At the St. Jude's Memorial Hospital, Scully
doesn't believe an invisible assailant beat the deputy to
death, as Mulder does. A
police flashlight was the murder weapon but it looks like
the deputy was hit with a sledgehammer. There are glasses
sticking out of the back of the Deputy's head, and Scully
tries to give her scientific explanation of how Tony could
have done that.
Tony, who is 16 years old, is charged with
the murder and 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. He seems torn over
whether to mention Max and Chastity being present, but ends
up saying nothing. Mulder thinks that if Tony was guilty he
would have made up a better story. Scully agrees, but
disagrees with Mulder's idea that it was some kind of
invisible spirit.
Chastity is taking a midterm in a high
school class. Max walks in having missed all but one minute
of the midterm. Chastity looks at the clock as it is about
to turn 12'o clock. The minute hand moves backwards before
it moves forward. He takes the test, turns around and turns
back with the answer sheet filled in, all correct. As
Chastity leaves class, M&S question her. She had visited
Tony and thinks he doesn't have it in him to kill a cop.
Max, it turns out, is the sheriff's son. He pulls the girl
away from talking with Mulder and Scully saying that she
doesn't have to say anything because they dont have a
warrant. (Mulder: "Wow, you must be her laywer!") Leaving,
Max looks Scully up & down they says as he walks away,
"You must have been a Betty back in the day"
The sheriff phones Scully - the flashlight
has disappeared from the evidence room. He takes Mulder
& Scully to the locker where Mulder finds a lump of
something strange on the floor. The tape shows nothing.
Mulder, however, finds a very brief blur, only on a single
frame of the video image.
Reed Residence 8:52, Tony is released
because the murder weapon has disappeared. His mother tries to
question him, and feels that Tony has fallen into a bad
crowd of kids. After she leaves his room a noise at the
window shows that Max is outside. They drive off. Max says
the cop had to go - he was snooping around. He drives crazy
and the car hits a tree cutting the front half completely in
half, but Tony finds himself outside the car, unhurt. "I'm
going to make you one of us," Max says as he walks over to a
stunned Tony, but he will call the shots.
Mulder's friend, Chuck Burks, evaluates the
video blur. He tells M&S 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") The
blur in the frame is actually a shadow of something, but
there is no solid object to give a shadow. It is indistinct
but turns out to include the school colors, like a school
jacket. At school Tony tells Chastity that he wasn't cut out
for this, but she says it's a little late for second thoughts.
In class, the teacher, Mr. Babbit, gives Max an F, although
every answer on the test was right. The teacher won't
tolerate cheating. Tony asks Chastity how he can tell Max he
wants out. She can't help - she says she can't even help
herself.
In the lunchroom the Mr. Babbit trips - Max
is standing across the room and seems to have caused it
somehow. Cuts appear on the teacher's hands and face, then a
table moves and slams him violently against a wall. A chair
flies across the room and also strikes the teacher, killing
him.
Mulder and Scully visit lunchroom crime
scene. Mulder now suspects Max, who has had increasing
discipline problems over the last several months, but whose
grades have gotten better. Mulder is wondering if he has
gained psychokinetic powers or some paranormal ability which
allows him to exert force over someone without laying a
finger on him. As Mulder decides to question Max, news
arrives that Max has collapsed and was taken to the
hospital.
Chastity flees to the woods and Tony
follows her, entering a cave. As he steps into a circle of
light, Tony begins shaking violently and spasming. He was
having his first "rush". In the hospital, Mulder and Scully arrive. The
sheriff resists their questioning his son. Max's medical
condition leaves him with symptoms of extreme exertion and
withdrawal, as if he needs another "fix" of whatever was
happening to him. Mulder says that it's the withdrawal from
the "rush," and that he is addicted to it. They check test
results on Max which evidence of repeated concussions,
stress fractures, etc., like someone who has crashed
racecars for years. Mulder & Scully are looking at Max's
clothes. The bottom of his shoes is covered with the wierd
stuff that Mulder had found earlier. Mulder concludes that
Max can move to extreme speed.
Meanwhile on a computer monitor, a nurse
sees Chastity in Max's room, but when she goes there, there
is no one there. When the nurse leaves, Chastity comes back
and sneaks Max out of the hospital. She tries to stop him,
but Max returns to the cave. 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. Tony is
there too. "Moving fast is such a rush," he says.
Sheriff looks through Max's room, finding
dozens of burned out tennis shoes and missing flashlight.
Max comes home and begins to attack his father but Tony
appears, and holds the sheriff's gun to Max's head.
Sheriff is brought into the hospital ER.
Unconscious and bleeding. The flashlight is found at the
scene and the sheriff's gun is missing. Mulder says that
something intervened or else 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 and Tony are hurrying back the
cave - they have to get there before Max does because they
are all slowing down. Tony trips and slows down, but tells Chastity
to go on ahead and he will catch up. When he goes into the
cave, he finds her unconscious, Max having knocked her out.
Max is about to attack Tony when Chastity, who has awakened,
finds the gun on the cave floor and shoots Max. In very slow
motion (indicating that they were moving very fast) the
bullet explodes from Max's chest and continues across the
cave. Chastity tells Tony she's sorry but she cannot go back
and steps in front of what to her is a very slowly moving
bullet, allowing it to kill her.
In the hospital later, Tony is recovering.
Geologists and scientists have found nothing special, except
for bat guana, in the cave. Scully asks Mulder why they
didn't get a "rush" from being in the cave ("Well you and I
were both in there, and nothing happened to us. We're still
slow poking around") Mulder thinks maybe they are all just
too old and that only teenagers with their hormonal
complexities
are affected. The cave has been pumped full
of concrete, sealing it. Tony has bruises and muscle strains
and Scully says he can now go back to being a normal kid,
but in the last scene he is staring at the clock, as it is
ready to hit the hour - the minute hand goes back a minute
before it goes forward and hits the hour.
Mostly by Michael
Marek/Jamie Ruby
