TEASER

PITTSFIELD, VIRGINIA
11:49 PM
A teenage boy, Tony, walks into the woods, passing "no trespassing" signs on the way. He's waiting for his two friends, Max and Chastity, and finally they show up. They make him promise not to tell anyone, no matter what, about what he is going to see, even if someone dies.

The deputy looks at Tony's ID.

DEPUTY: Anthony Reed? Got any outstanding warrants, Anthony?
TONY: No. Of course not.
DEPUTY: Well, I'm going to have to check it out for myself, so put your hands on the vehicle.
TONY: Look, I was just takin' a walk.
DEPUTY: Uh huh. Right past all those big "No Trespassing" signs. Now you just stand there for a minute.
The DEPUTY starts walking into the woods.
TONY: Come on, man. I didn't do anything.
DEPUTY: I wish I had a nickel for every time I had to drag you kids out of these woods, it'd be a lot of nickels!

There is a blur that goes past Tony, behind him. There is a grunt like someone has been hit. Tony turns around to see what happened, but he doesn't see anyone, not even the sheriff. He only sees the sheriff's flashlight fall to the ground.

Tony calls for the sheriff, but he doesn't answer.

He stoops down and picks up the flashlight, and immediately drops it. His hands are now covered in blood.

Tony walks over to the deputy's car, and inside is the deputy, covered in blood with his head smashed in.

ACT ONE

ST. JUDE'S MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
PITTSFIELD, VIRGINIA
Scully walks out of the elevator and over to Mulder. She taps him with a file, and he turns around surprised and smiling.

MULDER: Oh....there you are! Heavy traffic?
SCULLY: Slow going. Let's just say I had ample time to read the police report that you faxed me.
MULDER: Thoughtfully provided by the local authorities, even though it doesn't begin to tell the whole story.
SCULLY: The sheriff's deputy is slain during a routine patrol. It's a tragic occurrence, but I don't see the mystery here, Mulder.
MULDER: ...except that the deputy was beaten to death by an invisible assailant.
SCULLY: Yes, but that's according to the young man who's accused of his murder.
MULDER: One Tony Reed, and I'm guessing wrongfully accused. He's an A-student, moved here a few months ago from Philadelphia. He's never been in trouble in his life.
When they reach the room, Scully says:
SCULLY: Mulder, tell me you've got more than SAT scores to show that this Tony Reed didn't commit this crime.
MULDER: Maybe. Take a look at the body.
SCULLY pulls back the sheet to reveal the bloody head of the body and gasps.
MULDER: The former Deputy Ronald Foster. As you can see, the report doesn't quite do it justice.
SCULLY: Oh my God. He looks like he was hit with a sledgehammer.
MULDER: Police flashlight. One blow.
SCULLY (looking): The damage to the maxilla facial bones in the cranium is consistent with a blunt force trauma, but...ah...I'd say that, uh, Tony eats his Wheaties.
MULDER: Check out the back of his head.
SCULLY turns the body part way over to see the back of the deputy's head. There are glasses sticking out.
SCULLY: <gasps> His eyeglasses.
MULDER: Penetrated to the back of his skull. Babe Ruth couldn't hit this hard, let alone a high school sophomore.
SCULLY: Well, maybe, he could if he was under the influence of PCP or some kind of stimulant.
MULDER: No, his tox screen came back negative.
SCULLY: Well, even so, I mean, stress and fear may have triggered an adrenaline response which is known to enable feats of near superhuman strength.
The SHERIFF enters.
SHERIFF(Max's father): Agent Mulder, how long you planning on being down here?
MULDER: Ah, Sheriff Harden, this is my partner, Agent Scully.
SHERIFF: How long you plan on being down here? I'd like Ron left in peace. I don't know what there is to see anyway. We got the kid who did it.
SCULLY: Sheriff, we don't mean to second-guess you. We're just hoping to be of some assistance.
SHERIFF: Well, I don't need it. I got the murder weapon with bloody fingerprints, and once the state crime lab matches that up with Tony Reed, it's open and shut.
MULDER: Well, uh, (looks to Scully for approval) we're done here, right? But, uh, Sheriff Harden, you won't mind if I talk to Tony Reed, do you? I mean, it won't hurt your case, and if he did do it, you'll want to know why.

PITTSFIELD SHERIFF'S STATION
Mulder and Scully walk into the station when they are passed by Chastity. She brushes by Mulder and looks him over and he turns around. (IMO he doesn't really look at her, but just to see who it was) She smiles at him and Scully grabs him by the arm leading him into the room.

MULDER: What?

Mulder and Scully question Tony. He tells them the story about an invisible force killing the deputy. Mulder asks if he was just crusing. Mulder says that when he grew up, he lived in "dullsville" too, and that he knows where Tony lives isn't exactly "living la vida loca." Tony asks him how long ago that was. Tony tells them that everything he knows is in his statement.

Ok, but bare with us, 'cause we're old and stupid.

Mulder asks him how long it was before he heard the scream and saw the sheriff dead. Tony says that it was only a few seconds.

When Mulder asks if there was anyone else there that night, he hesitates and then says that he wants to go back to his cell.

Outside the room, Scully tells Mulder that she agrees that Tony is probably not guilty, but she doesn't think it's poltergeists like Mulder does.

Scully pouts at him and sweetly asks:

SCULLY: Mulder. Rather than spirits, can we at least start with Tony's friends? Please? Just for me? There's one person in particular I'd like to talk to.
MULDER concedes.

In a classroom at the high school, Chastity watches Max come in. She looks at the clock as it is about to turn twelve o'clock. The minute hand moves backwards before it moves forwards.

Max is late to take the midterm, and there are only a few minutes left of class. The teacher, Mr. Babbit, says that he doesn't care who Max's father is. If he fails his test, he still fails. Max tells him that he won't, and asks for a test. Within a few seconds he hands the test back. The teacher holds it up to his answer key, and all of the answers are right. The bell rings.

Chastity walks out into the hallway and is stopped by Mulder and Scully. She provides them with nothing, except saying that Tony didn't do it.

Max comes over and tells her that she doesn't have to say anything because they don't have a warrant.

MULDER: Wow. You must be her lawyer.

Mulder tells Max that he could tell his father, the sheriff, that he is obstructing their case.

Leaving, Max looks Scully up and down then says as he walks away:

MAX: You must have been a Betty back in the day.
MAX and CHASTITY leave. SCULLY TURNS TO MULDER.
SCULLY: A Betty?
MULDER: Back in the day?

Scully's cell phone rings. Someone is telling her about the evidence at the station.

PITTSFIELD SHERIFF'S STATION
12:24 PM
Mulder and Scully go to the station. The flashlight, and the only evidence they had, suddenly is missing from the evidence locker. He takes Mulder and Scully to the locker, where Mulder finds a lump of something strange on the floor. The sheriff then shows them the security tape, but it shows no one going near the locker. Sheriff Harden leaves. Mulder moves the video frame by frame that shows a blur in only one frame.

MULDER: Scully, check this out?
MULDER scans through the tape.
SCULLY: What am I supposed to be seeing?
MULDER: Here it comes. Now you see it, for one frame. Now you don't. What do you make of that, Scully? Take another look…Now it's here. Now it's not.

REED RESIDENCE
8:52
Tony has released for lack of evidence. He is coming home. His mother is mad at him and says that it's his friends' fault, and she doesn't want him to see them anymore. She leaves.

Tony hears a sound. He walks over to the window, and can see Max outside, waving him to come down.

MAX: Listen to that, man. This car's got guts. Sorta like you that way.
TONY: Whose car is this, Max?
MAX: Chastity told you to shut up, sit tight and things'd be fine. You did that. It tells me a lot.
TONY: Everything is not fine! We're in a stolen car, a cop is dead...
MAX: Calm down, man. He'd been snoopin' around. He had to go.
TONY: What do you mean, "He had to go?" What happened out there?
MAX: You oughtta learn not to ask so many questions.
MAX starts making the car go faster and faster, past 100 mph, but still faster.
TONY: Slow the hell down, man! You're freakin' me out!
MAX: You ain't seen nothin' yet.
TONY: Max! Look out!

Tony turns to see that Max is no longer in his seat. He grabs the wheel, trying to control the car.

The car smashes into a tree, cutting the front half of the car completely in half. Tony is standing in the grass beside the car, completely unharmed. Max walks over to a stunned Tony, and tells him that he's going to make him one of them, but he calls the shots.

ACT TWO

In Mulder and Scully's office, Chuck has been taking a closer look at the tape. He tells them that what they saw was not a glitch in the tape.

MULDER: Buckle up, Scully. I believe Chuck is about to take us on a ride to the paranormal.

To the naked eye, no one goes near the locker. When the video is set frame by frame, there is a blur in one frame. There is a shadow of something, but there is no solid object to give a shadow. With Chuck's "enhancements" he lets the computer "guess" the coloring throughout the rest of the picture. The blur is now colored, with the school's colors.

At the school, everyone is looking at Tony. He talks to Chastity, telling her that maybe he wasn't cut out for this, but she tells him that it's a little late for second thoughts.

In the classroom, Mr. Babbit gives the midterms back with their grades. Max gets an 'F.' Mr. Babbit says that he knows Max cheated, even if he doesn't know how.

Max gets up and leaves, throwing the test on the floor.

Tony wants help from Chastity, but she tells him that she can't help him. She can't even help herself.

In the cafeteria, Mr. Babbit falls forward, knocking his tray to the floor, as if he was tripped or pushed. Tony sees Max standing a little away, but knows he is doing it, but he can't do anything about it. Max blurs when he moves, indicating that he is moving at a speed that no one can see.

The teacher is punched in the head and then flung to the wall by a table, pushed by an invisible force. A chair is hurled at him as well.

At the school, Scully walks up to Mulder.

MULDER: I'll show you my theory if you show me yours.
SCULLY: Based on the eyewitness accounts of the students I spoke to, at this moment, I'd have to say that I don't have one.
MULDER takes out the glob of stuff he found at the station.
MULDER: What about for these globs of goo?
SCULLY: The ones we found in the evidence room?
MULDER: Yeah. And I'm guessing Max Harden could tell us how they got here.
SCULLY: You think Max did this? Based on what?
MULDER: I spoke to a few students myself. Apparently Max was angry at Mr. Babbit because he failed him on his midterm exam. So he had motive.
SCULLY: He may have had motive, but he didn't have opportunity. There was nobody here who saw him even go near the victim.
MULDER: Maybe he didn't need to. (off her look) I pulled his records. Rising attendance and discipline problems over the last few months, but look at this transcript.
SCULLY looks through the file.
MULDER: As his behavior was getting worse his grades were going through the roof. This kid has changed, Scully.
SCULLY: Well, Mulder, he's a teenager. Everything about him is changing. His body and his brain chemistry is in a state of unparalleled upheaval. Plus, there's peer pressure, and, and substance abuse: any one of these factors could alter his behavior radically.
MULDER: But what if it's given him a kind of psycho-kinetic or paranormal ability, that allows him to exert force over a victim without ever laying a finger on him?
SCULLY: That's your theory?
MULDER: Yes it is. Soon to be proven, as soon as I get Max in for questioning.
A DEPUTY enters.
DEPUTY: Agent, you needed to speak to Sheriff Harden?
MULDER: Yeah I wanna talk to him about his son.
DEPUTY: He's with him now. They're taking him to the emergency room. (off their looks) Max just collapsed in the parking lot.

Tony follows Chastity and finds a cave. When he steps inside the middle of a circle of light, he starts violently shaking and spasming. He is having his first "rush."

ACT THREE

Mulder and Scully confront Max in the hospital. Mulder theorizes that Max is taking a drug that makes him have superhuman powers, which is how he killed Babbit. Scully reads his chart. The symptoms indicate extreme exertion, as well as withdrawal. Mulder says that it's the withdrawal from the "rush," and that he is addicted to it.

Chastity stands in the hallway looking around.

When Scully looks at Max's brain charts, his brain is full of lesions and bruises, as well as his body (those are healed), only its to the extent of a race car driver or something of that matter. To the extent that a sixteen year old should not have.

On a computer monitor, a nurse sees Chastity in Max's room, but when she goes in the room no one is there.

When the nurse leaves, Chastity comes back out and sneaks Max out of the hospital.

Mulder and Scully are looking at Max's clothes. The bottom of his shoe is covered with the weird stuff that Mulder found earlier. He tells Scully that Max is taking some kind of speed, which enables him to move faster than the naked eye can see. Scully tells him that that's impossible, the human body isn't designed to move like that. Mulder thinks that that explains the charts with all the lesions and bruises.

The nurse comes into the room and gets Mulder and Scully. When they get to Max's room, he is gone.

Outside, Max is in the woods near the cave with Chastity. She asks him not to do it, that he can't stop it. He says that the same is true about her. She wants them to get some help, but he won't listen. He tells her that it's the best thing that has ever happened to him, and that he can't ever go back to standing still, and neither can she.

After Max leaves, Tony comes stumbling out. He tells Chastity that he followed her and went into the cave, and that it was such a "rush" to be moving so fast. She tells him that she didn't want it to happen to him.

Sheriff Harden comes into his house and walks upstairs and looks in Max's room, until he finds the flashlight that was stolen from evidence. He hears someone and puts the flashlight back and goes downstairs. Max is there, with the flashlight in hand. He's also taken his father's gun. He ends up punching his father in the abdomen, but Tony "rushes" in and grabs the gun off of Max, pointing it at his head.

ACT FOUR

Mulder and Scully find sheriff at the hospital, and the flashlight is anonymously delivered with him. Mulder thinks that someone intervened, or the sheriff would have died. Scully wants to know how someone could have stopped him with the strength that he has. Mulder says that it was someone that knew exactly what Max was doing to get the rush - Tony. They decide that they need to go to the source where Max gets his powers: in the woods near where the deputy was killed.

Chastity is driving a car with Tony in the passenger seat. They are going really fast.

TONY: Chastity, we don't have to be doing this. I told you, I took care of things with Max.
CHASTITY: No, you didn't and you shouldn't have tried.
TONY: He was going to kill his father. I had to stop him.
CHASTITY: You stopped him because he let you. He was slowing down. Tony, you slowed down too! If we don't get back to the cave before Max does, we're history!

Tony and Chastity get out of the car and run towards the cave. Tony trips and slows down, but he tells Chastity to go on ahead and he will catch up.

When Tony goes into the cave he sees Chastity lying on the floor, presumably dead. Before Tony can go into the place where he gets a rush, Max is there. Tony goes for the sheriff's gun he kept, but Max takes it from him. Max punches Tony.

Chastity grabs the gun before Max can shoot Tony. She shoots Max in the back and then jumps up in front of the bullet. The bullet is moving really slow, indicating that she is moving really fast. She looks at Tony, saying she's sorry, but that she can't go back.

In an instant, the bullet passes all the way through Max and into Chastity, and they both fall to the ground

Mulder and Scully are getting out of their care near the cave, when they hear the gunshot. They rush to it and inside they find Max shot, and Tony, holding Chastity.

They take Tony to the hospital. Scully asks what was found in the cave. They didn't find anything, except some bat guano. Scully asks Mulder why they didn't get a "rush" from being in the cave:

SCULLY: Well, you and I were both in there, and nothing happened to us. We're still slow poking around.
MULDER nods.
MULDER: What if we're too old.

Mulder explains that she had said that teenagers were different, and that maybe it only affects them. Smiling, Scully says it's doubtful, but no more than any other theory and that they could check it our. He tells her that they can't, because the cave has been sealed off with cement as a precaution, so they will never know. Mulder asks how Tony is doing, and Scully says that he will be all right, and will go back to being a normal.

Mulder and Scully leave.

Above Tony, he looks at the clock and it is ready to hit the hour. The minute hand goes back a minute before it goes forward and hits the hour.

Overall Rating : 8.5
*Shippy Rating: 3
*Based on the Redux II scale (1-10, as Redux II being a 10 [now with Triangle being an 11, and Millennium being a 12, above the scale])*


If you have any more information, spoilers, or questions for me, feel free to email me. If you give me a tip, I don't have to reveal my source, unless you want me too.