Agents MacMillian, Markham, Watts, Herschler, and Morrisson were called in for a briefing with Tad Eccles. Eccles opened the meeting in an unusual way, by confessing right up front that the Agents would not be happy with certain aspects of this mission. A construction company had contracted Orpheus Group to "clear out" a group of homeless people from the site of a half-finished building, by sending projected Agents in to scare them away. Although several Agents immediately voiced their aversion to a mission that essentially involved bullying the destitute and mentally ill, Eccles strongly entreated them to wait until they had heard him out. Then he told them the name of the construction site: Graceful Repose Residential Towers.
Agents Markham and Morrisson were not present for the previous fiasco at the Towers, but MacMillian, Herschler, and Watts were, and they objected in the strongest terms. Eccles countered that the Board of Directors had two very good reasons to be interested in this case (aside from its monetary value). First, there had been virtually no spectral activity in the vicinity of Graceful Repose Towers since roughly two months ago — which, given the neighborhood and the events that took place last year, was remarkable in itself. Second, preliminary observations suggested that the squatters at the construction site had formed a pigment cult. The Board was keen to find out whether, and how, these two facts were related, and had asked Eccles to put their top Agents on it.
At this point Agent MacMillian, visibly shaken, announced that she would not be able to accept this mission, and excused herself from the briefing. Eccles seemed perturbed, but continued to brief the other Agents, who eventually agreed to take the mission.
The Agents met privately to discuss what had happened during the last excursion for the benefit of Markham and Morrisson, and to make preparations for the job. Agent Herschler retrieved the "ghost-shot" bullets and the Kirlian goggles that he had acquired from the last encounter with NextWorld. They then reported to the projecting facilities, where they met Steve Keller, a new Agent who had been specifically assigned to this mission by Eccles. Watts, Morrisson, and Keller all projected; Herschler and Markham chose to remain in-body. They met Tommy Fabrosi at the motor pool and proceded to the mission site.
Agent MacMillian returned to her cubicle, where she soon received a phone call. To her surprise, the caller was Angela Delafont, who had left Orpheus Group after the management shakeup. Delafont asked to meet her somewhere away from Headquarters. After only a moment's hesitation, MacMillian agreed.
At a nearby coffee house, MacMillian and Delafont awkwardly caught up. Delafont revealed that Orpheus Group had been spying on her since she quit the company, but that she had managed to keep a low profile and was currently out of their surveillance. She also believed that Kate Hennisson was also being watched. She said that she had recently been asked to do a small job for someone as a favor, and that she had called MacMillian to ask for her help. When MacMillian asked who the job was for, Delafont handed her a Walkman radio. MacMillian put on the headphones and heard the static-shrouded voice of Radio Free Death: "Hi there, Emma. I need a hand."
On the way to Graceful Repose, Herschler grilled Agent Keller about his purpose on the mission. Keller revealed that he'd been through a special training program designed for dealing with spectres, and the Board of Directors wanted to test him in the field. When pressed, however, he admitted that he had no special powers; his training amounted to a thorough study of spectre behavior and strategies for exploiting that behavior.
Watts asked Fabrosi to stop at the local precinct police station. He entered invisibly, made his way to the armoury, and Enshrouded two pistols, a shotgun, and a bulletproof vest.
By the time they reached the Gardens, it had started to rain. The projected Agents noticed that there were more ghosts on the streets than they remembered — and more spectres as well, scurrying like insects along the walls of some of the deeper alleys. Keller remarked that they had nothing to fear as long as they kept a low profile and didn't activate any of their emanations. "Spectres are drawn to the weaker, less conscious ghosts. A ghost with high cognition and vital energy often won't even show up on a spectre's radar; your 'signature' looks too much like a living person's."
The area around Graceful Repose Towers was abandoned, although a new sign had been erected by the construction site. The Agents found a side door that had been broken open, and entered the building.
On the partially complete ground floor, there were numerous signs of habitation: piles of dirty blankets, human feces in the corners, and dozens of glass pipes littering the floor. The pipes all had the black, greasy residue of pigment on the inside. In one room, someone had sprayed the message
across the wall.
As they drove, Delafont explained to MacMillian the nature of their task. Certain ghosts, she said, possess 'anchors,' objects or places that tie them more closely to the physical world. Some ghosts have the ability to sense these anchors and trace them back to their owners; others even have the ability to corrupt anchors in some way, actually causing the owner harm. The ghost calling himself Radio Free Death was worried that his enemies had located one of his anchors, and were on their way to capture it; he contacted Delafont and promised her information if she would get to it first. She agreed, reasoning that he had aided Orpheus Agents in the past. She also hoped to learn more about the mysterious, diembodied voice.
The object of their search was a cardboard box, which they would find in the storage room of an apartment building in Rivertown. The name "Greene" would be written on the side of the box in magic marker. They found the apartment building without incident, and parked in a nearby vacant lot. Radio Free Death did not know whether his enemies would send ghosts or living people to steal the box, so Delafont decided to project while MacMillian, by necessity, remained in-body.
Before projecting, Delafont admitted to MacMillian that she had been using pigment. "There have been certain times where it was very convenient to be able to see ghosts while not projected," she said. MacMillian seemed perturbed, but Delafont assured her that she had only taken it twice, and only in low doses. She had experienced no ill effects and no addictive behaviors. "It only takes a small amount to let you see ghosts," she said. "I'm not going to insist that you try it... but I think it could be very useful."
Reluctantly, MacMillian allowed Delafont to administer a small dose of pigment.
Back at Graceful Repose, the Agents had just discovered that the squatters living in the building had been shadowing them for sometime, sprinkling sea salt across the hallways as they passed. The salt barriers exerted a strange force that made it difficult for the projected Agents to cross them. Effectively, the squatters were attempting to herd the Agents — the projected ones, at least — deeper into the building.
When confronted, the squatters claimed that they were showing the Agents "the path" so that they might find their way to the "center of the labyrinth" to meet "Grandmother." They would not elaborate on the identity or the nature of this entity, however. Herschler threatened them, confiscated the salt, and ran them off; however, it seemed clear that the squatters were not intimidated by ghosts, and that the original objective to "spook" them from the building was probably futile. The Agents decided to press on, however, hoping to learn more about the cult and the thing they called "Grandmother."
Reaching what appeared to be the central lobby area of the building, the Agents spotted a Reaper-class spectre ahead of them. The spectre saw them as well, but did not attack; it simply darted from view. Even without Agent Keller's expertise, the Agents knew that this was unusal behavior for any variety of spectre; however, when they thought to ask him about it, they found that Keller had disappeared. No one could say for certain when he had gone missing.
MacMillian found the manager of the apartment building sitting at a talbe in the lobby, watching reality shows on a cheap, grainy television. She introduced herself as Greene's neice. "You mean that guy that went to jail for shooting a cop? The black guy?" asked the manager. She explained that she was adopted, and that she had been sent to retrieve the last of his effects from the apartment storage room.
"Well, you're welcome to look," said the manager, and led her down the hall to a narrow, poorly lit staircase leading down to the building's basement. "Watch your step," he said, "that place hasn't been cleaned out in forever."
MacMillian descended in the store room, picking her way across decades' worth of junk. After some time searching, she found the cardboard box half-hidden behind the old water heater. She was in the process of extricating it when a shadow fell across the stairs. It was the apartment manager — with a baseball bat in his hand.
Delafont immediately dove into the manager's body, but was bounced back out by an occupying force. "Look out, Emma," she called, "he's being puppeteered!"
At Graceful Repose, the Agents decided to press on without Keller. As they descended the staircase, the ever-present graffiti grew darker and more thickly clustered, until the walls were nearly black with it. The basement was a large open space, segmented by aluminum struts and hanging plastic tarps. In the distance, they could see a dim, flickering light, a trash fire inside a discarded oil drum, in a partially walled in space in the center of the basement. As the Agents approached, they could make out more of the strange graffiti covering the walls, layersw and layers of tangled, arcane symbols. On the far wall, the symbols seemed to swirl together towards a point of ultimate, indelible blackness. The design resembled at moment a spiraling maelstrom; at the next, a faceless, screaming mouth.
Standing next to the fire was an old man covered in filth-encrusted blankets, his face obscured by long, matted dreadlocks. The old man watched the Agents as they approached, then produced a lighter and what looked like a glass crack pipe from the folds of his clothes and took a deep drag. The rock inside the pipe was inky-black.
They challenged the old man, asking him what he was doing here, but the old man only laughed. He held an empty beer bottle up to his lips and blew a single, resonant note across its neck. There was a moment of disorientation — and when it cleared, Agent Watts had been somehow shrunken and captured inside the bottle.
The others reacted instantly. Agent Morrisson released a Dirge blast that stunned the old man, causing him to drop the bottle. It shattered against the concrete floor, releasing Watts. Unfortunately, the sonic wave also shattered some two dozen similar bottles lined up along a makeshift shrine underneat the spraypainted maw on the other side of the room. Ghosts and spectres burst free simultaneously, filling the tiny area with a horde of ravenous predators and dazed, helpless prey. The Agents found themselves in the midst of a slaughter.
Watts stood up, grasped the old man by the throat, and Enshrouded him, bringing him across into the ghost-realm. At the same moment, the Reaper they had encountered earlier suddenly materialized within the room, its scythe-arms fully extended. Before anyone could react, the Reaper sliced into the old man's spirit — once, twice. The old man sagged like an empty skin and then dissipated, without so much as a corpse to leave behind.
Meanwhile, the carnage continued as the hunger-crazed spectres tore the newly freed ghosts to shreds. It would only be a matter of moments before they turned their attentions to the projected Agents, so the team beat a hasty retreat. Outside, they found Keller, who claimed to have gotten separated from the group when he found his way blocked by one of the salt barriers.
After regrouping at the van, the team drove immediately back to Headquarters.
While Delafont wrestled with the ghost possessing the apartment manager, MacMillian ducked around him and ran up the stairs. He got one hand on her ankle, but she was able to kick free and make it out the door and back to the car. Delafont extricated herself and joined MacMillian soon after.
Safely in a different parking lot, the two finally got a chance to open the box and see what it contained.
It was full of old baby clothes.
"What do we do with it?" asked MacMillian.
For a long time there was only static from the headphones. Then the voice of Radio Free Death said quietly, "Burn them."
So they did, there in the parking lot.
The static flared back to life. "I can't stay, they're already homing in on me again. The information I promised? September 9, 1998. It's an important date. Look it up."
At a nearby branch of the public library, Delafont and MacMillian pored through back issues of the City's newspaper. On September 9, 1998, a fire raged through the D-block of Conquin State Prison, just outside the City limits. Seven prisoners, all of them awaiting execution, died in the fire. The newspaper only listed six names, however: Terrence Greene, Malcom Hyde, Emmett and Darryl Milton,
Reyo Antonio Sanchez (aka "Rook"). . . and Uriah Bishop.
Tad Eccles was uncommonly subdued during the debriefing. Although he could not answer the Agents' questions about what had happened at Graceful Repose Residential Towers, he thanked them for their intelligence-gathering efforts.
Agent MacMillian shared her discoveries with her fellow Agents later that day. By group consent, they have not shared this information with Eccles.