“General, what is Blue?”

The man continued to look at his laptop. “That doesn’t matter right now—”

“My nephew said to ask about Blue. And I have. And no one seems to want to answer that question.”

“You have to understand something, Senator. I am no longer here to answer all your questions anymore.”

“Must have been a heavy hit to the ego to cover up those four stars under that black suit.”

He slowly looked up. “When the lightning first arrived last year, and the SSA updated the director of the FBI, he thought it best to contact my boss at the Pentagon. I was quietly transferred over to make sure that what happened fifteen years ago didn’t happen again.”

“Yes, things are much better this time.”

He turned the laptop, displaying a flashing red stripe stretched across CNN’s homepage, the banner reading, “WORLD UNDER SIEGE.”

“Let’s just start with the United Kingdom. Hurricanes off the coast of Scotland. A terror attack in Southampton. Wildfires in East Ireland. Hospitals in Kingston upon Hull flooded with calls from people suddenly in the final stages of cancer, heart disease, you name it. And do you know when all this started?”

“There have been reports of these disasters sporadically in different countries for the last six months—”

“They started ten minutes ago.” He scrolled down on the site. “Let’s check in on the Middle East. The coast of Yemen: Hurricanes. In Pakistan, Islamabad started burning like someone poured gasoline on the streets. Northern Kazakhstan: All of the residents of the Hotel Hizhina died when a car drove up and tossed in a truckload of bombs into the lobby. Lebanon: Overwhelmed with people barely able to breathe because of chest infections. In the last ten minutes.”

Mark pointed to a map of the world. “It’s the same now on every coast of Africa. Australia’s been battling these disasters for days now, but it’s now happening on the corners of every continent and heavily populated country. China, Russia, they have multiple accounts of the same disasters. On the four corners of the largest populations.”

“People are dying in all these countries, and you’re worried that we won’t be able to keep up with competing regimes? You have alien technology using our planet as a weapons testing site—”

“We have to make sure that there’s an America left if Syria finds one of the four.”

“My God, General, shouldn’t basic survival of our people be at the top of your list of concerns—”

“I’ll tell you what I’m concerned about. What I’ve been concerned about since the moment I was assigned to take over this shadow agency: that the SSA is operating in every nation in every world practically unchecked. So everyone has the same intelligence, and once the four are identified, their militaries will be thinking the same. That’s what worries me.”