IMAGES FROM "BADLAA" COMING SOON!


TEASER
SAHAR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MUMBAI, INDIA
A very large man is getting ready to leave India. The man shows the worker his passport and then walks away. Suddenly he hears a squeaky sound behind him and turns around. There is a small, legless man, on a flat cart that he pushes with his hands. The man just calls him a “poor bastard,” and then walks away.

After being followed by the small man, the man finally gives him some money. After he walks away the legless man lets the change fall to the floor.

The man is in the bathroom when he sees the small man coming up to his stall. He tells him that he already gave him money.

The man screams as he is dragged out from under the door of the stall.

DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The man is staying at a hotel. The bellhop asks him some questions, but he completely ignores him.

After the bellhop leaves the man sits on the bed. 

Blood starts running out from where the man is sitting, pouring down the bed and onto the floor.

ACT ONE
HOTEL BELMONT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
9:46 AM
At the crime scene, Doggett tells Scully about the case, and the death of Hugh Potocki. He was an importer-exporter from Minneapolis. He was laid over in D.C. on his way home when all the blood drained from his body. Scully asks him if the medical examiner has seen the body and he tells her that they have. The toxology test ruled out Hemorrhagic Fever, E-Boli, or anything exotic. Something killed Potocki, but it doesn’t seem to be any foreign disease. There was no sign of forced entry. No one saw anyone come or go from the room. The maid found the body twenty-minutes after the bellhop left.

SCULLY: So basically what you’re saying is that nobody knows anything.
DOGGETT: But then I guess that’s why it’s in your inbox.

Doggett starts asking what she thinks it is, such as alien invaders or sloppy vampires. He then tells her that there is one small thing.

He turns to the bed. In the blood there is what appears to be a child’s handprint. Doggett tells her how back in New York there was a ring of thieves who used children to help them do things, such as squeeze in small places. Scully tells him that from what she sees in the way the man died, she doubts it was a kid who did it. He tells her “thanks,” and that he’s not ready to lose all of his faith in humanity. She tells him that regardless, she thinks it is wise for him to keep an open mind.

FAIRMONT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
CHEVERLY, MARYLAND
A principle is looking outside the window at the children. She is talking to a man who wants to be hired for the maintenance position. She tells him that people don’t realize that as a maintenance engineer they are playing an important part in the kids’ lives. She tells him that she understands that he can start immediately.

The camera pans to show that the maintenance engineer, who is shaking his head, is actually the legless man, but she cannot see it.

Doggett enters the morgue to talk to Scully. Doggett makes a crack about Potocki being a big man. She says that he tipped the scales at 402 pounds. He tells Scully that he was big in other aspects too. He bought big cars and houses and had a big business. He was divorced twice and carried two alimonies, one with child support. He never missed a payment, and in fact seemed to have spoiled his wives and kids. Scully tells him that she’s missing the point. Smiling, he tells her that it seems he loved big women too. He says that considering the evidence and motives, they can probably rule out his ex-wives as suspects. Scully tells him that considering what she found in the autopsy, she’d have to agree.

There has been tissue damage and massive trauma to the lower intestine and rectum wall. Doggett asks her if it’s from something coming in or going out. She says that unfortunately there’s so much damage that it’s hard to tell. They took MRIs, which reveal further shredding throughout the abdomen and into the stomach area. She shows him the MRIs. He says that India is a major transit point for the Golden Triangle. Potocki flew to India and back a half of a dozen times in the past eighteen months. Scully asks if he’s suggesting that he’s a mule: a currier of heroine or opiates, a drug dealer. Doggett suggests that he could have swallowed a latex balloon with heroine. He asks what if someone got to him in route and forcibly extracted the drugs – tearing them from his stomach. Scully tells him that it’s a good, but graphic theory, but there would have been traces left of drugs in his system, plus it doesn’t account for the blood loss the man experienced. He tells her that they’re right back where they started – nobody knows anything.

Scully tells him that she ran a decay analysis to determine the time of death. She says that it’s not one hundred percent accurate but it gives them a range. The range is twenty-four to thirty-six hours. That would mean that Mr. Potocki died before he left Mumbai. He tells her that it would mean a dead man boarded a plane in India, changed planes in Paris, hailed a cab in Dulles, and then checked into a downtown hotel and tipped the bellman.

DOGGETT: In my experience, dead men don’t tip, Agent Scully.
SCULLY: I told you to keep an open mind.

At the school, Trevor and some other bullies run into Quentin and take his scooter from him. His dad sees what happens and yells at them for picking on people younger than them. He tells him that if he wants to be a bully to find someone his own age. He’ll talk to his father if he has to.

The maintenance man watches as Quentin and his father get into the car and leave.

After they drive away, the camera pans to show the small man there where the maintenance man was.

F.B.I. HEADQUARTERS
6:46 PM
Doggett is talking loudly on the phone with someone. He tells them that he is sorry to wake them, and then he hangs up.  Scully asks him if it was a bad connection. He says it was consolent in New Deli. Three weeks ago an American businessman was found dead inside his hotel room.

Doggett shows the papers to Scully. He tells her that the victim was Albert Breck of Spokan. He says that the reports have been hard to piece together. The medical records are in Hindi, the death certificates in Farsi, and the news accounts are in letters he’s never seen before. He tells her though that he did get her a translation of Mr. Breck’s autopsy results.

Doggett reads part of the report out loud. He says that the man had internal trauma and tearing in the abdomen, and it sounds like the same M.O. Reading, she tells him that his passport was a recent issue and it has his weight at 205 pounds, whereas the Indian medical examiner has him listed at 238 pounds just after his death. Doggett tells her that if there’s on thing people lie about, it’s their weight. She says that that’s a pretty big lie. Doggett says that he was a big man. She adds that their D.C. victim was too. All the better for accommodation.

Doggett is confused. Scully tells him that something has to account for the weight gain. She asks him what if whatever it was that killed the men entered and exited them of its own free will. It could have been something small, with small hands, living inside the victims as a stowaway of sorts. He tells her that she knows he agrees having an open mind is important to crime solving, but her theory requires an openness that he’s not comfortable with. She tells him that she understands, and she can’t prove it, but she bets that if they had weighed Potocki when he first arrived from Mumbai, he would have been thirty-three pounds heavier than his corpse. Doggett tells her that it’s a theory, but to his mind and pretty much the rest of him, it doesn’t work. She tells him that she appreciates his resistance, but so far the evidence supports it. Doggett tells her that it does except for one thing. Even if there was something living inside Potocki when he arrived, she said that he was already dead.

CHEVERLY, MARYLAND
During the night, Quentin sees the small man in his room and calls for his dad. His dad comes in and there is no one there.  He shuts the windows and goes back down stairs.

The boy hears his dad scream. He looks over the railing and sees his dad still sitting there. He walks downstairs and up to him. The camera pans to show that his eyes are completely bloodshot.

ACT TWO
Scully talks to Quentin for awhile.

She walks over to Doggett. Doggett tells her that the first time he saw a dead body was when he was nineteen and a marine.  Scully tells him that Quentin called his dad in because there was something in his room. When she asked him to describe it, he said it was a munchkin that had no legs and was keeping itself up with its arm. 

He tells her that that’s a pretty good trick considering what he just saw upstairs – handprints in Quentin’s room that match the ones they found earlier. He says that that’s the good news. It just doesn’t serve her theory, because the thing didn’t get in there in anybody’s body. It came through the window. When Scully asks how he can be sure, he says that there was a handprint on the sill, outside the locked window. Somebody must have closed it after the thing got in. Scully tells him that that is exactly what the boy said his father did, but it’s the father she has the problem with. He had none of the massage hemorrhaging that they found in Mr. Potocki. In the coroner’s report, he makes it sound like the man died from a cerebral embolism. The one detail the same in the external exams were the eyes, in which the blood vessels were broken. Scully thinks for a minute, and then says, “Unless that’s just the first stage.” She then runs out of the room.

Scully arrives at the morgue to examine Quentin’s father, even though it will be an unauthorized procedure. Under the sheet covering him, she sees a huge lump on his stomach. She cuts his stomach open and sees a hand push through the parted skin.  She jumps back and knocks her medical tray over, her gun falling to the floor.

Scully rushes and grabs her gun. When she turns back around, the man is gone. She follows the blood trail into the closet, but she sees no one.

When Scully turns around, the camera pans to show that the man was there all the time.

At the school, the principal is talking to the maintenance man again. She tells him that they were very worried when he didn’t show up that morning. She then walks away.

The maintenance man gets some cleaning supplies out of the closet.

Trevor comes down the hall and senses something. He watches the man. The camera shows once again who it really is.

In the X-Files office, Scully and Doggett talk to Chuck Burks. They are watching a video clip on the television of a man eating fire. Chuck tells them that they are called Fakir, ascetic masters bound to acts of self-torture to attain enlightenment.  He says that they shot the video when he was traveling through India back in the late seventies. 

Scully turns to Doggett and tells him that Mulder consulted with Dr. Burks on occasion and she has to admit that she’s been skeptical of him in the past, but he does have certain insights. Doggett says that they could use some insights.

Chuck says that he’s embarrassed to admit it, but he’s not sure what is going on. Scully asks him about the ascetic master’s abilities. He tells her that abilities similar to what she told him about on the phone have been ascribed to what are known as Siddi Mystics. The Mystics are a very mysterious and particularly powerful order of Fakirs. They pass on their secret practices from father to son, gaining occult powers with each generation. Doggett asks him what kind of powers. He tells him that they are powers of the mind. Powers that help them manipulate reality. Powers that make them become invisible or tiny as an atom. Doggett says that he hopes they’re tiny. Where, whoever it is, is going. 

Scully asks Chuck if one could make you believe that he vanished from a room when in fact he’s standing right in front of you. He tells her that they could, or they could disguise themselves, appearing as virtually anyone.

Doggett asks Chuck what he’s a professor of. He tells him that he runs the advanced digital editing lab at the University of Maryland and he dabbles. Doggett says that it’s been ‘insightful.’

After Doggett walks away, Chuck tells Scully that he’s not surprised. It’s hard to believe in something when you can’t understand it.

Trevor knocks on the door of Quentin’s house. Quentin opens the door, but when he finds out who it is, he tries to shut it. He tells him that he just wants to apologize. He’s sorry about Quentin’s father. He then tells him that he thinks he knows who did it.

ACT THREE
Scully is sitting at Mulder’s desk. There are papers spread everywhere. She’s looking through them when Chuck comes in.  She thanks him for coming down there again. He tells her that he’s just a little curious. It had always been Mulder who had done all of the calling. Scully tells him that she is trying to see the case as Mulder would. He asks her what the problem is.  She tells him that he described the Mystics as being religious men. He tells her that they believe their powers are derived directly from the divine. She says then that presumably using those powers for murder would be an opposition of that. He tells her that it would violate the very foundation of ascetic life. It would danger their eternal soul. Scully says that that got her thinking. If they hold so fast to their orthodoxy, then what would cause them to break their faith? He says that he doesn’t know. She tells him that it would be something human – maybe revenge.

Scully shows him a newspaper. She tells him that an American chemical plant in a village in India called Vishi, just outside of Mumbai, which is better known to them as Bombay. About six months ago the plant inadvertently released a small cloud of methyl isocyanate gas. 118 of Vishi’s mostly indigenous population were killed, but it wasn’t very well reported in America. She spent all night crosschecking the victims of the disaster. One finally caught her attention. She shows him another newspaper. She tells him that it’s an eleven year old boy who’s father is described as being a holy man of the Shamar cast. He tells her that it’s the Beggar cast. Fakirs and Mystics are often of low birth. Scully asks him if he thinks that the boy’s father could be a Mystic as he described. He tells her that he could be, but asks that if he’s out for revenge then why he is killing the people that he’s killing. 

Trevor is walking down the road when he hears a squeaky sound. He stops and looks behind him. No one is there. He starts to run. The small man is following him.

He runs through the door of his house and right into his mother. She asks him what’s wrong with him. He tells her that it’s nothing. He runs back out of the house. She yells after him wanting to know where he’s going.

Trevor’s mother goes outside, telling him that dinner is ready. She sees him floating in the bottom of the swimming pool.  She immediately dives in after him, but when she turns him over, it is the small man.

Trevor’s mother’s body is taken away. Doggett and Scully are there. Doggett asks her what they are doing there, because he’s not sure. She tells him that a woman died of mysterious circumstances not three blocks away from the previous victim.  The external signs are a direct match. Her eyes were bloodshot. Doggett tells her that dollars to donuts there wasn’t anything that crawled up inside her. He thinks that they are reaching, and he doesn’t know how to say it, but maybe she is seeing things that she wants to see. She asks if he’s questioning her integrity. He tells her that he’s not, but rather questioning the whole case – from her so-called expert, to the evidence that she’s chosen to ignore, to the fact that her approach has
gotten them no closer to finding a pattern or a motive or even catching the killer than they were when they started. She tells him that she asked him to keep an open mind. He says that he tries to keep an open mind, but it tends to shut his eyes. She says that there is something there, and she will admit that it’s hard to accept, but there is a motive, a pattern, and a reason, and they will see it, but not working like they are. He tells her that he hopes somebody sees it. Doggett starts to walk away.

Trevor comes out of the woods. Scully calls him over. Doggett stops and waits. She introduces herself and tells him that his father is in the house. He asks what happened and where his mother is. He tells her that the little man was there. He saw him following him. Trevor runs away.

Scully and Doggett look at each other.

ACT FOUR
Chuck comes to see the maintenance man that they arrested. Doggett tells him that they are going to release him because he won’t talk.

Chuck sets up a video camera aimed into the interrogation room and gets Doggett to look. The man in front of them is nowhere on the video screen. Doggett just thinks that it’s a trick. Chuck tells him that it is, but not of the camera. 

DOGGETT: Wait. If, if he’s not there…
CHUCK: He could be anywhere.

Scully goes to talk to Trevor’s house to talk to him again. His father answers and says that he will go get Trevor.

Doggett calls Scully and tells her that she should come down there. He says that the janitor is there, but he isn’t. He’s can’t explain it.

Trevor’s father comes back and tells her that Trevor is gone.

Scully asks Doggett what he means when he says that the maintenance man isn’t there.

At the school, the principal sees the janitor in the hall, and has Scully called.

The boys are at the school using walkie-talkies to communicate. Trevor waits in the closet until the janitor comes in, and then he knocks a glass jar on him. He looks down and there is no one there.

Trevor comes out of the closet.

Quentin is in the hallway when the small man wheels himself out. Quentin goes into a classroom and locks the door. Trevor is at the window and tells him to come out. The door unlocks and the man comes in. Trevor is yelling at him now to break a window, because they are locked. Trevor runs to go get help.

Suddenly Trevor is in the room with Quentin, but it’s really the legless man.

Scully and the principal come into the room. Quentin tells her that Trevor is really the legless man, and she believes him.  She points her gun at Trevor and tells him not to come any closer, but he keeps walking towards her. The boy yells for her to shoot, but she tells him that she can’t.

Doggett has arrived when he hears a gunshot inside. He goes into the classroom. The principle is upset and unsure of what happened. Doggett tries to get Scully to tell him what happened, but she doesn’t speak. She walks out of the room. The camera pans to show that lying on the floor is the body of the legless man.

The real Trevor comes into the room.

Doggett sees Scully outside. She is very upset and is just standing there, so he goes to talk to her. She is upset because she shot a little boy. He tells her that the good news is, she’s wrong. She tells him that that is still what she saw with her eyes when she fired the gun. She asks him if he knows what it’s like not to be able to trust your own eyes.

DOGGETT: Then why’d you shoot him?
SCULLY: Because it’s what the boy saw. And in an instant I realized that it’s what Mulder would have seen or understood, because that’s just how he came at things. Without judgment, and without prejudice. And with an open mind that I am just not capable of.
DOGGETT: It’s been a long night. Give yourself a break. This whole thing didn’t make any sense.
SCULLY: No. It did. In some way it did.

SAHAR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MUMBAI, INDIA
TWO WEEKS LATER

In India a businessman walks through the crowded airport. He hears a squeak and looks down. The small legless man is in front of him asking for money.

IMAGES FROM "BADLAA" COMING SOON!


Overall Rating : 7.5
*Shippy Rating: 3.5
*Note: Shippiness will ALWAYS be based on MULDER and SCULLY. The scale is based on the Redux II scale (1-10, as Redux II being a 10 [now with Triangle being an 11, All Things being an 11.5, and Millennium being a 12, all 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.