Burt met Harold Woodman at a rain-slicked pier in New Jersey. Harold, now a successful lawyer but still wearing his scars like armor, looked at the film reel. "She’s in California, Burt. She’s found something in the Hollywood backlots that makes the Committee of Five look like a bridge club."
"They’re calling it 'Project Title,'" Valerie whispered, leading them into a basement filled with flickering projectors. "A group of industrialists is buying up every film studio in the country. Not to make movies, but to control the 'Available Titles'—the narratives the public believes. They’re filming fake newsreels, staged riots, and manufactured heroes to prepare the country for a coup that looks like a parade."
"We didn't change the world," Harold noted, lighting a cigarette.
Burt Berendsen sat in his cluttered medical office in New York, adjusting his glass eye in the mirror. He had just received a package with no return address. Inside was a single, weathered film reel and a note written in Valerie’s unmistakable, frantic shorthand: “The titles are available. The script is being written in blood. Come to the coast.”
Valerie looked at the empty film canisters. "The titles are still available, boys. We just have to make sure the right people are holding the pen."
Their mission was a classic Amsterdam-style heist. They had to break into the "Vault of Titles" hidden beneath a legendary movie studio during a high-profile premiere.
They arrived in Los Angeles to find Valerie Voze living under an alias in a crumbling mansion. She wasn't making art out of shrapnel anymore; she was making it out of stolen government documents.
The trio realized the "titles" weren't just movie names; they were the designations of power. The industrialists had a list of who would be the next "President," the next "General," and the next "Traitor."
