Unrequited

[uhn-ri-kwahy-tid]

"Unrequited" is the sixteenth episode of the fourth season of television series The X-Files. The mysterious murder of a U.S. Army Lieutenant General has Mulder and Scully racing against the clock to stop a seemingly unstoppable - and invisible - assassin.

Plot Summary

Nathaniel Teager is a U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier who was MIA from the Vietnam War. However, he seems to have come back, and is out for revenge. Teager is hunting down high ranking U.S. Military officers who knew about the POWs and MIAs who were left behind in Vietnam, and killing them. Teager's mission is enhanced by an ability to seemingly disappear and become invisible in plain sight. At each murder, a so-called 'Death Card' is left behind by Teager.

Extended Plot Overview

The episode begins at the National Mall. Bloch, a U.S. Marine Corps General, is giving a speech to a crowd of military veterans about the Vietnam War. Behind him is Assistant Director Skinner, who is talking to Agent Mulder, Agent Scully and Agent Hill via earpiece as they search for someone in the crowd. Scully sees the man and identifies him from a photograph, and moves slowly towards him so that she can arrest him as he makes his way through the crowd. Suddenly the man turns around and sees Scully, and she says that he is heading for the sound booth. Scully and Hill desperately look for the man as Mulder stands in front of Bloch and looks through the crowd, eventually seeing the man. However as soon as Mulder sees the man, he mysteriously disappears and Skinner sees the man walking towards Mulder, warning him. Mulder sees the man again and sees that he has a gun, drawing his own and aiming at the crowd. As people in the crowd duck and scream, Skinner gets the General and tells him to take cover. Mulder then loses sight of the man and shouts that he can't see him, his weapon still aimed towards the crowd.

We then go back twelve hours earlier to Fort Evanson, Maryland. MacDougal, a U.S. Army Lieutenant General, is getting into his limousine after being brought in by a UH-1 helicopter. As the limo begins to drive onto the main road, the doors are locked and the divider is shut. MacDougal then finds a King of Hearts playing card with two bloody sabres on the back. When he looks up, he sees the same man from the beginning of the episode. As he asks the man who he is and how he got into the car, the man draws a gun and aims it at the General. In the front, the driver hears a single gunshot and pulls the car to the side of a road, going to the back doors and opening them. He finds MacDougal with a bloody bullet wound in his forehead, but can't see the man that shot him. The King of Hearts playing card is lying on the General's chest.