S3E23 · Wetwired

In Braddock Heights, Maryland, a man mistakenly kills his wife, believing her, as well as the police who soon arrive, to all be someone else. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is tipped off to the case by the mysterious Plain-Clothed Man, who provides him with a newspaper article discussing the case. Mulder and partner Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) visit the man, and his doctor, Dr. Stroman, in a psychiatric hospital and are told the man killed five people, believing them to all be the same person.

Mulder and Scully visit the murderer's house, where Mulder sees a repairman working on the cable line. They find hundreds of video tapes of a cable news channel. Scully believes all the violence the man watched on TV may have led him to the murders, something Mulder does not believe. That night Scully watches the tapes, seeing if there are any clues to why the man committed murder. She steps outside for a break and sees Mulder in a car talking to the Cigarette Smoking Man. In the morning Scully suspiciously asks Mulder if he moved the car in the night.

When Mulder tells her he only went out for a paper earlier, she believes he is lying. The next day a similar murder occurs when a woman thinks she sees her husband in a hammock with another woman; in reality she has killed her neighbor who was in a hammock with his dog. Mulder sees the same cable repairman near the house, who escapes from him. Climbing up on the telephone pole Mulder finds a device inside the cable box.

Mulder brings the device to the Lone Gunmen, who tell him it is emitting some kind of signal. Mulder contacts Scully, who is growing increasingly paranoid. Hearing possible clicks while on the phone with Mulder, she frantically searches her hotel room for monitoring devices. When Mulder knocks at her door, Scully fires her weapon at it and runs off. Mulder believes her to be suffering from paranoid psychosis. The Lone Gunmen believe the device to be some sort of subliminal mind control device. Mulder was not affected due to his color blindness.

The police find a body they believe to be that of Scully, but Mulder confirms that it is not her. Mulder is unable to contact Scully's mother, leading him to go to her house. He finds Scully there, who aims a gun at him. Scully claims Mulder never trusted her and blames him for her abduction and her sister's murder. Scully's mother calms her down, and she is hospitalized.

Mulder believes that the mind control device turns people's fears into paranoid delusions. Mulder tries to contact Dr. Stroman with no success. He traces Dr. Stroman's location to an empty hotel room where he finds a “Morley” cigarette butt in the ash tray. Using the phone log for the room Mulder tracks Stroman to a house where he spots him meeting with the cable repairman. However, by the time Mulder enters, shots ring out, and Mulder finds both men dead, with X (Steven Williams) responsible for their murders. X used a third party to inform Mulder, knowing he had orders to kill the men, but Mulder was not able to piece things together in time. Mulder calls him a coward but X tells Mulder that Mulder needs him. Later, X meets in a car with The Smoking Man (William B. Davis).