On the ground, the first of the people of Kashmir to wake in the predawn darkness looked to the sky and shook once more with fear. Seeing the fiery ring above them, the farmers and shepherds out with their flocks amongst the cold dew assumed that one side or the other was up to no good once more. They had long since stopped caring which side it was that was firing, as long as they survived. The only thing they cared about now was how the other side might retaliate.

For those in the military, this new fire in the sky was something unknown, as it was for the insurgents still running into the mountains to escape the wrath of an incensed Pakistani government. Knowing all the horrors they had each wrought on the region, the sight of this new, unknown weapon was disturbing.

As reports of the explosions started to run around the region, all of these groups wondered and worried about what new way their enemies might have found to attack them. But two the Agents that still hid among them knew precisely what was happening.

“They know about the viral pods.” thought Jean-Paul Merard, standing in a briefing room on the Allied Force Military Base near Kabul, Afghanistan. Over the last few hours, his world had changed completely, as it had for all the Agents. There could no longer be any doubt that John Hunt had betrayed them, and Jean-Paul fumed at the thought.

But his desire to find the traitor was, for the meantime, secondary to what Agent Jean-Paul Merard should do right now. It would be foolish to think that Agent Hunt had not also revealed the identities of his colleagues. Therefore he should assume that his cover was blown and that he needed to get off the base, and soon. His immediate instinct was to reach out to the Council and get their opinion on his next steps, but that was no longer possible, and he realized that for the first time since his personality had been implanted into this machine he was now free to make decisions of his own. Now that the satellites were dead, the Council was all but moot.

He needed to act, and he needed to decide what to do without input from the others. Looking into the night sky he knew that he could serve multiple goals with one plan. Get off the base, hurt the military force he had been sent to infiltrate, and find out what was taking out those viral pods as they attempted to deliver the final stanza in the satellites’ requiem.