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[Transcript]
“Y-you mean... June’s son is—Maxwell is in Bayview? He’s... he’s a spectral in Agent Spender’s Activity Club...?”
Agent Day stood at attention in a colorful corner of the Dream Hub, far from the hustle and bustle at the heart of the base. When she’d arrived to report what she had found to her superiors, she hadn’t thought that she’d be the one taken aback by new revelations. What an absolute airhead she’d been! Maxwell’s voice had changed a little since her babysitting days, but... but still, she should have recognized him! He’d been right there, just feet away from her!
“I can’t believe it...” Agent Day clutched her cane. Her mind was swimming.
Boss Leader had been swimming, too. She emerged in media res and in a classy pinstripe swimsuit from the pool where she’d been doing laps, tossing back the ribbon hair she’d conjured to project a femme mystique. Boss Leader wrung her carwash curls dry for the fun of it; when she was finished, they slurped back up into her puppet body like a pullstring curtain in an old cartoon.
“Wouldn’t that explain Rick’s reaction to Agent Summers’ new last name at your little restaurant outing? That was him finally putting two and two together—truly, he missed his calling as a math teacher.” Boss Leader took a towel that Agent Walker had silently offered her, dutiful pool boy that he was. “Besides, I met your Max myself! He was hauling around a hunk of metal with a grudge in it and everything. There’s really zero room for doubt that he’s the son of Agent Summers.”
“But... but how could we let Maxwell get involved with—? Bayview isn’t—June’s kids, they deserve a normal life...”
Agent Day stumbled to find the words her heart was feeling. Becoming a spectral had been the best thing that had ever happened to her, and Mrs. Puckett had loved Bayview with her whole entire heart... but even still—! Agent Day bit her bottom lip. She wished that Agent Griggs and Agent Savage weren’t standing just behind her. If it was just her, the Boss, and Agent Walker, her former mentor, Agent Day could speak her muddled thoughts at least a little bit more freely.
“If the little varmint wriggled through my barrier, Val, it means he wasn’t spectral ’til he got there,” Agent Walker darkly drawled. “Couldn’t dang well know that he was Bayview-bound, now could we? Paranormal world’s our purview, and even then our sight’s stretched thin. Best that we can do is watch over ’im now.”
“Bayview-bound may be a term more apt than you intended, Texas,” sighed Boss Leader, snapping to summon a suitsie in place of her swimsuit now that she’d dabbed herself dry. “I’ve read June’s reports to my predecessor... Agent Summers always claimed that the town had a pull of sorts, didn’t she? Perhaps we should have predicted a homecoming in her family’s future...”
Agent Walker tugged at his moustache. All this “Bayview” talk was grating on his nerves—he’d almost called it “Mayview” twice already. As much as he wanted to reassure his former pupil that June’s family would be safe, the proof that their new home was built on shaky, haunted ground was clear as day. It was just like Boss Leader had warned him: everyone within the ghost town’s reach had been brainwashed overnight. No wonder he’d forgotten it was “Clayview” when he’d first been sent to study it—when he had first met June. Dang nabbit! Texas Walker balled a calloused fist. What a cowgirl she had been, that Agent Summers. What a wrangler. What a rootin’, tootin’ loss...
“BUT! Hindsight is twenty-twenty!” Boss Leader spun around, revealing an extra set of eyes that had appeared with a pop on the back of her head. “Let’s return to your perspective, shall we, Agent Day?”
The blind spectral shuffled her feet.
“If you’re doing visual gags, ma’am, I’m not sure my point of view’s the one you want...”
“Ha! Don’t be ridiculous. That’s MY job.” Boss Leader chuckled, juggling her eyes, which she’d detached. “No, I didn’t send you to Bayview for the sightseeing—”
“...I can’t see why not,” Agent Day replied facetiously, striking a pose to put some half-hearted oomph into the punchline.
“Oh, you! So charming! Which is exactly why I sent you to Bayview to SPY on my secretive agents. THINK FAST!”
Boss Leader suddenly whipped both of the eyeballs she’d been juggling straight at Agent Savage. Two direct hits slapped against her face like old tomatoes against a medieval stockade, producing an appropriate, if artificial, expression of wide-eyed surprise upon the unfortunate agent.
“Tsk, tsk! Didn’t I tell you to think fast, Agent Savage? Disobeying my orders—that just isn’t like you!”
“...No, Boss,” Agent Savage grumbled, wiping dream gunk from her face.
“Now I’ve got my eye on you,” Boss Leader mused, a threat’s edge underneath her cheerful tone. “Here, take this and towel it off!”
The Consortium’s enigmatic leader lobbed her damp towel in Agent Savage’s direction. Savage snapped it out of the air from afar in the jaws of her plastic dinosaur toy, shrinking it to the towelette size that it had filled from her perspective.
“...If that’s not fitting symbolism,” Agent Savage scoffed in a whisper to Agent Griggs beside her, examining the scaled-down hand-me-down that she’d been given. “Boss gets a dollar, I get a dime...”
“You say that, Sid,” said Agent Griggs, idly shuffling his deck of haunted cards, “but I bet those fanclub freaks in the research division would pay a pretty penny for a token like that tossed their way—”
Restraint kicked in as Agent Savage slowly turned to face him with dead eyes (plus the extra pair still sliding down her cheek).
“...Not that I’m judgin’, mind,” shrugged Agent Griggs.
Agent Savage sighed and tucked the reappraised towel in her pocket.
“You’ve been debriefed vis-a-vis your dinner with Spender,” said Boss Leader, having long since turned her overbearing attention back to Agent Day. “But how about your luncheon with Zarei? How’d that go?”
“Oh! Well, she...” A wistful sigh escaped Val’s lips. “She didn’t really seem to remember me at all...”
It was the same as Agent Spender. Mina and Spender had started as the cast of June Puckett’s stories, the unlikely apprentices she’d looked after on her year-long final mission in Bayview. Val had seen a world of supernatural possibility through their eyes—through June’s words—and found her future in the echoes of their past. It was clear that Mrs. Puckett missed it terribly... the life of danger and adventure she’d led then. Val soon found she missed it, too, though she had never lived it. Borrowed nostalgia had brought her here, to the dream that they all shared. That was where she’d met them face-to-face... but not as equals. In her first years as a part of the Consortium, Agent Day had been beneath their notice. Spender had looked past her, busy as he’d been defending Bayview. Mina, though, had spoken to her once—one night, when they’d crossed paths as total strangers in a calm nook of the Dream Hub. Though it seemed that she’d forgotten the encounter, the advice that she’d imparted (offered carelessly, her voice cast downwards towards the research she’d been lost in) had stuck with Val ever since, no less resonant than the lessons June had left her with. Agent Day could still hear her words now—
“If you needed more agents to RSVP to your pool party, you have sycophants aplenty who would gladly check the box.”
Yes. There was nothing worse than an underattended pool party. Such kind, encouraging advice...
Wait, what? Agent Day blinked in confusion.
“Doctor Zarei!” exclaimed Boss Leader. “We were JUST about to talk about you behind your back! So glad that you could make it!”
“...I should have known that ‘in your dreams’ was not an answer you would take as my refusal,” Mina sighed, marching impatiently into the meeting she’d been summoned to.