"The Light"

Episode 116
(aired the week of 2/22/1997)
Case # 20-6132

Log line: As wounded Rollins lies near death, his evil doppelganger stalks the O.S.I.R.

Synopsis: This time, it's personal. The O.S.I.R.'s Curtis Rollins is rushed to the hospital, shot twice, flatlining, barely clinging to life. Yet as his colleagues hurry to the dying man's side, one of them, Peter Axon, has an inexplicable encounter: reflected in a mirror, he sees Rollins - alive, well and walking out the door.

After being clinically dead for a minute, Rollins pulls through and pieces of what happened to him start to surface. Despite his own amnesia, co-workers recall that he hastily left them to respond to a call, refusing back-up; deciding to follow, O.S.I.R. operatives arrived to find Rollins wounded and his alleged shooter jumping off a bridge. The story becomes even stranger when it's revealed that Rollins once worked as a "profiler" and his near-deadly encounter was likely with a longtime target, the White Crow Killer, whose creepily-unique M.O. was recently, suddenly linked to two murders. Even more bizarre, Axon and, now, Donahue see Rollins - or an exact duplicate of him - walking injury-free down a street; then, they see him on hospital security video. Could Rollins be in two places at once? Or has his near-death experience produced a duplicate? In this case, O.S.I.R. members are both investigating a potential paranormal incident...as well as being witnesses to it.

Through regressive hypnosis, Rollins confirms that his bridge encounter was with the White Crow Killer. He also recalls having a near-death experience in the ER during which he watched a duplicate of himself rise and walk out into the darkness - taking with it the part of Rollins' mind that understands what drives the killer.

The O.S.I.R. agent's experience turns from strange to dangerous when the ER physician who saved his life, Dr. Burr, is missing and believed abducted. The White Crow Killer, aka Dr. Stanley Forbes, a researcher obsessed with the secrets of the afterlife, turns up dead not far from the bridge where he jumped. And Rollins' fingerprints are found in Dr. Burr's office. Rollins, still hospitalized, becomes the chief suspect in the abduction (while his supervisors wonder if he will ever be able to effectively lead O.S.I.R. investigations); not far away in Forbes' old lab, his duplicate is aggressively conducting eerily-similar experiments on Dr. Burr.

Determined to solve his duplicate's crime and clear his name, Rollins struggles to call forth his old profiler skills and remember the unique qualities of the White Crow Killer that will lead them to the criminal. As he carries out his own research, his O.S.I.R. allies have a dangerous first-hand encounter with the duplicate; able to overwhelm it, they take the doppelganger into custody.

In a lab, the duplicate is first questioned by the O.S.I.R.; he claims to be Forbes, doesn't recognize any of them and refuses to reveal where Dr. Burr is hidden. Rollins, watching from behind one-way glass, decides he is the only one who can solve the puzzle. Stepping into the room, he is determined to do whatever is necessary to bring the two warring forces together. As Rollins launches his mission, he can't guarantee whether the dangerous fusion that is his goal will save the life of Dr. Burr...or even whether it will eliminate the real Curtis Rollins.

Starring:
Connor Doyle - Paul Miller
Curtis Rollins - Maurice Dean Wint
Peter Axon - Barclay Hope
Frank Elsinger - Nigel Bennett

Guest Stars:
Dr. Katherine Burr - Colette Stevenson

Written by: Will Dixon
Directed by: Milan Cheylov