While Scully travels to Africa to piece together the meaning of the symbols on the spaceship beached on the Ivory Coast, Mulder is imprisoned by his own frenetic brain activity. He manages to get a message to Skinner who finds Kritschgau, and together they try to understand what is happening to Mulder before it is too late.

Scully frantically searches for a way to help her ailing partner without having anyone to turn to for help, while a catatonic Mulder's dreams lead him away from his mission and the X-Files to a place which he believes is a better life.

A young girl inexplicably disappears from her home, and Mulder requests the case even though it is a full FBI matter, not just an X-File. When Mulder takes some outrageous leaps to convince the girl's parents that she will be found, Scully fears that Mulder is becoming too personally involved with the case because of his sister's abduction.

After arresting the murderer of Amber-Lynn LaPierre and discovering a mass grave site containing the bodies of dozens of missing children, a man comes to Mulder and claims to have had visions of other victims who aren't buried at the site. Despite Scully's objections, he takes Mulder on a journey which reveals what truly happened to his sister.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man offers to show Scully the cure for all diseases if she travels with him, but on one condition: Mulder must not know about her trip.

Mulder and Scully return to the town of their first X-Files investigation where a UFO has crashed in the forest. The Cigarette-Smoking Man arranges for Krycek to be released from prison in order for him to make contact with the aliens and begin rebuilding the "Project", while Scully's health appears to be taking a turn.