S8E10 · Badlaa

At the Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, India, an obese American businessman dismissively makes his way past a paraplegic beggar missing his legs from the knee down. While using the airport's toilet, the businessman is pulled out of the stall violently by the beggar he passed earlier. Later, the businessman checks into a Washington, D.C., hotel and sits down on his bed. Soon, blood streams out of his bodily orifices.

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) arrives late to the crime scene and John Doggett (Robert Patrick) tells her that the man's blood all drained abruptly in the hotel. A child's bloody print is found, but Scully doesn't believe that a child did this. Meanwhile, the beggar, somehow disguised as an ordinary-looking white man, applies for a janitorial job at a Cheverly, Maryland elementary school. In the morgue, Scully describes the massive stomach damage done to the body which leads Doggett to the idea of drugs being forcibly cut out of him. However, the man showed no sign of drugs in the blood tests and Scully tells Doggett that his time of death was 24 to 36 hours prior, long before he left India. Due to a discrepancy in weight, she begins to believe that there was a passenger in the corpse.

Quinton, a student at the elementary school in Cheverly, calls his father up to his room after he sees the legless beggar man at night. His father tells him that he imagined it, goes back downstairs, then screams. Quinton rushes down and finds his father dead, his eyes dripping blood. Doggett and Scully investigate this latest death after the police tell them about the strange man the boy saw. While discussing the lack of any damage to the body except the broken blood vessels in the eyes, Scully comes to the conclusion that the man is still inside the latest victim.

She rushes to the morgue and finds the boy's father with a distended belly. She cuts into him and sees a hand emerge from the scalpel incision. After being knocked over, she follows a bloody trail to a storage closet, but finds no one inside. Having turned invisible to Scully, the beggar watches her.

At the school, the principal tells the janitor that she was very worried when he did not show up that morning. Trevor, a bully who had previously tormented Quinton, sees flickers of the beggar through his janitor's guise. Trevor later goes to Quinton's home to apologize and express sympathy over Quinton's father's death. He also tells Quinton who he thinks killed his father.

Scully and Doggett consult Chuck Burks, an old friend of Fox Mulder 's, who tells them about the fakir, ascetic masters who subject themselves to torture in order to attain enlightenment. He also tells the agents that Siddhi mystics could do the things Scully described; the mystics have powers of the mind and can alter people's perceptions of reality, and their secret practices are passed on from father to son. When Doggett remains skeptical of both Chuck's insights and the Siddhi, Chuck remarks to Scully that he isn't surprised because "it's hard to believe in something you can't understand." Struggling to see the case as Mulder might, Scully consults with Chuck again and the two discuss whether a Siddhi mystic using their powers for murder would violate the very foundation of their lives and endanger their souls.

Scully then shares a theory that revenge might drive a Siddhi to act in such a way and that one such Siddhi is seeking retribution against people who worked for an American chemical plant in Vishi, outside of Mumbai, that inadvertently released a gas cloud that killed 118 people. One victim was the 11-year-old son of a holy man of the beggar caste.

After hearing a strange squeaking sound—the wheels of the unseen fakir's dolly—Trevor runs home, brushing past his mother in the foyer. She follows him outside to find him face-down in their pool. She dives in to get him, but his form turns into the beggar. At the scene of the crime, the real Trevor returns home and tells Scully that the "little man" followed him. Acting on Trevor's tip about the janitor, Doggett and the police arrest him. After Scully calls Chuck Burks, he turns up with his video camera hoping to capture footage of a fakir.

To Doggett's bewilderment, the video camera shows no one sitting in the chair the janitor appears to be seated in and Doggett and Chuck realize they do not, in fact, have a suspect in custody. Doggett calls Scully, who has gone to Trevor's house to speak with him only to find that Trevor is not at home, having sneaked out past his father.

Quinton and Trevor hunt the fakir at school, where the principal and her assistant call Scully to make her aware they've seen the janitor back at the school. The fakir turns the hunt around and begins stalking the boys, eventually taking Trevor's form just as Scully arrives. Scully hesitantly fires at the boy, wounding the fakir, who reverts to his true form. Following the shooting, Scully weeps as she realizes she was "just not capable of" viewing this particular case without prejudice, without judgment, or with an open mind as Mulder would have done.

Two weeks later at the Sahar International Airport, the fakir, unharmed, watches another American businessman with a large frame pass by.