Atticus tried unsuccessfully to conceal his surprise at seeing one of MASK's leadership carrying out what he was sure had to be a fairly low-level task. Why Valentine? he wondered to himself. Her eyes were laughing at his surprise from behind her thick makeup veneer. She pulled out a bulging plain, white, business-sized envelope folded precisely in half from her inside jacket pocket. Cash! he thought, relieved. "Your next leg of the journey will require tremendous resourcefulness and quick thinking. You are to proceed back to Chicago to deliver the data drive you retrieved. How you get there will be entirely up to you. However, you must avoid being identified at all costs. The data is mission-critical information- I cannot emphasize this enough." Valentine paused. "Good luck," she said softly, her heart in her throat, as she watched him walk away.

She ducked behind the newsstand counter and pulled a sleek tablet from her grimy tote bag, a well-worn bit of swag from forgotten pharmaceutical conference, selected especially for her current persona. She slid her finger and tapped. "They just left." she said as soon as Knight's face appeared on the screen. "Please don't worry." Knight replied, "They're the best we have. They'll pull this off. In their case, innocence is bliss." The screen went dark. Valentine tried not to think about how much was riding on the three.

Bayonne bus terminal

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It was nightfall at the Bayonne bus terminal. Mercury lights cast a corrupt glow on the gleaming chrome of the buses in the loading lot. Tayanna and Nasrin watched as Atticus walked through the side door. They turned and looked at each other. Tay gazed at the two xolos as they melted into the shadows to patrol.

Atticus softened his spine and lowered the angle of his head as he tried to blend in to the modest crowd of travelers. He looked to the left of the security check point where his contact was supposed to be waiting at the newsstand. He had been elected by the group to gather the travel stipend and information there. He saw no one but an elderly woman behind the counter, head in hand, yawning through a modest goatee. He sidled passed her and feigned interest in the current issue of Maxim.

"Boy, you will have to show me proof of age if you want to look at that." The crone spoke with an accent so thick it was hard to understand her. Atticus reddened. She stared at him and shook her head. "You are too young to be here." Atticus paled. The woman laughed. "Atticus, you came to meet me. I will tell you where and how the next leg of your odyssey will transpire." Atticus looked under the make-up and facial hair and recognized Faye Valentine, his chem-lab teacher.

Moot looked long and hard at Ferris. He had lost any appetite for keeping his cards close. He needed someone to trust, someone he could turn to. He had to risk this to forge an alliance. The heat rose up from the sidewalks and the city's traffic din lulled during the long moment of silence between them. She waited expectantly, her eyes locked on him.

"Something's rotten in MASK" he said finally. "I'm not sure exactly who - or what - is behind it- yet." Ferris' expression registered no surprise.

"I'm afraid that it goes all the way to the top. And MASK operatives are being thrown under the bus to serve as cover." Ferris knew she could trust what Moot said because he was so clearly being marked for elimination. He had nothing to gain from lying to her. She wasn't so sure about the others.

"Who do you think can be trusted? Knight? Rook? Valentine?" He noted her intentional omission of MASK CEO Love, and of Franken and Chapelle.

"Where Knight goes, so goes Rook. Valentine, I'm not so sure... did you know that Knight hasn't been seen for over a week? We've been communicating remotely- I'm not sure where he is- are you?"

"Let me see what I can find out." Ferris replied. "Let's meet for drinks at 5."

He was no longer smiling. The girl who talked to the dogs was silent. He was puzzled. But he had the dogs to talk to. He could hear them.

Their voices loud enough but listening to them was like hearing an unfamiliar voice, saying words that were hard to understand. This is how it was for him, with dogs. But people he listened to were easy to understand.

There he is! He saw the big male, there, and now he is gone. He ran into the high reeds. But he could still hear him, and the female. They were scouting for the best route to...

That was odd, instead of walking to the bus station they were heading farther into the marsh. They were walking on to a peninsula, trapped. Easy to follow now. Ah, yes. He could just see it. A boat. The big male was thinking about a boat. They had a boat waiting for them. He laughed. The little grey female was thinking of the boat now too. She was looking at the water but there was no boat yet. Neither of the dogs liked boats, he could see that. And they were out of land.

He smiled, at last he would be able to talk to all of them at once. He was not afraid of the dogs. Nor was he afraid of the students, children really. He would make them understand things. He had to. Understand things his way.

He could see water on both sides of him now, ahead sky through the trees. Just through this copse of scrubby brush and he would be at the end of the finger of land.

And so would the little group. Atticus,the tall young man, a fast thinker from what he could see. Nasrin, adept and capable, she might have been the most formidable if she had a few years to mature. And Tayanna, and her dogs, she was wild and unpredictable, he would watch her.

He smiled as he stepped out into the clearing.

He was surprised. This was not what he expected at all.

Twenty feet in front of him the two dogs lay their backs to the water. Ears forward, eyes gleaming, they were waiting for him. But there was no one else. He looked quickly to his right and left, then back at the dogs. They were still focused on him. No one else was there. Slowly the dogs stood. The big male's mouth opened slightly, as if he was smiling. Then quick as lightening both dogs darted to either side of him and were gone. That fast. He frowned. Can dogs lie?

Slowly he smiled. His assignment was now interesting.

"You know that Obi Wan follows us, no?" Nasrin and Atticus could barely conceal their shock at Tayanna's question. "Are you sure?" Nasrin asked.

"Oh, yes. He told me he is coming. He tries to listen to me, but I don't always let him. And he talks to the xolos- or, he tries to talk to them" Tayanna corrected herself.

"How in hell did he get here?" asked Atticus. " We took off from Brooklyn just 10 minutes ago."

"We have to shake him, and fast" Nasrin continued.

"I have thought of that, Nasrin," Tayanna explained.

Atticus pivoted and noticed to his amazement that the two hounds were nowhere to be seen.

Fiel circled silently behind the hated one. She thought only the thoughts the alpha had instructed her to think. El Sombre stood ahead, at the fork in the road until he was within eyeshot of the hated one. He too, thought only those thoughts. They heard the hated one's jumbled thoughts, full of nightmares, chattering on, but the hounds had learned to ignore such things and only pay attention to the alpha. As planned, the hated one followed el Sombre down the left fork.

He was smiling. He liked to see fire in the sky. That model Sikorsky was over-rated anyway. The explosion was timed well, but not perfectly. He tossed the radio remote over his shoulder into a deep water of Bayonne's Upper Bay. It was heavy and MASK had a steady supply, he could always get more. He looked north where the dogs and the girl who talked to the dogs were. He liked talking to the dogs. That they heard him interested him. The dogs hated him of course. Anything that could talk to him did. Since escaping from the camp in Mexico he heard the inner voices of some animals and a human or two. His brother, Seamus, heard the animals voices too. Seamus stayed in Mexico and until a few months ago he heard his brother's inner voice in his head late at night. He didn't hear Seamus any more. Thinking about the drugs they gave him and his brother in the camp in Mexico still made him shiver in his brain. He frowned. But seeing the fire in the sky made him smile. He watched the smoke dissipate in the darkening sky. He smiled as he started to walk towards the Bus Terminal.

Jackson Moot's heart sunk as the Sikorski's geo-location device marker suddenly disappeared from his screen. "What the f*&#k just happened?" he murmured under his breath. The phone rang. "The Sikorski just blew up" Ferris stated abruptly. "What happened? Knight needed it to be redeployed at three..." "Wish I knew. It was thoroughly checked out yesterday." "I'm coming over." Three minutes later Ferris stood in Moot's office at MASK HQ. "I can't afford another screw up." Moot said glumly, shaking his head. "That's the least of it- we don't know for sure whether our personnel were on board when it blew- and now we've lost their signals too." They exchanged uneasy glances. "Let's take a walk" said Ferris suddenly. As they strolled down the crowded, noisy sidewalk, Ferris asked, "I think we can speak frankly out here. Do you think this was an accident? If not, can you think why anybody would want that copter downed?"

They picked themselves up, brushed off the charred remains of the Sikorski and checked to make sure they and the Xolos were okay. "Should we even pick up the stipend?" Atticus asked. "We might be traced..." "Let's find out" replied Nasrin. "Maybe there's some cash- we could exchange it." She pulled out her cell phone and GPS and powered them down. "I suggest you do the same. We'll grab new SIM cards later." They walked in the general direction of the Bayonne bus terminal in silence still uneasy by what they had just witnessed.

The three watched as the copter lifted into the cloudless sky. "Something's wrong" said Atticus, as he noticed a sudden uncontrolled jerkiness in the Sikorski's motion. It suddenly began spinning chaotically, horribly out of control. "RUN!" he cried, and as the group sprinted full-tilt toward a nearby deserted road, the copter erupted in a ball of fire, shrapnel hurtling in all directions. The group fell to the ground, heads covered, Tay and Nasrin holding the hounds to protect them. "Are we all OK?" Atticus asked as the three lifted their heads and exchanged worried, silent expressions.

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