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.