The season opens with Stiles having a vivid nightmare, in which he sees the nemeton twice and has to fight to wake himself up.

When he finally does, his dad comes in to wake him properly, and he goes to school like nothing happened. We see him, Scott, and Noel all walking down some stairs together outside the school, Stiles explaining to them that the dream was like having sleep paralysis before explaining the sensation.

When they go inside, Noel tells him that that's rough, and that he used to feel like that sometimes whenever visions of Laura would come to him. Stiles brushes it off, saying "Yeah but, as crazy as it is to say, that was real. This was just a dream."

"Do you think the dream means anything?" Scott asks, Stiles continuing "What if what we did that night is still affecting us? Like post traumatic stress, or... Something."

They duck into a classroom, sitting down together as Stiles says "You know what scares me the most? I'm not even sure this is real."

Suddenly Stiles wakes up in his bed at home, screaming seemingly for his life. His father rushes in and holds him, telling him that it's okay as the credits start to roll.

—

Noel retains the same credit scene and remains in his new spot in the lineup, between Stiles/Dylan and Derek/Tyler.

—

The main three all get scenes of their morning before school, where Scott sees claws on his shadow (despite not having his claws out), Stiles can't properly read the title of his textbook because the letters are jumbled, and Allison sees visions of her aunt Kate before suddenly arriving at school as Lydia and Noel ask her if she's okay.

When Stiles and Scott meet up and both admit that they're seeing things, the girls walk in with Noel, Lydia saying that it's happening to all three of them (adding Allison into the mix).

Lydia walks into the front doors of the school and says smugly "Well well, look who's no longer the crazy one." Allison defends that they're not crazy, but Lydia retorts "Hallucinating, sleep paralysis, nah, you guys are fine."

"Well we did die and come back to life," Scott points out, "that's gotta have some side effects."

The bell rings and the five of them all agree to keep their eyes on each other, before the boys go to history class with their new teacher, Mr. Yukimura. He then introduces his daughter Kira to the class (in a rather embarrassing way) and Scott appears to take an immediate interest in her and vice versa.

—

After Allison, Lydia, and Isaac's scene in art class, the boys go to their lockers, and Noel suggests "Maybe you guys just need a bit of time for things to go back to normal."

"Try not to forget we hit the reset button on a supernatural beacon for supernatural creatures. I think there's a pretty good chance that things are never going back to normal," Stiles argues as he struggles to get his locker open. Scott and Noel overhear Kira's conversation with her father, Noel giving Scott a curious look as the boy makes eye contact with Kira.

Noel looks at Scott just as Stiles is finally able to decipher the strange characters on his padlock, Noel telling Scott "Hey, whoa, your eyes."

Scott's eyes are red, and Noel tells him to make them stop. Scott says that he can't, Stiles looking around to be sure no one is watching them. Stiles takes action and tells Scott to keep his head down, leading him away as Noel hurries along after them.

Stiles shoves Scott into an empty classroom and pulls Noel in behind them, Scott starting to growl and warning Stiles to stay away from him. Noel isn't deterred, stepping toward Scott and trying to calm him down.

"I said stay back!" Scott yells and scratches Noel's forearm, giving him the exact same wound he had inflicted when Noel was still human in season one. Noel stumbles back and looks at the wound, knowing it will heal soon, but still shocked that he has it.

Scott, looking guilty, digs his claws into his own palms, blood pouring down his forearms as Stiles and Noel look on in concern. The act of self harm is enough to bring Scott back to reality, collapsing against a desk as Noel tries again to approach him.

Scott looks at the long, angry looking claw marks that run on Noel's arm, saying under his breath "Noel... I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, they'll be gone by the end of the day," Noel says dismissively, handing Scott his overshirt to wipe his hands with. Stiles takes a cautious step forward, Scott showing him the cuts on his hands and explaining "Pain makes you human."

"Scott, this isn't just in our heads," Stiles says, almost like he's trying to convince himself as well. "This is real. It's starting to get bad for me too. I'm not just having nightmares, I'm having these dreams where I have to literally scream myself awake. And sometimes, I'm not even sure if I'm ever actually waking up."

"What do you mean?" Noel asks, Stiles mumbling "You know how you can tell if you're dreaming? You can't read in dreams. More and more the last few days, I've been having trouble reading. It's like I can't see the words, I can't put the letters in order."

"Like, dyslexia? Like, right now?" Noel asks, Stiles standing up and looking at the chalkboard at the front of the room. Sure enough, the letters are all jumbled nonsense, unintelligible instead of simply scrambled up like they had been at the start of the episode. Everything in the classroom is unreadable, and Stiles admits fearfully "I can't read a thing."

—

The next day during lunch at school, the six of them (Scott, Stiles, Noel, Allison, Lydia, and Isaac) are all sitting together, trying to figure out an explanation as to why three of them are hallucinating.

Kira comes up to them and lets herself into the conversation, telling them that there's a name for the state between life and death that some people go through when they have near death experiences.

Seeing her potential to help with their situation, Noel immediately stands up, offering her his seat next to Stiles. She accepts the seat with a smile and a small thanks, and continues to explain that in that between state, you can have auditory and visionary hallucinations of wrathful deities.

Isaac asks her to go more in depth, and Kira explains that she means demons. Stiles doesn't seem too thrilled about that, and Allison asks what the last progressive state is, since Kira said there are multiple. Kira, not seeing the bigger picture, tells them that it's death. The others all look surprised and not happy with this development, as we change scenes to the clinic.

—

Stiles explains to Deaton a vision he had, in which a whole classroom was saying something to him in sign language that he, naturally, couldn't understand. Deaton and Noel both ask if he remembers what the signs looked like, Stiles asking Noel why he wants to know.

"Because I know sign language. My dad was deaf," he explains, Scott and Stiles looking at him in shock. Noel rolls his eyes and says "Come on, you guys have to have seen me sign at some point."

Stiles and Scott then look at each other, waiting for either one of them to speak. Noel lets out an exasperated sigh, asking Stiles again to tell him what the signs looked like.

Stiles shows him the words the class was signing, Noel translating as he does. "That's when... Door... And not. Like this?" he asks, and repeats the phrase in sign, Stiles nodding.

Noel looks to Deaton, then back at Stiles, and asks "When is a door not a door?"

Stiles repeats the phrase questioningly like it makes no sense, but Scott answers "When it's ajar."

Stiles asks "Are you kidding me? A riddle? My subconscious wants to tell me a riddle?"

"Not necessarily. When the three of you went under the water, when you crossed from unconsciousness to a kind of super-consciousness, you essentially opened a door in your minds," Deaton tells him.

"So what does that mean, the door is still open?" Scott asks, Deaton correcting "Ajar."

"A door into our minds," Stiles asks to clarify, Deaton reminding them that he told them it was risky. Noel asks what can they do about it, Deaton responding that that's a difficult question to answer.

Stiles sniffs out his lie, saying "No, wait a sec, I know that look. That's the 'we know exactly what's wrong with you and we have no idea how to fix it' look."

"Well one thing I do know," Deaton says, looking from Scott to Stiles. "It's that having a door like that into your mind is not good. You each need to close that door. And you need to do it as soon as possible."

The three of them leave the clinic then, but the sheriff pulls in as they're leaving. Stiles asks what he's doing there, the sheriff saying that he came to get some help. He then looks to Scott and Noel, saying "Their help, specifically."

Scott and Noel ask why them, and the sheriff tells them about Malia Tate, and his theory that she may have been dragged away from the accident by a werewolf. He then asks them if they could possibly get a lock on her scent and help him find her body, and help bring the werewolf that killed her and her family to justice.

—

While the sheriff talks to Mr. Tate in the next scene, Stiles, Scott, and Noel sneak into the house to try and get Malia's scent. Stiles hands them various stuffed animals that they pass back and forth, Scott telling Stiles that all he's getting from them is an animal smell. Stiles asks what animal, Noel supplying "Dog."

The other two turn to look where he's looking, and they see a rottweiler growling up at them. Stiles tells the two of them to glow their eyes at it, Noel saying that he doubts a guard dog would stand down to a beta. He then nudges Scott and tells him to do it, since he's an alpha, Scott telling them both that he can't since he doesn't have control. Scott holds a hand out to the dog and tries to pet it, but the dog barks at them.

Mr. Tate turns toward the noise, and yells repeatedly for the dog to shut up. The dog obeys but keeps his eyes trained on the three boys before turning and walking away from them. They all look at each other in disbelief, and go back to trying to get Malia's scent. But all they smell is the dog, and Stiles takes a picture of Malia and her sister that's framed on her shelf.

Mr. Tate tells the sheriff that he doesn't want to think of their case as an unsolved murder, since he's spent the last eight years becoming used to the idea that it was an accident. He demands that the sheriff leave, and outside Scott and Noel apologize for not being able to pick up a scent.

The sheriff tells them that it's okay, and that it was a longshot anyway, and a terrible idea since he just reopened Mr. Tate's wounds after so many years. He thanks them one more time for trying, getting in his car and driving away.

Noel and Scott ask Stiles why his dad thought this case could be solved so many years later, and Stiles tells them that his dad just wants to be able to solve one more case while he's still the sheriff. Scott and Noel ask what he means, and Stiles reveals (offscreen) that agent McCall wants to strip the sheriff of his position.

—

After Scott's mom gives him a speech about being his own anchor, Scott walks into Stiles' room while he tries to sleep. He holds a flashlight, and Stiles sits up, asking what he's doing there. Scott tells him to get up and call Noel, because they're going out to find a body.

A dead body, he clarifies.

—

Later the three of them are walking through the woods, Stiles pointing out that if his dad is right, there's another werewolf in Beacon Hills that they don't know about yet. He continues that if it's a set of triplets that can fuse like the twins into a three headed hound, he doesn't want to deal with that. Scott agrees as he looks at the directions he has on his phone, Noel asking "So... Where exactly are we going?"

Scott doesn't answer, as they hear a coyote howling, and Stiles hits Scott's arm and sends his phone tumbling down a knoll into a puddle of water.

Stiles apologizes and tells Scott and Noel that he hates coyotes, because they sound like they're always mauling a small animal. Scott and Noel jump down to retrieve the phone, Stiles following after much less gracefully.

Scott wipes the phone off and Noel happily comments that at least it still works, Stiles taking the flashlight from Scott and shining it to his right. He comments that he thinks they found the wreck, stepping closer to it.

"Why wouldn't they move it? It's police evidence, isn't it?" Noel asks, approaching the wreck with them. Stiles offers that maybe they were too lazy to try and pull it out, and he comments on the claw marks on the underside of the upturned car. Scott puts his hand up to it, seeing that the claw marks are the same distance apart as his fingers.

"Definitely not an animal then," Noel comments, Stiles saying that his dad was right. He keeps looking around the car, pulling out a damaged baby doll and inspecting it. It speaks in a typical talking baby doll voice, cheerfully saying "I'm hungry!"

Stiles screams and drops the doll, Noel immediately laughing at him and picking it back up again. Stiles tells them he thinks he just had a minor heart attack, and Noel's laughter is cut off by a growl. They all look out at the treeline and see two bright blue eyes staring back at them, Scott asking Stiles if he sees it too.

Stiles confirms, both of them looking at Noel. Noel nods, saying "It's not just you guys... That's definitely real, and definitely staring right at us."

Scott takes off running after the animal, Noel following him as Stiles yells at them to wait. They don't listen, following it together. It proves to be too fast however, and no matter how fast they run, it stays ahead of them until Scott jumps effortlessly over a ravine. Noel skids to a stop and watches as Scott crouches face to face with the coyote, and his eyes turn red when it snarls at him. The coyote's eyes turn blue in response, and as if sensing that Scott is asserting dominance, Noel's eyes turn yellow where he stands.

Scott asks the coyote if it's Malia, but the coyote turns and runs away as Stiles and Noel watch.

—

The last scene of the episode shows Peter and Derek, tied up and being tortured by an unseen person. Derek's phone vibrates with two texts from Noel, saying "Call me or Scott ASAP" and "Sooner than ASAP if you can manage."

Derek looks at Peter, Peter asking why he's looking at him like it's his fault. Derek retorts that it's because it is his fault, as the unseen person turns the electric fence back on and shocks them mercilessly.