Ten days after the destruction of Orpheus Group, the team was still on the run, with APBs out on all top Agents. A police SWAT team caught up with Agents Morrisson, Herschler, MacMillian, Watts, and Lane in a cheap motel on the south side of the City.
Agent Lane was first to spot the trucks pulling into the parking lot beneath their window. He and Morrisson immediately projected, and Watts enshrouded their bodies. As cannisters of tear gas crashed through thei window, MacMillian ran to another motel room across the courtyard, hoping to escape out the opposite side of the building; Herschler, meanwhile, decided to make a break in the one direction he assumed they wouldn't expect — out the window, straight towards the police.
Watts and Morrisson each killed two SWAT officers as they attempted to surround the building: Morrisson by morphosing into a spiked, lamprey-like creature and then manifesting physically to attack; Watts by enshrouding the hapless officers and blasting them with a vitality-fueled, enshrouded shotgun. MacMillian kicked her way into the room across the courtyard, shot an officer from the bedroom window, and prepared to jump out. Herschler jumped through his own window holding a mattress, landing in the parking lot directly in between two SWAT officers, who moved to subdue him. However, Lane also jumped down and puppeteered one of the officers, neutralizing the other by activating one of his flashbang grenades. The two of them then commandeered one of the SWAT vehicles and drove it around to MacMillian's side of the building. The rest of the team jumped into the van, Watts carrying Lane and Morrisson's enshrouded bodies, and after a harrowing chase they were able to lose their pursuers and acquire less conspicuous transportation.
At a prearranged safehouse, the team paused to regroup and assess their situation. Although they had liberated more weapons and ammunition, along with a police scanner, from the SWAT vehicle, the Agents were exhausted, wounded, and low on vitality. Several of them were feeling the effects of spite buildup from the casualties at the motel shoot-out or from fueling emanations with spite. Radio Free Death had been helping them track down other cells of Orpheus Agents hiding in the City, but so far all they had found were cold leads.
Herschler contacted Bozzie and asked him to locate some pigment, and to gather all the information he could find on Phillip Nash. Bozzie agreed to put every ghost he knew on it. Watts infiltrated the medical examiner's morgue at St. Joseph of Arimathea Hospital and stole his own body; he buried it in the back corner of a small church cemetary by enshrouding it, pushing it under the ground, then bringing it back to solid form.
Finally, Radio Free Death returned with news. He had contacted a group of Orpheus employees holed up in the remains of Autumnville Mall. They were still there, and were willing to meet up with the Agents if the Agents came to them.
So all of the Agents projected (MacMillian and Herschler using pigment to due to their sleeper status), and Neel Shivani drove them to Autumnville.
They found the group of fugitives on the second floor of the old Finley's department store, huddled amidst the shadows and piles of naked and dismembered mannequins, around a portable television tuned to dead snow. Introductions were quickly made: Helen Fraser, a sleeper-class projector; Gwen McKendrik, a medical technician; Sid Lowenstein and Noel Alcott from the science division; and Dave from accounting. They cleaned up their campsite to remove any trace of their presence, then everyone headed for the escalators.
...except the escalators were gone. The layout of the department store seemed to have changed while they had stood there in the dark. Herschler immediately attempted to haunt the building, but was knocked back by a more powerful force. Suddenly the group became separated, each person lost in an escherized labyrinth. Agent Lane used Beckon to dispell the effect and draw everyone back together, but after they regrouped they noticed that Dave from accounting was missing. They found him hanging from an empty clothes rack, his head twisted 180° around.
Watts proposed to flicker everyone out of immediately. Helen suddenly began shouting, "Help me! Hyde! Hyde!" and pointed her gun at Watts. Herschler puppeteered her, knocking the possessing spirit loose, and in an instant before he dissipated, everyone saw the image of Malcolm Hyde leering at them. Suddenly Gwen began screaming "Hyde! Hyde!" as well, and attempted to strangle Helen, but Lane caughter her in a dreamscape. Hyde briefly flickered into visibility and disappeared again.
Then there came a wooden rattling and clacking from all corners. Everywhere, the broken and discarded mannequins began moving, croaking "Hyde, Hyde," from painted mouths. Detached limbs and torsos tumbled and flew together, forming twitching, insect-like conglomerations of limbs. The mannequins advanced, a jerking, staggering army.
Morrisson swept the front ranks with a Dirge, shattering and rupturing at least a dozen of the mannequins, but the mass kept coming. Herschler ignited his Nimbus ability, engulfing the room in black, spite-fueled flames that even burned some of his colleagues. He leapt into the middle of the mannequin horde. The mannequins began spasming in the fire, and Hyde materialized again — this time to vomit a stream of bile directly into Herschler's face. Back in the van, Herschler's physical body began to blister and steam. Herschler focused his fire on Hyde. Watts flickered above Hyde and blasted him with his ghostly shotgun. Morrisson morphosed into a swarm of steel wasps and ripped through Hyde's corpus like tissue paper. Finally, after sustaining massive amounts of damage, Hyde's corpus dissolved into a black, bubbling ooze. Just to be safe, Herschler scorched it some more.
The mannequins had collapsed; there were no more obstacles between the Agents and their escape. The group piled into the van along with the four other survivors, and Shivani sped off to the next safe-house.