“What was so secretive that you couldn’t give me any details over the phone?” Agent Appleton demanded.

“I believe I have found a Milford connection to The Collective,” Mr. Henry said.

“Go on.”

“After decrypting the bit of ciphertext that you provided, the payload was a standard archived file,” Mr. Henry explained. “The files in the payload appeared to be random until I realized the magic numbers didn’t match the file types that I was seeing.”

“Magic number?”

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“Oh, sorry. When I get excited, I get technical. Several images appeared in the archived file. They appeared to be random images at first, but the size of the disk seemed wrong. I checked the header, and it had the file signature of a memory capture file. I loaded the capture file into my memory analyzer program and was able to extract information out of it. Pieces of a conversation.”

“Did it list any specifics? Like names, codenames?”

“Dispatch, Rocky, and Ioann. The IP address originated from a mobile phone from the Milford area. The capture was too small to piece together more, but I’m able to give you enough information to work with the local cell provider to get additional information.”

“You’re brilliant!” Agent Appleton said.

Agent Appleton handed Mr. Henry another flash drive.

“The first fragment was a test. The remainder of the evidence should be on here.”

“I’ll get to work.”