02x02 - The Host

[bunniefuu]

Argh!

Dave can set it up, but the cost sounds a bit rich.

If he’s putting it together, you’d be a fool to pass it up.

I hear you. I just...

You just what? You wanna take a dip, you gotta test the water.

You just don 't wanna get wet. No, man. Dippage is sacred.

Dippage is sacred.

Agent Mulder? Yeah.

You're relieved from your assignment. Agent Bozoff will take over.

You've got a flight to catch in 45 minutes.

Where am I going? m*rder case. Newark, New Jersey.

Treat yourself.

Your contact in Newark is a Detective Norman.

How'd I draw the assignment? Assistant Director Skinner requested you.

Skinner requested me?!

Mulder, FBI. My forensics team's just wrapping up.

We left the body where we found it. Kenny!

This is one case I'm gonna be happy to turn over to you guys.

Watch yourself.

Yeah. Wouldn't wanna step in anything.

They say it cuts the smell if you don't breathe through your mouth.

They lied.

Who found the body? Sanitation worker.

Looks like it's been here a while.

Any ID? No. Not much to go on, either.

Front side is pretty much eaten away.

Would you like us to turn him over? No, I'll take your word on that.

Hey, Agent Mulder! What should we do with the body?

Wrap it up and send it to the FBI, care of Assistant Director Skinner!

Yes, sir. Thank you.

I need to speak to him.

Mr Skinner is unavailable. If you'd take a seat...

Will you tell him that I'm here and I need to speak to him... now?

Certainly.

Mr Skinner, I'm very sorry to interrupt, but Agent Mulder is demanding to see you.

Is there a problem, Agent Mulder? Yeah, there is.

Then make an appointment.

That's hard when you're up to your ass in raw sewage,...

..on another meaningless assignment.

Excuse me? What's next? Scrubbing bathroom floors?

You're out of line, Agent Mulder. So I gathered.

Fine.

Come into my office, Agent Mulder. Please.

Would you inform the room...

..as to why you regard your case in New Jersey as meaningless?

It's a simple drugland body dump,...

..not the type of case the FBI wastes time or manpower on.

Given your recent history, you're not one to judge what is or is not a waste of time.

Sir, my work on the X-Files...

The X-Files have been closed, Agent Mulder.

You will carry out new assignments,...

..and investigate them to the best of your ability. Is that not clear?

Yeah.

And I'll be anticipating your field reports on your current homicide case.

Thank you.

Is this seat taken?

No. But I should warn you, I'm experiencing violent impulses.

Well, I'm armed, so I'll take my chances.

I hear you really endeared yourself to Assistant Director Skinner today.

Sometimes it's hard to smile when they ask you to bend down and grab your ankles.

It's not as if you've ever tried to fit into the programme.

No.

No, I've been thinking a lot about that lately.

I've been thinking about leaving. The Bureau?

What would you do?

Pursue my work in the paranormal, somehow.

You could request a transfer to Quantico. Come back to the behavioural science unit.

They don't want us working together, Scully.

And that's the only reason I can think of to stay.

What about this case you're working on?

It's a zero. Where's the body?

In our forensics lab. Look, I know what you're trying to do.

Maybe I can request to do the autopsy.

It's an exercise. Skinner is just rubbing my nose in this one.

There's nothing to it.

There's a dead body, isn't there?

Oh!

Examination and autopsy of John Doe number 1-0-1-3-5-6.

Case number DP1-1-2-1-4-8.

Special Agent Fox Mulder, field investigator.

Body is an adult male with advanced tissue decomposition,...

..weighing 165 pounds in extremis,...

..69 inches in length.

Intact skin is mottled and discoloured,...

..due to submergence in and exposure to a highly bacterial environment.

Cause and time of death...

..unknown.

Possible identifying mark on right forearm.

Body cavities appear normal.

Interior organs intact,...

..consistent in rate of decomposition.

Removing the ribcage.

Condition of heart and lungs are good.

No sign of thrombi, natural or degenerate diseases.

Indicate victim was probably a young adult.

The liver shows some nodular hardening,...

..consistent with incipient alcoholism.

Oh, God!

It's on the way! Got it!

OK.

Need a big piece of 30-gauge and some baling wire.

I gotta go back up top for the screen.

Frank! Help!

Frank! Frank!

Frank!

Frank! Hurry!

Hold on!

Frank! Come on!

Frank!

Hold on till I tie the line! Hold on!

Pull up, come on! Come on! Come on!

Pull up!

My God!

I'm gonna get help!

I'm gonna give you a tetanus booster, just as a precaution.

I'd be happy if you just give me something to get this taste out of my mouth.

Let me take a look.

Ah.

Any trouble swallowing? Uh-uh.

It'll go away.

Agent Mulder? Yeah.

Newark PD referred me to you. I'm surprised the FBI is involved.

Is there something here I should know? I don't know. Maybe you can tell me.

He's a sanitation worker. He claims he was att*cked by something down in the sewer.

att*cked? By what? We've been unable to determine.

I thought it was a bogus disability claim, but he appears to be telling the truth.

What's his condition? He's in satisfactory health.

I've given him a heavy course of antibiotics, and we're checking for hepatitis.

He does have a strange wound on his back.

What kind of wound? It could be some kind of bacterial infection.

Frankly, I can't say I've ever seen anything like it.

This is Agent Mulder of the FBI. Any idea what att*cked you?

I've been thinking it might've been a python.

A python?

Or a boa constrictor. Somebody probably flushed their pet snake down the toilet.

We found an alligator in the sewer a couple of years ago.

Stronger than hell, I'll tell you that. Clamped onto me like a vice.

It almost looks like a bite.

Excuse me.

Mulder. Mulder, it’s me. I need to see you.

I've got something you should know about.

What is it? Some kind of parasite in your John Doe.

I should know more by the time you get here.

I'm in Jersey. I should be taking the shuttle in about an hour.

Can I get outta here? I'd like to go home.

Excuse me.

Scully, this is a bad time for me to talk. Mr Mulder?

Yeah?

I think you should know... you have a friend at the FBI.

Who is this?

Agent Mulder? If you don't have any more questions, I'm gonna release this man.

OK. Go ahead.

Close the door.

It's called Turbellaria, commonly known as a fluke, or flatworm.

This was living inside the body?

It had attached itself to the bile duct and was feeding off the liver.

Lovely!

Believe it or not, some 40 million people are infected worldwide.

This isn't where you tell me some terrible story about sushi, is it?

Maybe you'd rather hear what you can catch from a nice rare steak.

So, what? The m*rder w*apon was a top sirloin?

Flukes are endemic in unsanitary conditions.

It's more likely that the victim contracted it down inside the sewer.

Before or after he d*ed? I don't know.

My sources say it's unlikely a single parasite could have k*lled him.

He was a young man. But the weird thing is, there's no other discernible cause of death.

How do these parasites attach themselves?

They have what's called a scolex, a sucker-like mouth with four hooking spikes.

Anything like this? Where'd you get that?

Something att*cked a workman in a New Jersey sewer this morning.

And you're asking me if this is from a fluke?

Could it be?

The scolex is a tiny organ. This is a huge bite mark.

How big can these things get? Mulder, I...

I'm sorry.

It felt like old times there for a second.

Flatworms are what are known as obligate endoparasites.

They live inside of the host,...

..entering the body through the ingestion of larvae or eggs.

They are not creatures that go around attacking people.

That's good. I didn't wanna tell Skinner...

..his m*rder suspect was a giant bloodsucking worm.

No.

Well, at the very least, this'll be interesting to the Newark Department of Sanitation.

Look, I don't know who you shared our conversation with the other night, but...

..I'd prefer it if you didn‘t try to launch a campaign for me.

Excuse me? I don't know who you talked to.

I didn't talk to anybody. Somebody told me I had a friend at the FBI.

Look, Mulder, I... I don't know what to say. But I... I wouldn't betray a confidence.

The city runs on different systems,...

..some new, some built at the turn of the century.

Almost as old as Charlie. Right, Charlie? Oh, yes, sir.

What part of the sewer was I in? An older section. Big eight-foot tunnels.

It looked more like a catacomb than a sewer line.

The new sections are concrete pipe, mostly 24 inches.

And all the sewage comes through this plant?

560,000 people a day call my office on the porcelain telephone.

Have you ever seen one of these?

It looks like a big old worm.

It's called a fluke. It came from the body in the sewer.

Wouldn't surprise me.

No telling what's been breeding down there in the last 100 years.

Ray here.

Charlie, slow down.

I'm backflushing the system. It's in there.

What is it? I don't know. It just swam right past me.

There it is.

Turbellarian flatworms are carnivorous scavengers, less than 3cm in length,...

..found in fresh and sea water. They are hermaphroditic,...

..with complex reproductive systems, capable of internal fertilisation.

Many species require more than one host to complete a life cycle.

Although the wound on the sanitation worker suggests scolex attachment...

..the sheer size of the wound precludes involvement of the common fluke worm.

Scully. Scully, it's me.

You know that fluke you caught? Yeah.

It must've been the runt of the litter.

I don't see it.

There it is. Tucked away in the far corner behind the pipes.

Oh, my God. I don't know if you can see,...

..but it has no sex organs. It's genderless.

Platyhelminthes are often hermaphroditic.

Mulder, this is amazing!

Its vestigial features seem parasitic, but it has primate physiology.

Where did it come from? I don't know.

But I'll have to tell Skinner that his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all.

All we're missing is the identity of the body in the sewer.

He was a Russian. An engineer on a cargo freighter.

He had a tattoo on his forearm. I didn't make the connection until I detected...

..that that was the name Dmitri, spelled in Cyrillic lettering.

How did you make the connection at all?

Somebody shoved this under my door.

I guess you really do have a friend in the FBI.

And, Mulder,...

..when you see Skinner to hand in your field report,...

..I know that it's your decision, but I hope that you know...

..that I'd consider it more than a professional loss if you decided to leave.

Everything looks in order.

Is something wrong, Agent Mulder?

That's an unexpected response, considering the bizarre nature of the case.

And of the suspect.

The strangeness of the criminal and the crime are not lost on me.

I had my reaction to them in a conversation about how to process the suspect.

This meeting is to evaluate your work.

There's no way you'll prosecute this.

The Justice Department wants the suspect transferred to a psychiatric institution.

This is not a man, it's a monster! You can't put it in an institution.

What do you do with it, Agent Mulder? Put it in a zoo?

It k*lled two people.

Two?

The sanitation worker who was att*cked was found dead at home as a result of his injuries.

You know, you had a pair of agents that could've handled a case like this.

Agent Scully and I might've been able to save his life, but you shut us down.

I know.

This should have been an X-File.

We all take our orders from someone, Agent Mulder.

That'll be all.

You're secure!

This is vehicle 49-40 requesting immediate backup and assistance.

Roger, 49-40.

What have you got? A dead marshal and an escaped prisoner.

Other than that, bupkis.

We got a police line in a two-mile radius.

Watch any access to the sewer system. It's gonna try to get back underground.

Mulder. Mr Mulder, I'll make this brief.

Success in your current assignment is imperative.

Who am I speaking to? Are you hearing me, Mr Mulder?

Yes. Why is it imperative?

Reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable.

Canine unit Six-Four, copy. Six-Four, copy.

We 're at a campsite a quarter-mile from you.

The dogs tracked a scent to a chemical toilet.

I looked inside, but it's empty. The tanker.

Hold on, Six-Four. What if he's on the tanker truck?

The company that owns the truck doesn't keep detailed service records.

They had five trucks out this morning. Three of them have deposited their loads.

So he could have been here and gone. If he hasn't, he will be.

And every tanker dumps its load here? It's a state law.

Everything's processed through this plant? Yep.

Then what? It empties through an outlet pipe,...

..about five miles out to sea.

Could it have escaped through that pipe? Doubtful.

The system‘s full of filters. Nothing bigger than your little finger's gonna get through.

If it's here, it's going to be trapped here.

I guess all we can do is wait.

Mulder. It's me. Where are you?

The treatment plant. I thought it might be back in the system.

How? Forget it. It's stupid.

Well, you won't like what I have to tell you. Why not?

It hadn't occurred to me, but the fluke in the corpse might have been an incubating larva.

This creature, or whatever it is, transmits its eggs or larvae through its bite.

You mean it's trying to reproduce? It's looking for hosts.

It att*cks because the victims' bodies provide generative nourishment.

Mulder... Yeah.

If it finds a new host... I know. It could multiply.

Agent Mulder! Linesman spotting something down in a section of pipe!

Where?

Here. That's near where we found the first body.

Right. Except this is an old overflow system...

..that dumps into the harbour during heavy rainfall.

That must be where it got into the system.

It's working its way back out to sea.

That's the overflow pipe. It leads to another vault like this one,...

..then about three quarters of a mile to the sea.

Let's see if we can get that gate closed.

It's rusted in position.

Let's see if I can get some leverage here.

Agh!

Hey!

Goddammit! You all right?

Yeah. I... I lost my glasses.

Give me your hand! Get me outta here!

Grab it!

We need some help down here!

I'll get you outta here!

Hold on! Hold on!

Are you all right? Are you OK?

Is this seat taken? No.

But I should warn you, I may reek a bit of the sewer.

I'll take my chances.

You talked to Skinner yesterday?

Success in our work is imperative, Scully.

Reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable.

That came from Skinner?! No.

We have a friend in the FBI.

I thought you might be interested in the lab results on the biology of the fluke larva.

Dissection and analysis indicates...

..reproductive and physiological cross-traiting,...

..resulting in a sort of quasi-vertebrate human.

Human?

Yes, but still capable of spontaneous regeneration, like any fluke or flatworm.

How does that happen?

Radiation. Abnormal cell fusion.

The suppression of natural genetic processes.

Mulder, nature didn't make this thing. We did.

I know these.

These are from Chernobyl.

That creature came off of a decommissioned Russian freighter...

..that was used in the disposal of salvage material from the meltdown.

It was born in a... in a primordial soup of radioactive sewage.

You know, they say three species disappear off the planet every day.

You wonder how many new ones are being created.

I made this!