The X-Files

- Home to America, Mr Potocki? - Not a moment too soon.

Poor bastard.

Here's 50 peso. Buy yourself some WD-40.

Oh, for cryin' out loud.

Listen, fella, I already gave.

Do you understand English?

Long flight, huh? Bombay to DC?

You know, I always wondered. Do they serve, like, Indian food on the plane?

If there's anything else I can do for you, sir...

- The things that land in your in-box, huh? - Good morning. I'm sorry I'm late.

I didn't see the case file yet. The traffic's terrible.

Takes longer to get crosstown than it does a plane ride from India.

Which is where our victim flew in from last night - Bombay.

- Who are we talking about? - Hugh Potocki.

Importer/exporter from Minneapolis. Laid over in DC.

All this blood drains from his body.

- Did the ME see it? The body? - Yeah.

Tox test ruled out haemorrhagic fever, Ebola, anything exotic.

Something killed this man, but it wasn't any foreign disease.

- No sign of forced entry? - No.

No one was seen 00min' or goin' from this room.

The maid found the body 20 minutes after a bellman left Mr Potocki. It happened fast.

So what you're saying is that nobody knows anything.

But then I guess that's why it's in your in-box.

So what do you think, Agent Scully? Haunted hotel room?

Alien invaders? Sloppy vampires?

There is one small thing. The cops missed it their first time around.

- A child's print. - Yeah. That's what it looks like.

There was a ring of thieves when I was back in New York.

They used kids for B and E jobs.

Squeezin' in through cracked windows, that kind of thing.

But this, this is beyond.

No. From what I see, Agent Doggett,

from the way this man died,

I doubt it was a kid who did this.

Thanks. I'm not ready to lose all my faith in humanity.

But regardless,

I'd say it's wise you keep an open mind.

The better the economy gets, the harder it is to fill these kinds of jobs.

And the problem is that people look at it as just a pay cheque.

They don't realise that, as Maintenance Engineer,

you are playing an important part in these kids' lives.

And I can't tell you how wonderful it is

to find someone as enthusiastic as you are, Mr Burrard.

And I understand you can start immediately?

That's wonderful.

- Big fella, isn't he? - Big is a relative term, Agent Doggett.

It took three strong men to wheel him in here.

He tipped the scale at 402 pounds.

Hugh Potocki was a big man with big appetites.

Loved big cars, big houses, big business.

Divorced twice. He carried two alimonies, one with child support.

Never missed a payment. In fact, he seems to have spoiled his wives and kids.

- I'm missing the point. - It seems he loved big women too.

Considering the evidence and motives,

we can probably rule out his ex-wives as suspects.

Well, considering what I found here today, I'd say I have to agree.

Tissue damage. Massive trauma to the lower intestine and the rectal wall.

Is that from something goin' in or 00min' out?

Unfortunately, there's so much damage that it's hard to tell.

I took MRls, which reveal further shredding throughout the abdomen

and into the stomach area.

India's a major transit point for the golden triangle.

This guy flew in and out of India a half-dozen times over the past 18 months.

Are you suggesting that he's a mule? A courier of heroin or opiates? A drug dealer?

Fills a latex balloon with heroin, swallows it. We've all seen this kind of thing before.

But what if somebody got to him en route,

forcibly extracted the drugs... tearin' it from his stomach?

I'd say that's a good theory, Agent Doggett. Not to mention a graphic one.

But there would have been traces left of drugs in his system.

Nor does it account for the blood loss that this man experienced.

Then we're right back where we started. Nobody knows anything.

Uh, not exactly.

I ran a decay analysis to determine the time of death.

Liver temperature, build-up of gases, extent of rigor - routine stuff.

It's not 100 per cent accurate, but it gives us a range.

- What's the range? - 24 to 36 hours.

Well, that's just wrong.

It would mean that Mr Potocki here would have died before he left Bombay.

No. It would mean that a dead man boarded a plane in India,

changed planes in Paris, hailed a cab at Dulles

and then checked into a downtown hotel and tipped the bellman.

In my experience, dead men don't tip, Agent Scully.

I told you to keep an open mind.

- Look what you did to my scooter. - It's mine!

- Yeah, right. - You gonna take it from me?

Hey!

Leave him alone.

What's goin' on here, Quinton?

I know you. Your name's Trevor?

You're in seventh grade, right? Got nothing better to do than pick on sixth graders?

- He ran into me. - Liar!

Enough.

You wanna be a bully? Find somebody your own age.

I'll talk to your father if I have to.

Come on, Quinton.

Yes. Thank you.

Sorry to wake you.

Good bye.

- Bad connection? - Consulate in New Delhi.

Three weeks ago an American businessman was found dead in his hotel room. Look.

A Mr Albert Brecht of Spokane. The reports were hard to piece together.

The medical records are in Hindi. The death certificate's in Farsi.

And the news accounts are in... I don't know, letters I've never seen before.

But I did get you a translation of Mr Brecht's autopsy results.

Internal trauma. Tearing in the abdomen.

You're the doctor. It sounds like the same MO, doesn't it, Agent Scully?

Look at this. Brecht's passport was a recent issue.

It has his weight at 205 pounds.

Whereas here, an Indian medical examiner

has him listed at 238 pounds just two hours after his death.

Well, if there's one thing people lie about, it's their weight.

That's a pretty big lie. I mean, that's a 33-pound discrepancy.

Well, he was a big man, that's for sure.

Yeah...

As was our DC victim.

All the better for accommodation.

Accommodation?

Well... something has to account for the weight gain, Agent Doggett.

What if whatever it is that killed these men...

entered and exited them of its own free will?

I mean, something small...

with small hands...

living inside the victims as a...

as a stowaway of sorts.

You know I agree that having an open mind is important to crime solving, but...

this theory of yours requires an openness that I'm... I'm just not comfortable with.

I understand, Agent Doggett.

And I can't prove it,

but I bet that if we had weighed Hugh Potocki when he first arrived here from Bombay,

that he would have been 33 pounds heavier than his corpse.

It's a theory, Agent Scully, but to my mind - and pretty much the rest of me -

it... doesn't work.

I appreciate your resistance.

But so far this evidence supports it.

Except one thing.

Even if there was something living inside of Hugh Potocki when he arrived from Bombay,

you said that Mr Potocki was already dead.

Uh, Dad.

Dad? Dad! Dad! Dad!

- Quint, what is it? - There's a man in here.

What?

- What are you talking about? - He was here, Dad. Right over there.

- He had no legs! - Quinton...

Quinton, listen to me.

Things that you imagine, things that you dream, they're not real.

- And what's not real can't hurt you. - But, Dad, it was real. It was.

Quint, there's nobody here.

Try to get some sleep. OK?

Dad?

Dad?

The first dead body I saw, I was 19 and a marine.

This boy... Criminy.

Yeah.

- That's not all he claims he saw. - That's what the cops told me.

That's why I thought we should come down here.

He said he called his dad in because there was something in his room.

I asked him to describe it. He said that it was a munchkin.

That it had no legs.

And that it was keeping itself up with its arms.

That's a pretty good trick, considering what I just found upstairs.

Palm prints in the boy's bedroom. They match the ones we found in Potocki's room.

And that's the good news. It just doesn't serve your theory.

Because this thing didn't get in here in anybody's body.

- It came in through the bedroom window. - How can you be sure?

There was another print on the sill outside the locked window.

Somebody must have closed it after it got in.

Right. Which is exactly what the boy said that his father did.

But it's the father that I have a problem with here.

He had none of the massive haemorrhaging that we found in Mr Potocki.

The coroner's initial report makes it sound like the guy died of a cerebral embolism.

The one salient detail in the external exam are the eyes,

in which all of the blood vessels are broken.

Unless that's just the first stage.

This is Special Agent Dana Scully.

I am a medical doctor about to perform an unauthorised procedure on a body.

The subject is a Caucasian male.

Age... I don't remember at this particular time.

His height is about six feet.

And his weight is...

quite possibly subject to change.

I suppose distension could be due to decomposition gases...

but that seems unlikely.

Reliability is one of the most important parts of your job.

We were very worried when you didn't show up this morning.

They're called fakir, ascetic masters bound to acts of self-torture to attain enlightenment.

We shot this video when I was travellin' through India in the '70s.

Oh, man, look at my hair back then.

Agent Mulder consulted with Dr Burks on occasion.

I admit that I've been sceptical of him in the past,

but he does have certain insights.

Well, we could use some insights.

Uh, well, I'm embarrassed to admit,

but I'm not sure I know what the heck's goin' on here.

These ascetic masters... they have abilities?

Absolutely. And abilities similar to those you told me about on the phone