The Lone Gunmen reveal the (possibly fake) secret history of the Cigarette Smoking Man to Mulder and Scully; from a young captain in the U.S. Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy.

Covered in blood and suffering from amnesia, Mulder pieces together the events of the last few days, but the trail leads to a double murder that appears to have been committed with Mulder's weapon.

In 1990 Agent Fox Mulder visits an aging FBI Agent named Arthur Dales. He listens to a story of the agents assigned to a would-be X-File in the Cold War era of the 1950's and how Mulder's father was connected to a series of strange deaths.