When a teenaged girl, Ruby, is mysteriously abducted from a campsite in Iowa, Mulder has a particular emotional investment in the case -- especially in light of his belief that his own sister was abducted. Ruby's brother Kevin has been behaving strangely ever since the abduction, and has taken to continuously writing down series of 1's and 0's. Mulder sends the writing to some analysts back in Washington, and the boy and his mother are promptly taken into custody. Kevin's scribblings are actually the binary transmissions of a defense satellite.

Scully thinks Ruby may have been murdered, and she believes that Mulder is allowing his personal feelings to cloud his judgment. Yet when the agents return to Ruby's home, they find Kevin arranging countless pages of binary code on the floor. When Scully looks down from a stairway, she is shocked to see that the numbers have formed a giant portrait of Ruby.

Ruby suddenly reappears in the woods and is unconscious. In the hospital, she exhibits symptoms of having been weightless for a prolonged period of time. But instead of subjecting her daughter to scrutiny, their mother takes the children and disappears.