first. Tooms is institutionalized and begins to build another nest using newspaper. Scully informs Mulder that medical tests on Tooms show an abnormal skeletal and muscle system, and a rapidly declining metabolism. When Tooms is given food through a slot in the door, he stares at the thin slot and grins.

S1E4 · Conduit

At a campground at Lake Okobogee National Park in Sioux City, Iowa, Darlene Morris witnesses a flash of light outside her RV. She ventures outside to find her young son, Kevin, who claims that his teenaged sister, Ruby, has vanished.

In Washington, FBI Division Chief Scott Blevins informs Dana Scully that, unbeknownst to her, Fox Mulder has requested travel expenses to Sioux City based on a tabloid article about Ruby's disappearance. Blevins also shows Scully an X-File on the disappearance of Mulder's sister Samantha. When Scully asks Mulder about the travel expenses, he explains that Lake Okobogee was the scene of a series of UFO sightings in 1967; Darlene, then a member of a Girl Scout troop, was one of the witnesses.

When Mulder and Scully travel to Iowa and meet the Morrises, Mulder observes Kevin writing down binary code on a piece of paper; Kevin claims they are coming from static on a television screen. After submitting Kevin's code for analysis, the agents meet with the local sheriff, who tells them that Ruby was a juvenile delinquent who likely ran away. They also meet a young woman, Tessa, who says that Ruby had gotten pregnant and was planning to run away with her boyfriend, Greg Randall. The agents are unable to find Greg at the bar where he works; however, his boss tells them about UFO activity at Lake Okobogee.

Kevin's code is revealed to be part of a Defense Department satellite transmission. NSA agents ransack the Morris household, looking for any other material that might supposedly compromise national security. After the Morrises are taken into NSA custody, Mulder examines the charred roof of their RV, prompting him to head to Lake Okobogee. There, the agents discover sand turned to glass and a burned tree line, indicating the presence of a massive heat source. Upon encountering some white wolves, Mulder and Scully find Greg's body in a shallow grave.

On his person, Mulder and Scully find a note in Greg's wallet that eventually leads them to conclude that it was Tessa, not Ruby, who was pregnant. Under interrogation, Tessa confesses to killing Greg but denies Ruby was at Lake Okobogee that night. The agents return to the Morris' house, and, finding it deserted, discover the binary-covered pieces of paper laid out across the living room floor, forming an image of Ruby's face. Returning to Lake Okobogee, they find Darlene and Kevin in the nearby woods. A motorcycle gang appears, and as Mulder hurries to rescue Kevin from their wake, Scully discovers Ruby nearby.

Ruby is then seen in a hospital bed, with Kevin by her side. When questioned about her ordeal, she says she was told by an unnamed group not to say anything. Darlene also refuses to cooperate any further, given the ridicule that she faced after her past experiences. Back in Washington, Scully listens to a tape of hypnotic sessions in which Mulder recalls the night his sister vanished. Mulder, meanwhile, sits in a church, crying as he looks at a picture of his sister.

S1E5 · The Jersey Devil

In 1947, a motorist is attacked while fixing a flat tire near the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. His corpse is later found with its leg chewed off, and a hairy humanoid is killed nearby.

In present-day Washington D.C., Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) brings to Fox Mulder 's (David Duchovny) attention news about a body found in New Jersey with its arm and shoulder missing. Upon arriving at the Atlantic City morgue, they discover that the body was seemingly eaten by a human. However, the local detective, Thompson, denies the agents access to the investigation. Scully returns to Washington to attend her godson 's birthday party while Mulder stays in New Jersey. At the party, Scully meets Rob, the divorced father of one of the guests.

Meanwhile, a homeless man shows Mulder a drawing of a humanoid creature which he and other homeless people have seen and which the police are aware of. Mulder gives his hotel room key to the man and sleeps in the alley, where he sees a shadowy, human-like creature. He chases the creature but is arrested before he can catch it.

The next morning, Mulder calls Scully to post his bail. Afterwards, Scully brings Mulder to meet with Dr. Diamond, a professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, before going on a date with Rob. Peter Boulle, a local park ranger, contacts Mulder after finding the corpse of a wild man in the woods who he believes could be the Jersey Devil. The agents bring Boulle and Diamond to the morgue, where the body has mysteriously vanished. Mulder believes that the Jersey Devil they are hunting is actually the creature's mate, who has come to Atlantic City in search of food after her mate's death. The agents, along with Boulle and Diamond, search for the creature in an abandoned building. As they do so, Detective Thompson arrives with a SWAT team.

Mulder spots the creature and chases after her. He is attacked by the creature, which wounds him before Scully scares her away. The creature then escapes into the woods. Scully, Mulder, Diamond and Boulle manage to find the creature, which again escapes after being shot with a tranquilizer dart. However, the SWAT team soon finds and kills her. Mulder asks Thompson why he killed the creature; he responds that it is the same reason one would kill a rabid animal. The autopsy reveals no prehistoric bone structure, although human bones are located within her digestive tract. The autopsies of the male and female creatures also reveal that they likely had children. Mulder leaves to talk to an ethnobiologist at the Smithsonian; Scully turns down a second date with Rob to join him. Meanwhile, in the woods, the child of the creatures appears, watching a father and son hiking.

S1E6 · Shadows

Two muggers are found dead in a Philadelphia back alley after attempting to rob a woman, Lauren Kyte (Lisa Waltz), at an automated teller machine. FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate the case when called in by a secretive pair of agents from an unknown federal agency. The bodies are found to have an electrostatic charge, and their throats appear to have been crushed from the inside. Meanwhile, Lauren sees her boss, Robert Dorlund (Barry Primus), and gives her two weeks notice due to her grief over the suicide of her old boss and Dorlund's partner, Howard Graves.

Mulder and Scully determine that one of the dead muggers belonged to an Islamic terrorist group, the Isfahan, and, using the ATM's surveillance video, are able to track down Lauren. A frame of the video appears to show an additional blurry figure. When the agents interview Lauren at her home, she reluctantly admits to the incident, but knows nothing about the murders. Upon leaving, the agents find their car going out of control on its own, causing it to crash. At the FBI's repair garage, the car is found to have no evidence of tampering, but an electrical charge is detected within it.

Upon visiting Graves' headstone, the agents learn of his purported suicide and the death of his daughter at a young age, who would be Lauren's age if she were still alive. Scully suspects that Graves faked his death, but after consulting the pathologist who examined his body and testing a donated organ, finds that he is in fact dead. Meanwhile, Lauren experiences a vision at night, including blood appearing in her bathtub, that leads her to believe that Graves was murdered.

At her going-away party, Lauren is threatened by Dorlund over knowledge of confidential information that could implicate him. Lauren calls the agents to her home, but before they get there, two assassins arrive to kill her. An invisible force kills both of them just as Mulder and Scully arrive, with Mulder witnessing the body of one assassin floating in midair.

Lauren is questioned by Mulder, Scully, and the two unknown agents, who believe Graves' and Dorlund's company sold export-controlled technology to the Isfahan. Lauren admits to Mulder and Scully that the sales took place, and that she believes Dorlund had Graves killed. After hearing Lauren recount the eerie circumstances she believes are being caused by Graves' spirit, Scully—the usually reserved skeptic —readily accepts her story. After Lauren leaves, Scully explains she was just humoring her.

The agents search the company's premises but are unable to find any evidence. When Lauren attacks Dorlund with a letter opener, Graves' spirit takes it and cuts open the wallpaper in Dorlund's office, revealing a hidden floppy disk. Weeks later, Lauren starts her new job in Omaha, Nebraska; it is implied that Graves' spirit may have followed her there.

S1E7 · Ghost in the Machine

In the Crystal City, Virginia, headquarters of the software company Eurisko, founder Brad Wilczek and chief executive officer Benjamin Drake argue about downsizing measures. After Wilczek leaves, Drake writes a memo proposing to shut down the Central Operating System (COS), a computer which runs the Eurisko Building. Seeing this through a surveillance camera, the COS sets up a trap and lures Drake into a bathroom, locking the door behind him. Drake tries to use his keycard to open it, but it rejects the card. When he inserts a manual override key, he is fatally electrocuted.

FBI Agent Jerry Lamana, Fox Mulder 's former partner in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, approaches him and Dana Scully for help in investigating Drake's murder. On their way up to Drake's office, the agents' elevator stalls, causing Scully to call the front desk for help; as she identifies herself, the COS records her contact information before reactivating the elevator. While examining the crime scene, the agents meet Claude Peterson, the Eurisko Building's systems engineer. Later, Lamana steals Mulder's profile of the supposed killer and presents it under his name; an outraged Mulder confronts him afterwards.

Mulder and Scully question Wilczek, who denies any involvement in the murder. Scully initially doubts Wilczek's involvement but finds that his voice matches a speaking clock Drake received before his death; Lamana sets out to arrest him. Meanwhile, Wilczek fails to access the COS from his home computer. Concerned, he travels to the Eurisko Building, followed by Lamana. There, he is still unable to access the COS, but discovers that it has learned to talk. Lamana arrives but is killed when the COS causes his elevator to crash.

Mulder meets with Deep Throat, who explains that the COS is an artificial intelligence developed by Wilczek, and that the Department of Defense is trying to acquire it. Mulder also meets with Wilczek, who has falsely confessed to Lamana's murder. Mulder convinces Wilczek to develop a computer virus that can destroy the COS. Scully doesn't accept Mulder's belief that the COS is sentient, but later discovers the machine hacking into her computer. She joins Mulder at the Eurisko Building to help him destroy the machine.

The COS hinders the agents as they make their way inside. When it shuts down the building's power, Scully climbs through the air vents and is almost pulled into a giant fan, but manages to destroy it. Meanwhile, Mulder is permitted into the COS' control room by Peterson. However, Peterson reveals himself as a mole for the Defense Department and tries to stop Mulder uploading the virus. Scully arrives and holds Peterson at gunpoint, allowing Mulder to upload the virus and destroy the COS.

Mulder again meets with Deep Throat, who explains that Wilczek is being detained by the government at an undisclosed location. When Mulder asks if the COS survived, Deep Throat assures him the virus left no trace of the program and that scientists from the Defense Department examined the machine to no success. At the Eurisko Building, Peterson directs a team attempting to recover the COS, but is told by his superiors to destroy the machine in six hours. Unbeknownst to Peterson, the COS comes back to life and watches as he says to himself, "I'm going to figure this thing out even if it kills me".

S1E8 · Ice

A mass murder–suicide occurs among a team of geophysicists at an outpost in the Icy Cape of Alaska. FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully head for the outpost, accompanied by physician Dr. Hodge, toxicologist Dr. Da Silva, geologist Dr. Murphy, and the team's pilot Bear. Along with the bodies of the geophysicists, the group finds a dog that attacks Mulder and Bear. Scully notices black nodules on its skin and suspects that it may be infected with bubonic plague, though she also notices a rash on its neck and movement beneath its skin. Having been bitten by the dog, Bear becomes ill and develops similar nodules on his body, but autopsies reveal no such nodules on the bodies of the geophysicists.

Murphy finds an ice core sample believed to have originated from a meteor crater and theorizes that the sample might be 250,000 years old. Although Bear insists on leaving, the others are concerned about infecting the outside world. When he is asked to provide a stool sample, Bear attacks Mulder and tries to flee. Something moves under his skin, and he dies when Hodge makes an incision at the location of the movement and removes a small worm from the back of his neck. Now without a pilot, the group is informed that evacuation is impossible for a while because of an oncoming storm.

The worm removed from Bear is kept in a jar, while another is recovered from the body of one of the geophysicists. Believing that the worms are extraterrestrial, Mulder wants them kept alive, but Scully feels they should be destroyed to prevent more infections. The group check each other for black nodules and find none, though Mulder reminds Scully that the nodules disappeared from the dog over time. He wakes up in the night to find Murphy in the freezer with his throat slashed; when the others arrive to see him standing over it, all of them—including Scully—lock Mulder in a storage closet as they suspect he has become infected and killed Murphy.

Scully discovers that two worms placed in the same host will kill each other. When the group investigates by putting a second worm into the infected dog, leading the dog to recover when the worms destroy each other. Against Scully's objections and after trapping her in a freezer, Hodge and Da Silva try to put the other worm into Mulder, but Hodge sees movement under Da Silva's skin and realizes she is the infected one who killed Murphy. Da Silva breaks free and the rest pursue her through the outpost until Mulder and Scully restrain her, allowing Hodge to place the last worm inside her.

After they are evacuated, Da Silva and the dog are quarantined and the others are released after showing no signs of infection. When Mulder later declares that he wants to return to the site, Hodge tells him that it has been destroyed by the government.

S1E9 · Space

In 1977, after the discovery of a face sculpted into the landscape of Mars, Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt (Ed Lauter), an astronaut, is plagued by flashbacks of an encounter with the disembodied face during a spacewalk. Sixteen years later, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are approached by Michelle Generoo (Susanna Thompson), a communications commander for NASA 's Mission Control. Generoo believes that someone within NASA is sabotaging launch attempts. A recent Space Shuttle liftoff was aborted seconds before commencement, and Generoo fears the next launch will be similarly compromised. She also has a personal interest, as her fiancé will be aboard the next mission.

Mulder and Scully travel to NASA and meet Belt, a childhood hero of Mulder's. Belt, who now manages the Space Shuttle program, dismisses the agents' concerns and states that nothing can possibly go wrong with the mission. He allows the agents to watch the successful launch from Mission Control. As the agents are leaving, however, Generoo informs them that contact has been lost with the shuttle in orbit. While driving back to NASA, she sees the face come at her through her windshield, causing her to crash her car. The agents manage to get her out of her overturned car and, despite being injured, she manages to get back to Mission Control.

The shuttle has moved into direct sunlight and Mission Control is unable to rotate it into a safe position, putting the astronauts' lives in danger. Generoo believes that the uplink is being sabotaged. Belt orders the uplink to be cut, allowing the astronauts to rotate the craft manually. Over the objections of Generoo and the agents, he orders the mission to proceed and lies to the press about its progress. Belt tells Mulder that the shuttle program may be cancelled if the mission is not completed successfully.

Belt returns home and has another flashback. As he lies in bed in agony, an astral presence leaves his body and flies out the window, heading into the sky. The astronauts then report hearing a thump outside the shuttle and begin to experience an oxygen leak. Belt fixes the situation but orders the mission to proceed. The payload is successfully deployed, but an astronaut reports seeing a ghostlike entity outside the shuttle. Meanwhile, the agents examine NASA records and find evidence that Belt played a role in other failed missions, including the Challenger disaster.

Belt behaves irrationally and collapses screaming as he hears mention of the entity from the astronauts. Paramedics are called to attend to him and find him cowering under his desk, whimpering and begging for help. Before Belt is taken away, he tells the agents that the shuttle will not survive reentry due to sabotage by "the face", which has possessed his body since the spacewalk. At his urging, they alert the shuttle to change its trajectory and are just able to land it successfully.

In the hospital, Belt continues to wrestle with the presence, telling Mulder he wasn't responsible but also couldn't stop it, as "it came to me, it lives in me". Eventually, in a last struggle with the re-possessing entity, he leaps from the window to his death–experiencing a flashback to his last space mission as he falls. Before his funeral, Mulder theorizes that, while Belt was compelled to sabotage the launches by the entity possessing him, he was also the one who sent Generoo the evidence of what was taking place. He lauds Belt's final sacrifice, stating that in the end he gave his life for the mission, as befits a true astronaut.

S1E10 · Fallen Angel

Mulder puts the future of the X-Files in jeopardy when he heads to a UFO crash site being rapidly covered up by the military. He is arrested and while in jail he meets Max Fenig, a UFO nut whose NICAP group has followed Mulder's work on the X-Files. When Mulder is released, Scully urges him to return to Washington to face his superiors and try to save his job, but Mulder finds out that Fenig is more than meets the eye and ignores Scully to try to save him instead.

S1E11 · Eve

When two fathers on opposite sides of the country are inexplicably murdered at exactly the same time in exactly the same way, Mulder and Scully find that their eight-year-old daughters are perfect twins and were created in order to continue The Litchfield Experiment, a eugenics project of the 1950s which produced cloned boys named Adam and girls named Eve who have heightened strength and intelligence, but are prone to psychotic behavior.

S1E12 · Fire

In Bosham, England, a wealthy elderly man says goodbye to his wife before leaving for work, but suddenly catches fire in an apparent case of spontaneous human combustion. His family and house staff—including his Irish gardener, Cecil L'Ively—watch as he burns to death on his front lawn.

Later, in Washington, D.C., agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are met by Phoebe Green, an investigator from London's Metropolitan Police and Mulder's former lover from the University of Oxford. Green explains that a serial arsonist is targeting the British aristocracy, burning his victims alive while leaving no trace of evidence. The only links between the crimes are the suspect's love letters to the victims' wives. His latest target is Sir Malcolm Marsden, who is visiting Cape Cod for protection after escaping an attack by the killer. Mulder and Scully visit a pyrotechnics expert who says that only rocket fuel can burn hot enough to destroy evidence of its origins.

Mulder tells Scully that Green, with whom he had a complicated relationship, is using the case to play a mind game, exploiting his debilitating fear of fire. Meanwhile, L'Ively—having killed a caretaker and assumed his identity—greets the Marsden family as they arrive at their Cape Cod vacation home, faking an American accent. Unbeknownst to the Marsdens, L'Ively is painting a layer of rocket fuel onto the exterior of the house. L'Ively befriends the Marsdens' sick family driver, offering to go into town to get him some cough syrup. While there, he uses his pyrokinetic abilities to burn down a local bar purely for fun.

At the hospital, Mulder and Green interview a witness to the bar fire, who tells them of the assailant's apparent ability to will fire into existence. The Marsdens' driver becomes even sicker due to the poisoned cough syrup provided by L'Ively. Because of his illness, L'Ively is recruited to drive the family into Boston that night to attend a party at a luxury hotel. Mulder flies up to Boston to watch over the party with Green, hoping to set a trap for the suspect; Scully continues working on compiling a criminal profile of the killer.

Mulder and Green dance during the party and afterwards kiss; Scully arrives at the hotel and sees them. She also spots L'Ively in the lobby, watching her. A fire alarm goes off after a blaze starts in the Marsdens' room, where the children are located. Mulder attempts to rescue them but is overcome both by his phobia and the intense smoke; they are instead "saved" by L'Ively. When Mulder awakens, Scully questions "Bob" but is dismissed by Green, who believes the man is a long-time employee whose background checks out. Green tells Mulder that she will leave a few days after the Marsdens when they return to England the next day.

Scully discusses her research with Mulder, suspecting that L'Ively is the arsonist; this is confirmed by a police sketch taken from the witness' description. Upon reaching the Marsdens' house, the agents find the driver's charred body in the bathroom before the second floor bursts into flames. As Scully and Green escort the Marsdens to safety, Mulder faces his phobia and is able to save the Marsden children. Scully holds L'Ively at gunpoint but is forced to hold her fire when he informs her of the rocket fuel he has painted onto the house. Green throws a can of the rocket fuel in L'Ively's face, causing him to lose control and set himself alight outside.

With the case solved, Green returns to England with the Marsden family. Despite having sustained fifth and sixth degree burns over most of his body, L'Ively survives his immolation and is held in a medical facility as he awaits trial, healing at an alarming rate. The episode's final scene shows him asking a nurse for a cigarette.

S1E13 · Beyond the Sea

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) entertains her parents, William (Don Davis) and Margaret (Sheila Larken), shortly after Christmas. After they leave, she falls asleep on her sofa. Several hours later, she wakes up to see her father sitting across from her, speaking silently. The telephone rings, she looks again at the chair and sees that it is empty. She takes the call — from her mother, who tells her that her father died of a heart attack an hour earlier.

In North Carolina, a young couple are kidnapped by a man impersonating a police officer. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) tells Scully that Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), a serial killer he helped catch years before, has claimed to have had psychic revelations about the kidnapping and has offered to help police in exchange for his death sentence being commuted. Mulder is unusually skeptical about Boggs' claims.

Visiting Boggs in prison, the agents give him a piece of "evidence" from which he has a vision, only to be told it is really a piece of Mulder's T-shirt. Satisfied that he is lying, the pair prepare to leave. However, Scully looks back at Boggs and sees another vision of her father, then back to Boggs, who begins to sing the song that had been played at the funeral for Scully's father: " Beyond the Sea ". Scully does not tell Mulder about this, and the pair discuss the possibility that Boggs has orchestrated the kidnapping with a partner to avoid execution.

Mulder and Scully have a fake newspaper produced which declares the couple have been found, hoping to trick Boggs into contacting his accomplice. He does not fall for the trick but gives the agents vague clues about the case. Scully, acting on these, first finds a warehouse where the couple had been held, and later leads Mulder and several other agents to a boathouse where the kidnapper is holding the couple. The girl is rescued, but the kidnapper shoots Mulder and escapes with the boyfriend. Following this, Mulder and the girl are sent to the hospital.

Scully attempts to have Boggs' sentence commuted but is rejected by the judge. Boggs is then visited by Scully, who tells him he has his "deal". Boggs then gives information about the kidnapper's new location, warning her to avoid "the devil". He tells her he knows she was lying about the deal, but also knows she tried her best. Scully then leads several agents to the location Boggs gave her — a brewery — where they rescue the kidnapped boyfriend. Scully chases the kidnapper as he flees but stops in her tracks when he runs along a gantry beneath the brewery's logo — a leering blue devil. The gantry gives way, and the kidnapper falls to his death.

Scully speaks to Boggs again, suggesting that if he had orchestrated the kidnapping, the kidnapper would have been aware of the danger he warned her about. Boggs claims to be able to contact her father and offers to relay one last message from him if she will attend his execution. As he is about to be executed, Boggs sees that Scully has not attended.

Scully visits Mulder in the hospital, explaining that she changed her mind and now believes Mulder's theory that Boggs arranged everything. She cites as evidence that if Boggs knew she was Mulder's partner, Boggs could have looked up the information about her father's death and used that information to manipulate her. Mulder asks her why she was afraid of believing, even if it meant losing the chance to hear from her father again through Boggs. She tells him that she did not need to hear anything, because she already knew what her father would have said.

S1E14 · Genderbender

In a dance club, a young man is taken by a young woman, Marty (Kate Twa), for casual sex. The man dies afterwards, and Marty leaves the room as a man (Peter Stebbings). FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are called to the scene; Mulder believes that the man's death was caused by a fatal dose of pheromones. There is also ambiguity in similar murders as to the sex of the killer. Evidence from the crime scene leads the duo to an Amish -like community in Massachusetts called the Kindred.

Mulder approaches some of the Kindred, only to be shunned. Meanwhile, Scully befriends a member, Brother Andrew (Brent Hinkley), who is reluctant to talk. While shaking hands with him, Scully appears entranced, not coming to until Mulder catches her attention. The agents visit the Kindred's remote community, where they are asked to surrender their guns before entering. Mulder and Scully are invited to dinner. When the Kindred refuse to allow Scully to treat Brother Aaron, a sick participant at the table, Brother Andrew states that the Kindred take care of their own. Meanwhile, in another nightclub, a man convinces a girl to dance with him by touching her hand.

When the Kindred escort the agents out of the village, Mulder comments on the lack of children in the community and states that he recognizes some of the faces from photographs taken in the 1930s. Curious, he returns to the village that night and hears chanting as a procession of the Kindred moves to a barn. Scully is led off by Brother Andrew, who claims to be able to give her information about the murderer, whom he calls Brother Martin. Downstairs in the barn, the group can be seen bathing Brother Aaron's body in watery clay.

Mulder hides in a crevice, where he discovers that the sick man has been buried alive and has begun to take on feminine features. Meanwhile, Brother Andrew uses his power to seduce Scully. She is unable to resist and is on the verge of succumbing before Mulder comes to her aid. The agents are again escorted out of the village.

Another man, Michel (Nicholas Lea), is having sex with the female form of Brother Martin in a parked car before a patrol officer interrupts them. As Michel suddenly starts retching, the officer is attacked by Brother Martin, who changes into a man and escapes. In the hospital Michel reluctantly reveals to Mulder and Scully that when he looked out of the car, the girl he was with "looked like a man". The agents are alerted about activity on a previous victim's credit card, which was stolen by Brother Martin. The agents chase Brother Martin into an alley, only to have the Kindred appear and take him away.

The following morning the agents return to the Kindred's dwelling, which now appears deserted. The tunnels are blocked entirely with the white clay. Mulder and Scully walk into the nearby field where they find a large crop circle, suggesting that the Kindred are aliens.

S1E15 · Lazarus

Dana Scully assists a fellow FBI agent, Jack Willis, in pursuing violent bank robbers Warren Dupre and Lula Phillips. Following an anonymous tip, the two agents corner Dupre during an attempted robbery. Dupre shoots Willis with a shotgun but is himself shot by Scully. Dupre dies, but Willis is eventually revived; however, Dupre's corpse is seen reacting to the jolts from the defibrillators used on Willis.

Willis wakes up a few days later, but now has a more sinister personality. He finds Dupre's body and cuts off his fingers to retrieve a wedding ring before fleeing the hospital. Scully explains to Fox Mulder that Willis has been obsessed with the Dupre-Phillips case for the past year, and admits to dating Willis while he was her instructor at the FBI Academy.

It is discovered that left-handed shears were used to cut off Dupre's fingers, despite the fact that Willis is right-handed, leading Mulder to believe that Willis' body is inhabited by Dupre's consciousness. The agents visit a University of Maryland medical professor who theorizes that during near-death experiences, an energy release can occur that could radically change someone's personality. He points out that those who have had such experiences often are unable to wear watches, as due to the level of energy running through their body the watches cannot function.

Willis, who finds Dupre's tattoo appearing on his arm, confronts Lula's brother Tommy and kills him, believing that he sold him out to the FBI and caused his "death". When Mulder and Scully investigate the next day, Willis arrives. He passes the tests that Scully gives him, but when Mulder asks him to sign a fake birthday card for Scully—whose birthday is months away and on the same day as Willis—he signs it. Scully is skeptical of Mulder's claims that Dupre is in Willis's body, believing that he is under stress due to his near-death experience.

When a landlord calls the FBI to tip them off about Phillips' location, Scully and Willis move in to capture her. However, when Scully corners Phillips, Willis holds Scully at gunpoint and forces her to instead handcuff herself. Scully is taken to Phillips' house, where she is beaten and handcuffed to a radiator. Willis then successfully convinces Phillips that he is actually Dupre. Willis calls Mulder to tell him that he and Phillips are holding Scully hostage, leaving Mulder frustrated and angry.

After seeing Willis/Dupre consume a large quantity of soda, Scully reveals that Willis is a diabetic and will require insulin to survive. Phillips and Willis/Dupre rob a pharmacy to obtain the necessary insulin. However, Phillips refuses to let Willis/Dupre use it, revealing that it was she who betrayed him, having fled the scene during the botched bank robbery. She calls Mulder, demanding a $1 million ransom for Scully. Audio of a nearby plane allows Mulder and his task force to track their general location, and a disguised cop going door to door spots Phillips.

Willis/Dupre feigns death, and when Phillips drops her wedding ring on him, he grabs her gun and kills her. He dies seconds later due to the lack of insulin. Mulder, who has just arrived on the scene, releases Scully. Later Scully retrieves Willis' possessions from the morgue, including a watch she gave him for his thirty-fifth birthday. The watch stopped at 6:47, the moment Willis died after the bank shooting.

S1E16 · Young at Heart

In 1989, Joe Crandall, an inmate at a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, hears screaming from the infirmary. Inside, he discovers the prison's doctor, Joe Ridley, amputating the hand of fellow inmate John Barnett. Ridley tells Crandall that Barnett is dead, threatening him with a scalpel. However, as Crandall leaves the room, he sees Barnett blinking.

Five years later, Fox Mulder is notified by his former FBI supervisor, Reggie Purdue, about a note from a jewelry store robbery mocking Mulder by name. Mulder recognizes the message as being from Barnett, a sociopathic multiple murderer whom he helped capture on his first case with the Bureau. Even though Barnett supposedly died in prison, the note bears his handwriting. Purdue shows Dana Scully a video of Barnett's capture, which shows that Mulder didn't fire on Barnett due to him having a hostage, per FBI procedure. Mulder's hesitancy allowed Barnett to kill both the hostage and a fellow agent.

Scully looks into Barnett's cause of death and discovers that despite it being listed as heart attack, he had no history of heart problems; he had been sent to the infirmary due to problems with his hand. Meanwhile, Barnett leaves Mulder another note in his car, along with photos of him and Scully. The agents visit the prison and meet Crandall, who recounts his experiences with Barnett and Ridley. Barnett makes taunting phone calls to Mulder and strangles Purdue with a disfigured hand. Scully looks into Ridley's past and finds that his medical license was revoked for performing illegal medical trials on children with progeria, a disease that causes premature aging. Mulder theorizes that Ridley's experiments helped him find a way to reverse the aging process.

Scully summons Mulder when Ridley suddenly appears at her apartment. He tells the agents that he succeeded in making Barnett age in reverse after replacing his hand using salamander cells. However, Barnett stole Ridley's government-sponsored research. Deep Throat meets with Mulder and confirms Ridley's story, saying that the government is negotiating with Barnett to purchase Ridley's work. Scully hears someone dialing into her answering machine and spots Barnett's fingerprint on it. After Barnett calls again, Mulder decides to set up a sting operation at the cello recital for a friend of Scully's, which Barnett learned about from her answering machine.

That night, FBI agents wait at the concert hall for Barnett's arrival. Barnett, who goes completely unseen due to his youthful appearance, poses as a piano tuner. He shoots Scully in the chest during the recital and flees, taking the cellist hostage. Mulder doesn't hesitate this time and fires at Barnett, fatally wounding him. Scully is revealed to have survived the attack, having worn a bulletproof vest. Despite the efforts of doctors and a mysterious CIA agent to resuscitate Barnett, he dies, and takes the secrets of Ridley's research to the grave. The episode ends with a close-up of a locker in a train station, implying the secrets are contained within and will one day be discovered.

S1E17 · E.B.E.

In the skies over Iraq, an Iraqi fighter jet shoots down a UFO, which crashes in Turkey. Later, in Tennessee, a truck driver named Ranheim shoots at something in the dark as another UFO flies overhead. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate the sighting the next day, but Ranheim is quickly let go by the uncooperative local authorities. In a seemingly inconsequential event, a woman briefly borrows Scully's pen before they leave Tennessee.

Back in Washington, D.C., Mulder introduces Scully to the Lone Gunmen, a trio of eccentric conspiracy theorists with whom he collaborates. After returning to FBI headquarters, Scully discovers a surveillance device within her pen. Mulder meets with Deep Throat, who provides him with documentation of an intercepted Iraqi transmission regarding the downed UFO. Scully continues to investigate the Tennessee incident, learning that two thousand pounds of extra weight had been added to Ranheim's truck. She also learns Ranheim's true identity as Frank Druce. Mulder and Scully argue briefly over the trustworthiness of Deep Throat, whom Mulder defends.

Mulder intends to track Druce's truck, which is on its way to Colorado. However, before he leaves, Deep Throat approaches him at his apartment, offering the photo of a purported UFO at Fort Benning. Mulder initially believes that Druce's truck is a decoy meant to distract him from the UFO, but discovers that Deep Throat's photo is a fake. When Mulder confronts Deep Throat, he admits his deception and confirms that the earlier transmission was genuine. He also divulges that the truck is transporting an extraterrestrial biological entity, or E.B.E., recovered from the Iraqi crash site. Mulder and Scully escape their pursuers and head towards Las Vegas, the last known location of the truck.

Mulder and Scully catch up with the truck, and while pursuing it encounter strange weather. The truck stalls, but when they look inside it they find both Druce and the E.B.E. have vanished. When they investigate the truck and the area, Mulder concludes that the encounter was a constructed hoax, intended to convince the duo to cease further pursuit. With help from MUFON and NICAP, Mulder tracks Druce and the E.B.E. to a power plant in Mattawa, Washington. With assistance from the Lone Gunmen, the agents enter the plant with fake identification. Their unfamiliarity soon gives them away, but Mulder flees from the guards through a restricted area and is about to approach the room where the creature is held when armed guards stop him.

Deep Throat appears and calls off the guards, telling Mulder the E.B.E. is dead. He reveals a secret agreement made between multiple countries after Roswell that any living E.B.E. found would be killed, and that he is one of three men to have executed an E.B.E. Mulder looks through the window into the creature's holding cell, but it is empty. Mulder suspects that Deep Throat of lying to him, though he doesn't know which part of Deep Throat's information is a lie. Afterwards, Deep Throat lets Mulder and Scully go free.

S1E18 · Miracle Man

In 1983, a young boy, Samuel Hartley, appears at the scene of a car accident and pushes his way past an emergency crew. He opens a body bag and commands the severely burnt cadaver inside to "rise up and heal." Samuel's father, Calvin, convinces a fireman to let him continue. The body inside the bag comes alive, grabbing Samuel's hand.

Eleven years later, Dana Scully shows Fox Mulder a videotape of a religious service led by the now-grown Samuel (Scott Bairstow), who has become an evangelical faith healer for a ministry run by Calvin. The video shows a supposed healing which later left the follower dead. The agents travel to Clarksville, Tennessee, where they attend a service featuring an enthusiastic sermon by Leonard Vance, the man whom Samuel raised from the dead a decade earlier. The agents learn from Calvin that Samuel has gone missing.

Samuel eventually turns up drunk at a local bar, his faith shaken by the death. He is taken into custody. The agents doubt his ability, but he is able to convince Mulder that he knows the latter has lost a sister— Samantha —at a young age. Mulder has been seeing visions of Samantha, and continues to see them. At Samuel's bail hearing, the courtroom fills with a swarm of locusts, which Samuel claims is a sign of God's wrath against him.

Once he is released, Samuel returns to his ministry and attempts to heal a woman in a wheelchair. However, she suffers a seizure and dies, which leads to Samuel's second arrest. An autopsy reveals the woman died of cyanide poisoning, while Mulder and Scully find evidence that the swarm of locusts, which were actually common grasshoppers, was guided by someone to the courtroom through the building's ventilation system. Mulder believes Samuel to be innocent. However, the local sheriff, Maurice Daniels, allows two of his men to beat Samuel to death in his cell.

At his home, Vance is confronted by a ghostly vision of Samuel, who accuses him of betraying the church and perpetrating the murders. Vance confesses and blames his bitterness at having been resurrected with such a scarred and deformed visage. Mulder and Scully, who have been able to trace a large purchase of grasshoppers to Vance, arrive to find the man dying of cyanide poisoning from his own glass of water. He confesses to the agents before falling dead.

As the agents prepare to finish work on the case, they receive a phone call and learn that Samuel's body has gone missing from the morgue, and witnesses have seen him walking around, badly bruised. Meanwhile, Daniels is arrested by one of his deputies for questioning by the district attorney over Samuel's death. As Mulder and Scully leave Tennessee, Samuel's ministry closes down, and Mulder sees one last vision of his missing sister before he gets into his car.

S1E19 · Shapes

FBI agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder travel to Browning, Montana, to investigate the killing of a Native American man, Joseph Goodensnake, by local rancher Jim Parker. The killing appears to be motivated by a dispute over the ownership of a tract of land, although Parker claims that he fired on a monstrous animal rather than a human. Parker's son, Lyle, bears scars that lend credence to the story.

At the scene of the shooting, Scully reasons that at the short range from which Goodensnake was shot, it would have been impossible to mistake him for an animal. However, Mulder finds tracks leading to the area that appear to change from human to something more animal in nature. Scully dismisses this but finds a large section of shed human skin nearby. She believes that the Parkers knowingly killed Goodensnake, but knows that they could not have skinned him since no signs of such injury were found on the body.

The investigation is complicated by the hostility Mulder and Scully face from the Native American population, stemming from their experience with the FBI during the 1973 Wounded Knee incident. Goodensnake's sister Gwen is also bitter that her neighbors are too frightened of native legends to confront his death. The local sheriff, Charles Tskany, permits Scully to make a cursory examination of Goodensnake's body but forbids a full autopsy. They discover that he had elongated canines, similar to those of an animal, and bears long-healed scars similar to Lyle's.

Mulder tells Scully of a similar incident in the area forty years previously, which was investigated by J. Edgar Hoover and became the FBI's first X-File case. As the agents watch Goodensnake's body being cremated in a traditional ceremony, Mulder shares with Scully his belief that the culprits in both the current case and Hoover's investigation are werewolves. Scully dismisses this theory and instead credits the belief to clinical lycanthropy. Parker is subsequently ripped apart by an unseen animal outside his home, and Lyle is found naked and unconscious a few hundred yards away.

Ish, one of the elders of the reservation, explains to Mulder the legend of the manitou, a shape-shifter that can pass to a new host, through a bite or upon the death of the original host. Ish believes he had seen the creature in his youth but was too frightened to confront it. He says it happens every eight years to someone in the region, and that it has been that long since the last sighting of a possible manitou.

Mulder calls the medical examiner, who tells him that Scully has taken Lyle back to the ranch, and Parker's blood type was found in Lyle's stomach. Mulder and Tskany hurry to the ranch. After firing on the creature, which escapes unharmed, Mulder finds Scully hiding upstairs. They search for the creature, which is shot by Tskany as it lunges to attack them. Scully expresses disbelief on seeing Lyle's body, believing they were attacked by a captive cougar; Tskany replies that the cougar is still in its cage. As the agents leave, they learn that Gwen has left town, while Ish cryptically warns Mulder, "FBI... See you in about... eight years". As Mulder and Scully drive away, a wolf is heard howling in the forest.

S1E20 · Darkness Falls

In Olympic National Forest in Washington State, a group of loggers flee through the woods, trying to escape from an unseen force. They are eventually killed by a large swarm of small, glowing, green insects. Later, at FBI headquarters, Fox Mulder shows Dana Scully a photo of the missing loggers, telling her that another group of loggers disappeared in the forest in 1934. The two agents head to the forest, where they meet U.S. Forest Service employee Larry Moore and Steve Humphreys: head of security for the logging company. While driving through the forest, their truck hits caltrops left in the ground by eco-terrorists, forcing them to walk the rest of the way. Upon arriving at the camp site, Mulder and Scully find the cabins abandoned and the communication equipment destroyed. Searching the forest, they find a corpse encased in a large cocoon hanging from a tree.

While repairing one of the generators, Humphreys catches an eco-terrorist named Doug Spinney. He tells the group that there's a deadly swarm of insects in the forest and that they must avoid darkness to stay alive. The next morning, they find an old-growth tree cut down with an unexplained band of green contained within its growth rings. Spinney suspects that an organism that was dormant in the tree for centuries was disturbed when the tree was illegally cut down. Humphreys hikes down to Moore's truck but is killed by the swarm at nightfall. In the cabin, everyone else is kept safe by the light. The next morning, Spinney convinces Mulder to let him hike to his colleagues with gasoline so that he can return with a Jeep to pick them up. Scully and Moore confront Mulder, since this will leave them with little fuel for the generator.

The night passes with only a single lightbulb lighting the cabin, going out just as morning arrives. Mulder, Scully, and Moore hike down to the truck with a flat tire from camp, hoping to patch it, put on the spare, and escape. They find Humphreys's cocooned body. Spinney returns with the Jeep, telling the others that his friends are all dead. The Jeep hits another caltrop left in the ground, and Spinney is killed when he leaves the Jeep after dark. Moore and the agents are engulfed by the insects, which enter the vehicle through the air conditioning vents.

They are found soon after and brought to a quarantined facility in Winthrop, Washington, where one of the scientists tells Mulder that the forest is being bombarded with pesticides and controlled fire in the hopes of eradicating the insects. Mulder asks the scientist what will happen if the efforts fail, but is simply told "that is not an option."

S1E21 · Tooms

After the events of " Squeeze ", Eugene Victor Tooms has been placed in a Baltimore sanatorium. He attempts to escape by squeezing his arm through the food slot of his cell door. He is forced to abort when he is visited by his psychologist, Dr. Aaron Monte, who tells him that he is ready to be released into society.

Dana Scully is called before FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who is accompanied by The Smoking Man. Despite the success of the X-Files investigations, Skinner criticizes their unconventionalism and wants both Scully and Fox Mulder to do by-the-book work. Later, the agents attend a release hearing for Tooms, where Monte claims that Tooms' attack on Scully was due to being falsely accused of murder. Mulder tries to point out the evidence of Tooms' crimes and unusual physiology but is ignored by the hearing's panel. Tooms is released into the care of an elderly couple and is ordered to continue his treatment with Dr. Monte.

Scully meets with Frank Briggs, the retired detective who investigated Tooms' 1933 murders. Briggs claims that the body of one of the victims from that spree was never discovered. He and Scully visit a chemical plant where a piece of the victim's liver was found, ultimately discovering a skeleton encased in concrete. A researcher examining the skeleton identifies it as the missing victim from 1933. However, there seems to be no substantial evidence proving that Tooms was the murderer.

Meanwhile, Mulder harasses Tooms at work as he stalks a would-be victim. Later that night, Mulder follows him when he tries to break into a couple's house. Tooms flees without attacking anyone. Scully relieves Mulder, who is watching Tooms' new residence; they are unaware that Tooms is hiding in the trunk of Mulder's car. He manages to break into Mulder's apartment, where he injures himself and imprints Mulder's shoe print on his face. Tooms' frameup leads the police to question Mulder and Skinner to forbid him from contacting Tooms.

Further research on the skeleton reveals bite marks matching Tooms' teeth. When the old couple watching Tooms leave their home, he is visited by Monte. Tooms kills him and consumes the final liver he needs to begin his thirty-year hibernation. After discovering Monte's body and defying Skinner's orders, Mulder and Scully head to the site of Tooms' former apartment building, which has been demolished and replaced with a shopping mall. Inside, Mulder crawls below an escalator and finds Tooms' nest. Tooms bursts out, covered in bile, and pursues Mulder, who makes it to the surface and activates the escalator, trapping and killing Tooms.

Skinner reads Scully's final report on the Tooms case and asks the Smoking Man if he believes it, to which he replies, "Of course I do." Outside, Scully finds Mulder, who is observing a caterpillar's cocoon. Mulder predicts that change is coming to the X-Files.

S1E22 · Born Again

In Buffalo, New York, police detective Sharon Lazard finds a little girl, Michelle Bishop, alone in an alley. Lazard takes the seemingly lost girl into her precinct and leaves her alone to be interviewed by another detective, Rudolph Barbala. However, moments later, Barbala is launched through a window, falling to his death.

Lazard turns to FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for help. She tells them of Michelle's claims that a man had attacked Barbala, even though she was the only person in the room when the detective was killed. The agents have Michelle describe the alleged attacker for a computerized facial composite; the computer seemingly glitches, displaying a face that Michelle identifies as the killer. The composite matches that of a Detective Charlie Morris — who died nine years previously in an apparent gangland hit. Mulder speaks to Michelle's psychiatrist, Dr. Braun, who tells him that she habitually mutilated dolls in a uniform manner during their sessions together, removing the same eye and arm each time; Mulder realizes that these mutilations match the circumstances of Morris' death.

The agents interview Tony Fiore, Morris' ex-partner, who attributes his death to a triad gang they had been investigating together. Later that day, Fiore meets with a Leon Felder to discuss claiming a large sum of money from a safety deposit box. The two men agree that they haven't waited the ten years they had intended to, ominously discussing that they are the last two claimants left. That night, Felder gets off a bus, but his scarf catches in the door, seemingly moved by an invisible force, as the bus drives off. The driver tries to brake, but the bus inexplicably continues to accelerate, strangling Felder. Michelle watches from inside the bus.

Investigating further, Mulder and Scully learn that Fiore, Barbala, Felder and Morris had all worked closely together in the past. They also find that Fiore's wife Anita keeps a collection of origami animals made by her first husband—Charlie Morris. Anita tells the agents that Fiore hasn't returned home from the previous night; meanwhile, the agents find that pages are missing from the file on Morris' murder, and Fiore was the last one to have checked the file out.

Michelle undergoes a session of regression hypnosis, where she claims to be twenty-four years old. She suddenly starts screaming in panic about someone trying to kill her, and the session is ended. Mulder reviews the video of the session and is convinced that the girl is the reincarnation of Morris, having been conceived right around the time the detective was murdered. The tape contains a brief section of static noise just before Michelle begins screaming, which Mulder has an expert clean up. The noise is found to contain a grainy image of what appears to be a fish tank ornament of a man in a diving suit. Meanwhile, Scully has tracked down Morris' autopsy findings, which show the presence of salt water in his respiratory tract, indicating he died of drowning. The agents realize from these findings that Morris was drowned in the exotic fish tank in Fiore's house.

Rushing to Fiore's house, Mulder and Scully find Michelle using telekinetic powers to try to kill Fiore. They prevent her from doing so, and Fiore confesses that he, Felder and Barbala had stolen a large sum of money, intending to keep it safe for ten years before claiming it. Morris learned of their plan and threatened to report on them, and was consequently killed to silence him. However, Fiore maintains that he never wanted to see Morris dead and only wanted to take care of Anita after his death. Michelle uses her powers to destroy the fish tank, but spares Fiore after hearing pleas from Anita not to hurt him. Later, Fiore pleads guilty to charges of murder and grand larceny, whilst Michelle seemingly recovers and goes on to become a normal little girl.

S1E23 · Roland

At a physics research lab, intellectually disabled janitor Roland Fuller is scolded by scientist Dr. Keats for forgetting how to use the facility's keycard locks. Keats walks in on his colleagues, Frank Nollette and Ronald Surnow, arguing over a prototype jet engine. After Keats and Nollette leave, Surnow enters the facility's wind tunnel to make adjustments. However, Roland activates the tunnel's turbines, killing Surnow. Roland examines the scientists' whiteboard and changes some of its equations.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate Surnow's death. Scully learns another member of the research team, Arthur Grable, had died several months earlier, and suspects industrial espionage. Mulder examines the handwriting on the whiteboard and concludes it was written by at least four different people, suggesting a fourth individual was present. Keats and Nollette both inform the agents that Roland was the only one left in the facility at the time of Surnow's death, but do not believe him capable of murder.

Nevertheless, Mulder and Scully visit Roland at his care home, where he denies seeing anything unusual. He displays his mathematical prowess by rapidly counting the star designs on Scully's blouse; however, his handwriting does not match the fourth sample from the whiteboard. The discussion ends when Roland experiences a violent vision involving Keats' head being frozen and has what seems to be a fit. Later, he has another vision of someone killing Keats. Roland appears at the lab and submerges Keats' head in a tank of liquid nitrogen, shattering it before typing at a computer. The next day, the agents notice the computer was used hours after Keats' death and realize that the number Roland had written on an art project previously is the password to files containing the work of Grable, which have been worked on since his death.

Investigating Grable's death, the agents learn he had hired Roland. They suspect Grable faked his death and is killing his colleagues, using Roland as a patsy. Grable's body was never brought to the morgue, nor was a funeral held. However, Nollette brings the agents to a cryogenic facility where Grable's remains are being stored. A photo of Grable reveals he is Roland's identical twin. Mulder becomes convinced that Roland is being periodically controlled by Grable.

Nollette sneaks into the cryogenic facility and sabotages Grable's unit, thawing his remains. Roland returns to the lab and is in the process of pushing the prototype engine to mach 15 when Nollette enters. Nollette admits to stealing Grable's work and prepares to shoot Roland; when he is distracted, Roland strikes him and drags him into the wind tunnel. The agents arrive in time to convince Roland not to kill Nollette. At the same time, the rising temperatures in the cryogenic unit kill Grable. Roland is taken from his care home to a psychiatric institute for testing. As he leaves, he combs his hair in the style of his brother, suggesting he is not free of Grable's control.

S1E24 · The Erlenmeyer Flask

In Maryland, a high-speed police chase unfolds at a waterfront. The driver of the car, Dr. William Secare, is cornered by officers but fights them off with surprising ease. He is shot as he runs up a gangplank and leaps off a ship into the water. The police fail to locate him but discover that his blood is green.

Soon afterwards, Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) approaches Fox Mulder with Secare's case, saying he is of major importance to revealing the truth. When investigating the case, Mulder and Dana Scully visit Dr. Terrance Berube (Ken Kramer), a scientist working in Gaithersburg whose car was being driven by Secare. That night, Deep Throat meets a second time with Mulder and insists he continue, despite Mulder's uncertainty on what he should be looking for. That night, Berube is confronted by the " Crew Cut Man " (Lindsey Ginter), who kills him and makes the death look like a suicide.

While investigating the crime scene, Mulder finds an Erlenmeyer flask labeled "Purity Control". Scully takes the flask to Georgetown University, where Dr. Anne Carpenter (Anne De Salvo) helps her analyze its contents. Meanwhile, Mulder heads to Berube's home and finds keys for a storage facility. Secare calls Berube's home office and Mulder answers, pretending to be Berube; Secare states that he's been in the water for three days and is hurt. Meanwhile, the Crew Cut Man eavesdrops on the conversation. Secare collapses due to blood loss before he can tell Mulder where he is. While he is driven away in an ambulance, a poisonous gas is emitted from his body when the paramedics perform a needle decompression. Secare recovers and flees from the ambulance.

Mulder arrives at the storage facility and finds five men suspended in tanks, as well as a sixth empty tank. He is pursued when he leaves the facility but escapes. Carpenter reveals that the "Purity Control" flask contains a sample of bacteria that doesn't exist anywhere in nature and can only be described as extraterrestrial. Upon revisiting the storage facility the next day with Scully, Mulder discovers the room to be completely empty. Deep Throat arrives, revealing that Berube was experimenting on humans with extraterrestrial viruses. Six terminally ill volunteers were experimented on, and all had begun recovering. When it was ordered that they be destroyed, Berube helped Secare escape.

Scully learns that Carpenter and her entire family have been killed in a car accident. Mulder returns to Berube's home and finds Secare in the attic. Secare is shot to death by the Crew Cut Man, and Mulder is captured when exposure to the gas escaping from Secare's wound causes him to pass out. Deep Throat meets Scully outside of Mulder's apartment and says that he may be able to make a deal with his captors. He gives Scully the credentials necessary to enter the High Containment Facility at Fort Marlene, where Scully finds an alien fetus contained within liquid nitrogen.

At an exchange on a freeway overpass, Deep Throat presents the fetus to the Crew Cut Man, who shoots him seconds later. Mulder is thrown out of the Crew Cut Man's van as he drives off. Scully tends to Deep Throat, whose last words before dying are, "Trust no one".

Several weeks later, a despondent Mulder calls Scully to inform her that the X-Files have been shut down. Meanwhile, in a scene mirroring the conclusion to the pilot, the Smoking Man (who interestingly does not smoke during this scene) stores the alien fetus in the massive evidence room within the Pentagon.