"May I help you?" A young woman with light brown hair and a winning smile asked as Will and Helen approached the front desk of the museum.

"I hope so," Helen said, offering the young woman a smile of her own. "My name is Dr. Helen Magnus, and this is my colleague, Dr. Will Zimmerman. We're here from..."

"The British Royal Museum." She interrupted, nodding. "The curator's been expecting you. Right this way, please."

Helen nodded as she and Will followed, Helen's heels clacking against the tile as her curls bounced with each step toward the office.

"Dr. Magnus and Dr. Zimmerman, I presume." The blond woman said with a smile as she looked at the visitors. "Welcome to the New City Museum of Antiquities. My name is Sydney Hamilton, and I'm the curator here."

Helen shook her hand with a smile before Dr. Hamilton turned and shook Will's hand.

"I was sorry to hear about the recent theft of the Roman vase from your museum." Helen said as Dr. Hamilton led them out of the office.

"And I was sorry to hear about the royal jewel theft from yours." Dr. Hamilton said somewhat tartly.

"I'm sorry," Helen said, apologetically. "That was rude of me."

Sydney turned to the other woman with a small sigh. "And I'm overreacting," she said with a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry as well."

"Have there been any leads on the theft?" Will asked, conversationally.

"You mean besides the million dollar reward that INTERPOL has posted for information that could lead to the perpetrator and the stolen artifacts?"

Helen's eyes widened. "One million dollars?"

Sydney nodded. "You didn't know?"

"We knew there was a reward," Will smoothed over. "But we didn't realize it was a million dollars."

"Five priceless artifacts went missing, Dr. Zimmerman, with little trace to who had taken them." She said, stoically. "Of course there's a substantial reward."

He nodded, slowly. "Of course."

"Why are you here again?" She asked, studying the two visitors.

"We've come for a number of reasons," Helen soothed. "Including examining and appreciating your unique collection of artifacts. But given our shared history in these thefts, we were also hoping to share information on how to keep these burglaries from happening again."

"The British Royal Museum is coming to New City for tips on security?" She asked, skeptically. "And to study OUR artifacts?"

Will could see the disbelief in the other woman's eyes, and he looked over. "Okay, okay, we're not curators."

She looked somewhat appeased by his admission.

"We're from the private security firm that handles the British Royal Museum's security. We're being audited because of the burglary, and we just want to make sure that we left no stone unturned, okay?"

She nodded, slowly. "Anything you need."

"Thank you." He said, gratefully. "Now, can you show us where the vase was being kept?"

"I have some other work to do," Sydney said as she brought them to the display. "Let me know if there's anything you need."

"Thank you," Helen said, gratefully, as the woman left. She turned to Will. "What do you see?"

"Well, the glass isn't broken." He said, studying the case, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been tampered with."

Helen raised an eyebrow as Will bent over and pointed to a nearly invisible line at the base of the glass enclosure. "Looks like it was something sharp."

"The authorities may have been looking for some sort of plasma cutter, but there are no signs of heat damage."

Will nodded as he placed both hands on the case, and gently lifted it off.

"But why didn't the alarm go off?" Helen asked, curiously. "Surely there was some sort of glass break detector or pressure sensor..."

"First of all, a glass break detector only handles the sound. If it didn't sound like the glass was breaking, then it wouldn't have gone off."

She nodded, following his argument.

"Secondly, the alarm is off. I shouldn't be able to lift this now without alarms going off."

"No museum in the world would have turned off an alarm, even on an empty display." She agreed.

"I think we need to reexamine whether or not whoever did this had inside help."

"Or...we need to know how much reconnaissance they did before the actual heist."

"What do you mean?" He asked as his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Perhaps there isn't anyone on the inside." She said, enlightened. "Think about it. All of the clues point to either Ashley or one of the other Montana test subjects – all of whom possessed any number of the powers of the Five."

"Right. Uh, vampiric tendencies, teleportation, ultra-healing capabilities..."

"Obviously if they were able to plan a heist of this magnitude, they have some small part of James's intellect." She said, pensively.

"Yeah, the perfect crime...I think Sherlock Holmes is the only who could really pull one off."

Helen nodded, tensing somewhat.

"If the super-abnormals had yours, Druitt's, Tesla's, and Watson's gifts, couldn't they have gotten Griffin's gift?"

Helen raised an eyebrow in interest. "You think the super-abnormals may not have used all of their powers to fight us."

"Or there was a latency factor that they didn't account for."

Helen's eyes widened. "If that's true," she said, soberly. "Then, we could have a much bigger problem than mere theft."

Will sighed. "I guess it's time to at least consider the possibility that our initial assessment that Ashley hadn't gotten through the EM field was erroneous."

Helen managed an uncomfortable smile as the reality of everything settled over her.