Production Code: #9ABX13 Original Air Date: 03/17/02 Written by Steven Maeda Directed by Kim Manners
DOGGETT AND SCULLY LOOK FOR ANSWERS THAT WILL SAVE REYES’ LIFE AFTER SHE IS INJURED IN A HORRIBLE CAR ACCIDENT. YET REYES IS ALSO FIGHTING TO STAY ALIVE IN THE NETHERWORLD BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.
Reyes drops Doggett off after work, and he laments that he is thinking about getting a cat to subsidize his lonely existence. “You are a dog person, John,” she laughs. There is an awkward moment between them, but Doggett gets out of the car and goes into his house. Reyes pulls away and her car is suddenly hit in a crash. She is rushed to the hospital where she is examined by the trauma team. When Dr. Preijers flashes his penlight in her eyes, Reyes wakes up. Yet she is in another hospital’s emergency room and she is all alone. There are no doctors around, and this doppel hospital seems abandoned and quiet. Although there is one trickle of blood on her forehead, Reyes is otherwise fine. She walks to the entrance of the ER and stops short. The hospital building is floating in a dark void of nothingness.
Reyes goes back inside and wipes the blood from her forehead. Stephen Murdoch, a patient who doesn’t know why he too is in this doppel hospital, greets her and introduces her to another patient, Mr. Barreiro. Both Murdoch and Barreiro are convinced that they are dead, but Reyes doesn’t believe it. She roams the doppel hospital, realizing that there are no signs on any of the walls and that all of the paperwork on the charts is written in gibberish. Murdoch tells her that he has gotten used to this fact, figuring that he is in some kind of in−between state on his way to Heaven. Reyes wonders if maybe she is merely hallucinating. She again goes to the door of the hospital and drops a coffee mug
into the void. It is caught in a flash of electricity and vanishes.
At the regular hospital, Reyes lies in a coma− state attached to ventilators. Her heart still beats. Doggett does not want to accept that Reyes is brain dead. Dr. Preijers states that Reyes signed an organ donor card, but Doggett refuses to let her go just yet.
Reyes sees a woman in the doppel hospital. The woman runs away and disappears into a blank wall. Suddenly, Barreiro’s body is overcome with electrical sparks. He fades away, just like Reyes’ coffee mug. Reyes explains to Murdoch that she believes that they are not really dead. Whatever happened to Barreiro caused him to die. Meanwhile, in the regular hospital, Dr. Preijers shuts off the life support unit keeping the real body of Mr. Barreiro alive. The doctor apologizes to Barreiro’s family, as the mystery woman in the doppel hospital watches. She is a patient’s aide by the name of Audrey Pauley, and she goes about her rounds delivering flowers.
Doggett begs Scully for help in buying time for Reyes. He points out on Reyes’ EEG chart that she had brain activity up until one distinct point. Doggett is determined to find out what happened. He questions Dr. Preijers whether there was a change in Reyes’ condition at that time. Preijers gives Doggett Reyes’ chart. Doggett goes to Reyes’ room and finds Audrey Pauley there. She comfortingly tells him that Reyes’ soul is not gone. He says that he wishes he could talk to her. Audrey then goes down to the hospital basement to her own private room. There’s a small−scale model of the hospital there. She peers inside the model and concentrates. In the doppel hospital, Reyes and Murdoch are trying to open all the locked doors when Reyes sees Audrey. She begs her not to run away again. Reyes asks Audrey to show them the way out, but Audrey tells them that she can’t. Audrey informs Reyes that her friend loves her very much. Reyes gives Audrey a message for Doggett: “Tell him he’s a dog person.” Audrey rounds a corner and disappears.
Back at the hospital, Nurse Edwards helpfully tells Dr. Preijers that he neglected to put an injection on Reyes’ notes before handing them over to Doggett. Preijers asks if anyone else noticed, and then lunges at her. He stabs her with a needle in the neck. The nurse falls to the ground.
Doggett sadly remembers his last conversation with Reyes about pets. Yet he imagines that this time, he kisses her. He is snapped back to reality by the commotion in the hospital. Nurse Edwards has been found dead. Doggett tells Scully that this nurse worked on Reyes, and perhaps foul play is involved. He has her autopsy Edwards’ body for signs of murder. Scully suggests that he not believe this will bring Reyes back to life. Audrey delivers Reyes’ message to Doggett, explaining that she is “not
gone.” She takes him to her room and shows him her model hospital, explaining that she made it so that she can enter it in her head. She used to have it all to herself, until hospital patients showed up – including Reyes. Doggett asks her for the names of the other patients inside.
Reyes theorizes that the doppel hospital resembles a movie set, created by someone who didn’t get it quite right. Suddenly, Murdoch falls to the floor. His body begins to crackle with electricity. In the real world, Dr. Preijers has clicked off Murdoch’s life support system. Doggett hands Scully the charts of Barreiro and Murdoch, who had both been declared brain dead by Dr. Preijers. Doggett is convinced that Preijers injected them and Reyes with something to cause their bodies to shut down. Although Barreiro has passed, they can still save Murdoch and Reyes. Yet Doggett and Scully find that Murdoch is already dead. Doggett goes to Audrey’s room and begs for her help. He asks her to go back into her model and explain the situation to Reyes. Doggett breaks down in tears, saying that he needs Reyes to fight and prove that she’s still alive. Dr. Preijers secretly watches as Doggett leaves Audrey’s room.
Audrey goes into the doppel hospital and warns Reyes. She is upset because she can’t help Reyes escape. Yet Reyes realizes that Audery is dyslexic, and that the doppel hospital and all its gibberish charts are her creation. She convinces Audrey that since it is her hospital, she can make the rules work any way she wants. Audrey disappears, and returns to her real room. Dr. Preijers is there, holding a needle. He blames her for what he’s being accused of. In the doppel hospital, Reyes sees the walls warble and finds that Audrey has returned. Audrey leads her to the front door and tells Reyes to jump into the abyss. Although Reyes is afraid she will die, Audrey assures her that she will be safe. Audrey serenely says that she now knows who told her to build the fake hospital. With a leap of faith, Reyes falls into the void. Audrey evaporates along with the doppel hospital.
In Reyes’s hospital room, Scully tells Doggett that the transplant teams are in place. Doggett still refuses to let them take Reyes. Scully wants him to convince her and the doctors that Reyes is still alive. Suddenly, Reyes awakes and says, “Audrey.” Doggett rushes to the basement and grabs Preijers. He is saddened to see Audrey dead on the floor.
Three days later, Doggett drives Reyes home from the hospital. They say goodnight to each other, and Reyes goes into her apartment, alone.
Underneath
Production Code: #9ABX09 Original Air Date: 03/31/02
WHEN A CASE FROM HIS PAST IS RE−OPENED, DOGGETT HOLDS STEADFAST TO HIS INITIAL CONCLUSIONS, WHICH PUTS HIM AT ODDS WITH SCULLY AND REYES’ THEORIES.
Flashback to 1989: On a rainy night, a Triboro Cable repairman named Bob Fassl pulls up to a house in Brooklyn, New York. A male voice from the back of the van tells him to “do his job.” After kissing his rosary, Fassl timidly goes to the front door and tells the teenage girl of the house that he her cable is out. Believing that her father may have called the cable company, she lets the man in. The father questions whether Fassl made a mistake, and he asks to see the work order. Yet when Fassl looks down at his empty work order, a spray of dark red blood splatters onto the paper. The father is suddenly lying on the ground, dead. A bloody screwdriver is in his neck. Fassl is horrified to see that both the mother and daughter are also lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor. The front door immediately opens and two NYPD cops burst through and apprehend him. One of the policemen is Doggett.
In present day, Doggett is furious to learn that, after thirteen years, DNA tests cleared Fassl of being the “screwdriver killer” who had murdered seven people. Doggett is insistent that he caught the right man. Although Scully has verified the DNA tests, Doggett still wants answers to back up his police work. He asks both Scully and Reyes for their help. Fassl, meanwhile, is released from Sing Sing Prison in New York. The world around him seems to blur when he sees a scraggly bearded man near the courthouse. Fassl becomes disoriented, and the man mysteriously disappears.
In New York, Scully and Doggett convince Damon Kaylor, the Assistant District Attorney, to hand over his case files. Kaylor reluctantly agrees, and Doggett and Scully pore through the numerous boxes of evidence. Doggett summons his old partner, Duke Tomasick, to meet him at the Brooklyn courthouse. Unlike Doggett, Duke accepts the DNA test’s acquittal of Fassl.
Fassl’s lawyer, Jana Fain, brings Fassl to stay at her house. That night, as he prays silently with his rosary beads, blood appears on his hands. The words “Kill Her” have been scrawled in blood on the wall. He is terrified. Fain then catches Fassl praying, and leaves him in his solemnity. Suddenly, Fassl sees the bearded man in his room. He begs the man not to hurt Fain, but the bearded man slaps Fassl across the face. The man follows Fain. A screwdriver is in his hand. The next morning, Fain confronts Fassl because, when she left to see another client, her dresser drawers had been rifled through. Fassl is relieved that she is still alive. When Fain goes to work, Fassl finds her maid’s body stuffed into a dumbwaiter chute. Fassl removes the body and cleans the blood. He chops up the woman’s remains and places them in a plastic tarp.
Reyes meets with the Sing Sing superintendent, and he informs her that Fassl’s cellmate had also been murdered with evidence pointing to Fassl. The security camera caught the murderer on tape, but instead of Fassl it was a bearded man. This man did not fit the description of any prisoner, so the case was never solved. The superintendent, however, believes that Fassl had something to do with this killing. Scully, meanwhile, finds that the hair samples found at the scene of the crime do not exactly match Fassl, but to someone who is his blood relative. Yet Fassl is an only child whose parents are dead. Kaylor is furious at Doggett for ordering a re− test on Fassl’s DNA. Kaylor gets a settlement for Fassl from the county and retrieves his case files from Doggett. Reyes shows Doggett and Scully the picture of the bearded man from the Sing Sing file. The man has no identity, but he materialized in a federal prison and then disappeared. Reyes is convinced that this bearded man is responsible for all the murders attributed to Fassl. They can prove it by comparing the evidence from the Sing Sing murder to the ones in 1989. Yet Scully reveals that the 1989 DNA evidence needs to be thrown out. It had been planted to convict Bob Fassl. Doggett confronts Duke, who admits to framing Fassl in their initial investigation. Duke is troubled that he helped put an innocent man behind bars.
Damon Kaylor comes to Fain’s house to tell Fassl about the settlement, but Fassl asks to be sent back to prison. The bearded man appears, and stabs Kaylor with a screwdriver. Fassl dismembers Kaylor, wraps the body parts in a tarp and hides the remains in an underground sewer tunnel. The next day, Reyes questions Fassl about Kaylor. Fain interjects that her client had nothing to do with the Assistant District Attorney’s disappearance. Reyes shows Fassl the photograph of the bearded man, and Fassl begins frantically praying with his rosary beads. Scully tries to appeal to his faith, asking Fassl to tell them about the bearded man in the photo. Fassl begins to cry, and Fain quickly ushers him out of the room. Reyes suggests to Scully and Doggett that perhaps Fassl is such a devout Catholic that he can’t even admit that he has a sinful side. That other side of him may have manifested itself into a whole different personality that has its own physical traits. This might explain the DNA profiles not matching perfectly. Back at Fain’s house, the bearded man beats up Fassl in an attempt to have him kill Fain. When Fain enters the room, the bearded man is gone. She turns around, and the bearded man appears. She gasps in fear.
Doggett and Reyes sit outside Fain’s house in surveillance. He sees the bearded man leaving through the front door and chases him to the backyard. Fain tells Reyes that somehow Fassl disappeared and the bearded man was there. Doggett comes upon a manhole cover used for cable access, and he and Reyes descend into the
underground tunnel. Suddenly, the bearded man appears and strikes Reyes to the ground. Doggett fires as the man runs off. Doggett and Reyes follow him, but separate at a fork in the tunnel. Reyes falls through a grate and lands in a culvert filled with water. With her flashlight, she spots the head of Damon Kaylor. She also sees the skulls and bones of well more than the seven victims known about. Reyes calls out for Doggett. When he turns around, Doggett is stabbed in the shoulder by a screwdriver. Doggett drops his gun. Reyes rushes up and finds the bearded man holding a screwdriver at Doggett’s neck. She tells the bearded man that she knows that he is Fassl, and that Fassl is a murderer and a sinner. The bearded man tells Reyes to shut up, and Doggett escapes his grasp. Reyes fires a shot at the bearded man, who falls into the water. Doggett turns over the body – it is Bob Fassl.
Scully informs Fain that the maid, Kaylor and many other bodies were found in the sewer. Fain can’t understand why she saw a bearded man. Doggett tells Reyes that he can not accept everything that has surfaced with the Fassl case because it’s not the way his mind works. Reyes says that what he believed was enough to close the case. “What happens next time?” Doggett asks.
Improbable
Production Code: #9ABX14 Original Air Date: 04/07/02
Written and Directed by Chris Carter
THE AGENTS RELY ON NUMEROLOGY, THEIR POWERS OF DEDUCTION AND A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER TO HELP CATCH A SERIAL KILLER.
At a casino, a dealer shuffles a deck for a group of hard−core gamblers. One of the gamblers with a prison−style tattoo on his hand, Mad Wayne, reaches for his hand and folds angrily. He gets up from the table and walks through the casino, approaching a woman at a slot machine. Mad Wayne only stares at her and moves off. Watching from across the room is Mr. Burt, playing solitaire at the bar. Mr. Burt nonchalantly says to the bartender, “Seven seven, pack of Morleys.” Mad Wayne sits next to him at the bar and orders exactly what Mr. Burt predicted. Mr. Burt strikes up a conversation parceled with gambling odds and motions to the woman at the slot machine. When she heads for the ladies room, Wayne gets off the barstool to follow her. Mr. Burt stops him, indirectly cautioning him to not do what he’s intending to do, but Wayne ignores this and goes to her. A casino patron screams that a woman has been murdered in the bathroom. Mr. Burt doesn’t even flinch at the turn of events. He flips another card in his solitaire game to reveal the Ace of spades – the death card.
Agent Reyes reads a newspaper article about the casino murder in the X−Files office. She is staring at some case files and rambling numbers when Scully enters. Reyes shows Scully a photo of a murdered woman and lists the woman’s birthdate. Then she does the same for two other similar cases, informing Scully that the victims all had significant karmic numbers. Scully dismisses numerology as child’s play, but she sees a connection in the photos – all the women had the same mark on their bodies. It could be from the killer’s ring.
Mad Wayne gets dressed in his dark apartment, putting on a large ring with a devil’s face. He sees out of his window that Mr. Burt is on the street working a three−card Monte scam. Mr. Burt smiles and nods at Wayne, lip−synching to music. The other people on the street are clustered in threes, moving to the beat of the music in an accidental symphony. Wayne threatens Mr. Burt to stop following him, but Mr. Burt is confident that it doesn’t fit Wayne’s “pattern.” When Mr. Burt implores Wayne to “choose better,” Wayne becomes agitated and turns over the card table.
Reyes visits with a numerologist named Vicki Burdick who resides in a hotel suite numbered 33. Although reluctant to get involved, Burdick agrees to help when Reyes shows her photos of the murdered women. Reyes gets a call from Doggett with news that two more victims surfaced with the distinctive ring marks. She meets him and Scully at the FBI’s behavioral science office, where Special Agent Fordyce briefs his task force. After three murders in 1999 and the three current ones, they have determined that the killer is working in patterns. Yet they don’t know how he chooses his victims, why he kills and if he’ll kill again or disappear like he did