After two hours skulking from back alley to doorway, he arrived back at the warehouse where his few useless old warriors still remained, too stupid or too afraid to run. As he recounted the story of their victory, they whispered hoarse cheers, some of them crying with an orgiastic, fanatical joy. He removed the clean smock he had thrown around himself to cover his gory clothes and they cheered again at the sight of his victims’ blood drenching him.

As he walked toward a waiting van to leave, one of them asked after the fate of the prime minister’s family. As Shahim told them, they leered and cheered once more, whispering vulgar epithets about the dead woman and children.

Shahim’s huge frame froze for a moment, then he carefully placed his clean smock in the van, closed the door, and turned to the once proud warriors.

The sight of his left eye sliding back into his head, and the aberration that replaced it, shocked the levity out of them.

If they loved death so much, Shahim thought, he would give it to them, and his weapons flashed out once more before he finally left the warehouse, alone, his shame masked only by a murderous fury.

Part 3

Chapter 33: Counterpoint

Neal sat looking at the large corkboard on the basement wall. It seemed like every time he did it was more formidable. Over the last six months they had managed to confirm the identity and location of nearly all seven of John Hunt’s fellow Agents. They had slowly and discreetly acquired varying amounts of information on each of them, and Neal had arranged this information on a large corkboard in his basement headquarters.

In that time, their small team had also grown and split into three somewhat liquid groups. Madeline was now living almost full-time in North Dakota. Their cover company Matsuoka Industries had a large facility there and she had become a regular in their research department, helping them develop the new micro-manufacturing technology that was set to make them all very rich, for what that was worth. While the rest of the team there was unaware of it, they were actually also now a vital part of something far more profound. Even now they were close to completing the first step in the long process required to develop and deploy an antigen to the virus that hung, quite literally, over their heads, waiting to fall like a guillotine once they initiated their attacks on the satellites.