Forever Knight (1992) s03e13 Episode Script

WOMAN: Your T-cell count is holding at 120.
Oh, good.
Still no symptoms? No, just the cough.
You're a lifesaver.
Yeah, well, that's what we get into this business for, isn't it? Mm.
See you Thursday.
Wouldn't miss it for the world.
[CHUCKLES.]
[RATS SQUEAKING.]
[.]
Dan, what are you doing here? Uh, just checking up on some-- I-- I needed my notes.
You wanted them ready by tomorrow.
Uh Looks like another all nighter.
I-- I better get to it.
What were you taking? Dan! [SQUEAKING.]
Dan.
Where are you going? Why are you taking my work? Linda, it is not what it looks like.
The hell it isn't.
Linda, please.
You're stealing my work.
Just stop it.
[SCREAMS.]
Linda? [WHISPERING.]
Oh, my God.
Oh.
Oh, God.
[CLATTER.]
With a love Of the liquor He was born [SNIFFS.]
[CHUCKLES.]
Ah.
[CLEARS THROAT.]
[♪.]
♪ With a gallon Of whiskey ♪ Every night And a drop Of the creature Every morn-- [CHUCKLES.]
Hello.
Oh.
Where'd you come from, my lovely? [CHUCKLES.]
Someone's looking out for old Screed, huh? [CHUCKLES.]
Mm.
Mm.
Oh, there we are.
[SQUEAKS.]
[HEART BEATING.]
[.]
NARRATOR: He was brought across in 1228.
Preyed on humans for their blood.
Now he wants to be mortal again to repay society for his sins to emerge from his world of darkness from his endless forever night.
[GROWLS.]
[.]
[INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER.]
Ugh.
What is it about these places that always smells the same? Like they use the same cleaning service, Lab Smell Incorporated.
You ever notice? It's like, uh, cherry car deodorizer, only not.
Uh, I've never noticed.
Something? [.]
KNIGHT: It's a lab rat.
VETTER: Cat musta got at it.
You think it has something to do with the case? KNIGHT: It's fresh.
KNIGHT: Did Dr.
Wyatt often work late? There's a lot of demand for equipment, detective.
We're underfunded, undersupplied.
Linda was dedicated to her work.
Nights, weekends, whatever it took.
She musta slipped.
They're always overwaxing the floors.
Then there's nothing missing? No, nothing.
I checked.
You're not saying somebody? I'm not saying anything right now.
Could this be hers? Uh, there would be a-- A tattoo behind the right hind.
Hers is the 700 series.
Where did you get that? Any idea how this might have gotten away? Uh, no.
We're very safe here, detective.
Even with the animals that have a harmless antigen.
We handle some things here that if they ever escaped, the whole city would go down.
How 'bout this rat? Linda's work wasn't like that.
What was she working on? Immunodeficiency.
She was hoping to clone a benign virus that attacks HIV.
And she thought she was getting close.
She was gonna save lives.
Thanks.
That's all for now.
[SIGHS.]
Her assistant called it in.
He thinks it's an accident.
The landing up there is pretty slick with wax.
I suppose it's conceivable that she could have gone for a skate and then fallen down the stairs.
I got her appointment calendar out of her office.
It looks like she had three appointments after business hours: Janet Dornhoff, Derek Swanson, and Calvin Tucker.
Oh, that's where we'll start.
Calvin Tucker? You know him? Since med school.
He was on his way to being chief of surgery at Metro General.
But? He got sick.
AIDS.
Howsen Pharmaceutical isn't exactly a Fortune 500.
I mean, old equipment and second-string research grants.
What would Cal have been doing here? CALVIN: Well, I was looking for a miracle.
Linda was working on an experimental treatment, and she needed guinea pigs.
I was desperate enough.
First trials? Cal, you're a doctor.
You know the risks.
Natalie.
I've been sick for four years.
I've outlived a half a dozen of my friends who were all diagnosed at the same time that I was.
Linda Wyatt was on to something.
I wanted in.
See, the approval process for new drugs takes two years, four years, 10 years, more years than I have.
When you're staring at death in the face, you'll try anything.
Believe me.
CHILDREN: Ring around the rosy Pocket full of posies Ashes Ashes We all fall down Ring around the rosy MAN: Bring out your dead! MAN 2: Over here! MAN: Bring out your dead! [WOMAN SHRIEKING.]
[SIGHS.]
I haven't had a decent meal in weeks.
They all have the taste of plague in them.
London used to be such a nice city.
I think we should move on.
[MAN 3 SCREAMING.]
I thought you thrived on human suffering, Lacroix.
Disasters are a useful distraction, Nicholas.
Nobody questions a few more dead here, or the way of their going.
But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Besides, they've closed the theaters.
I detest a city with no culture.
[PEOPLE GROANING.]
Nicholas, leave him.
MAN 4: We are creatures of death, my children.
We are rotting on the inside from the day we are born.
[WOMAN COUGHS.]
Look to your souls.
Tell me they are not rotten with sin.
It is God who gives life and health.
It is by his grace we are spared to live our few years upon the earth.
God has not spared this city because it is a city of sin.
[CROWD GASPS.]
These are the marks of evil.
The evil have fallen in great numbers and more will fall before God is done with London.
But the righteous man will survive.
God will spare him who is without sin.
Well-spoken, wouldn't you say? Is this Christian charity? This poor child has done no wrong.
There is not a neighborhood in this city I haven't visited to tend the sick.
Not a house that is safe from this terrible illness.
Righteous and sinners, tavern keepers, and priests.
We are all equal in the eyes of this plague.
Not quite all of us.
Well, that's three for three.
Seems like everyone who knew Linda Wyatt thought she was a saint, a miracle worker.
Is it possible there might be something to this cure of hers? What are you thinking, industrial espionage? Well, if it worked, it would be worth a lot of money.
If it worked, it would be worth the Nobel Prize.
Nat, I'm sorry about your friend.
He's 35, and he looks 55.
He's dying.
Is it any wonder he'd latch on to anyone with a theory, any treatment or magic crystal? Nat.
I'm all right.
I'm just tired.
Why don't you have some samples of whatever Linda Wyatt was working on sent over, and I'll see if there was anything worth stealing.
Sure.
Is there anything else you need? Right now? Sleep.
Is she gonna be okay? KNIGHT: Oh, yeah.
We should head home too.
VETTER: Vachon, I found a lab rat at a crime scene, partially chewed.
I think Screed might have been in the neighborhood.
[BANG.]
Well, he wouldn't do much good on the witness stand, assuming you could get him there.
Well, maybe he could give me a lead, something he saw or heard.
[.]
[VETTER GASPS.]
Hands off.
Smell her, V man.
[SNIFFS.]
Ah.
Fruit in her veins.
Best vino on earth.
I said, hands off.
Hungry man will take any wine, Jack.
Any loaf you got.
First kill.
Any kill.
[SNORTS.]
Jacks, Jills [CHUCKLES.]
even sweet baby Jane.
What is he saying? First night, the first feeding, you wake up so hungry, you'll do anything for the blood you need, take anyone.
Enemy, friend, lover.
If your first kill isn't human, you don't hunger for humans.
Got me dingoes into a squealer that first night, I did.
[CHUCKLING.]
The rest is history.
But he went for me.
Got to have somethin'.
He's starving.
[.]
I take it this isn't normal.
No.
He's sick.
He can't be.
We can't get sick.
But I think you're right.
[HEART BEATING.]
KNIGHT: I take it you need something.
Your doctor friend.
What for? I got a sick friend.
I need her help.
She's not that kind of doctor.
I hear she's pretty good with the dead and the undead.
Look, I can't take this one to the hospital.
In the emergency room, what am I gonna tell them, he's, uh, allergic to penicillin, garlic, sunlight, crosses and food? He's about 450, and he can fly? One of us? Screed.
Tracy says he put the bite on some experimental rat.
I guess he picked up something.
It's impossible.
It's true.
I've seen sick, Knight.
I'm seeing it now.
The fever, the shakes, the way they breathe.
I've been feeding him all morning and, uh He's still starving.
[CROWD CHATTERING & LAUGHING.]
The young doctor, is it not? Gerald Archer.
We have seen you work.
You've been kept busy.
There are more sick every day and fewer doctors willing to see to them.
Most of my colleagues have left the city, if they could, or shut themselves up in their houses.
Sirs, I have watched you.
You move about the city with no fear, no cloth over the face, no garlic hung about the neck to ward off this plague.
You stay in the center of all this death, and yet you have your health.
Perhaps we are "righteous men" as the good Father Laird suggests.
Righteousness does not guard a man from illness.
But I believe you know what does.
Sirs, if you have a physic of some sort which can ward off this Black Death, I beg you to share it with me.
I wish I could help you.
Please.
I must live.
I must continue my work.
If there is such a physic, it will not come without cost.
Anything.
Free consent freely given.
Let him be saved.
[GROWLS.]
KNIGHT: Is it possible? You tell me.
Nothing's ever touched a vampire.
Not the bubonic plague, not leprosy, not influenza, not Ebola.
Not AIDS.
Not anything.
Stay out of the sun, keep away from sharp sticks, you'll live forever.
That is supposed to be the deal.
Well, God just changed the deal.
Or nature or whatever you wanna call it.
Look, Nick, there have been some major changes to this planet over the last 50 years.
We've pushed further into the rain forests, further into cellular structure.
We're discovering new things every day, new medicines and new diseases.
It's possible that there is something in this world that could infect you guys.
Anything's possible.
I'm not talking about something that just came out of the jungle.
Screed was infected by Linda Wyatt's rat.
What if, whatever it is, she made it? High fever, extreme hunger, delirium.
If he were human, I'd prescribe antibiotics, but He's bleeding out, Nick.
It's one of the effects of a multiplying retrovirus.
The cell walls start to break down.
And the lungs and the abdomen fill with fluid.
In this case, blood.
Then the brain.
He's in the final stage.
[CHUCKLING.]
Nice bit of toast, that.
She's a doctor, Screed.
She can't be.
She didn't try leeches or nothing.
[CHUCKLES THEN COUGHS.]
You can't do anything? I'll get the sample back to the lab, but we don't have much time, and I don't really know what to look for.
[COUGHS.]
I'll let you know.
Hey, where you been? I was visiting a sick friend.
Sorry.
Didn't mean to pry.
So I've been going through Linda Wyatt's records, and I realized something.
Natalie's friend, Calvin Tucker? He was on a placebo.
Linda Wyatt needed a control group.
Half of her patients were receiving saline injections.
You think Tucker knew? Well, she wouldn't have told anyone in the control group, but he is a doctor.
What if he figured out she wasn't giving him anything? That even though her stuff works, it's not working on him? So he killed her? Well, he wants to live, doesn't he? What would he do if he thought she was withholding a cure? Let's talk to him.
I went to Linda against everything that I've learned, against all the advice I would have given anybody, and I went on her program.
Ten cc's of saltwater twice a week for my trouble.
You didn't know about the placebo? Know? [CHUCKLING.]
Oh, detective, please let me explain to you what a sucker I am.
I thought the stuff was working.
Six months without an opportunistic infection.
I-- My T cells were up.
[CHUCKLES.]
I thought it was helping.
[.]
Because I wanted it so bad.
Sorry we had to tell you.
No, no.
That's all right.
I'll be fine.
Fix your own problems.
I believed him.
Yeah, me too.
But the theory might be okay.
I-- Nick, are you okay? Sure.
[HEART BEATING.]
The theory might be okay.
Maybe one of her other patients.
No? We'll keep looking.
We had a good run, didn't we? A bit of fun.
Can't say none better than that.
That's a fact.
Been too busy to pick up after myself, I'm sorry to say.
I-I meant to give the place a good scrub.
Tidy it up.
[CHUCKLES TEARFULLY.]
Needs a little spit and polish, eh? [GASPS.]
Do us a favor, mate? One last.
Anything.
Put my bones down by the water if you can.
Bury 'em good in the sand.
I never felt right on land.
[NEW WAVE MUSIC PLAYING OVER SPEAKER.]
Is it possible? It is not possible, Nicholas.
It is a fantasy.
But I saw him.
He was dying.
Nonsense.
We are immortal.
This is a convenient fantasy that you've constructed, Nicholas.
A danger to the vampire community.
Something that strikes at only us, leaving your precious mortals sleeping safely in their beds, never knowing that an invisible people has been killed off by some germ.
BARTENDER: Here you go.
We are not so easy to eradicate.
Men have struck at us with fire and with lies, and we are still here.
I am still here.
[WOMAN COUGHING.]
It seems the good doctor was not the only one with suspicions about us.
Father Laird is most alarmed.
He seems to think we may have had a hand in the young doctor's most recent odd behavior.
Why, if the doctor's discreet? Ah, would that were the case.
Unfortunately, he appears to have become careless.
What are you talking about? Apparently, the sick are dying faster in Dr.
Archer's dispensary than they have a habit of doing on their own.
Good Father Laird was here to inquire if we could explain the strange marks on the necks of the patients.
Would you care to offer an explanation? I don't believe it.
He's not like that.
I leave tonight.
I suggest you do the same before the reverend returns with holy water and a stake.
Gerald! [GROANS.]
Nicholas, my savior.
I saved you for a reason, Gerald.
I gave you your life so that you could help people.
You've made me a vampire, a man who need never worry about sickness or death.
They are mere candles, barely lit before any wind extinguishes them.
It is only we who know life, real life, life unending.
This isn't life, Gerald.
This is a shadow of a life.
What about your practice and your work? Playthings to a man who believed he had but a short time to make his mark.
Less than nothing to a man who has forever.
I've destroyed you.
No, my friend.
You have given me deliverance.
[VACHON COUGHING.]
Are you all right? I've been better.
[.]
[HEART BEATING.]
Screed was right.
You do smell like fruit.
Must be my shampoo.
No.
It's inside you.
Every woman has her own scent.
Her own flavor.
Your blood is who you are.
A taste of apricot a scent of calla lilies.
[SNIFFS.]
[MOANS.]
Every drop tells its story.
[SNIFFS.]
What? Go.
Get out.
Now! No, don't you understand? It's the hunger, the first hunger.
Get away from me before it's too late! [SNARLS.]
VETTER: So have you had a chance to look at those samples from Howsen Pharmaceuticals? Anything interesting? Well, I don't think she was about to win the Nobel Prize.
The antivirus has very low viability.
I'm getting fragments, dead samples.
Nothing I can really get a good look at.
Nothing worth stealing, or killing for.
Not so far.
Thinking about calling Cal.
If he's been taking this stuff for six months, I might get a better breakdown from a sample of his blood.
See if it's having any effect on the HIV.
Didn't Nick tell you? He's not on the stuff.
He's a control.
You're kidding.
[HUFFS.]
It's stupid, I know.
I, of all people, should know better, butI-I was hoping it was working.
I was hoping Cal Hoping he'd live? It's really hard to watch him go, you know? He's not the first.
You start to wonder who else you're gonna lose.
I just feel like I should be able to do something.
Well, I guess everybody must feel that way when someone they care about is sick.
Yeah, well, I wonder if everybody feels quite as useless as I do right now.
You go into medical school thinking you're gonna save lives, save the world.
Maybe if I'd graduated a few years later after all the AIDS stuff broke, maybe I'd have done something different, you know? Maybe I'd be Linda Wyatt looking for a cure or trying to give a few people a few more years.
Instead of staying up all night, trying to figure out who pushed her over the railing.
That's important too.
Yeah, I know.
But just once, I wish that I could help someone before it was too late.
Nat, I gotta go.
I'll catch up with you later.
Is something wrong? I'm hungryand I'm hot.
[.]
Are you having any kind of dizziness, nausea, D.
T.
's? No, it's the hunger mainly and the fever.
Your temperature's That's not even human normal.
Well, it feels like fever to me.
I know, I know.
I'm sorry.
Nick? Nick? I have to feed.
No! Nick! Nick! No! Look, look-- This virus of Linda Wyatt's, it can't live in saline, it can't live in air.
The only viable specimen that I've gotten from it has been from the blood of that rat.
Did you touch it? I I am not I'm not sure.
Why? Because if the disease is transmitted by simple contact Then all vampires are at risk.
Okay, okay.
From what I know about what it does in your body and your friend Screed's, it It-- It binds to the vampire element in your blood and then multiplies.
The more you drink, the more you give it to feed on, the faster itgrows.
[HEART BEATING.]
You haven't gone as far or as fast in your disease because your blood intake is restricted.
Well-- Well, relatively.
Nick Nick, the progress you have made has saved you.
You can't stop now.
[GASPS.]
I can't.
The hunger.
Nick, Nick, the blood will kill you.
And staying off it will save me? No.
No, not unless I can find a way to kill the virus, but it'll slow it down.
It'll give you more time.
Slow or fast, what's the difference? Maybe this was meant to be, Nat.
What if nature has decided that it's had enough of unnatural creatures feeding on this world? What if this is nature's way of getting rid of us? I should not have made you.
MAN: Hey! CROWD: There they are! Quickly.
Let them come.
Are you mad? They are only men.
There is the man whose false medicine has gone against God.
Move away, Father.
I gave no medicine.
Explain, then, how you still live.
CROWD: Yeah! For months you've gone to sick houses and allowed the sick to come to you, and yet you show no sign of the plague.
What pact with the devil is this? Is it a pact with the devil to have medicine to survive? It is for God and God alone to decide who shall live and who shall die.
This plague is the word of God, giving pause to the evil man and sparing the man of righteous faith.
[CROWD MURMURING INDISTINCTLY.]
Those who come to you die, and you grow stronger.
What sorcery is this? Come and see.
[HISSING.]
[SCREAMING.]
Divine justice.
Don't you dare! What, God sends sickness to punish the wicked? To wipe the unnatural from the earth? What about Calvin? I've seen too many good friends with AIDS, with-- With cancer, with-- With pneumonia.
God does not choose.
Natalie, I do not claim to know what God does.
I stepped out of that light too long ago.
But whoever sent this, however it came about, this plague does nature's work.
It kills vampires.
It's killing you.
Is that the kind of mortality you've been looking for? Maybe it's the only kind I'm allowed.
Don't you give me that crap.
How can you stand there and not care if you die? Not care how that's gonna make me feel? Maybe you'd like to explain that to someone like Cal.
Someone who would give anything in the world just to live a little longer.
[.]
Vachon? Brought you something.
Mm-mm.
[SIGHS.]
Not hungry? Not anymore.
This isn't fair, is it? Probably not.
I mean, I knew there'd be some disadvantages to getting involved with a vampire, sure, but dying young was not supposed to be one of them.
If it's any comfort, you know, I'm not actually young.
[CHUCKLES.]
You know what I mean.
Dying before we had a chan-- We just met.
I'm the one usually left behind, Trace.
In 500 years, I've buried a lot of mortal friends.
So when does it get easier? I'll let you know.
Knight.
Your partner's taking a personal day.
Said she had to sit with a sick friend.
How many times have I heard that one for everything from a golf date to a little bit on the side? So the Wyatt case, any progress? We're working on it.
Maybe you want to tell me how come nobody's gone over their personnel records, checked alibis, had this Garrett guy in for an interview? You got things on your mind, okay.
But you're letting a case slide, not okay.
Go talk with him, Nick.
[.]
LACROIX: They say the ages of man are denial, awareness and acceptance.
A young man believes he will live forever, a middle-aged man knows he will not, and an old man is ready.
What, then, of those taken out of sequence? How to prepare them for the bitter end? A man who knows he will not die is a young man.
He is kept young by the knowledge that death shall have no dominion.
[COUGHING.]
[SNIFFLES.]
There's nothing so hard as watching that die.
A dozenin a single night.
My children and my people, who should have lived forever, living their last.
Who would have ever believed that they would die? My people, my children One short sleep past, We wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
We will survive.
[GASPS.]
Oh, what have we done? W-what do you mean? You said it was working.
Because I felt better.
I wasn't even on the damn drug.
Look! It only works in the test tube.
HIV destroys it in vivo.
What an idiot I've been.
Where are you going? Home.
Think you're going back to your fat job and leave me at this place picking up mouse droppings? Hey! What about the job you promised me? What about the research grant? What, you don't get it? The stuff doesn't work.
There is no job.
There's no project.
You killed Linda Wyatt for nothing.
Damn it, you promised me! Dan, stop! [COUGHING.]
Dan! [COUGHING.]
[ALARM SOUNDING.]
CALVIN [COUGHING.]
: Help me! [CALVIN COUGHING, HEART BEATING.]
CALVIN: Help me, somebody, please! [ALARM SOUNDING.]
[CALVIN COUGHING.]
Poison gas.
Garrett-- [COUGHING.]
He tried to kill me.
He killed Linda.
We both did.
We've gotta go.
Now.
CALVIN: I thought it was working.
I thought Linda had really found a cure: an antivirus that binds with HIV to protect its host.
That worked in the test tube.
It's just that HIV overwhelms it in the body.
Howsen Pharmaceuticals is a small-change operation.
They don't even have a full-time patents lawyer.
It would have taken 10 years for Linda's treatment to get on the market.
That's 10 years I don't have.
Ten years that a lot of people don't have.
I-- I have connections.
I have a good lawyer.
I have a good lab.
I could have had nationwide rollout, 18 to 24 months.
So you promised Dan Garrett a split if he stole it for you.
It had nothing to do with the money or the credit.
God help me.
I just thought it was working.
I wanted people to live.
Instead two people died.
I would have done anything.
I would have paid any price for a cure.
It would have been worth it.
Captain, do we have to press charges on this? He was involved in a crime that resulted in a woman's death.
That's murder, and we can't just let that slide.
I don't like it any better than you do.
REESE: He's cooperating.
He's facing up to it.
I don't think he's a flight risk.
We'll release him on his own recognizance.
Who knows? The way the court calendars are these days, he might not reach trial.
[.]
I'm sorry, Nat.
I didn't want this to happen.
I know.
So the case is solved.
Where does that leave us? He's still dying.
[WHISPERING.]
You're still dying.
[WIND WHOOSHING.]
You have faced human justice tonight, doctor, and it has released you.
Who are you? One of the damned.
One of your damned.
The search for a cure for your harmless, little virus has brought my people to their knees.
How many deaths will be on your conscience, doctor? A dozen? A hundred? A whole race? A race that dare not speak its name, that cannot turn to medicine for help.
They die silently, invisibly, out of the light.
I am their only voice.
And my people cry out for revenge! At least I can get a larger viable dose from these.
A better look at what you're facing.
What do you want, Lacroix? Oh, nothing much.
I just thought that now, at the hour of our death, the good doctor might appreciate seeing firsthand the results of her hypocrisy.
You purport to help people, doctor.
You proffer modern medicine as religion and that faith and technology will not be defeated.
It's a false promise.
A lie.
You can't save your friend.
You can't save us.
You are powerless.
Why are you so angry? You're not sick.
But you were sick, Lacroix.
What happened? I've looked into that abyss, Nicholas.
I have faced death this night, and I have called his bluff.
You killed him.
You drank his blood? Yes.
A reward for the plague that he visited on my house.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, that's the answer.
Cal-- Cal said it in the precinct: "HIV overwhelms it in the body.
" Sothe killer is the cure.
Isn't that fascinating? His tainted blood will be our salvation.
Still here? How long? Well, the sun'll be up soon.
You'd better go.
I can stay.
I don't mind.
I'm not gonna make another night.
You don't want to see this.
You told me once the day you became what you are, the woman who made you She rejoined the sun.
Or something.
[CHUCKLES SOFTLY.]
I've always wondered what that would feel like.
Tracy, go.
Thanksfor trying.
[.]
[VACHON SIGHS.]
Here to give me last rites? Were you expecting a priest? Mmm.
Mm-mm.
Give me your arm.
[.]
Natalie when Lacroix asked you why [SIGHS.]
Why save vampires? Why not let them die? You know, there are still some people who think that AIDS isn't worth curing.
That men like Calvin Tucker aren't worth saving.
Who are they to decide that? Who am I? VACHON: With a gallon of whiskey Every night Drop of the creature Every morn Told you I'd dance on your grave.
I, uhtidied up a bit.
The place looks better than it did.
Might even move in there myself.
See you in hell, sailor.
[.]