“Midnight” is episode eighteen of season one of Fringe.
A man is getting ready to go out as there’s news on in the background about a gruesome murder, the body mutilated with what seems like a hunting knife. As he picks up a knife. He heads out and is then speaking to his girlfriend, who is out of town, claiming he’s going to a business dinner. Instead, he’s eying up young women as he heads into a nightclub. Inside (the Observer is seen inside; he doesn’t exactly blend), he starts chatting up a woman until her boyfriend comes over, then picks another on the dance floor. They head back to his. The assumption is probably that he is responsible for the murder. The assumption would be wrong. The woman snaps his neck, and is cleaning blood from her in the bathroom as the girlfriend is ringing. The woman has unusual, probably unnatural, blue eyes, and the man is now gruesomely mutilated.
Olivia and Rachel are talking to a couple who met through a matchmaking service. Though they have little in common. Which seems to be the point. Olivia doesn’t appear to get it. The door goes and Rachel answers it; when she returns, she tells Olivia quietly that Greg is filing for divorce. Olivia gets a call; work. The couple asks what sort of work she does.
At the scene, Charlie fills Olivia in. The victim matches the other gruesome murder. Walter is reminded of something by the body. Shrimp cocktail. Peter checks if Olivia is okay; she’s not as chipper as she normally is at a gruesome and bloody crime scene. Home stuff. Walter is looking at the severed spine. It’s fascinating. There are bite marks. They look to be human, but with a jaw strength in excess of a normal human. Peter suggests Dracula. Walter takes him seriously. But there are no vampires. Sadly.
Olivia briefs Broyles; it’s not a monster but definitely human. Broyles can remember when the suspect being human was a given, not an option. The suspect’s car is missing and Walter has both bodies at the lab. Olivia then asks about if Broyles was satisfied with his divorce attorney. She worked out he was divorced. Yes, except for the bill. She’d like the name and number. Broyles sends them to Olivia. He hopes things work out for her sister. Broyles pays attention too.
Walter is at the lab, examining the body and singing. Astrid recommends that Peter, when he finally meets a nice girl, avoids bringing her home for as long as possible. Some lab work Walter wanted is back; the body has been drained of spinal fluid. Also infected with the syphilis bacteria from the killer’s saliva. A strain that has been extinct for decades.
A representative of the CDC comes to see Olivia. The syphilis comes from a strain that was shipped out 4 weeks ago to an address in Brighton. Olivia thinks a phone call would have sufficed. He isn’t sure it would. Because the address is in a residential area, he ran all the requests made by the pharmaceutical company. This isn’t the first contagion they’ve ordered. Olivia decides Broyles needs to be shown.
Any reputable scientist with the appropriate credentials can procure samples of bacteria and viruses for research. One compound is used to make bioweapons. It was a component of the rapid skin growth toxin that killed Agent Kent in “Ability”. They end up explaining some of what they know about ZFT.
The address is moved on and they find a scientist, Nicholas Boone, there. He’s brought in and is asked how long he’s been a follower of ZFT. Boone explains that someone has been dosed. He can answer questions, tell them what they need to know. But they have to help him first. ZFT has his wife and Boone wants her back. He’s being punished; once Boone realised what his work was being used for, he tried to get out. He’ll tell them everything he knows. When his wife is back.
The wife hasn’t been at work in 3 weeks. Broyles and Charlie aren’t convinced, but Olivia thinks this is worth moving on, given the number of people who have died in Fringe cases. An agent says the address is a restaurant in Chinatown. But it’s been tagged for using five times the power it should.
Charlie and Olivia are heading there with a strike team when Rachel calls; Greg wants sole custody. Olivia reassures her; they’ll talk when they get home. She has to go to a meeting. Raid a restaurant. Boone’s wife isn’t there. He wants to speak to Olivia, because he knows that. The killer has been infected with a compound and he needs it to make the antidote. His wife is the one infected.
Boone is an unwilling participant in ZFT’s trials. And his wife is no longer acting in a predictable way. She needs spinal fluid to survive. And there’s a revelation, though perhaps not a surprising one.