Sleepless

In Manhattan, Dr. Soul Grissom is trapped in his apartment by a massive fire. The fire department, which arrives on Grissom's call, finds no sign of fire, but finds Dr. Grissom dead.

With the morning paper, Mulder receives a tape recording of Dr. Grissom's call, and a note about a scientist who died in an unrelated fire. Mulder brings the files to FBI Deputy Director Walter Skinner, but young agent Alex Krajicek gets the case first. Mulder calls his former partner, Dana Scully, and asks her to perform an autopsy on Dr. Grissom. The agent goes to Stamford, to the Dr. Grissom Center for the study of sleep disorders. On the way, he fights with Krajicek, annoyed that Mulder doesn't want to work with him and keeps him in the dark. The two agents travel to Quantico to meet with Scully, who claims that no burns were found on Dr. Grissom's body, but there are secondary signs inside, as if the doctor's body believed it was on fire.

In the Brooklyn apartment of Henry Willig, a Vietnam veteran, a friend from his time in the Marine Corps, Augustus Cole, visits. Willig tells Cole that for many years he has been trying to forget about how their squad destroyed a Vietnamese school full of children. Suddenly, a group of wounded, burned Vietnamese with young children appears in the apartment, who, after Cole's speech about the need to atone for their sins, shoot Willig.

While examining Willig's body, Mulder and Krajicek discover a large scar on the victim's neck. After finding out that the deceased veteran served in the special forces in Vietnam in 1970, the agents begin searching for his colleagues. According to the documents, the only survivor of the squad is Augustus Cole. The agents go to the Veterans ' Medical Center in New Jersey, where Cole is being held, but find that he has been released, although his doctor does not remember doing so.

Mulder receives a mysterious phone call from a certain "X" and, meeting with him, receives information about a secret military project that Dr. Grissom was engaged in: he eliminated the soldiers ' need for sleep through brain surgery. One of the side effects of the operations was the excessive aggressiveness of the test subjects. Now Augustus Cole, known as The Preacher, who was himself the subject of an experiment, kills former colleagues, inducing them to hallucinate and make them believe in their own death. "X" also tells the FBI agent the name of another member of the test group, Salvatore Matola, who was mistakenly included in the number of those killed in battle. Mulder hides the data packet from X under the driver's seat of his car, unbeknownst to Krajicek.

After hearing a report that a man matching Cole's description has robbed a drugstore and is trapped in a hotel by a SWAT team, the agents rush there, but the two FBI agents who arrived on the scene first shoot each other, and Cole goes into hiding. Mulder comes to the conclusion that over the years without sleep, Cole has acquired the ability to inspire people with his thoughts. After meeting Matola, a laborer in a Long Island diner, the agents learn that, because of the experiments, he, like Cole, has not slept in 24 years. Matola also tells the story of his team after the end of the experiment, as well as the fact that another scientist, Dr. Girardi, took part in the experiments.

Mulder and Krajicek go to the train station, where, according to their information, Dr. Girardi is supposed to arrive to attend Grissom's funeral. Mulder sees Cole shoot Girardi in the back, and then Mulder himself, but it's all in the agent's imagination. In reality, Cole grabs Dr. Girardi and, while holding him hostage, sends him visions of the soldiers he was experimenting on. With the help of the station security service, the agents track down Cole's whereabouts and find a barely alive Girardi. Mulder discovers Cole, who is close to suicide, and tries to talk to him, saying that he knows about the experiments. Cole hands Mulder the Bible, but Krajicek runs in and sees Cole pointing a gun at Mulder, and shoots Augustus. Mulder tries to save Cole, but Cole dies in the agent's arms with a smile on his face.

Mulder and Scully discover that all their files on the case are missing. Krajicek reports back to Smoker and the others about the work done and states that Scully is a bigger problem than they realized.