“Patient X” is episode thirteen of season five of The X-Files.
Mulder is talking about the stars before space travel, how the heavens were the location of the gods, as a light settles behind some mountains at night as two youths watch. One asks the other if he thinks the others have seen, though not in English, as they are in Kazakhstan. They head to tell the rest and smell fire. There are many cars in flames, presumably the others of which they spoke, as they are calling names. They see a man on fire stumble out and flee. One is grabbed by someone with their eyes, noses, mouth and ears sewn shut. The other hears him scream.
The next day, UN vehicles approach the site of the smoking cars, led it appears by Marita Covarrubias. The survivor from last night is watching, but he is caught by soldiers led by Krycek. Krycek asks his name – Dmitri – and if he saw what happened. He did. Unfortunate it seems. The UN soldiers are examining the remains when Krycek approaches with his soldiers. He tells them that the UN’s authority isn’t recognised. He also says he knows who Covarrubias is working for and to tell them to go to hell.
Mulder is on a panel at the visiting lecturers forum at the Massachusetts Institute. They have been shown an alien abduction video by someone referred to as Patient X. The others on the panel are convinced there are aliens. Mulder, after “Redux II”, no longer agrees. He questions the mindless belief; there is no military complicity, because there is no complicity, just the military testing weapons.
Mulder is leaving when he recognises someone, a Dr Werber. Werber is surprised that Mulder has abandoned something he believed so completely, the memories he helped Mulder recover. Mulder now distrusts those memories. Werber is Patient X’s doctor, and wants Mulder to meet her.
At the Tunguska Gulag, Krycek has interrogated Dmitri. He knows everything Dmitri knows now, and tells a doctor to begin. The doctor says they only experiment on criminals, and Dmitri is just a boy. Krycek convinces him to continue, bribes a guard to leave then swipes a vial of something.
Patient X’s name is Cassandra, and she tells Mulder he’s a hero of hers, after how he helped Duane Barr. The story saved her life. She’s a multiple abductee and was afraid to seek help, until she read of Mulder. Cassandra claims there is war amongst the alien nations, and she has been summoned, just like Duane Barry. Mulder reminds her Duane Barry died. Mulder might once have believed, but no more. Cassandra tells him something has gone wrong, there are other forces at work. Mulder isn’t interested.
Dmitri has been treated with the black oil. Someone arrives at the gulag and isn’t happy to hear what’s going on. Dmitri isn’t in his cell, though; only the doctor, who has been hung. Krycek is on a ship leaving Vladivostok. Dmitri is with him, but his facial orifices have been sewn shut.
At the FBI, Scully is approached by an agent Jeffrey Spender. He’s been trying to contact Mulder, and has reached out to Scully. Mulder is talking to an alien abductee, who Spender would prefer he wasn’t talking to. Because Cassandra is his mother and she’s a very disturbed woman. Spender would prefer this matter didn’t get out.
Covarrubias is reporting what she found in Kazakhstan; 41 corpses, all burned beyond recognition by an intense biochemical reaction. The corpses had been literally carbonised. They found at least two with implants. They may well all have been abductees. The group is disturbed by this; this is far ahead of the timetable.
Mulder no longer believes and has no problem with the idea of leaving Cassandra alone. Even a similar mass death to the one in Kazakhstan, and at a very familiar place, doesn’t interest him. Scully, however, is now the one who may believe, meaning she is more willing to listen. The story continues in the next episode, “The Red and the Black”.