Five ascensions remain
The team is put onto investigating a disappearance in the town of Bronson, CT (basically a New York expensive bedroom community) in which a woman, Molly Walters, vanished from her kitchen while talking on the phone and making dinner. Her husband is under investigation by the police who don't believe that she just disappeared, but they aren't having any luck pinning anything on him.
Background investigation reveals that Molly was VP of Finance at Pemberton, Fiskill & Roe, a respected New York management consultancy. She has/had an MBA from Harvard as well. The Walters (her husband Tom is a mid-level software manager) have two children: Minnie, age 8, and Julia, age 12. Angelina gets some journalistic credentials in order to help her sniffing around. The others opt for the blunt approach.
The team except for Angelina go to the Walters' house (Mr. Walters is known to be taking a leave from work) and note Minnie running around the house before knocking and talking to Mr. Walters. Alexandra says that they are investigators with some experience in this type of disappearance and implies that they'll believe the poor man's strange story. He lets them in.
They get the story that Molly had been talking on the phone to George (at PF&R), making dinner, and helping Julia with her homework - a typical evening for her - when she suddenly vanished. Tom admits to having seen some sort of lights during the dissapperance as well. They ask for and receive permission to investigate the kitchen, where things have been left untouched - Tom won't even go in there - but find only a cellular phone with a bit of a strange aura, which they take. Tom then has to go pick up the children at school, and agrees to meet with them at seven in the evening.
After he drives off, they become confused that Minnie is still around, and go into the backyard to talk to her. She tells them that she is at school - but is also here. She trades off with herself because she doesn't like school. Meanwhile, Angelina, following Tom, confirms that Minnie is taken from school, and then Julia is picked up as well as Tom begins a path from swimming to dance to piano to whatever other lessons the girls have in the afternoon.
Minnie has been able to be in two places at once for a few days, she says. After they've been talking to her for a while, they hear someone come home, and snooping catch Julia in the kitchen (as well as having been dropped off at dance). They break in and eventually get Julia to come out from under her bed and stop pretending not to be there. She, too, can be in more than one place at the same time.
After these revelations they return to their hotel and rejoin with Angelina, who has only discovered that Molly was active in organizing the local girl's soccer league and that Tom has driven his daughters to a truly amazing number of places that afternoon. They agree that this seems to have been an ascension, but aren't clear what the archetype was. The Working Mother is the leader, but there are a few other spins on it.
Gavin decides to try using the cell phone and calls Graham. Instead, he gets some heavy breathing and a deep voice which says "One becomes many, many become one." This is considered weird. Trying another number, he gets a male voice and asks for Mark. The voice is willing to pretend to be Mark, and they have a nice chat about nothing for a while. Later, Alexandra is able to talk to a nice woman who claims to be a shepardess from Arragon, and though she doesn't know the year precisely it was some time in the 1400s. The woman can't say where she is now, though. It is considered that at least some times the phone is contacting the dead.
Gavin gets it back and thinks about talking to the Invisible Clergy. He gets a chorus of voices and asks who they are. "Everyone." Where are they? "Everywhere." and so on. He then asks "How to we replace the communist" and one voice pushes forward and says "You may not oppose me" followed by a few more words which make Gavin drop the phone and nearly completely freak out.
That evening (after a lot of debate about what to tell Tom) they return to tell him something but are intercepted by George from PF&R who tells them that he's just given Tom some bad news. It seems that Molly turned in some work to PF&R - in fact, completed everything she needed to do and provided directions for her successor - some time after her disappearance. The consensus at the office is that she must have just run off, and so George had come to tell Tom that. The team waits a bit and hears Tom throwing china in the back yard, but decides that they have nothing they want to tell him and leave for the Ranch.
There was also some fine French red wine passed around during the debate about what to tell Tom. Alexandra made a strong case for telling Tom the truth, at least as far as Team S.I.L.V.E.R. knows it. When consulted, Damien indicated that the Inquisition would not be recruiting Tom at this time, so the team should keep some information classified. As noted, however, the Strausses eventually left Tom alone with his thoughts and a lot of broken china in the backyard.