Threshold (2005) s01e04 Episode Script

and I work for the Federal government.
I deal in worst-case scenarios, the unthinkable.
On September 16, 2005, the unthinkable happened.
An extraterrestrial object appeared off the bow of a naval freighter.
The entire crew was exposed to a high-frequency signal.
Some died instantly.
Others began to change.
They are now stronger, more resilient.
They dream of alien landscapes, and they are driven by the impulse to infect others.
Several of the crewman are now loose in the United States.
They will strike anytime, anyplace, anyone.
Their goal: to turn us into them.
But I have a plan to stop them.
That plan is called "Threshold.
" MAN: Okay, guys, lights out.
Lights out, guys.
Go to bed, Harry.
Richard? Richard? Security, we've got a runner, South Wing.
It's Tate.
Security, come back.
He's headed your way.
Another nugget from the data mine: Intercepted a police report outside of Cleveland, Ohio.
Thanks.
Escaped mental patient.
Cranked a guard's head around, pulled apart an orderly, and then tore through an electrified fence.
If these ETs are trying to hijack our planet by turning us into them, why in the hell pick a guy in a loony bin? And how could he have been exposed to the bio-forming signal? Another UFO? Maybe there's less here than meets the eye.
This one is not for us.
We should definitely check this out.
Caffrey, you wrote the Threshold protocols.
You need to be here to implement them.
You don't have time to chase down every yeti, crop circle or psycho that comes across our desk.
I understand Send Cavennaugh! If there's something worth investigating, he'll let you know.
He won't have to.
This is a crime scene photo of the escapee's room.
Is this what I think it is? Paintings of the glass forest, just like the dream I had.
Enjoy the Buckeye state.
OFFICER: You can understand my being curious.
Why do people in Washington care about some nutcake? FENWAY: You been in Washington? CAVENNAUGH: We're going to need all the information you've got on the escapee.
Richard Tate.
He's kind of a local legend.
Back in '79, he set his house on fire.
He was only 13 years old.
Burned his family alive.
( man screams ) Found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Surprise, surprise.
Committed to Bridgeview, where he's apparently been living quietly until tonight.
Do you have a BOLO on him? Went out this morning.
His picture's plastered all over the state.
He'll probably come back when he hears what happened to rock and roll.
This his room? Mm-hmm.
Nothing's been touched.
Look familiar? Yeah.
According to Tate's profile, he's a paranoid schizophrenic.
Was he outwardly violent? No.
But you have to remember that by the time I came here, he'd been on a regimen of valproates for years.
I mean, he might as well have been furniture.
In '96, we started him on olanzapine-- less harsh and, in Tate's case, just as effective.
Until about a week ago, we had him down to five milligrams a day.
What happened a week ago? We had to up the dosage.
He was having nightmares, waking up, screaming, that kind of thing.
He had delusions that there are aliens among us-- not atypical for these kinds of illnesses.
You see, extraterrestrials often represent our darker selves.
When the mind can't accept its own nature, it creates ghosts or aliens or some other handy bogeyman.
Did he describe his dreams to you? They're up on the walls.
What you are looking at is the landscape of a different world: the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Note the glass trees, indicating a fragile sense of self Thank you for your time, Dr.
Urbassik.
Anything else you need, just let me know.
CAVENNAUGH: All right.
You bet.
All right, let's make sure he doesn't have any paintings in his possession or photos or video.
Last thing we need is that genius writing a book about his star patient.
I have men at his house right now.
Is there a civil right you haven't violated? Subsection Alpha-14 of your protocol: "Evidence of alien incursion, "no matter how indirect, must be obtained by any means necessary.
" I see you read the classics.
So, what do you got? Well, we got years worth of journal entries, stories, poetry There's random lists, doodles None of it seems to make much sense.
I had a professor once who said "It's impossible to write anything without telling the reader about yourself.
" Let's get Ramsey here.
Maybe he can sort through this.
( flipping pages ) Might give us an idea where Richard Tate went.
CAVENNAUGH: It looks like we got a new guy in our forest.
Is that what it looks like in your dreams? Yeah.
You? Like he took a picture.
In order to get out, Tate had to withstand a 9,000-volt pulse.
Impressive.
It gets even more impressive.
The way these fences are designed, if the pulse doesn't work, both the current and the voltage are automatically increased to a lethal level.
How high? Did you ever touch the end of a nine-volt battery with the tip of your tongue? Yeah.
No.
Well, we're looking for a guy who could suck on a car battery all day and not feel it.
Our stun weapons aren't going to be enough.
Call Lucas-- tell him to boost the amperage and get a new set of hardware out here as soon as possible.
Is that a piece of fence missing? Apparently, Tate's not indestructible.
He cut himself on the way out-- left us some skin cells and blood.
I snipped around the sample to protect it.
Good.
Anything on the victims? Nothing yet.
Everything's packed up and ready to go back to Threshold for analysis.
I also want to get blood samples of everybody at the hospital.
No one else is showing any signs.
Until we know how Tate got infected, we cover every contingency.
Oh, Mr.
Baylock.
Lucas, there's a good chance we're going to be working together for quite a while.
I think you can call me "J.
T.
" Yes, sir.
What's on your mind? Uh, weapons.
Dr.
Caffrey wants me to juice up the amps in our stun-shells.
Why? Something about that infected mental patient breaking through an electrified fence.
They're worried they'll need more stopping power.
So, could you just sign off on a few things for me? 300-amp laser-diodes uranium? You building a bomb in there, son? Look, I don't have a lot of time, okay? They wanted these weapons, like, five minutes ago.
Ramsey's not here to help me with the math.
So if you could just approve this stuff, I would greatly appreciate it, okay? Just try not to blow up the building.
Yes, sir.
Mr.
Miller? I'm Molly Caffrey.
I'd like to ask you a few questions about Richard Tate.
And I'd like somebody to play with.
Well, I guess we're both out of luck.
Oh, oh Oh, good! Yeah Oh What would you like to ask me? You were a friend of his, right? Oh, yeah, I was a I'd known him for, um two years.
C-1.
Miss.
Did he ever talk about what he'd do if he got out? B-6.
Miss.
Richard Richard was never gonna get out of here.
Did he ever talk about killing his family? Well, once he said that he burned them alive and he could hear them screaming.
And then, once, he said they were already dead when he set the fire.
Uh, D-7.
Miss.
Did he ever talk about nightmares? Uh, G-10.
Hit.
We all have nightmares.
That's not an answer.
Couple of days ago, Richard warned me that aliens were coming and that we were all going to change.
Did he say how? No.
He just said that it was gonna be soon and that he had some unfinished business to take care of.
A-2? Miss.
Uh Mr.
Miller, this is very important.
Do you know where Richard Tate is? No, I don't.
But, just between you and me, I've been having some pretty weird alien dreams myself.
When did they start? Just about the same time as Richard's.
I mean, it's like I'm turning into an alien.
I can't fight it.
I start getting the big bug eyes and the antennas.
You know, maybe you could talk to the doctors.
Maybe they could give me some more meds like they gave Richard.
I think we're done here.
But you're going to talk to the doctor? I don't think so.
But thanks for your time.
All right.
Hey, good news for a change.
None of the other patients tested positive for genetic mutations.
Then it's only Tate.
Mm.
Still no sign of him? Not yet.
I've got agents searching the town, local police-- of course, they have no idea what they're dealing with.
I don't get it.
How could one random psychopath locked in a cell become infected in the first place? Because it wasn't random.
There has to be a reason why it happened to this particular person.
But there's no evidence the alien signal was ever here.
Yeah, but he's having the dreams.
How? That UFO was hundreds of miles away over the Atlantic Ocean.
You're saying there's some kind of connection? Maybe.
Maybe he was exposed indirectly, like Cadet Janklow was.
Maybe some people are more receptive to the signal.
What, like human antennae? Why not? What if some people can pick up the signal from far away? So there's a guy in China sitting in his pagoda, drawing the glass forest.
I don't think so.
Lucas said the signal only has a radius of 3,000 meters.
It's basic science.
Basic science is out the window, in case you haven't noticed.
How many times have you read Tate's file? ( sighing ): I don't know, like, 50, and I can't find anything.
Let me see it-- maybe it needs a fresh pair of eyes.
I hope yours work better than mine.
Okay, Mr.
Tate talk to me.
Who is it? Oh, hi, uh sorry to bother you, but is this your dog? Because it was running around outside, the gate was open Oh, thanks so much.
I didn't know he got loose.
Shut up, shut up, shut up Shut up Shut up.
Shut up.
Shut up.
Don't scream.
Don't scream! Does it have the date? Does it say we're getting married? Does it say "You're invited"? Okay, then why would I care what font we use? It's a wedding invitation, right? Okay, look, just e-mail me your top five.
I'll try to glance at them tonight.
Honey, I'm not snapping.
I just I'm really swamped right now.
I know.
I want it to be perfect, too.
Uh, look, I got to go.
I'll call you later.
Hey how's it going? I've boosted the power of the stun weapons and I've added a variable control to the amperage, so our guys will have a choice in the field.
I'll be done in about an hour.
I'm not talking about the weapons.
Oh.
It's great.
( clears throat ) It's just great.
Plucked out of existence, eight days with barely any sleep I can't even tell my fiance what I'm doing here, when I might be back.
"Well, you see, Pumpkin, uh, an extraterrestrial probe "landed in the ocean and it sent out this weird-ass signal "that mutates your DNA and turns you into an alien, see? "And it infected a bunch of people on the ship, "and now they're running loose in the general population.
"And, oh, by the way, I might be infected as well.
How was your day?" I'm I'm done ranting now, thanks.
This fiance of yours, uh Rachel.
Rachel.
She's a pediatrician, right? Clinical research or something? Yeah.
Now, I might be able to pull some strings, get her a posting over at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda.
You're kidding me.
Given what we're up against, you may be here for a long time.
( sighs ) Thank you.
Well, thank Dr.
Caffrey, they're her protocols.
Now get these weapons out in the field.
Right.
Yeah? Anything? Quite a bit, actually.
I just don't know what it all means.
More artwork? I think it's Tate's version of an identicon.
The image of the farmhouse keeps reappearing in conjunction with anything having to do with the murders.
Probably the farm where it happened.
He must be haunted by the memories.
What about these words? "Cat, brother, oak tree, door" Well, could be random words, or it could be a code based on a system of personal mnemonics.
See how some of the words are repeated? Right.
Well, can you crack it? Might give us a clue where he went.
Eventually, but I've got a lot of reading to do.
All right, well, start chipping away.
I've got not one, but two surprises for you.
This isn't Tate's blood.
What? I checked his hospital records.
Tate's blood type is AB-negative.
This is O-positive.
Surprise number two? I compared the sample against the one we found on the fence.
It's the same.
And it's mutated-- triple helix.
We have another infectee on our hands.
So Tate didn't break out alone.
More likely, someone else who was infected broke him out.
Check the infected sample against the Big Horn crew manifest.
What would one of the crew members be doing here with Tate? I have a feeling that'll be our third surprise.
FENWAY: Whoever broke Tate out cut himself pretty badly.
We should be looking for someone with an injury.
I need a shovel.
Do you have a shovel? Do you have a pick or an ax or anything? Okay, I know that you're not going to scream while I'm gone.
And I know that you're not gonna try and run away, right? I've got the DNA sequence on the blood drop you found.
FENWAY ( over phone ): Okay, now, I want you to bring up the Big Horn crew manifest and go into the DNA profiles for the missing crewmen.
Stand by.
How'd we get DNA samples from people we can't find? Do I ask you how to shoot people? It's one of the first things we did.
We sent med techs to the crewmen's homes and collected, uh, hair follicles, dandruff, toothbrushes I've got the profiles, Dr.
Fenway.
Right.
( phone rings ) Cavennaugh.
What do you got? Separate the ACTG string with the new sample.
Cross-check it against the profiles.
See if we come up with a winner.
It's Lieutenant Novak.
Raymond Novak.
Well, we better let our search teams know they're looking for both Tate and Novak.
BAYLOCK: Anybody want to hazard a guess as to why he was so keen to get inside a mental ward in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio? They got to be working together somehow.
BAYLOCK: We'll run a background cck on Novak and Tate, see if there's any connection in their past.
Why don't we just ask Tate? The BOLO panned out.
He's been spotted about five miles from here, at a construction site.
AGENT: Richard Tate! Stop right there! Freeze! Go! Go! Mr.
Tate, come on out.
We know you're here.
I got him.
This way.
This area's secure, right? Yes, sir.
Perimeter is secure.
He's here.
Find him.
You have two options, Mr.
Tate You can climb on down, hassle-free, or we can go up there and drag you down, and trust me, you won't enjoy that.
I'm not going back! Climb on down! Now! Nice and slow.
There you go.
You don't understand.
I understand, trust me.
Now climb down.
Tate, stop! No! No! No! Please! What do you got? 600 pages, and here's what I know about our man Tate.
His favorite dish is creamy tuna surprise, which they serve each and every Thursday.
Couldn't have been much of a surprise.
In fact, he's catalogued every meal he's had for the past 15 years.
His vast canon of poetry has an annoying reliance on approximate rhyme.
And before he started painting glass trees, he was obsessed with his old farmhouse.
Drew hundreds of pictures of them.
You ever break that mnemonic code? I think each word represents a number.
I've got most of it figured out.
It could be a set of coordinates.
Longitude and latitude, maybe.
Coordinates to where, his old house? Well, whatever it is, he went through a lot of trouble to encrypt it.
Send what you got to Lucas.
Maybe he can help fill in the blanks.
Back to your cell.
Those restraints going to be enough to hold him? He shouldn't be a problem.
This man hasn't been infected.
Are you sure? Mm.
He has elevated theta-waves, which means he was exposed to the alien signal at some point, but not enough to mutate his DNA.
Mr.
Tate, my name is Molly Caffrey.
I need to talk to you.
Do you know a man named Raymond Novak? Does he look familiar to you? How do you know him, Richard? We're trying to find him, but we can't do that without your help.
He came for me last night.
Grabbed me out of my room.
A guard tried to help me, but Go on.
While he was attacking the guard, I I got away, I ran out, I found a hole in the fence.
I ran down a ravine, I followed a creek, and I hid in the woods.
He's gonna try and find me again.
Why did he come for you? Because of what I know.
And what is it that you know, Richard? Can you give us a minute? All right, we'll be just outside.
I understand why you have trouble trusting people.
No one wants to believe you, right? People can be pretty closed-minded.
But I want to hear what you have to say.
Tell me about your paintings.
Glass trees.
You saw those in your dreams, didn't you? How do you know about the dreams? Because I've had them, too.
I've had the same nightmares.
In the forest.
You're not alone.
There's a figure there.
Someone you can't quite make out.
But he's watching you.
How would I know that if I wasn't telling you the truth? I know about the aliens, Richard, and I want to stop them, too.
Now, explain why this man broke into the hospital to get you.
What did he want? You have no idea what you're dealing with.
The nightmares are only the beginning.
That's how it starts.
And then, there are headaches.
And then, people change.
And then, they try and kill you.
Hodo you know? Have you seen this happen, Richard? Richard? ( Tate sobbing ) Richard? ( sobbing ) You have to let me go.
You have to let me go.
( screams ): Please, let me go! Let me go! Shh, shh, shh, shh It's okay.
It's okay.
Please! Let me go! Please! Please! CAVENNAUGH: It's okay.
It's okay.
Mind if I ask what you're looking for? Federal matter.
I remember the night this happened.
Everybody knew the Tates.
Nice family.
Shame that lunatic had to torch them.
We can take it from here, thank you.
Have fun.
Let's get copies to Ramsey, bring him up to speed.
All right.
YOUNG TATE ( on tape ): My dad went into the basement, so I locked him down there.
I could hear him banging on the door, saying he was gonna kill me.
I went out to the garage and got a gas can-- the five-gallon one.
I even poured it on my mom and brother.
MAN: And they didn't try to stop you? TATE: I told you.
They were already dead.
But I had to be sure.
I grabbed some matches off the kitchen stove.
And? I told you what happened.
I've told you a million times.
I'd like to believe you, son, but frankly, you're not making a lot of sense.
Why would your dad kill your brother? And why would your mother kill herself? I don't know.
They changed.
You know what I think? I think you were really mad at your family.
No! I think you were so mad, you lost control.
You didn't know what you were doing.
They weren't my family anymore! Right, right.
The, uh, headaches and the nosebleeds and the and the- the strange dreams My mom's face started to change.
My dad stabbed Andy with a butcher knife! We'd like to confirm that, son, but you didn't leave us a lot to examine.
I'm telling you the truth.
So, everyone in your family, except you, went nuts and started killing each other.
How do you explain that? I I can't.
Sound familiar? Same story we heard from Gunneson about the Big Horn crew.
People getting sick, dreams, killing each other, themselves.
Yeah, but this happened 26 years ago.
The aliens were here before.
I assume you got some sort of clearance for this.
Assume whatever you want.
Which one is this? This'll be the mother.
Mutations.
FENWAY: Poor woman.
Excuse me.
How in the hell could the police not notice this in 1979? FENWAY: Well, the mutations obviously continued postmortem.
See where the jawbone migrated into the upper mandible? The bone underneath is white.
This this happened after the fire.
And, if I'm not mistaken, Mrs.
Tate has some new teeth.
Six incisors, to be exact.
We're gonna need all three bodies shipped back to Threshold.
You all right? 26 years diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, locked away, pumped full of meds, Why are you doing this? What do you want? What are you doing? No! Please, don't hurt me! Just tell me what you want! Speak again, and I'll kill you.
I know you're not delusional, Richard, and I know that something terrible happened to your family and you were only trying to protect yourself but I need you to tell me what happened when you were 13 and what Novak wants from you now.
When I was 13, my-my family got very sick-- the nightmares and the headaches.
But before that What happened before that? Did your family see anything unusual-- uh, an object in the sky or? Not in the sky.
It was buried.
Buried where? In our backyard.
M-M-My dad and I were digging a well, and, um there was a piece of metal down there-- an object Wh-What kind of object? Describe it to me.
It was copper-colored.
It was about the size of a football.
It wasn't made of copper because it wasn't heavy enough.
And it-it looked real old and it it kept changing.
Changing? Changing shape.
We couldn't figure out what it was.
And my dad was going to take it to my uncle's machine shop to try and make sense of it.
And-And we decided to bring it in the house for the night and that's when they started getting sick.
Where is it now? Look, I-I-I-I just I couldn't take the chance that anyone else would get sick, so I just I just put it back in the ground where I found it.
We found a drawing in your room of your old house.
It had a series of coded words on it.
Is it a map? Richard is that where you buried the object? I threw it in the well.
Why didn't you tell anyone this? Look, I-I told you.
It just it was too dangerous.
People would've gotten sick.
That's what Novak wants.
He came for the object.
He can't find it himself, and he knows that I can.
Did he say this to you? He told me in a dream the night before he came.
He said that we were connected and he said that he could find me because I had touched it.
Get in here, Cavennaugh.
( over radio ): Copy that.
Tell us where to find that well.
One chimney.
They only had one chimney.
Two chimneys two chimneys, two chimneys two chimneys Lucas? Ramsey.
Any luck on those coordinates? Yeah, I think so.
I did a little safecracking.
I filled in your missing digits with random numbers and got 56 combinations.
When I plugged them into the geographic database, the globe lit up like a Christmas tree.
The coordinates ranged from Antarctica to Pakistan to the Red Sea, but I got one hit in Painesville, Ohio.
What's there? Is it a house? No, uh, no houses.
I tapped into the Lake County Title Bureau.
Um, there's a subdivision there-- condominiums.
When were they built? The permit was issued in 1985.
What was there before that? What was there in 1979? Single family dwelling, three bedrooms, two baths built back in the '20s.
Did they have two chimneys? It doesn't say.
I think I can get you a picture.
How? The U.
S.
Geological Survey has a massive archive of aerial survey photos.
Some of the more recent ones were taken with satellites I helped design.
I've got a shot from the mid-'70s.
I'm honing in on your coordinates.
Got it.
How many chimneys, Lucas? Two.
One on either side.
You are a prince.
Oh, hey.
I'm glad you're here.
Let's take a break from saving the world to do something really important.
Help me pick a font.
How far have you gone? All right.
Keep me posted.
They've dug six feet, and so far, nothing.
That's where I left it.
You know, I-I've never seen the view out this window before.
Do-do you see that water tower over there across the hill? Andy and I used to ride our bikes over there all the time.
We used to climb to the top of the water tower.
You could see the whole town from there.
What did they do with my bike? Do you think they just threw it away? I don't know.
Yeah, probably did.
You're digging in the wrong place.
That house he kept drawing-- it's not the house he burned down.
It's the house where the cops arrested him the night of the fire.
I checked the police report you gave me.
It's about two miles east of where our guys are digging.
You were burying the object there when the cops showed up.
You lied to me, Richard.
It's somewhere on that other property, isn't it? You can't go.
You can't go there! Please! Look, I'm the only one who can go near it! She's unconscious.
Let's get her out of here.
Well, Tate was busy.
This is Cavennaugh.
Let's get a digging team in here.
It's okay.
Come on.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you're a good girl.
Good girl.
There you go.
CAFFREY: It's Novak! You all right? Yeah.
This must be the prize.
Don't go near it.
Whatever it is, it's active.
Tell the data miners to widen their search.
We're not just looking in the present anymore.
Way ahead of you.
I read the protocols, you know.
I told them to start sniffing around as far back as the 1970s.
They're going to have to go further than that.
I had our geotechs analyze the soil in Tate's well.
And? According to them, that thing was down there at least a hundred years before Richard and his father dug it up.
A hundred years? We're going to need more data miners.
It's composed of elements that aren't even on the periodic table.
It looks like a super-dense alloy, but it's actually extremely light.
I'm running a metallurgical analysis, but it's going to take a few weeks to even figure out what's holding this thing's electrons together.
And watch this.
CAFFREY: Huh.
PEGG: Yeah.
Some kind of hyper-dimensional properties.
It's literally impossible for us to see it all at once.
It's like that object we saw from the Big Horn.
Yeah.
It could be a hub fragment from another probe, for all we know.
Whatever it is, it's emanating a weaker version of the alien signal.
Oh, great.
No, don't worry; it's not strong enough to penetrate this chamber.
It sure as hell screwed up the Tate family.
Only after they brought it in the house.
What about that chick in the condo? Her DNA's clean as a whistle.
She obviously wasn't in proximity to the object long enough for it to do any damage.
It must've been buried under enough dirt to dampen the effects.
Well, we all know this thingamajig may be stable for the moment, but I-I would feel a lot safer if it was somewhere else, like out of the building.
We're preparing an underground storage bunker as we speak.
It's a hundred miles from nowhere.
So what do we think Crewman Novak wanted with it? Maybe he was planning to propagate the signal somehow.
Well, we've got him in isolation, and he ain't talking.
CAFFREY: We know one thing.
The rules of the game have changed.
How do you figure? Because now we have something they want.
You know, my eighth-grade class was going to take a field trip to Washington, DC.
Needless to say, I never made it.
Um where-where is the, um In a safe place.
It'll never hurt anyone again.
What's going to happen to me? We've arranged for you to be transferred to a new hospital.
It's not like Bridgeview; there are no criminals there.
You'll have more freedom, better therapy, a support system.
Will I ever get out? I think so.
Of course, we all know a sane man doesn't go around talking about aliens, does he? No, no.
No, ma'am.
We're going to keep an eye on you for the time being make sure you're safe.
C-Can I just ask you one question? Why didn't that thing change me? I mean, it got my whole family, and it just left me alone.
We think it's because you were so young.
Doesn't affect children the same way.
That's why you were spared.
Sometimes I wish I wasn't.
I guess it's time for me to go.
Listen What you did back then as horrible as it was it was the right thing to do.
And it took a lot of courage.
I don't think many people in your shoes could've made that decision.
Do you think you can stop them? It'll be okay.
We have a plan.