“The Breed” is episode three of season three of Mutant X.
A man wearing a lab coat and holding a gun is in a corridor. He hears a roar and a scream and opens a door as a shadow passes elsewhere. There are bodies on the floor and one, whose face is blotchy, grabs the man by an ankle. The lab coated man shoots him and runs, trying and failing to get someone to open a door for him. He manages to get through a locked security grate and door; what’s been making the noise looks to be people.
An alarm is going off at Sanctuary with a computer reporting an incoming communication. Brennan and Shalimar ask what is making the racket and can they kill it. Jesse says it’s an emergency alarm on Adam’s private frequency. The lab coated man is on a video call and tells Adam he was right, he shouldn’t have got involved, the project is out of control. The video call is one way. The man says something is happening on the base, showing people’s arms reaching through the security gate, and that he needs help. Then the feed is cut off.
The man, according to Jesse, is Dr Vincent Arrigo. An ex-Genomex alumni and, when Genomex folded, Adam arranged for Arrigo to get a place at the army’s biomedical research division. The base does gene-based research; Jesse can’t find out what. Lexa tells him germ warfare, according to her contacts, a new form of weaponised plague. The base has gone dark and the army won’t call in outside help, because then they’d have to admit responsibility.
All four head out on the Double Helix. There is a military presence around the base and it’s been circled by an energy fence; high tech quarantine, according to Lexa. They can’t land inside the fence. Jesse turns off the stealth so that the military doesn’t react badly, and are hailed and told to land or be considered hostile. Shalimar tells Lexa that if she’s got any military pull, now is the time to use it.
The officer in charge, Klein, doesn’t want to help. But Lexa gets a call and gives him her phone; Klein has been ordered to cooperate. He tells them the infection is not airborne; it needs to enter through broken skin. They can go in, but not out. Jesse is nominated to stay behind and link to Sanctuary, to see if he can find a way to bring the fence down if needed.
One section of the fence is taken down, then put back up after the other three enter. Inside, there are bodies, damaged vehicles, smoke and fire. Shalimar can smell rotting infected flesh. Which makes the infected sound like zombies. An uninfected soldier runs towards them, pursued by infected. The infected attack but the three take them down, grab the soldier and run.
Outside, Jesse asks about the fence’s power and wants to take a look at the specs. They’re classified. He tells Klein that his team has unique resources. Those are classified.
Brennan gets them into a building and inside there are more bodies. Shalimar says there are probably as many infected inside as out. And they’re onto them; they probably smell people who aren’t infected. They manage to get to Arrigo’s lab and he lets them in.
Arrigo explains he was working on behavioural shadowing, where parasites control their hosts. Only proven to happen in lower species, but the directive was to create a parasite that would influence human behaviour to gain control over an enemy force. It worked. The parasite got out when his assistant accidentally infected herself before Arrigo could create a cure. The soldier, Peter, collapses. He’s been infected. Arrigo ties him down and Peter agrees it’s a good idea. In fact, they should kill him. Peter was hiding with some others at the base hospital when a woman went into diabetic shock and he volunteered to get medication.
Brennan and Shalimar head out and Lexa remains behind. Arrigo was working on a treatment when the army shut down the main computer system. Lexa tells him that he should continue and that Peter is his patient. Jesse tells Lexa the fence is solid and she explains the situation. He will link Arrigo to Sanctuary’s computers so he can continue researching a cure.
With an infection running wild it’s only a matter of time before one of Mutant X gets infected. How the whole thing started may be different to how it’s been stated and the military are going to sterilise the whole base rather soon.