“Earthling” is episode six of season two of Fringe.
In Boston, a man gets a call from his wife. He’s telling her he’s in the airport lounge and his flight is about to leave. He’s lying; he’s actually at home making what looks like romantic preparations. The television comes on and he says his flight has been announced and ends the call. The man goes and turns the television off. Some lights go off. He turns them on. They go off again. He turns them on again. And a shadow in the form of a humanoid walks towards him. The wife comes home and finds her husband sitting in a chair. Unmoving and unresponsive. She touches him. And he turns to powder.
Broyles is in a restaurant when he gets a call.
Walter is picking through the powdered remains; it reminds him of Christmas when a log burns and remains intact. He doesn’t think there was a fire, though. Walter wants some way of getting the remains to his lab. He asks Peter to get him a Dust Devil. Broyles arrives; Olivia explains what they know. Broyles asks if the victim worked in a hospital. No; he was an investment banker. Had he visited a hospital in the last 24 hours? Olivia can check. This isn’t the first time Broyles has seen this.
Broyles takes Olivia and Peter to a storage unit where he keeps files. Four years ago in Washington, there were 5 deaths like this one; each had recently visited the same hospital. After the third, Broyles was contacted by an Eastern European man who knew things only the killer would. The man offered to turn himself in if they could decipher a formula. Peter says it’s a molecular model. It was implied that solving it would stop the murders. Broyles says they couldn’t solve it. Oliva got a call; the victim had visited his mother in hospital, Latchmere General.
At Latchmere General, the shadowy figure walks past one of the staff. Broyles and Olivia turn up at the hospital with a team to search the files for anyone from Eastern Europe.
Walter has the remains in his lab; Astrid beings him a Geiger counter. Walter says the formula is organic and highly radioactive. If it had anything to do with the man’s death, he expects the powdered remains to be highly radioactive. Except they aren’t. They have no radiation. Less than would be expected, not more. Olivia calls Peter; he tells her Walter thinks the formula is an organism. Walter wants a word and starts talking to Olivia. Then gets an idea and leaves her hanging.
At the hospital, Olivia says Broyles can go home. She asks why the killer called him; to taunt him? Broyles thinks not. It seemed the man was distraught and couldn’t control the killings and wanted them to end. Until today, Broyles thought they had.
In a ward in the hospital, the shadow enters a room. A fly lands on a patient in a bed in that room. She crumbles. A nurse screams when she sees. Olivia and Broyles see the staff running and follow. An agent tells them they have a name, Tomas Kosalov. Worked at the previous hospital, quit the week the murders stopped and didn’t show up to his shift today.
Olivia and Broyles head to Tomas’s apartment. It’s empty. Peter arrives; Olivia shows him some stuff. Soldering burns and electronic components. Broyles says the name is an alias. Peter says he’s still Russian; the components have Cyrillic writing. They also have a print.
Broyles is in his office when he’s told a Senator Van Horn wants to see him. In person. It seems that Van Horn is a former FBI agent and a friend. The CIA is taking the case from Broyles; the man is the suspect in an ongoing international investigation led by the Russian government. He illegally removed property belonging to the Russian Federation.
Tomas – real name Timur – is building something in a motel room. Something that requires a lot of batteries. Broyles tells Olivia that the CIA is taking over. He’s going to ignore them. Timur isn’t the one doing the killing, and really wants to stop them. But he can’t. Much of the focus of the episode is on Broyles.