BRISENTINE: Assistant Director Skinner made the request.

MULDER: Skinner requested me?

MULDER: Any I.D.?

NORMAN: No. Not much to go on either. Front side of the body is pretty much eaten away. Would you like us to turn him over for you?

MULDER: No, I'll take your word on that.

NORMAN: Hey, Agent Mulder. What would you like us to do with the body?

MULDER: Wrap it up and send it to the F.B.I., care of Assistant Director Skinner.

MULDER: You know, sometimes, it just gets really hard to smile through it when they ask you to bend down and grab your ankles. You know?

SCULLY: It's not exactly as if you've ever tried to fit into the program.

MULDER: They don't want us working together, Scully... and right now, that's the only reason I can think of to stay.

SCULLY: Where's the body?

MULDER: They transferred it to our forensics lab. Look, Scully, I know what you're trying to do.

SCULLY: Maybe I can request to do the autopsy.

MULDER: It's an exercise. Skinner is just rubbing my nose in this one. There's nothing to it.

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

MULDER: Any idea what attacked you?

WORKMAN #1: Yeah, I've been thinking it might have been a python.

MULDER: A python?

WORKMAN #1: Yeah, or a boa constrictor. Somebody probably flushed a pet snake down the toilet. I found an alligator in the sewer a couple of years ago.

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

MULDER: This was living inside the body?

SCULLY: Apparently, it had attached itself to the bile duct and was feeding off the liver.

MULDER: Lovely.

SCULLY: Believe it or not, something like forty million people are infected worldwide.

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

SCULLY: Well, maybe you'd rather hear what you can catch from a nice, rare steak.

MULDER: So, what, the murder weapon was a top sirloin?

SCULLY: Flatworms are what are known as obligate endoparasites. They live inside the host, entering the body through the ingestion of larvae or eggs. They are not creatures that go around attacking people.

MULDER: Well, that's good. I didn't want to have to tell Skinner that his murder suspect was a giant, blood-sucking worm.

MULDER: Have you ever seen one of these?

FOREMAN: Looks like a big, old worm.

MULDER: It's called a fluke. It came from the body they pulled out of the sewer.

FOREMAN: Wouldn't surprise me. No telling what's been breeding down there in the last hundred years.

SCULLY: Platyhelminthis are often hermaphroditic. Mulder, this is amazing. It's vestigial features appear to be parasitic, but it has primate physiology. Where the hell did it come from?

MULDER: I don't know, but it looks like I'm going to have to tell Skinner that his suspect is a giant, blood-sucking worm after all.

SKINNER: The justice department has asked that the suspect be transferred to an institution for a full psychiatric evaluation.

MULDER: This is not a man. It's a monster. You can't put it in an institution.

SKINNER: Then what do you do with it, Agent Mulder, put it in a zoo? It killed two people.

MULDER: You know, you had a pair of agents that could have handled a case like this. Agent Scully and I might have been able to save that man's life, but you shut us down.

SKINNER: I know. This should have been an X-File. We all take our orders from someone, Agent Mulder.

X: Mister Mulder, I will make this brief. Success in your current assignment is imperative.

MULDER: Who am I speaking to?

X: Are you hearing me, Mister Mulder?

MULDER: Yes. Why is it imperative?

X: Reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable.

SCULLY: It hadn't occurred to me, but I think that the fluke in the corpse might have been an incubating larva. This... creature, or whatever it is... Is transmitting its eggs or larvae through its bite.

MULDER: You mean it's trying to reproduce?

SCULLY: It's looking for hosts. It attacks because the victims' bodies provide generative nourishment. Mulder...

MULDER: Yeah...

SCULLY: If it finds a new host...

MULDER: I know, Scully. It could multiply.

SCULLY: 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 quasi-vertebrate human.

MULDER: Human?

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

MULDER: How does that happen?

SCULLY: Radiation. Abnormal cell fusion. The suppression of natural genetic processes. Mulder, nature didn't make this thing. We did.

MULDER: I know these. These are from Chernobyl.

SCULLY: 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.

MULDER: You know, they say three species disappear off the planet every day. You wonder how many new ones are being created.