The two stunned faces opposite him stared aghast at this turn. John went on, “If they perceive that there is a credible threat to the mission, they will release the virus into the atmosphere in a series of cluster bombs. They will not allow you to prepare for the coming fleet. They cannot risk it.”

Madeline broke the ensuing silence, “Can we take out the satellites before they can release the virus?”

“Destroying them will require a massive amount of weaponry to get past their defenses, but even if we mount a successful attack without their knowing about it in advance, no amount of firepower could destroy all four satellites before one or all of them dropped their pathogen clusters into the atmosphere. You should know that one successful release would be enough to wipe out up to half of Earth’s population.”

They both stared, aghast, again. It was becoming a habit.

John labored on, once more, “No, before we can actually attack them, you must develop the antibody and a method of distributing it, and you must do so covertly. To that end, I am going to give you a detailed breakdown of the virus, but more importantly, I am to give you the design for a universal nano-antigen that can be used to combat the virus.”

And with that, John handed the pad he had been holding to them. All the while he had been talking he had been doodling on the pad in front of him, or at least that was how it had seemed. In fact, he had assigned a subroutine within him control of his arm and given it a set of data to replicate onto the pad. It had then set to writing a phenomenally detailed dossier for Madeline and Neal while John talked to them, leaving it to its task.

Neal began to leaf through it all. It included a detailed description of the virus and the associated antigen, with schematics and chemical breakdowns. Subsequent pages listed, in exhaustive detail, the other seven Agents, their ranks, locations past and present, mission parameters and interim goals, and a phenomenal set of facial sketches for each, both front and in profile. Neal continued to flick through the pad, coming to design drawings for machines he did not even begin to understand and John reached out to rest his hand on the top of the dossier.

Neal stopped looking through the information and looked up at John, his face meek like a child after the TV has been shut off.

“You can spend time looking at that later,” said John, “for now, we have more to discuss.”

* * *

That had all been ten minutes ago.

There had been so much to decide, so much to talk about, that John had suggested that they stick to areas where immediate decisions needed to be made, decisions like who they should recruit into the team, and what they were going to need to do to move forward.