Página PrincipalInternal dating: No date given. Presuambly October 1995, if internal dating more or less tracks episode order, although the dating of 2Shy rather messes up that theory.
Three weeks later, Mulder and Scully talk to Stans. He says the person who keeps saving his life looks like a soldier, though he can never see him clearly. This person spoke to him, saying "your time has come", then started taking away everything that made his life worth living - his wife and children who were burnt in a house fire. Scully writes a note to Mulder suggesting it's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but Mulder looks less certain.
Captain Janet Draper calls Mulder and Scully out, saying General Callahan wants them to suspend their investigation and hand it over to military channels. As Mulder watches admiringly, Scully firmly stands up to the captain, insisting that they get to speak to the General and refusing to suspend the investigation.
A room full of men in wheelchairs talk about their hopes and dreams, but one of the men, Leonard "Rappo" Trimble, sneers at them. He has no arms or legs, and is full of contempt for people who try to come to terms with such a condition. He's then wheeled out by an orderly, "Roach" Freely, who warns him the FBI are there.
General Callahan warns Mulder and Scully he has contacted the Justice Department about their "gross misconduct." He assures him this matter won't go unaddressed. "I would hope not," Scully says, saying that there are serious omissions in Colonel Stans's file, such as the death of his family in a house fire, which she's found out was never investigated. She's also found out about another soldier who also lost his family in a fire and then tried again and again to kill himself. The General insists there is nothing to investigate, all problems being caused by the unavoidable aftermath of war, but Scully says they'll investigate and reach their own conclusions.
Scully tells Mulder she thinks the case is clear. The General is protecting his men, she says, from being brought to justice for murdering their families, maybe because their behaviour is caused by Gulf War Syndrome, which has been disavowed. Mulder, however, thinks there is more to it than that, pointing out that a man as set on suicide as was Colonel Stans would not be likely to leave the door unlocked.
In his office, the General seems to see a figure of a soldier at the door, but then it is gone. An unintelligible message is repeated endlessly on his answering machine.
The captain goes for a swim but something looking rather like a human figure made of steam, pulls her under the water and she is drowned. When her body is found there are marks like fingerprints round her neck and shoulder. However, security saw no-one entering or leaving at the time. Mulder warns the General that he maybe in danger, and asks him if he's seen anything unusual. He tells them what happened in his office the previous night.
Roach, the orderly from the military hospital, sneaks into the General's house and steals some mail. While the General is playing the answering machine message to Mulder and Scully, Scully catches a glimpse of Roach in the garden, and they find footprints in the sand pit.
Roach gives Rappo the General's mail, saying this is the last time he dies it. Rappo tells him it's his fault he's in the wheelchair, and that he owes it to him, and to all the other soldiers that came home crippled. "The enemy must be defeated," he says, "and we're going to do it."
Colonel Stans is wheeled past and seems to recognise Rappo.
Fingerprints on the General's mailbox lead them to Roach, who is arrested. In his house they find letters addressed to the two soldiers who'd tired to kill themselves as well as to Captain Draper and the General.
The General's house is thoroughly guarded, but something rises out of the sand while the General's son is playing soldiers, and he is buried and killed.
Roach is interrogated and asked about his accomplice. He finally admits he's "Rappo's mailman," and Mulder and Scully rush off to see Rappo. Seeing that he's quadriplegic, Mulder looks thoughtful.
Rappo lies back on the bed, concentrating. His eyelids flutter.
Roach, in a cell, panics and begs to be let out. "He's going to kill me!" he shouts. When Mulder and Scully arrive to talk to him he's dead, suffocated by the bedsheet. Scully thinks he's killed himself, but Mulder thinks Rappo helped him to die. He shows her a dental X-ray kit he's been carrying around with him all day All of them have been exposed to some sort of radiation, which he attributes to astral projection, by which the astral body can leave the corporeal body and go wandering around by itself. He says that the astral body is sometimes invisible but sometimes appears as an apparition. In addition, it sometimes has psycho-kinetic capabilities. He theorises that Rappo used Roach only because he needed the letters as some sort of psychic connection with the victim. Scully says this is insane, but Mulder, somewhat cryptically, says, "sometimes the only sane approach to an insane world is insanity." He then plays the message that appeared on the General's answering machine, but this time he plays it backwards. "Your time has come, killer," it says.
Mulder and Scully visit Rappo to question him about Roach's death. "Serves him right," Rappo mutters, explaining that Roach is the one responsible for the loss of his arms and legs. Mulder tells Roach that they know he's refused all physical therapy and refused to be fitted with prosthetic limbs. Maybe this is because he doesn't need them, he suggests, because he can move around whenever he wants and thus kill people. He tells Rappo that he, as a soldier, should have known the risks when he enlisted and it's not right to go round blaming everyone else. "You don't know what it was like," Rappo says. "The thing is, you don't care, do you?.... Nobody knows what I feel. They took my life away." He then asks them to leave, saying he wants to sleep. "No sleepwalking," Mulder whispers.
The General's wife is grief-stricken by the loss of her son, and won't talk to her husband about it. Drinking whisky alone, he seems to see Rappo, all his limbs intact, in the mirror. There are bloody footsteps on the floor and he follows them, finding his wife's body. The phone rings but he ignores it, puling out his gun.
Mulder and Scully are driving to the General's house, intending to warn him to get out of the house. There is no answer when they phone him.
The General enters Colonel Stans' hospital room. "You were right, Victor," he says. "He won't let me die. He kills out wives and children, but won't let us die." He puts the gun to his head, but Stans stops him, saying he knows who it is who's doing this to them.
The General goes to see Rappo. "I've been waiting for you," Rappo says. He admits the killings, taunting the General to shoot him. The General is tempted but fires into the wall instead, saying Rappo can suffer like the rest of them. Mulder and Scully arrive just as the General is leaving Rappo's room. He hands the gun over to them and walks off. Rappo is unresponsive, his eyes flickering. Mulder assumes from this that he has left his body.
General Callahan watches in horror as his elevator goes to the sub-basement and stays there. There seems to be no-one there, but all the doors are locked and he can't get out. Suddenly steams starts bursting out of all the pipes and a man-like figure rushes through the steam at him, knocking him to the floor. Mulder rushes in, having chased the General to warn him. He too is thrown across the room by some force in the steam.
The nurses and Scully treat Rappo in his hospital room. When they go to get some equipment, Stans goes into the room, locks the door and suffocates Rappo.
In the basement, the steam figure knocking the general around suddenly disappears.
As we see Stans delivering mail to the general, Mulder writes his report, saying there is no official evidence on the case, which remains technically unsolved. Rappo's aim, he says, was the make everyone else suffer the same pain as he did. He talks about so-called phantom limbs, and wonders if Rappo developed some sort of phantom psyche. It was war that destroyed his body, he says, but his wounds went deeper than that. "What destroyed those parts of him that make us human beings - those better angels of our nature - I can not say."
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