Agents Morrisson, MacMillian, Herschler, and Markham had regrouped at Markham's home along with Walter Hanley and Kate Hennisson. Agent Doug Sands and former Agent Angela Delafont had also joined them.
Hanley injected himself with pigment and projected. His ghost form was holding a spectral artifact (i.e., an object with a ghost presence but no physical presence, like the stone tablet discovered the previous year) — an iron mask with a curious symbol engraved in the forehead. The original Board of Directors had given it to Hennisson, explaining that to enable them to regain control of Orpheus Headquarters, someone would have to enter a sealed room in the middle of the Headquarters building and place the mask there. They did not explain what the mask was or why it had to be placed.
Agent MacMillian expressed grave doubts about working for the original Board of Directors without understanding their true nature and motives, since that had already led to disaster once before. Hennisson told her that she suspected that the Board were very old ghosts, from before the 23-year "cut off." She could not speak to their motives, but she felt that she could trust them to uphold their end of their bargain. Eventually, MacMillian accepted this, on the condition that Tad Eccles would be put out of business.
Herschler drove back to his flat to pick up some equipment, while the rest of the group made plans.
Meanwhile, Rochelle and Sarah were across town at the rave.
Sarah found Rochelle standing alone, off to the side of the main dance area.
"Try one of these," Sarah said. "They'll make you feel good." She held up a small, black capsule.
"Where did you get that?"
"Some guy's been passing them around. You want some?"
Rochelle looked nervous. "My dad would REALLY kill me for this."
Sarah shrugged. "Nobody's forcing you."
Rochelle hesitated, then took the pill. "Then again...how's he going to find out?"
It was decided that Agents Delafont and Morrisson would flicker into the sealed room with the mask. Agent Herschler would enter the building in-body, accompanied by Agents MacMillian, Markham, and Sands, all projected. They would attempt to locate and capture Tad Eccles, and also provide backup if Morrisson needed help. Hennisson would stay at the house to coordinate the teams and watch over the projecting Agents' bodies.
Morrisson flickered in and knew immediately that something was wrong. He found himself alone in a small bathroom, staring into a mirror over the sink. In the mirror, his face was as it was before the accident that made him a projector — handsome, not marred with the little inconsistencies of shape and proportion that made him so unnerving to others now. Over his shoulder, he could see a blurry figure standing behind him. Something about the bright fluorescent light reflecting off the figure's clothes made him difficult to focus on.
The figure said, "It's time to put on your true face. Go on."
Brett looked down. The iron mask had become a rubber Halloween mask. Its features were those of his own face.
When he looked back at the mirror, his face was covered with a fleshy cowl.
"Go on. You don't have to hide any more."
Brett slowly turned around. He had masqued his face into a grotesque, spectre-like appearance: a wide, red-lipped grin framing rows upon rows of jagged shark teeth. "Back off," he hissed.
The light above him grew brighter and brighter until he couldn't see at all.
Herschler and his team entered the building through a back door. Herchler used the walking stick he had taken from the home of Holwood Angler, and thumped the wall with it. Immediately an Agent who had been haunting the building was forced to abandon it and coalesce in the hallway in front of them. The projector quickly forgot his loyalty to Eccles when Herschler threatened him with a pistol loaded with ghost-shot. Alarm bells were ringing. What few employees were in the office at this hour were busy evacuating the building. Herchler's team made their way directly to Tad's office. Before they could get there, however, they were intercepted by Steve Keller.
Keller laughed and said that he was sorry he wouldn't get to "settle things with that Watts asshole," and then began to change form — into a Reaper-class spectre. He/it lunged, and in one blinding attack managed to sever Agent Markham's silver cord.
Back at the house, Markham's body began to undergo cardiac arrest.
Agent Morrison now found himself inside the computer room of Orpheus Headquarters, which had been sealed off since the disastrous mission against NextWorld nearly a year ago. It was dark. Standing around the edges of the room were a number of men wearing somber suits, their faces hidden in shadow. In front of Morrisson stood the man in the white suit, smiling calmly. The mask in Morrisson's hand had reverted to its true form, a thing of archaic, black iron.
Everything was very quiet.
The man in the white suit began speaking, again, calmly. He kept telling Morrisson to "put on his real face." Meanwhile, Morrisson, responding to some little-understood impulse within himself, continued to embellish and exaggerate his masqued features, growing ever more demonic and spectre-like in an attempt to intimidate the man in the white suit.
At some point it occurred to Morrisson that the man in the white suit was trying to convince him to put on the mask, or at least hold on to it. With this came the implication that simply bringing to the mask to the computer room was not enough — the deciding action was to literally put it down and let go of it. For a moment he struggled, then he made his decision. Morrisson knelt and put the mask on the floor. The man in the white suit made no move to stop him. Light began to pour out of the apertures of the mask, and Morrisson ripcorded back to his body.
After a brief and vicious struggle, Agent Herschler dispatched the Keller/Reaper with several rounds of ghost-shot. By this time, Agent Morrisson had accomplished his mission and the interior of the building was undergoing strange spatial effects, similar to that caused by a ghost's haunting. Herschler and the rest of his team retreated, providing assistance to Agent Markham, who no longer had the ability to ripcord back to his body.
All of the Agents regrouped back at Markham's house. Agent Delafont had kept Markham's body stable by supplying continuous CPR, and Markham was able to successfully reintegrate with his body. The group then realized that, while they had apparently succeeded at their mission objectives, they had no idea what was now going on at Orpheus Group. Leaving Markham to recuperate, the others returned to Headquarters.
They found the place in chaos. All of the employees still in the building had been "ejected" — any door they went through, no matter where inside the building, inevitably led outside, and the outer doors could not be re-entered. Tad Eccles was nowhere to be found.
Suddenly, Daniel Watts, younger brother of Agent Michael Watts, arrived and began pushing his way through the crowd, heading towards the front entrance, shouting his brother's name. When the other Agents accosted him and asked what he wanted, he became cagey, insisting that he speak to his brother first. When the Agents persisted, he broke down and began babbling about a party, how he hadn't known "the drugs were bad," how "nobody was supposed to die."
At that moment, the police-band radio in Herschler's van turned itself on, and the voice of Radio Free Death announced that the Agents needed to go to Warehouse D in Dockside, right away.
By the time the Agents got to Warehouse D, it was already surrounded by a sea of police and emergency personnel. In the general panic, it was easy for them to slip past the cordon and make their way to the center of the confusion.
Most of the personnel seemed to be yelling at each other, or into walkie-talkies, or both. EMTs unloaded equipment from ambulances and hustled it as fast as possible through the crush.
Closer to the warehouse, they saw a police officer sitting on the bumper of his car, openly weeping. Near the entrance, an EMT leaned forward and vomited onto the sidewalk.
Inside the warehouse, the lights had been brought up. Over one hundred people — many of them teenagers — lay in positions of contorted agony. A few still convulsed weakly; the rest were dead. Their mouths were drawn open in horror, stained with flecks of black foam.
Agent Doug Sands screamed. He muscled his way past the paramedics, picked up his daughter's lifeless body, and held it to his chest, calling his daughter's name over and over again.
Those Agents who were still projected were witness to yet another horror: the warehouse floor was crowded with the ghosts of the victims, and they were being hunted by spectres. Dazed from the agony of their deaths and the hallucinatory effects of the pigment, the spirits made easy pickings as bat-winged spectres swooped down from the ceilling and snatched them up by the half-dozen. The air was filled with the shrieks of the already dead, all unheard by the still living.
In the air outside, the spectres flew in a straight line over the City, carrying their wailling, squirming captives towards a huge, pallid mass that squatted cancerously amidst the skyline...
...an enormous hive, built over and on top of the Graceful Repose Residential Towers.
Fade to black.