Senior Agent Herschler was approached by his former handler from his brief stint in the CIA, Phillip Nash. Nash asked him to work for them again, by passing along information about Orpheus Group's personnel and current missions. He also told Herschler some disturbing facts about Kate Hennisson's history, in the hopes of swaying Herschler's loyalty. Herschler demurred, claiming that it had nothing to do with loyalty — he just didn't want be a spy.
At Orpheus Group, most Agents and resources had been devoted to locating and "cleaning out" local pigment dens, rousting the junkies squatting there and either burning or demolishing the house. Hennisson called in Senior Agents Herschler, MacMillian, Lane, and Watts to brief them for a special assignment.
She introduced the group to new recruits Matthew Podlowski and Li "Jen" Xianjin. Both had demonstrated unique and powerful emanations in their preliminary training, and Hennisson wanted to see how well they did in the field. She asked the Agents to take Podlowski and Li with them on their next "housecleaning," show them the ropes, and report on their capabilities.
They chose a target on the City's south side, at the edge of an abandoned neighborhood, next to the canal that runs by the landfill. The Agents projected along with Podlowski and Li, and Tommy Fabrosi provided transportation.
Before approaching the house, Podlowski attempted a reading. He saw a Reservoir Dogs-style stand-off, in the near future, and from this surmised that one or more people in the house had a gun. Senior Agent Herschler then haunted the house. He detected half a dozen junkies on the first floor. The second floor consisted of a bathroom and two unfurnished bedrooms. In the first bedroom, a scruffy young man who seemed a bit too well-put-together to be a pigment addict was having a heated conversation with two ghosts dressed like gangbangers. In the second bedroom, cowering in a corner, was... Tad Eccles.
Herschler altered the spatial dimensions of the house interior so that the front door led directly into Eccles' room, and removed all exits from the other room. The other Agents charged in. Eccles was high on pigment and weilding a gun loaded with ghost-shot. MacMillian solidified and pinned the gun to the ceiling. Watts then enshrouded Eccles, bringing him across to the spectral realm. One of the ghosts in the other room, haunted the house in order to wrest control of it from Herschler; at that moment, Herschler relinquished the house and skinrode the living man. Blue fire bloomed over Agent Li's corpus as she moved into the hallway to intercept the second ghost.
Suddenly, the man in the white suit appeared in the room. He gestured at Eccles and said, "If you wish, we will take it from here." Instead of responding, Watts flickered both himself and Eccles out of the house, and all of the remaining Agents but one beat a hasty retreat.
Herschler remained behind, still skinriding the living man who had been talking with the two ghosts. The man left the house by the back way, climbed a chain-link fence, and made his way along the canal until reaching the lower business district. There he made a phone call, reporting to someone that "the meeting" had been "interrupted by a third party."
The man then proceeded to check into a motel. He lay down on the bed (after removing a revolver from an ankle-holster and putting it under his pillow), and soon fell into a doze. Herschler did a quick memory-scan and learned that the man was Scott Archer, an undercover agent for the DEA, currently assigned to investigate the pigment trade in the City.
Back at Orpheus Group Headquarters, Walter Hanley met the returning Agents and ordered them to take Eccles down to the interrogation rooms. Kate Hennisson was waiting for them there. She opened the interrogation room door, revealing near-impenetrable blackness broken only by a distant, white light. Eccles, still trapped in spirit-form, was pulled screaming into the room, and the door shut of its own accord.