Aiden and I step into the Ghost Office and stop, blinking at the scene before us.

The ghosts can’t touch anything, which means that nothing has moved or changed since the last time we were here. Nothing except the ghosts themselves, that is.

Will is sprawled out on the floor by the burnt wall, deeply asleep. His head is resting on his folded arms, his face turned towards us. One lock of blonde hair falls over his eye, flutters with his slow breaths. He’s missing his heavy workboots, and he’s shrugged off his suspenders.

Kasey, on the other hand, is wide awake. Her outfit hasn’t reset since we last saw her in the forest, but now she’s also kicked off her shoes and socks. She’s kneeling on one of the workbenches, her head bent over an open textbook that we left out for her. She’s talking very fast - apparently to Will, whose soft snores she has yet to notice.

“I fucking knew we could do it, I knew! We just needed the keyword, didn’t I say that?”

“Mmm,” Will mumbles in his sleep.

“That’s right, I did! I should’ve just trusted myself from the beginning, I had a feeling there might be an ancient history angle to this code, but I was afraid that I just wanted there to be that angle, since I’m a historian. But no! I was right! Even modern-day codes have roots in antiquity, sometimes! Didn’t I say that when we started?”

Will lets out another soft snore. Kasey breaks into a huge grin, her black eyes shining with excitement.

“Just wait until Jamie and Aiden see this, wait until-”

“Kase-face,” I call, leading Aiden further inside.

Kasey's head snaps up. Her eyes land on us, and her smile widens.

“Oh - yes!” She leaps down from the workbench, bounds over to Will, and seizes his foot. “Will, they’re here!”

His green eyes blink open, alarmed and bewildered. “What-?”

“Aiden and Jamie are here, we can do the translation!”

“Transl-? Oh, yes.” Will sits up, rubbing his tired eyes. “Of course, the-”

He breaks off, laughing as Kasey impatiently takes his hand and throws her weight backwards, trying to drag him to his feet. All this does is straighten out his arm, while Kasey nearly goes horizontal from the effort.

“How do you weigh more than me?” she complains. “We’re literally made out of energy, it doesn’t even make sense. You and Aiden both - you’re so tall, it’s annoying - with your Paul Bunyan-sized selves-”

“Okay,” Aiden cuts in firmly, as Will gets to his feet, chuckling. “Are we translating the code, or not?”

Kasey whips around to face him, grinning wildly.

“Fuck yeah, we are! Come on, come on come on-”

She rushes back over to the workbenches, dragging Will along. He looks at us helplessly, struggling to get his suspenders back on, and I suppress a laugh.

I was worried that Kasey might be too much for him to handle when she’s in this mode. But I'm not worried anymore.

Will does look exhausted, but as soon as his green eyes go back to her, they fill up with affection. Like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than right here, with Kasey, even when she’s like this. She looks absolutely deranged right now, and he's still staring at her like she’s the most precious treasure in the world.

I hide my smile as Aiden and I cross the Ghost Office to join them at the workbenches.

“Okay!” Kasey claps her hands together sharply, startling Will the rest of the way awake. “So - I thought that Will and I should begin with antiquity, because a lot of modern codes draw on the same principles as ancient codes.”

“Alright,” Aiden says, watching as Kasey points to an open textbook.

“Thought we should start with Classical Greece,” she continues. “That was well over twenty-five hundred years ago, but a lot of these codes have to do with math, and the math is still good. Been helpful to have Will here, for that. Math isn’t like, my best thing.”

“I’ve been happy to be of service,” Will says fondly, resting a hand on Kasey’s lower back.

Kasey points to something in the textbook. “So, we started with the Polybius Square, obviously-”

“Obviously,” I mutter.

“-and went from there.”

Aiden, Will, and I all fall silent while Kasey launches into her explanation. Eventually I steal a glance at Aiden, who looks back at me, his eyebrows raised high. Will catches our eyes over the top of Kasey's head, gives us a knowing smile.

I don’t think any of us are understanding more than a few words of whatever the hell Kasey is saying. She’s speedily referencing people and theorists I’ve never heard of, explaining her own theories that have since been discarded - most of which I can’t even begin to get my head around - and making jokes that I suspect only a historian could possibly understand, then chuckling maniacally to herself before she keeps speaking.

I give up trying to follow what she’s saying, and I think that Aiden and Will do, too. But we're all still listening, anyways. I definitely know that Will is, because he blushes when Kasey says things like, then Will and I stopped to make out for a while, and when we got back to work we moved on to Bellaso’s ten alphabets…

Her eyes are glittering and wild the whole time, burning brightly with excitement.

Aiden snags my eye, mouths at me: Floyd Mode.

Will starts gently smoothing down Kasey’s hair, straightening out her rumpled clothes, fixing the slipping knot of the headband she made herself. She's so caught up in telling us everything that she doesn't even notice.

By the time she reaches the end of her lengthy speech, she looks somewhat pulled together again - even in her torn-up clothes - and she’s folded neatly into Will’s arms. She's talking at a slower, much more understandable pace. She hasn't taken her eyes off of me and Aiden, but she automatically rests one hand on Will's forearm, leans back against his chest.

“The key, really," she finishes, "Was getting the Stasi agent’s name. Scholz. We figured it was likely that his name was included in the letter from the farmhouse, which meant there had to be a six-letter combination that spelled it out. And we finally found a code that, when applied to the letter, produced that combination.”

Kasey points now to the piece of paper we found, the coded letter that was hidden in the go-bag.

“So, I'd like to get going on decoding the rest of it. But I can explain what the code actually turned out to be, if you really want to know. It’s complicated, um - basically, it's a twist on the principles of…” Kasey fades off, blinking in surprise as she takes in the expressions on our faces. “What’s happening, right now?”

Will tightens his arms around her. “We're astonished at the force of nature that is your mind, my love."

“Seriously, Kase-face.” I stare at her, wide-eyed. “What the fuck.”

Aiden shakes his head in disbelief. “I understood, like, five percent of that. Max.”

“Brilliant shade of mine,” Will says affectionately.

“Okay, okay - can we please-?” She stabs a finger at the letter, her cheeks turning pink. “C’mon, we need you guys to write it down while we decode it!”

Aiden retrieves his laptop from my bag and powers it on. He opens up a translation website, so we can go directly from German to English.

“You guys ready?” Kasey asks, when he's got it set up.

A trill of excitement moves through my chest. "Yeah, let’s do it!”

Kasey beckons to Will. They put their heads together over the page of coded writing. Will hovers one finger over the first letter, and Kasey puts her fingertip through his, starts there. Then she begins moving it down the column of letters and across the rows, then at a diagonal, counting silently.

“First letter is V.”

This is a long letter, and the ghosts have to do each letter of every word one at a time, without messing up the counting pattern. For a long while, the only sounds in the Ghost Office are Kasey's quiet, focused voice, and the click of Aiden typing.

Kasey gets to the last letter, lets out a breath, and turns to look hopefully at Aiden.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, staring at the translation. “You guys definitely cracked the code.”

Kasey breaks into a gigantic grin. She spins around, seizes two fistfuls of Will's shirt, and throws herself upwards to kiss him. He staggers, but catches her. Smiling, his cheeks turning red.

Kasey whips around to face us again, breathless and beaming. Together, we all crowd around Aiden’s laptop to read the letter.

From K. Friede to HVA/Station: Lichtenberg

Confidential / No copy to file

Field copy issued to Agent Scholz (Encoded)

Subject: Meeting Report

Location: House SK2

Priority: High

Present: Assignment Officer K. Friede, Agents Scholz, Jahn

Met with Scholz and Jahn for the briefing. Everything has been arranged. All mission materials to be issued to drop point for agents to retrieve upon arrival with the subject at the safehouse. Have provided everything necessary in the event of emergency exfiltration. Agents will cache all materials on site. Recommended the abandoned well.

Scholz asked if the assignment was indefinite. Explained we have no clear timeline to give him yet. Safehouse has been leased from a local (Joseph Finley). We have paid in advance for six months. Will issue further funds to the on-site agents if/when the time comes to pay beyond that lease term. There should be no tracing it back to us.

Finley has agreed to our requests. No outside staff will be sent to the property during the lease term. Finley himself will perform any necessary maintenance or repairs. Agents have been instructed not to hire any outside help or allow anyone on the premises.

Passed along the message to both agents that the subject is not to be left unsupervised at any time, and that one of them must always accompany him. Agents will alert us if there’s any sign that they or the subject may be compromised/exposed/at risk.

Subject has been taught his new identity and has learned to respond to his alias. Seems to understand the situation as best as he can, at his age. Already familiar with Jahn and Scholz, which helps.

If our intelligence is right and the Americans know about him, he needs to be moved as soon as possible. We should move him right away even if they’ve only heard rumors. There’s still time to make them think it was all smoke. He’s far too valuable to fall into the wrong hands.

Recommend immediate departure.

Team Ghost Office stares at the letter in silence for a long moment. Then we all twist to face each other, grinning from ear to ear.

“Holy shit!” Kasey yells.

“Oh my god.” Aiden stares at his laptop, blue eyes wide. “I can’t believe - oh my god.”

“This is so much!” I sputter, pressing my fingers over my mouth. “Jesus Christ - some of our theories were dead on!”

“Wait a moment,” Will cuts in, his blonde eyebrows furrowing. “This letter says that no outside help was to be hired.”

“So?” I ask.

“So - did John Botswick’s log not mention a babysitter?”

We all look at each other, and then Aiden turns back to his laptop. He pulls up the photos I took of Botswick’s notebook, and we lean in to read the words again.

The mark appears healthy, is often under the care of a local babysitter.

“Oh, wow.” Kasey lets out a scoff of disbelief. “They broke the rules! Repeatedly, too. Often under the care of a local babysitter.”

“Maybe they resented being put on babysitting duty,” I suggest. “Scholz asked how long the assignment was going to last. Sounds like he didn’t really want to do it. He’d been protecting an important Stasi official in his home country, and suddenly he was, like - in Port Sitka. Babysitting.”

“And for at least six months,” Will observes. “Possibly longer. That’s quite a while to work a job you find boring. Without beginning to slack, anyway.”

“That could be why Scholz was fired when he got home.” Kasey nibbles her lip thoughtfully. "He and Jahn weren't supposed to leave the kid's side, and it sounds like they did. All the time."

“Oh,” Aiden says suddenly, his eyes on the laptop screen. “You guys - we fucking forgot about this part of John Botswick’s log! Two Stasi agents protecting the mark. These guys work directly under the kid’s father, used to be part of his personal security squad.”

“Oh, my god,” I say, realizing out loud. “That means Floyd’s theory was dead on, too - this whole letter is proof of Floyd’s theory, actually! And now we even have the name of the other agent!”

We all beam at each other, stunned and thrilled.

I seize Aiden's laptop and drag it over to myself, start typing away.

“What are you doing, Jamie?”

"Searching up Joseph Finley." I glance up at Kasey, pointing to the screen. “We know he was local to Port Sitka, so maybe we can find him. If he handled maintenance on the farmhouse, he might have met the agents. He might know something.”

I search the name and town, and we all let out a groan of disappointment. The first result is an obituary from the Port Sitka newspaper, which informs us that Finley died a few years ago.

“Wait, though.” Aiden points to the bottom of the obit. “It says he’s survived by his son. It’s a long shot, but his kid probably would’ve been alive at the time. He might remember another kid living on his dad’s property.”

“That’s true,” Will agrees. “Does his son still reside in Port Sitka?”

I type the name of Finley’s son into the search bar along with Port Sitka, and results pop up. The topmost one is a website for a business owned by Hugh Finley, complete with a Port Sitka address.

“He’s still there! Aiden and I could go ask him some questions.”

Aiden shrugs his broad shoulders. “Sounds good to me. We can’t just tell him that we’re ghost hunters, though."

“Why not?”

“Because, Jamie, so far as we know, the property hasn’t changed hands since the farmhouse collapsed. So this guy, Finley’s son - he probably owns it. I doubt he’d be stoked to hear that two ghost hunters have already searched it without his permission. I doubt he wants to encourage the idea that his land is haunted, at all.”

“Oh." I wince at Aiden, realizing that he's right. “Yeah, that’s true.”

There’s a silence as we all think this over.

“Hey,” Kasey says slowly. “Do you guys still have the badges you used for the heist?”

Aiden arches an eyebrow. “Yeah…?”

Kasey fixes us with a meaningful stare. Aiden and I look at each other, simultaneously catching on, then look back at her.

She can tell that we've got it. She smiles, then yawns deeply, leans against Will.

A big yawn is usually the first sign that she's coming down from her tornado of energy, and when she comes down, she comes down hard. I have a feeling that she'll be asleep within the next two minutes.

“I thought I'm not supposed to get tired, anymore?” she mumbles, her eyes closing.

“Your mind can still be tired.” Will sweeps her up into his arms, and she loops hers around his neck, buries her face into it. “You need rest, my wraith. Let me take you to the loft?”

No answer. She stays silent, cozied up in his arms.

“Think she's already out,” Aiden tells him.

“You guys have worked so hard,” I murmur. “Go rest, we’ll take it from here.”

Will gives us a grateful, tired smile, then vanishes. A soft, ghostly glow appears in the loft.

We leave the ghosts to get some sleep. Their job is done. Now it's up to me and Aiden.

Or, more accurately, to Agents Foster and Sutton.