In May of 1989, SWAT police investigating reports of night-time gunfire at 204 Fells Point Road, a warehouse at Fells Point Industrial Park in Baltimore, Maryland, entered the warehouse and discovered Agent Mulder lying naked on the warehouse floor, disoriented and disabled. Agt. Mulder was heard to say repeatedly, "They’re here." SWAT officers also discovered and arrested three men, identified as John Byers, Melvin Frohike, and Ringo Langly. The three men were held in the Homicide Unit of the Baltimore Police Department, where Detective John Munch interrogated Byers. During the interrogation, Det. Munch informed Byers that Agt. Mulder continued to behave irrationally, and that the Bureau had refused to answer questions regarding both Agt. Mulder and the events at the warehouse earlier that night. Det. Munch also described to Byers the inexplicable absence of weapons or bodies at the crime scene, despite the presence of blood, and evidence of break-in and gunfire.

Under interrogation, Byers identified himself as a public affairs officer for the Federal Communications Commission. He stated that he had been representing the FCC at a computer and electronics trade show at the Baltimore Convention Center. There, while unsuccessfully attempting to distribute promotional materials, he had been struck by the presence of an attractive woman, seemingly in distress, whom he surreptitiously followed through the trade fair. When Byers and the woman accidentally collided, objects fell from the woman’s purse, including a photograph of a small girl. Byers offered the woman help.

Over coffee at the convention snack bar, the woman told Byers that she was in search of her daughter, whom she identified as the girl in the photograph. She informed Byers that a man she identified as her former boyfriend, the girl’s father, had kidnapped the girl; she described the kidnapper as psychotic, and the police and private investigators as having been unhelpful. She informed Byers that she had trailed the kidnapper to Baltimore, but that the kidnapper was aware of her pursuit and was therefore dangerous. She showed Byers a piece of paper reading "ARPANET/Whtcorps/," describing it as her only lead. Byers identified the text as referring to a site on Arpanet, a network of the United States government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, accessible through the Internet. He offered to access the address online. The woman then identified herself as Holly.

At his trade show booth, Byers sent his co-worker, identified as Ken Hawryliw, on a break. Using the computer, he searched online for the Arpanet address, reaching the Defense Data Network, accessible only by passcode. Succumbing to the persuasion of Holly, Byers reluctantly circumvented the passcode and entered the network. In the network, he searched for the name Susanne Modeski, which Holly informed him was the name of her daughter. That search invoked the download of an encrypted file, which Byers printed. As Holly took the printout of the file, she then claimed to have caught a glimpse of the man she had earlier described to Byers as her daughter’s kidnapper. She and Byers hid behind a curtain in Byers’ trade show booth. The man she identified as the kidnapper was Agt. Mulder.

Byers and Holly approached Frohike, who was selling a thirty-three-channel TV system in a nearby booth. Despite mutual mistrust inspired by their respective roles in government and anti-government aspects of computer-technology culture, Byers and Frohike discussed decoding the encrypted file. Frohike suggested that using force against the kidnapper would be a more effective means of finding the kidnap victim. Despite Holly's objections, Byers and Frohike shadowed Agt. Mulder through the trade fair into a corridor, where Agt. Mulder surprised them, identifying himself as a Bureau agent. He showed them a picture of the woman identified as Holly. They denied knowing her. When Byers and Frohike returned to the booth, Holly had fled; military police were arresting Hawryliw for illegally accessing the Defense Data Network. Frohike restrained Byers from turning himself in for that crime, and suggested that they illegally enter the Bureau mainframe to learn more about Agt. Mulder.

Frohike and Byers then sought the assistance of Langly, finding him successfully gambling with young computer technologists. In Byers’ hotel room, Langly, Byers, and Frohike illegally entered the Bureau database and examined Agt. Mulder’s file and photograph, noting that Agt. Mulder was attached to the Violent Crimes Unit. They searched the database for the name Holly Modeski, to no avail. Searching for the name Susanne Modeski, they discovered that the woman identified as Holly was in fact Susanne Modeski, a former employee of the Army Advanced Weapons Facility in White Stone, New Mexico. She was currently wanted by the Bureau for murder, sabotage, and terrorism, and described on file as brilliant but deranged. The woman now identified as Susanne Modeski then entered the hotel room and identified herself. She admitted to having no daughter but denied all charges against her. She claimed that secret government forces were plotting against the citizens of the United States. She described a project in which she had been employed, in which ergotamine-histomine gas (E-H), which induces anxiety and paranoia, was to be tested on the people of Baltimore. She invoked the assassination of President Kennedy, characterizing it as a government plot, and stated that Bibles placed in hotel rooms are forms of electronic surveillance. Frohike and Langly expressed skepticism about the government’s capacity for such efficiency, citing Amtrak, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, and Byers’ government employment. As Modeski begged them to help her decode the encrypted document, a pistol fell from her purse. As Byers later told Det. Munch, the three men then felt they had no choice but to assist Modeski.

That night, surreptitiously using computers at a supercomputer exhibit in the convention center, Frohike decoded the encrypted document while Byers, Langly, and Modeski looked on. Modeski interpreted the document’s jargon as stating that a government-sponsored Engineered Biological Operation (EBO), in which toxic organic agents would be used on human subjects, was scheduled for deployment in the Baltimore-Washington corridor within one week, and that her former research colleagues had been murdered by the government. The document also stated that the E-H product was being stored as lot number A-9000 at 204 Fells Point Road. The document further stated that Modeski was being monitored through actions taken by Dr. Michael Kilbourne. Modeski identified Dr. Kilbourne to Byers, Langly, and Frohike as her dentist. In the women’s bathroom, Modeski extracted her own tooth and showed the three men a microscopic circuit board implanted in it. Modeski and the three men then flushed the tooth down a toilet.

They then proceeded to the address at the Fells Point Industrial Park, where they broke into the warehouse and identified the boxes in lot A-9000. The boxes contained asthma inhalers, which Modeski stated were the planned means of delivery of the E-H product. The four were interrupted by the entry of Agt. Mulder, his weapon drawn. Byers, Langly, and Frohike followed Agt. Mulder’s order to lie on the floor. Two men in suits then entered the warehouse and, ignoring Agt. Mulder, demanded that Modeski leave with them. Challenged by Agt. Mulder, the unidentified men drew their weapons and fired at him. Agt. Mulder took cover behind the boxes in lot A-9000. The unidentified men continued to fire, rupturing the inhalers and releasing the gas in lot A-9000. Agt. Mulder, overcome by the gas, began to disrobe in an attempt to assuage its effect, but eventually succumbed. The unidentified men prepared to execute him. Modeski shot and killed the unidentified men and escaped. Agt. Mulder became extremely disoriented. As Byers called after Modeski, a team of men wearing chemical-resistant apparatus entered the warehouse, followed by the man identified only as X. X checked Agt. Mulder’s condition and ordered his men to "sanitize" the area. While Agt. Mulder, now naked and still disoriented, Byers, Langly, and Frohike watched, the men cleaned the area, placing the bodies of the unidentified men in body bags—despite the fact that one of them was still alive—and vacuuming debris. A forklift removed the boxes in lot A-9000. X ordered his men not to touch Agt. Mulder. Byers challenged X’s authority, over Frohike’s objections. X, seemingly preparing to execute all three men, pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. He then ordered the men to "behave yourselves." Byers expressed outrage, invoking the assassination of President Kennedy. X sarcastically reminded Byers of the "Lone Gunman" theory, as he and his team left the warehouse. The Baltimore SWAT team arrived soon afterward.

When Byers concluded his statement to Det. Munch, Det. Munch expressed skepticism regarding its accuracy, reminding Byers that Det. Munch was not talk-show host Geraldo Rivera. In the Homicide Unit holding cell, Byers, Langly and Frohike argued about Modeski’s culpability. Langly and Frohike blamed Modeski for their current situation. When Byers stated that he now believed both her story and her theories regarding government plots, the two others softened their attitude toward her. Det. Munch then released the three men, stating that Agt. Mulder had verified their story. He also suggested they wear aluminum-foil hats in order to block government mind-control rays.

While being released, the three men overheard a police officer state that Agt. Mulder’s car had been located at the train station. Byers inferred that Modeski had used the car to mislead pursuers into believing she had taken a train. Byers, Langly, and Frohike located Modeski leaving the office of the Guardian Newspaper Group. She informed them that editors there had disbelieved her story. She stated that she would try other papers; the three men insisted that they wanted to help her. When a nearby public phone began ringing. Modeski warned them that they could never be paranoid enough and exhorted them to reach out to others with the truth. She was then apprehended by unidentified men and taken into a black sedan. Seated in the sedan's back seat was X.

At the empty convention center, with the trade show now over, Agt. Mulder approached Byers, Langly, and Frohike. He stated that while he had recovered from the effects of the gas, he now had ideas in his head that he could not dispel. He also stated that the Bureau had officially closed the Modeski case. Byers, explaining his new belief that secret government forces are working against United States citizens, related to Agt. Mulder the events of the preceding days.