The year was 1938. The pact made by Burt, Valerie, and Harold in the original "Amsterdam" had held firm for years, but the world was tilting on its axis once more.

As the lights came up and the conspirators fled into the night, the trio stood on the studio roof, watching the California sun rise.

"We didn't change the world," Harold noted, lighting a cigarette.

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."

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."