Agts. Mulder and Scully were assigned to a joint Bureau-BATF raid on the Temple of the Seven Stars, a millenialist religious cult based on a compound in Apison, Tennessee and led by Vernon Ephesian. During an eighteen-month BATF investigation of the cult, a telephone tip from a cult member self-identified as "Sidney" had been received by BATF Agt. Harbaugh. Sidney had suggested that children on the compound were being hurt. On the strength of that call, the Attorney General had authorized the early-morning raid on the compound. Agts. Mulder and Scully had been assigned to the raid in order to investigate Ephesian’s claims of paranormal abilities.
The raid surprised the compound. Ephesian and his six wives, however, were found only when Agt. Mulder left the main building, followed by Agt. Scully, and opened a wooden hatch in a nearby field, revealing a bunker. Ephesian was in the process of giving his wives a red liquid to drink. Presuming suicide, Agt. Mulder knocked the cup away from one of the wives, Melissa Riedal, before Riedal was able to drink it. Riedal spat at Agt. Mulder.
Despite the arrests, the raid resulted in immediate embarrassment for the Bureau and BATF. By late-morning, firearms had not been discovered on the compound; no cult member named Sidney had been arrested or discovered. If firearms were not found on the compound, Ephesian and the cult members would quickly be arraigned and released. Following an acrimonious meeting of accountable Bureau and BATF units, A. D. Skinner met privately with Agts. Mulder and Scully. If Ephesian were released, A. D. Skinner stressed, further investigation might inspire him to induce a mass suicide comparable to that at Jonestown. Agts. Mulder and Scully therefore had fewer than twenty-four hours to interrogate Ephesian and other cult members in an attempt to gather further evidence.
Agts. Mulder and Scully interrogated Ephesian in the presence of his attorney. Ephesian’s statements were replete with quotations from the Biblical Book of Revelations, including a reference to a "crown of life." When Agt. Scully asked Ephesian whether "Sidney" had received a "crown of life," Ephesian’s attorney intervened in the interrogation. Ephesian became suddenly adamant in warning Agts. Mulder and Scully that if they failed to believe in his message, they, like all else, would be destroyed.
By noon, cult members began to be released; the compound remained under Federal control. Agt. Mulder began the interrogation of Ephesian’s wives with Melissa Riedal. During Agts. Mulder’s and Scully’s interrogation, Melissa Riedal evinced confusion, as well as pride and hope for someday bearing a child for Ephesian. At Agt. Scully’s suggestion that children were being hurt on the compound, Riedal abruptly spoke in a voice and accent the agents recognized as that of the informant Sidney. Like the taped Sidney, Riedal made an anachronistic reference, to the McCarthy hearings; when asked the name of the President, Riedal answered Harry Truman. Agt. Mulder rejected Agt. Scully’s scribbled suggestion that Riedal was suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder. He believed instead that Riedal had been speaking from a past life. Agt. Scully expressed skepticism. Agt. Mulder could not explain his certainty.
In a meeting with A. D. Skinner, Agt. Mulder argued passionately for a diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder. He suggested that Melissa Riedal be taken to the compound, where one of her personalities might reveal information. Agt. Scully expressed doubt about that diagnosis and asserted the Bureau’s responsibility for the witness. A. D. Skinner ordered Agts. Mulder and Scully to take Riedal to the compound. In A. D. Skinner’s absence, Agt. Scully accused Agt. Mulder of cowardice in not revealing his actual theory of past lives to A. D. Skinner. She also accused him of being cavalier with the mental stability of the witness.
In the deserted main building of the cult compound, Riedal cried when viewing wedding pictures of herself and Ephesian. In the building’s day-care area, Riedal appeared to take on the characteristics of a four-year-old, Lily, and then of Sidney. None of Riedal’s personalities was responsive to Agts. Mulder and Scully’s questions regarding the location of the firearms. On leaving the main building, Riedal abruptly began walking across the field toward the bunker where Agt. Mulder had discovered Ephesian. Following Melissa, Agt. Mulder appeared to Agt. Scully to become momentarily disoriented. Questioned by Agt. Scully, Agt. Mulder could not explain the change in his mental state.
In the field, Riedal began speaking in the voice and accent of a Southern nurse recalling events of November 1863. She referred to a Civil War battle, and to having been hidden with weapons in a bunker in that field. She told Agt. Mulder that he too had been in that field, and that she had watched him die there.
In their car, Agts. Mulder and Scully disagreed about their next move. Agt. Mulder wanted a therapist to regress Riedal to a past life. Agt. Scully countered with concern for Riedal’s well-being. Agt. Mulder heatedly reminded Agt. Scully that he had somehow known the location of the bunker. Agt. Mulder believed there was important information to be gleaned from his own and Riedal’s apparent past-life relationship. Agt. Scully remained skeptical.
Under hypnosis conducted by a therapist, Riedal described Ephesian’s relationship with Scott, a boy who had come to the compound with his mother Elizabeth. Ephesian had taken Scott from Elizabeth and made Scott one of his own, known as "grandchildren of God." When Elizabeth had secretly entered the area where Ephesian kept such children, she was caught by Ephesian and his bodyguards, known as "Mighty Men," and she and Scott were beaten. In relating that incident, Riedal became distraught, first describing what happened to Scott and his mother, then interrupted by Sidney, the protector personality. Asked by the therapist for the location of the guns, Sidney referred to other Civil War bunkers in the field near the compound. Over Agt. Scully’s objection, Agt. Mulder spoke to Riedal in the role of her 1863 lover. Riedal appeared to recognize Agt. Mulder and spoke to him lovingly in the personality of the Civil War nurse. She expressed anguish over her separation from Agt. Mulder. Agt. Scully insisted that the past life was a function of Riedal’s illness and urged Agt. Mulder to focus on the need to find the firearms before Ephesian was released.
Agt. Mulder subjected himself to a past-life regression conducted by the therapist. Under hypnosis, Agt. Mulder revealed that his sister, Samantha Mulder, was, in a past life, Agt. Mulder’s son. In that same life, Agt. Scully was Agt. Mulder’s father. The man referred to by Agt. Mulder as The Cigarette Smoking Man appeared in that life as an officer of the Gestapo; Agt. Mulder himself was a woman whose husband was taken to a death camp; that husband was Riedal. According to Agt. Mulder’s statements under hypnosis, the same souls continue to rejoin each other in a succession of lives. Regressing further, Agt. Mulder described his own death during a Civil War battle in the field near the cult compound. In that life, Agt. Mulder’s name was Sullivan Biddle; his sergeant was Agt. Scully. A woman named Sarah Kavanagh, who held Agt. Mulder as he died, was Riedal. Agt. Scully pressed Agt. Mulder for information about other bunkers where the firearms might be hidden. Agt. Mulder, apparently exhausted, could not answer.
In the Apison Historical Records Office, Agt. Scully studied the location of the Civil War battle of Apison on an old map. In the county register she discovered the names, Sullivan Biddle and Sarah Kavanaugh, to which Agt. Mulder had referred under hypnosis. In a drawer of photographs, she found a picture of Sarah Kavanaugh and a picture of Sullivan Biddle. In the interrogation room, Agts. Mulder and Scully met to examine the photographs. Agt. Mulder asked Agt. Scully whether, had she believed she had been connected to Agt. Mulder in past lives, lives in which, he implied, she had repeatedly died painfully, and before Agt. Mulder, she would have done anything differently regarding their current partnership. Agt. Scully replied that while she had no belief in past lives, she would not have changed a day of their partnership.
In a final interrogation, Agt. Mulder played Melissa Riedal the tapes of her statements during past-life regression. While admitting that she wanted to believe, Riedal denied a belief in reincarnation and referred to her present life as pointless. Calling her Sarah and touching her hand, Agt. Mulder reminded her that if such past lives were real, no life would be pointless. Riedal’s response was interrupted by Ephesian, who had been arraigned and released. Riedal tore the picture of Sarah Kavanagh in half and left with Ephesian.
The cult members returned to the compound; BATF agents continued to search for other old bunkers in the field. Agts. Mulder and Scully and A. D. Skinner discussed the possibility that with federal agents so close to the compound, Ephesian would induce a mass suicide in order to "deny himself" to the federal government. A. D. Skinner’s opinion was that the Attorney General would not approve another raid.
A. D. Skinner’s request that BATF agents be removed from the field was rejected by Agt. Harbaugh. On a parabolic microphone aimed at the compound, A. D. Skinner, Agt. Harbaugh, and Agts. Mulder and Scully heard Ephesian preaching to the cult, using a Biblical text suggesting that the faithful must lay down their lives; Ephesian had witnessed BATF agents in the field. As Ephesian’s Mighty Men passed out KCN (Potassium Cyanide) to the cult members, BATF agents approached the building. The Mighty Men fired on BATF agents. Agts. Mulder and Scully arrived at the scene to find a BATF agent down. The agents were ordered to hold fire. Over Agt. Scully’s shouted objection, Agt. Mulder approached the building, hands raised.
In the building, Agt. Mulder encountered the dead bodies of the cult members, including that of Melissa Riedal. Riedal, having been taken over by the personality of Sidney, had faked her death, but on rising had been confronted by Ephesian, who had forced her to drink the poison. Agt. Scully found Agt. Mulder in the compound, crouched over Riedal’s body. In Riedal’s hand was the torn picture of Sarah Kavanagh.