Reality is manipulated by an Indian mystic, and no-one is who they seem...
Hugh Potocki is making his way through Sahar International airport in Mumbai, India. A beggar with no legs, sitting on a cart, approaches him - he�s disgusted. Later, in the toilets, he hears the noise of the beggars cart. He's pulled violently from underneath the cubicle door.
Back in the USA, Potocki is in a hotel, with the beggar's cart strapped to his luggage. As he sits on the bed, blood pools beneath him.
Investigating the incident, Scully and Doggett find a fingerprint in the blood in the hotel room. When Scully later performs an autopsy, she finds severe damage to the victim�s colon and rectal tissue - but was it caused by something going in, or out? Even stranger is the fact that Potocki must have died 24 hours earlier- in Bombay.
At Fairmont Elementary, Mrs Holt, the principal is interviewing Mr Burrard for the post of maintenance engineer. She sees him as an average white male, but he is in fact the Indian beggar. Elsewhere in the school, Trevor, a large seventh grader, is picking on Quinton, a weaker boy. Quinton�s father intervenes, and is watched by Burrard.
Doggett has discovered a similar case - Albert Brecht, a businessman, died of internal injury in Bombay three weeks earlier. His passport stated he weighed 205 pounds, but the Indian pathology report gives his weight at 238. Scully thinks that the difference could be due to an internal parasite.
Quinton, the weak schoolboy, has a nightmare of a beggar in his room - his father tells him it is a dream, but is later killed by the beggar.
Investigating the death, the Agents find similar palm prints to those in Potocki�s hotel - but this victim has no internal trauma. During the autopsy, a hand forces itself out of the man�s stomach - Scully draws her gun, but the creature escapes. Following blood trails to a hazchem store, she finds it empty� unbeknownst to her, the beggar is hiding there.
At Fairmont Elementary, Trevor sees fleeting hallucinations of the beggar every time he looks at Burrard. He later tells Quinton that he knows who killed his father.
Scully and Doggett visit Chuck Burks, one of Mulder�s sources, who shows them video of Indian Fakirs performing self-torture to gain enlightenment. One order of Fakirs - the siddhi mystics - can manipulate reality, making themselves invisible or very small. Further investigation reveals that the son of a siddhi mystic was killed in a toxic gas accident at an American chemical plant near the village of Vishi in India.
Meanwhile, Trevor�s mother sees her son floating face down in their swimming pool. When she dives in to rescue him, she instead finds the Indian beggar. After her corpse has been removed from the pool, Trevor tells Scully about the little man who has been following him.
The agents place Burrard under arrest, but he refuses to cooperate. Doggett tells Chuck Burks that Burrard is to be released due to lack of evidence, but Burks is cautious. Burks sets up a video camera -although Burrard appears to be in the cell, he doesn�t show up on camera.
At Fairmont Elementary, Quinton and Trevor join forces to ambush the janitor, dropping bottles of chemicals on to him. The man vanishes, but reappears to chase Quinton down a corridor. Quinton locks himself in a classroom, but the beggar materialises in there with him. Scully finds them, but sees Trevor in place of the Beggar. When Quinton insists that the other person in the room is not Trevor, she draws her gun - it�s a struggle to shoot what appears to be a child, but after firing she finds the body of the beggar.
Talking to Doggett later, Scully explains that as she fired, she understood what Mulder would have seen, and that it is important that she keeps an open mind in her work.
At an airport, the beggar targets his next victim...
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