Mission 29

Henderson assigns his students a social studies project: research a profession that interests them, whether by interviewing parents, visiting a business, or consulting him about education, then present a report on Friday. Becky settles on her father's company; Damian tells Emile he will interview his dad if the man can even be reached.

At home, Yor imagines what showing Anya her real work would look like: a full assassination outing, with a matching outfit for Anya, lessons on respecting the target, several demonstrated killing techniques, and a blood-soaked child to be explained away as a tomato festival. Having read the entire fantasy, Anya diplomatically opts for Loid's job instead, and Yor agrees that city hall paperwork would be dull anyway.

Two days later Loid escorts Anya, dressed as a detective, through Berlint General Hospital, where his psychiatrist cover gives him access to influential patients and intelligence opportunities, thoughts Anya promptly copies into her notebook. His polished answers about healing minds wounded by the war sit atop a quieter motive she also overhears: the post might someday put him near Donovan Desmond. Staff members fawn over Anya with head pats and candy, praise Loid's kindness, and mention the director wants to golf with him, all of it feeding his network of useful contacts. Shown an empty consultation room, Anya starts poking at the bookshelf, and Loid's alarmed thoughts betray the emergency escape route concealed behind it. When Fiona Frost arrives with disguised mission documents, Loid steps out, leaving Anya with a sand table and a warning to touch nothing.

Naturally, she pulls the hidden lever and climbs down the escape ladder, where a vent carries voices from a closed-door meeting on the neuroscience of paranormal perception. Thrilled by talk of ghosts, she settles in to listen, bangs a pipe, traps her leg, and fills the room below with sounds the researchers take for a haunting. She scrambles back just ahead of Loid, hastily piling the sand table into chaos. He interprets the mess as subconscious distress over her adoption, blames his own parenting, and gently offers a comic and help with her report; she declines the help once he nearly reads her notes, though her handwriting proves indecipherable anyway. On Friday, Anya's presentation cheerfully mixes his real psychiatry work with golf at the office, a secret escape route, and occasional patient beatings, horrifying Henderson. Loid, out meeting Sylvia, feels a chill, and later talks his way out of the resulting school summons.

Fiona Frost makes her debut as Loid's WISE contact at the hospital, where the agency has planted assets to support his cover. Yor's imagined assassin apprenticeship convinces Anya to profile Loid instead. Anya discovers the consultation room's hidden escape route and accidentally convinces a room of researchers that ghosts are real, and her Friday report exposes just enough of Loid's oddities to get him called into the school.

Mission 29 runs 23 pages in Volume 5, released June 29, 2020, opening the Campbelldon Tennis Arc and adapted in Episode 20. The cover gathers Henderson, Ewen, Damian, Emile, Anya, and Becky.

The original digital release drew Fiona with a non-final design; Volume 5 substitutes her finished look. Anya's remarks in the consultation room, asking after the brain-fixing machine and noting it looks nothing like an operating room, can be read as callbacks to her days in the lab, and her buried dolls in the sand reference Damian's rolling sweep from the prior chapter.