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“I need an exterminator at 1162 Millgrove Avenue. Yes. Wednesday at nine a.m., then. How long will I need to be out of the office?”

Her last sentence crawled up Jack’s leg like a cockroach, scuttling across his torso and wiggling its way into his skull until it transformed into a thought and then into an idea. Greta the Exclamation Point would be out of the archives on Wednesday morning. Jack needed to be in the office when she wasn’t there. Of course, the reason she’d be gone was because, presumably, a group of exterminators would be there instead, filling the space with the kind of toxic fumes that might impede Jack’s mission to keep his current body alive. Unless they weren’t.

Jack grabbed a decoy file from a nearby shelf and hustled back past the desk, giving Greta a tip of the head as she carried on her phone call and he carried on out the door, up the stairs, and away from the archives.

Back at his desk, Jack dug his phone out from the bottom of Margaret’s purse and opened his texts, tapping Carter’s name.

JACK: does your cousin still keep bees?

A few minutes of staring at a blank laptop screen passed before his phone buzzed.

CARTER: yeah, why?

JACK: we need to borrow her suits. And a van. Know anyone with a van?

CARTER: …

JACK: ???

CARTER: how fucked up is this gonna be?

JACK: medium

JACK: but i think im onto something here

JACK: i think i know how to track the list down

JACK: for Greer

Jack watched Carter’s little speech bubble appear and disappear twice. After a third time, the text followed through.

CARTER: I’ll make some calls.

Jack leaned back in his chair, hands resting behind his head, satisfaction coursing through him like rushing blood. By the time he left the office that evening, his plan had solidified into an almost tangible thing, and Dale would be the first to behold it, just as he always had been. As soon as he got home, Jack sat Dale on the leather sofa and regaled him with his untempered genius, the unspooling of his scheme eliciting the hushed awe it deserved from his audience. That was the thing about Dale: he wasn’t the brains or the brawn, but he was always the first to remind Jack of his brilliance, and a guy needed that from time to time.

After a satisfactory amount of oohing and ahhing, Jack left Dale to the TV and called the others. There was a time when this conversation would have taken place between the flimsily connected branches of Fort You Again, or over questionable coffee in a booth at Billy’s Diner, but FaceTime would have to work in a pinch. The faces of his friends soon encircled his own on his phone screen.

“Yeah?” Eli was the first to speak, his phone camera partially masked by steam as he cooked something on the stove.

“You gonna tell me why you need Cousin Angie’s beekeeping suits?” Carter said.

“Beekeeping suits?” Greer piped in.

“And a van,” Carter added.

“Shit,” said Eli. “Jack, what are you dragging us into now?”

“What are you all up to Wednesday morning?”

The answer to that question, after more negotiations and reassurances and explanations than Jack felt were strictly necessary, was meeting him at the S.C.Y.T.H.E. offices. When Wednesday morning dredged itself out from the misty tendrils of the night before, everything was in place. Jack was in the parking lot just as Greta came marching out the front doors to meet the incoming exterminators. He intercepted her with more energy than any octogenarian should have first thing in the morning, barreling toward her with a cacophony of inane questions primed on his tongue. She was too caught off guard by the chipper accosting to resist at first, but that wouldn’t last long. Soon she’d come to her senses and shake Jack off to complete her mission. He shot a look down the parking lot. The others would have to work quickly. Very quickly, actually, now that the exterminator van had driven into view.

Jack kept the barrage of senseless words coming, but his hold was beginning to break. Greta’s inadvertently given attention was fading. Where were they?

A second, unmarked van entered the lot, swooping past the first and parking just in front of it, so the majority of the first van was hidden from view. Carter hopped out of the driver’s seat in a puffy white suit that made him look like he’d dressed for a Pillsbury Doughboy convention. Greer exited the passenger side in the same uniform and made for the driver of the original van.

“I can’t help you without my computer,” Greta said in response to a question Jack only half realized he was asking. “For the last time: all the information is there. You’ll have to wait until I’m back in the office later today.” She made to turn, at which point she would have witnessed an unexpected face-off between two men in tasteful khaki boiler suits and three roughly human-shaped marshmallows, so Jack screamed. This was enough to pull the woman’s focus back to him, which meant, much to his own displeasure, that he now had to follow through.

After a quick mental run-through of all possible elderly ailments in his repertoire, he settled on a classic, grabbing his left arm with his right hand and gurgling slightly. Then he clutched his chest, pulling frantically at the silk fabric of his salmon blouse. Greta’s face remained stiff, but something that might have almost passed for concern flashed very briefly behind her eyes, though whether that was for Margaret or the silk blouse, Jack couldn’t be sure. Behind her, the first van pulled away and the marshmallows piled back into the second. Jack quickly straightened and caught his breath.