Agent Angela Delafont was briefing the other Senior Agents on what she and her surveillance teams had learned recently about the Church of the Children of the Embracing Mother, an organization they had first learned about from pamphlets found in the home of the Warehouse D Rave poisoner. The "church" was a functioning pigment cult, and was somehow still receiving pigment even after the drug's distribution network had been recently eradicated. The cult boasted at least one "VIP" member who always arrived in a limosine, who might be underwriting the cult's expenses, or perhaps even supplying it with pigment directly. So far, Delafont's team had been unable to get close enough identify this member, since rampant pigment use throughout the cult's congregation made conventional ghost-based spying methods impractical.
Delafont's recommendation was that one or two Agents should infiltrate the cult as new members, and attempt to find out who was funding it and where they were getting their pigment from. Agents MacMillian and Morrisson volunteered, while Herschler elected to be their contact-man and provide backup if necessary.
After the meeting adjourned, Walter Hanley asked the Agents to help him deal with a singular problem. Apparently, a former DEA agent calling himself "Agent Smith" had approached Orpheus Group, claiming to have information valuable to them. He claimed that the DEA was working on a top-secret project referred to in-house as, simply, "The Project." The goal of The Project was to pin the blame for the warehouse D massacre on Orpheus Group and effectively destroy the company. Agent Smith had protested against this course of action and had been demoted; he then quit the DEA and decided to exact petty revenge on his former employers. The DEA's spearhead agent in The Project was Scott Archer, who had disappeared following a bungled abduction operation. The DEA did not know where he was hiding, but Agent Smith did — and was willing to give that information to Orpheus Group for free.
The Agents discussed this new development. Although there were compelling reasons to not take Agent Smith at his word, they agreed that there could be no harm in investigating the address Smith had given them — so long as they did so carefully, with the knowledge that it could be some sort of trap. Agents Watts and Lane volunteered to investigate, while Agent McGee elected to follow Smith and see what he could learn.
McGee followed Smith to the parking lot, watched him make a phone call, then tailed him to a local bar. Smith sat alone and ordered a couple of beers. Agent McGee attempted to apprehend Smith as he left the bar, but Smith attacked and overpowered him and got away.
Meanwhile, Herschler received a call from Phillip Nash. Nash had just learned that his "ringer" DEA agent had delivered the information about Archer, and wanted Herschler to make good on his promise to deliver personnel information on Orpheus. Herschler again demurred, saying he would see what he could do.
At the Church of the Embracing Mother, Agents MacMillian and Morrisson were warmly welcomed to the morning's service. The minister, Elison Daley, greeted the congregation and spoke a few words of inspiration. A few minutes into the service, the Agents saw Lamont Christensen, surrounded by bodyguards, enter the auditorium through a side door and sit down in the front row.
Daley then introduced a "very special guest" — none other than Bishop himself. The Agents watched as a gaunt man with fiery eyes stepped up to the podium and addressed the crowd in a deep, imposing voice. He claimed that the time of the Embrace was coming soon, and that the members of the Church must be ever-vigilant, and always striving to bring more people into the Mother's arms before that day. When he left through the stage's rear curtains, they did not appear to move. Christensen followed him through a door to one side of the stage.
The congregation then took communion, which was a small tablet of quick-dissolving pigment. MacMillian took hers; Morrisson palmed his.
After the service, Morrisson distracted the bodyguards while MacMillian slipped through the backstage door. The pigment she had taken was making her disoriented; she began to feel dizzy and nauseous. In a dark, open area behind the stage curtains, she saw Christensen talking to Daley, who seemed to be ridden by a huge, insect-like, black shadow. At that moment, more of Christensen's bodyguards found her and ushered her back into the congregational hall.
When Christensen left, Agent Herschler followed his limosine back to his estate in Burdrock Mills.
Agents Watts and Lane found Archer in a hotel up in Rivertown. He had barricaded the door, pulled the bed away from the wall, and trashed the entire room. He was currently passed out on the stripped mattress, cradling a bottle of scotch.
When they woke him up, Archer's first question was simply which agency they were from, and whether they were there to kill him or take him back. He had become bitter and disillusioned after the debacle with Delilah Milton, which had driven him to attempt to shoot the old woman in the head. He felt that he had finally crossed a personal moral boundary, and couldn't live with himself anymore.
Watts and Lane convinced him that he could work for the "good guys" by helping Orpheus Group. To demonstrate what sort of powers he was dealing with, Watts enshrouded Archer momentarily, bringing him bodily into the spirit world, and then taking him back. Shocked sober, Archer agreed to come with them back to headquarters and help them out.
Over the next couple of weeks, the Orpheus Agents developed two plans for dealing with the Church of the Children of the Embracing Mother. Agent Morrisson had been living in a Motel 6 at the outskirts of the City, developing a relationship with Jack, one of the Church's congregational elders. Eventually, Jack grew to trust Morrisson enough to invite him to help in a simple job for the Church — drive a truck from the docks to the school where the Church was based. There were strong indications that the truck would be carrying a shipment of pigment, and the Agents planned to intercept and impound it.
Meanwhile, Agent Herschler and others had been tracking Lamont Christensen's movments, and had developed a reliable schedule for when he left and returned to his gated compound each day. Herschler's plan was to intercept Christensen's limo as he was returning home, puppeteer him, and then wait until Christensen was inside his own home and past all security measures before taking control.
Both plans worked flawlessly. The truck full of enshrouded pigment was commandeered and diverted to Orpheus Group Headquarters. Herschler pulled all of Christensen's access codes from his memories and went through his computer files. He learned that Christensen had been using his own shipping to continue to bring pigment into the City, distributing it through the Church of the Children of the Embracing Mother. He also learned where the pigment was coming from: a T&S Pharmaceuticals laboratory, hidden in the mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru.
Kate Hennisson had anticipated something like this, and had been making preparations for Orpheus to temporarily transfer its operations to a remote location. She immediately began putting her plans in motion for a team of Agents to travel to Bolivia.
Phillip Nash was furious with Herschler for not telling him about the sudden mission in South America. He warned that powerful people were now panicking, convinced that Orpheus Group was planning to help some revolutionary or terrorist group. Herschler tried to appease him by offering a partial list of Orpheus personnel, but he was angry at Nash as well. His ringer agent had not worked as well as Nash had promised. Agent McGee had done some digging through the DEA's computer records, and found numerous discrepancies in Smith's file. Everyone knew that Smith was not a real DEA agent; they just didn't know whom he was really working for or what his agenda was. For Herschler, this was almost as bad as being exposed.
Herschler demanded passports and new identities for himself and several of his colleagues, including Kate Hennisson. Nash said he would do what he could, but he didn't seem very optimistic.
The two parted under a cloud of frustration and mistrust.