The episode opens at night in Lake Okobogee[1] National Park in Sioux City, Iowa. After a bright flash with intense heat, a teenage girl, Ruby Morris, vanishes while camping with her mother and younger brother. In Washington D.C., Blevins tells Scully that Mulder has requested travel expenses to Sioux City because of a tabloid headline on the aforementioned disappearance. He also shows Scully an X-File on Mulder's sister Samantha, who vanished 21 years earlier. When Scully asks Mulder about the travel expenses, he tells Scully that Sioux City was the subject of UFO sightings in 1967 and that Ruby's mother Darlene was one of the witnesses.
Upon arriving at Sioux City, the agents meet Darlene and her son Kevin. Mulder observes Kevin writing down zeros and ones (binary) on a piece of paper; Kevin says they're coming from the static on the TV screen. While waiting for an analysis of what Kevin has written down, the agents meet with the sheriff, who tells them that Ruby has a history of misbehavior and likely ran away. Upon finding a note on their car, Mulder and Scully meet a friend of Ruby's, Tessa, who says that Ruby had gotten pregnant with her boyfriend, Greg, and was planning to run away with him. The agents are unable to find Greg at the bar that he worked at; however, after the barman is questioned about his UFO tattoo, the agents are directed to Lake Okobogee.
The numbers Kevin wrote down are revealed to be part of a transmission from a Department of Defense satellite transmission, and government agents arrive and trash the Morris's house looking for any other documentation that might compromise government security. An angry Darlene tells Mulder and Scully to leave them alone.
Mulder and Scully visit Lake Okobogee where Mulder finds sand turned to glass and burned trees, evidence of the presence of some sort of massive heat source. Encountering some wolves, they discover the body of Greg in a shallow grave. On his person, they find a note in his wallet that eventually leads Scully and Mulder to conclude that he had impregnated Tessa, not Ruby. Interrogating Tessa, she confesses to having killed Greg; however, she says that Ruby wasn't at Lake Okobogee that night.
Mulder and Scully return to the Morris's house, and, finding it deserted, discover the binary-covered pieces of paper laid out across the floor of the living room floor, forming an image of Ruby's face. The agents return to Lake Okobogee, where they find Darlene and Kevin in the nearby woods. A motorcycle gang appears, and as Mulder hurries to rescue Kevin from their wake, close by, Scully begins to shout: she's found Ruby.
Ruby is then seen in a hospital bed, with Kevin by her side. When questioned about her experience, she says she was told not to say anything by an unnamed group. Darlene also refuses to cooperate any further, given the ridicule that she faced after her experiences.
Back in Washington, Scully listens to a tape of hypnotic sessions from Mulder for the night his sister vanished. Mulder, meanwhile, sits in a church, crying as he looks at a picture of his sister.
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