Maria, Isabel, Max, Liz and Michael are still huddled in Atherton’s secret room after Topolsky struck Valenti in the back of the head. They begin to search quietly through Atherton’s possessions, looking for any clue to their past. Upstairs, Topolsky notices the keyhole in the wall. Liz discovers a trap door in the secret room just as Topolsky succeeds in picking the lock. Max and Michael put whatever papers and books they can into a box and head for the trap door. Isabel grabs a pendant from a statue as she makes for the exit.

Topolsky enters the secret room as Isabel closes the door behind her. The trap door opens into a tunnel that the kids navigate until they emerge into the desert night and escape in their Jeep. When they return home, Isabel urgently flips through a family photo album until she finds a picture of a symbol that she and Max drew in the sand on a vacation when they were eight. She compares it to the pendant she took from Atherton’s home, which is an ancient looking etching on a stone. They are identical, save for a piece of the pendant that is broken off. Max is equally intrigued by this similarity.

Late for school, Max hides the box of things taken from Atherton’s under his bed while Isabel slips the pendant around her neck. At school, Maria tells Liz that she and Michael shared some sort of moment in the motel room the prior night that was neither physical nor verbal. Liz spots Kyle and asks him to not say anything about going to Texas. Kyle agrees to keep quiet…until he has something really incriminating on Max.

In her office, Topolsky gets her new assignment from Agent Stephens: Obtain whatever the kids took out of Atherton’s house and find out what they are doing. Approaching the case from a different angle, Valenti questions Milton about Atherton and discovers that he disappeared off the face of the earth right after he made supposed direct contact with aliens. The legend is that he went away with the aliens, perhaps voluntarily, in 1959.

Valenti returns to his office and compares Atherton’s picture from the back of his book with the photograph of the 1959 corpse. It is a perfect match. That afternoon, Max, Isabel and Michael return to the Evans home to find the police investigating a robbery. After letting Michael off, Isabel and Max go into the house and discover that their rooms have been much more ransacked than any other part of their home. Max quickly looks under his bed and sees that all of Atherton’s things have been taken. While they tell the police that nothing is missing, Deputy Blackwood notices the pendant that Isabel took from Atherton’s home. He tells her that he has not seen anything like it since he left the Mescalero Reservation.

That afternoon, Liz goes over to see Max in order to get the pendant from him. She firmly tells him that she is going to the reservation. Seeing that he cannot talk her out of it, Max gives her the pendant. Liz arrives at the Mescalero Indian Reservation that evening and finds it dark and eerie. She shows the pendant to various people until a man named River Dog takes the pendant and asks where she got it. He warns her that it brings danger and death. Freaked by his foreboding presence, Liz takes the pendant out of his hand, jumps in her car and takes off.

At the Crashdown, a young Native American man, Eddie, comes up to Liz and hands her the missing piece of her pendant. He tells her that River Dog will meet her at the reservation at ten o’clock that night. That evening, Michael helps Max and Liz lose Topolsky, who has been tailing them. Valenti, in turn, has been following Topolsky. Now, he comes up to her and suggests they discuss the situation over a drink.

Meanwhile, Max and Liz arrive at the reservation to be greeted by Eddie. He tells them that River Dog will answer their questions if they can pass a test. Eddie leads them into a cave and leaves. They hear a noise, Liz is grabbed and her flashlight goes out. Max uses his powers to generate light from his hands. He has just passed the test.

In town, Valenti tells Topolsky that he knows she is an FBI agent and they agree it would be in both their best interests to work together. Back at the café awaiting word from Max and Liz, Michael "calms" Maria by giving her a kiss. They are both shocked.

Out on the reservation, River Dog tells Max and Liz that forty years ago the fourth alien befriended both he and Atherton. The alien gave Atherton the pendant shortly before he killed the author. River Dog was too far away to see exactly what happened, but he knew the alien feared for his life and may have acted in self-defense. He then leads the kids to a painting on the cave wall that was drawn by the alien. It is a message for anyone who could pass the test, but Max is the first in forty years to see it. Max finds it familiar, yet he cannot understand it. River Dog tells them that they can never return there. He then pulls Liz aside and warns her that Max could be dangerous.