“Sleepless” is episode four of season two of The X-Files.
The episode opens in New York at night and a man is asleep on his couch in his apartment. He wakes, smelling something, and sees smoke coming under the apartment’s door. When he opens it, the corridor outside is aflame. He calls 911 and tells the operator he’s trapped by a fire outside his apartment. He gets an extinguisher and tries to put out the fire, but to no avail. The building’s fire alarm is going off and residents are being evacuated as firemen head upstairs. One of the people heading out briefly glances up. The firemen arrive outside the apartment, which is distinctly not in flames, and confirm with the operator that they are in the right place. They are. The door is broken down and, inside, the apartment is untouched by fire. The man, Dr Grissom, is dead, however.
Mulder opens his apartment door and picks up his paper. As he brings it in, a cassette falls out of it. The doctor’s death is ringed in the paper itself, and the cassette is the 911 call. Mulder plays it to AD Skinner, pointing out that the article makes no mention of fire. Skinner can read. Grissom’s company does a lot of government contracts, which brings the investigation into the jurisdiction of the FBI. Skinner does not believe that is why Mulder wants the assignment. Mulder thinks the circumstances warrant further investigation. He called the NYPD, but they won’t even talk to him unless the attorney general signs off on it. Skinner will look into it further. Meanwhile, Mulder has wiretap tapes to transcribe.
Mulder is doing this as another agent is watching. The man approaches; Skinner approved Mulder’s 302. Mulder notices another agent is assigned. Yes; Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea). That’s him. He opened the file two hours before Mulder filed the request. Technically, it’s Krycek’s case. Krycek has already spoken to the NYPD. There was an empty fire extinguisher covered in Grissom’s fingerprints at the scene and the walls and floor were covered with the contents. Yet there was no trace of fire. Krycek isn’t giving up the case, so Mulder tells him to requisition a car.
Then contacts Scully using the ‘George Hale’ alias he used in “Little Green Men”. Mulder wonders if Scully would like to join him for an autopsy; he’s getting a shuttle from National Airport. She has classes, so Mulder says he will wrap the body to go.
Having dumped Krycek, Mulder arrives by taxi at Grissom Sleep Disorder Centre in Stamford, Connecticut. Grissom’s work is explained, as is something being used to treat a patient. Which could, in theory, be used to alter someone’s dreams. Outside, Mulder’s taxi has gone and been replaced by an irritated Krycek. Who says he believes in Mulder’s work. Scully contacts Mulder; he needs to come and see the autopsy. Krycek is definitely coming with. According to Scully, when they arrive, Grissom’s body bears all the secondary but none of the primary physiological responses to being in a fire. Responses that only happen in high heat. Almost as if Grissom’s body believed he was burning. He seems to have burned to death without a fire.
A man with a scar on the back of his neck is watching television in a cheap flat in Brooklyn when a man enters. The one from the stairwell in Grissom’s building. The first man calls him Preacher (Tony Todd). Preacher asks the first, Willig, how he is doing. Trying to forget. Not very well. He keeps seeing their faces every day. They are all going to hell. Although they may have already been there for the past 24 years. Willig knows Preacher killed Grissom. He had to pay, as do they all. Willig sees people standing, all dead, then they draw guns. He accepts his fate as the guns open fire.
Krycek brings the case of Henry Willig to Mulder. A friend from Homicide called him because the ME called the friend. Willig had 43 small internal haemorrhages and skeletal fragments, which wouldn’t happen without external trauma. They appeared to be gunshot wounds, but without the actual holes in the skin. Willig was a Marine who served in Vietnam, and all Marines on the East Coast train at Parris Island. Dr Grissom was there at the same time. Only one person out of Willig’s squad is still alive, Augustus D. Cole.
Cole is at a VA medical centre in North Orange, New Jersey. He’s been there 12 years. Cole is separated because he was interfering with the treatment of the other patients; sleep is very important to them. The doctor doesn’t answer when asked how Cole disrupted the sleep. However, Cole is not in his room. The doctor discharged him two days ago. He has no memory of doing such. Cole is Preacher.
Mulder is contacted by the mystery man who contacted him in “The Host”, wanting to meet. He has data on a top-secret military project, to eradicate sleep. To build a better soldier. It worked; sort of. Cole’s squad killed over 4,000 people, a huge number. They also went off the rails. Cole hasn’t slept in 24 years. There’s another survivor. The man references someone they both knew – Deep Throat – who paid for what he did with his life, in “The Erlenmeyer Flask” He doesn’t want to go the same way.
So, Mulder is after a man who appears to have the ability to manipulate what people see, and make them see things that kill them. And there are more plots ongoing.