Again we follow on from the theme of no X-Files, just freak genetic engineering when Skinner is tasked with protecting an employee of the Morley cigarette company (the brand Smoking man smokes, though it’s not relevant in this episode).

The poor employee was planning on giving evidence against the company the next morning, but is found dead in his bathroom during the night. Skinner didn’t hear or see anything and is slightly confused. He asks Scully and Mulder to help.

The rest of the episode see’s good old classic X-Files investigation. Scully surrounds herself with dead bodies and medical reports while Mulder goes and harasses various other employees of the cigarette company. Then later on, someone else dies in exactly the same fashion – only this time, they have nothing to do with the cigarettes.

Mulder later finds out that a little bug was present in each of the deaths – which are starting to look more like an accident then a murder. Without further delay it seems that the company was working on a cigarette that contained less tobacco, so they began manipulating tobacco plants. However what they didn’t know was that they were also affecting the tiny bugs that lived on it. As a result of inhaling the smoke made from these mutant plants – the test subjects died, except one.

He smoked so much, the nicotine gave him a natural resistance, and he was able to breathe out the killer spore-like bugs to anyone he wished. Skinner shoots him but not before Mulder manages to get a lung full of smoke and begins spewing out little bugs. Scully pumps him full of nicotine to save him which works a treat.

Until he buys a pack of smokes on the way to work! Could this be the beginning of Mulder’s smoking addiction?