Kate Hennisson informed the other Agents that the Board of Directors was gone. Where, or why, or for how long, she did not know. All she knew was that in the past, whenever the Board wished to speak to her, they would contact her telepathically, and she had received no such contact since waking up from her coma.
As the other Agents left the room, Hennisson asked Herschler for a personal favor — to get the men who had maimed her, no matter what the cost.
In the main room of the polio ward, Agents Delafont, MacMillian, McGee, Herschler, Lane, and Morrison sat down to plan their next move.
Most everyone agreed that finding the entity that Donald Sanderson had called "Grandmother" should be their top priority (although inexplicably, Agent Morrisson kept insisting that perhaps they should do nothing whatsoever). However, no one had any idea how to go about it.
Herschler realized that he had absorbed some of his doppelganger's memories when he merged with his doppelganger several weeks ago. He remembered the number that his doppelganger had called when delivering information to the CIA. He proposed that he attempt to make contact, then track down and puppeteer the contact and search his memories to get a lead on whomever had ordered the destruction of Orpheus Group Headquarters.
Herschler called the CIA contact, a man named Reynolds, and told him to be at a certain pay phone in 30 minutes. Meanwhile, Tommy Fabrosi and Agent Lane drove out to the pay phone to set up observation (with Lane skinriding Fabrosi in order to remain out of sight of the numerous spectres still at large. Herschler then called the pay phone, and when Reynolds answered he rode the telephone signal to Reynolds' location and immediately skinrode him. Reynolds, finding himself holding a dead line, went back to his car and ordered his men to do a sweep in a six block radius, just in case the caller was hiding nearby.
Fabrosi and Lane tailed Reynolds back to CIA headquarters. Reynolds went straight to his office and phoned Samuel Magabe to tell him he had been contacted. Herschler rode the signal to Magabe's office and skinrode him. And then he puppeteered Magabe and began rifling through his memories.
Magabe had been dealing with the world of ghosts since the CIA's remote-viewing experiments of the early 1970s. When certain subjects began contacting "post-life entities" (PLEs), He was transferred to a branch program codenamed PROJECT: SHADOWLANDS, the purpose of which was to make further contact with and explore the military and security applications of the ghost world.
When the Eurydice Corporation began making headway into the development of projector technology, PROJECT: SHADOWLANDS quickly stepped in, appropriating most of the technology and personnel (including Dr. Masato Takeichi). While a splinter group went on to form Orpheus Group, Magabe and Takeichi went on to perform the Conquin State Prison experiments, which led to the transformation of Bishop and his crew.
Magabe helped establish Terrel & Squib Pharmaceuticals and set up Dr. Takeichi's laboratory in Bolivia to manufacture pigment. By this time, Magabe was now head of PROJECT: BLACK MERCURY, a military program with the aim of developing projector-soldiers, and pigment was a key component to the project. Magabe was aware of Bishop's activities but did nothing to stop him so long as the ghost's goals did not conflict with his own.
When Magabe began to perceive Orpheus Group as a potential threat to the secrecy of his operation, he leaked information about Orphus personnel and security to Bishop, which led directly to the assault on Orpheus Group and the assassination of many of its key personnel. Magabe's own Black Mercury operatives played no part in the initial attack, although they did sweep the ruins in order to recover any surviving computer records.
Magabe felt no remorse over the deaths of so many civilians or the lives ruined by the pigment trade. Even now, his only concerns were for the security and continued funding of PROJECT: BLACK MERCURY, and how to eliminate Bishop before he compromised the project further.
All this Agent Herschler learned in the blink of an eye. He also learned that Magabe's program had developed a device that could "enshroud" people in a limited radius. It was originally intended to breach the barrier between this reality and a theoretical "underworld," but researchers were never able to make it work without significantly boosting its power beyond what their technology was capable of.
Herschler, acting through Magabe's body and voice, called Price Research Facility and ordered his men to immediately airlift the "phase convergence device" to St. Joseph of Arimathea Hospital.
Then he forced Magabe to break his own kneecaps with a hand-held fire extinguisher. After stuffing his shirt in his mouth to muffle the screams, Herschler left Magabe's body, manifested, and used Conflagration to burn him alive.
When the unsuspecting Black Mercury operatives arrived at the hospital, Orpheus Agents were able to intercept and overpower them easily. They brought the device into the polio ward, where Neel Shivani determined that he could probably figure out how to make it work and amplify its effects using the advanced "Shadowlands" emanation recently developed by Agents McGee and Watts.
Dr. Shivani then went to finish the resuscitation procedure for Agents MacMillian and Herschler. Suddenly there was the thupp of a silenced gunshot, the sound of breaking glass, and Shivani grabbed his neck and fell over.
The CIA had tracked Fabrosi back from his observation of Reynolds!
From the upper windows of the polio ward, snipers began firing tranquilizer darts and tear-gas cannisters into the room. Immediately the Agents were put on the defensive as visibility dropped to nothing and more Orpheus employees were shot and paralyzed. MacMillian attempted to hold them at bay with her Beckon ability, but the tear gas and smoke prevented her from using her powers to their full extent. Herschler puppeteered one of the soldiers and began shooting at his victim's comrades from behind. McGee and Lane attempted to move the phase convergence device into another area of the hospital, but they were cut off by more soldiers coming down the hall.
At the height of the chaos, a bullhorn-amplified voice called on the CIA agents to cease fire. The voice asked the Orpheus Agents to stand down, and asked to speak specifically to Agent Lane. "I have something very important to tell you," the voice said. "I'm your father."
The melee paused. Senator Richard Boyle entered the room and explained that he was Holland Lane's father by an extramarital affair. He wanted the bloodshed to stop. He was head of the oversight committee that managed PROJECT: BLACK MERCURY, and he had the power to enforce a truce. He knew that Magabe had helped to unleash something disastrous, but didn't fully understand what it was.
Holland Lane materialized so as to be visible and stepped forward. "Show him," he said. "Show him what Magabe and Bishop have unleashed."
McGee enshrouded the Senator and forced him to look out the window at the plague of spectres crawling over every exposed surface of the City.
When Boyle returned to solidity, he paused to catch his breath, then took a radio from one of the CIA gunmen and contacted Reynolds. "It's over," he snapped. "Tell your boys to clean up and go home." Then he turned to the remaining Orpheus Agents.
"What do you need from me?"