“Soft Light” is episode twenty-three of season two of The X-Files.
At the George Mason Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, a man is settling in for the night. Another man wearing a jacket with a logo comes out of the lift and is looking for a room. He knocks on a door, opposite to the first man, and is telling someone called Morris that he needs to talk to them. In the first man’s room, the lights flicker. The man from the lift is continually knocking with no answer, saying that Gail is dead and it’s his fault. The first man goes over to the door to check on the noise and looks through the peephole. The man from the lift steps back and his shadow goes under the hotel door. There are lights from under the door and all that’s left of the first man is ash which flickers blue before dying out. The second man turns the lightbulb then runs off panicking.
Mulder and Scully arrive at the hotel. There have been two apparent abductions in the last month, then another last night. Richmond PD has hit a brick wall and Kelly Ryan, a student of Scully’s from when she was teaching at the academy, was recently bumped to detective and asked for help.
The dead man, Patrick Newirth, was a tobacco executive in town and he was supposed to be up for a meeting. Security waited three hours then broke into the room. It was locked from the inside and they’re six floors up with no fire escape. Scully checks the vent; Ryan asks if she really thinks someone could squeeze through there (yes; Eugene Victor Tooms). All that was left was the burn mark. Similar were left at the other scenes. The ash has been tested already and Mulder comments that it could be the residue from burnt human flesh. He points out a bit that looks like an arm and that it’s where someone would be standing to look into the corridor. Which he wouldn’t be doing unless there was something to look at. Mulder notices the bulb and asks Ryan to dust if for prints. Mulder’s initial thought is spontaneous human combustion. No, he tells Scully as they leave, he wasn’t having fun.
At the house of the first victim, the lamp in the front garden has also been tampered with. Inside, there is a similar residue on the floor. She, like the previous night’s victim, worked for a tobacco company – but so does half of Richmond. The other victim worked for an engineering company. In the bin, Mulder finds a train ticket, the same train Newirth would have been on. Mulder wonders if the victims are being hunted and the spontaneous human combustion might not be spontaneous. Mulder suggests that Kelly send police to the station.
At the train station, the man with the jacket is looking at the floor and his lack of shadow. He heads outside and a police car approaches, then another from the other direction. He tries getting away from the light, but his behaviour and words come across as threatening. Both cops step into his shadow and they, too, are turned to ash.
There are many cops as well as Ryan at the scene when Mulder and Scully arrive. Ryan feels she is indirectly responsible for what now looks like a cop killer. Mulder comments to Scully that he was right; the killer was here. And now they might be able to identify him by looking at footage from the security cameras. Mulder eventually focuses on the man in the jacket, and they are able to read the logo. Polarity Magnetics, where one of the victims worked.
They head to the place and are greeted by a Dr. Christopher Davey (Kevin McNulty). The man is Dr. Chester Ray Banton, his business partner who he hasn’t seen in weeks. Banton was involved with a terrible accident. His true passion was theoretical stuff and Banton ended up shut in the target room of the miniature supercollider they have. The countdown can’t be stopped once started, Davey was out of the room and Banton got locked in the target room. There’s a shadow burnt into the wall where Banton got what Davey describes as a two-billion-watt X-ray. Mulder and Scully are discussing this in the room, about how the shadow is similar, but Davey is also watching them on a monitor.
Back at the train station, Mulder realises that Banton was looking at his lack of shadow, because the lighting is diffused soft light. Banton arrives, they see him and he runs. He is cornered and he tells them that it will kill them. So, Mulder shoots out the lights.
Banton has been found quite quickly, so there are bound to be further consequences. Detective Ryan seems a little too ambitious for her own good; Richmond PD have no idea what they are dealing with and probably wouldn’t believe the explanation that the man’s shadow reduces people to atoms. That will cause problems. Banton is convinced the government is out to get him. Mulder reaches out to Mr. X and loses patience with him as a result.