THE HOST

                 The creature came out of the decimated Russian freighter that was used in the                                   disposal of salvage material from the Chernobyl meltdown

We begin inside a Russian trawler located two miles off the coast of New Jersey. The ship has a problem with its plumbing and one unlucky sailor gets the task of having to remove the blockage from the drainage system. Unfortunately this poor young sailor gets dragged under water in the sewerage system as his comrades look on helplessly....the male disappears....

Meanwhile in Washington DC Mulder, no longer working in the X Files, is assigned a murder case in Newark, New Jersey. A body has been found in the sewers by a sanitation worker with nothing to go on (in terms of clues). Mulder is not happy about being passed from one 'meaningless exercise to another' and confronts Skinner, who tells him to get on with it. Mulder, clearly disillusioned with life at the bureau, meets Scully, who tells him that she will conduct the autopsy on his sewer corpse. She conducts her autopsy and reveals that the body is an adult male in the advanced stages of tissue decomposition. The skin is discoloured and there has been some exposure to a bacterial environment. Whilst his organs are all intact, when she removes his ribcage there appears to be something alive in their....some kind of parasitic organism that resembles a fluke worm.

Back in the sewerage systems of Newark another worker is dragged under water and attacked by some form of creature - although he is rescued he receives what can only be described as a large bite to his body. At Middlesex County Hospital Mulder arrives to see the victim of the attack, who tells him that he was attacked in the sewer. There is a strange wound on his back and as a result he has some kind of bacterial infection - which the victim puts down to a snake bite. After leaving the hospital Mulder receives a call from someone at the FBI - who tells him that he has a friend.

At the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Mulder meets up with Scully, who tells him that she has found a fluke worm like organism in the dead body. It would appear that it attached itself to his bile duct and was feeding off his liver. Scully adds that it is unlikely no single parasite could have killed him...yet there is no other discernible cause of death. They discuss how fluke worms attach themselves to their hosts and Mulder shows her the photo of the bite the second victim received in the sewers - however she suggests that whilst fluke worms may live in hosts they do not go around attacking people.

Back at the second victims home he attempts to take a shower following his earlier ordeal - yet he struggles to get a taste out of his mouth and subsequently falls to the floor - we then see blood and a worm like creature similar to that found in the first victim slither out of his body and down the plug hole. The male dies.

Mulder's investigation leads him to Newark County sewerage processing plant , where a worker (Ray) tells Mulder that there is no telling what's been breeding down there in the last 100 years. The two men manage to trap something in the system, which turns out to be a strange creature that retains some human features. The creature is transported to Middlesex County Psychiatric Hospital and the agents observe that it has no sexual organs. It also appears to be parasitic yet it has primate psychology - and Mulder will have to tell Skinner that the suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm. The two make the connection that the first victim was a Russian Engineer on a cargo ship - and that his body must have been dumped by the crew. Skinner however feels that Mulders report is appropriate, and acknowledges that the case should have been an X File.

The mysterious creature is loaded for transportation by US marshals, yet its driver soon discovers that it has escaped its strapping and upon closer discovery the driver becomes the next victim. The transport is close to a campsite, Lake Betty, and the following day a sanitation truck turns up to empty the portaloos. Mulder, who is in the area investigating the creatures escape, makes the link that the creature is at home in sewerage, and would be on its way back to the sewerage works in one of the lorries. Back at the plant he is told that when the sewerage is processed it finds itself running through an outlet pipe five miles out to sea...but it is filtered and the creature would once again be trapped. Scully meanwhile, still working on the bodies and parasitic organisms, discovers that the fluke in the corpses actually an incubating larvae, and the creature is transmitting the eggs/larvae through its bite. She concludes that the creature is looking for hosts, and it attacks the victims as the bodies provide generative nourishment.

Mulder and Ray finds the creature, and the latter is dragged under. However as the creature again tries to evade capture Mulder slices it in half after closing a section of the pipe. When he later meets with Scully she tells him that further tests reveal that these creatures are capable of spontaneous regeneration, and that its abnormal cell fusion may be the result of radiation. They play around with the idea that the creature may have been the result of Chernobyl - born in the primordial soup of radioactive sewerage....

Back in the sewers the top half of the creatures torso floats on top of the water.....and then its eyes open.....

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