S6E17 · Trevor

In Stringer, Mississippi, inmates are being made to prepare and fortify a prison farm for a series of devastating tornadoes, which are due to pass through within the next few hours. An argument breaks out between Wilson "Pinker" Rawls (John Diehl) and another inmate, causing Pinker to nail the other prisoner's hand to a wall. After being reported to the warden for the incident, Pinker is made to sit through the tornado in a tiny outdoor shack. Afterwards, the prisoners and guards emerge from their shelters and discover that the shack has been totally destroyed. One of the guards later finds the warden's body split in half around the waist, propping his office door shut from the inside.

Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) soon arrive to investigate. Scully performs an autopsy and concludes that the severing of the torso and severe burn marks could have been caused by the weather conditions at the time and that a substantial amount of the torso is missing from the severing. The guard who found the warden's body insists that it was the work of Pinker, but cannot bring himself to explain how he did it. Mulder finds that a wall in the office has become extremely brittle and crumbles at the slightest touch. Meanwhile, in Meridian, a woman named June Gurwitch is disturbed when she watches a news report on Pinker's apparent death.

Elsewhere, Pinker is revealed to be alive. After breaking into a store to get clothes, he is confronted by a security guard and handcuffed to a pole. However, Pinker slips out of the handcuffs and escapes in the security guard's car. When the agents arrive on the scene, Mulder inspects the handcuffs and finds that they too have become brittle and easily snap in half. Bo Merkle, an old friend of Pinker's, discovers Pinker ransacking his house, demanding to know June's whereabouts. Bo attempts to shoot Pinker, but the bullets pass through him. In response, Pinker burns off Bo's face, killing him. Mulder later discovers that the spent bullets, too, crumble into dust when compressed. He muses that Pinker, after being struck by lightning, must have developed the ability to pass through solid objects. Scully argues that he cannot possibly defy the laws of chemistry.

Evidence leads the agents to track down June, while Pinker accosts her sister Jackie and her son Trevor. Mulder and Scully later discover Jackie, who tells the agents that Pinker has the ability to walk through walls. June has changed her last name to avoid Pinker; the agents find her living with her new boyfriend and convince her to go into witness protection. Pinker, who was hiding in the trunk of the agents' car, leaves a charred message on June's house wall reading "I want what's mine", but the agents discover when this writing stops at the glass of a mirror that glass, acting as an insulator to electricity, repulses Pinker's abilities. Scully finds medical bills indicating that June gave birth to a child and learns that Pinker is actually in search of his son, whom he has not yet met.

June is placed in a motel by the Mississippi Highway Patrol, but Pinker kidnaps her after killing the trooper assigned to guard her. Pinker discovers his child is actually Trevor, who has been living with Jackie for the past several years as her son. Pinker attempts to kidnap Trevor, but is confronted by Mulder, who is armed with a shotgun loaded with rubber bullets. Pinker manages to evade Mulder and continues to chase after Trevor and Scully, whom he quickly corners. Scully, using Mulder's glass insulator hypothesis, locks herself inside a telephone booth with Trevor.

After failing to break into the telephone booth, Pinker sees his son trembling in fear. Realizing that he does not want to scare his son anymore, Pinker decides to walk away. However, June appears and hits Pinker with her car; he passes through the metal components of the car, but not its glass windshield, and is cut in half and killed as a result. June insists she had to do it or else Pinker would have hurt Trevor. She asks what Pinker wanted, to which Mulder replies, "Maybe another chance", causing June to cry.