The room was deep beneath Washington D.C. and the people in it were not well known to the public - but they held most of the puppet strings. Large monitors on every wall showed the current conditions of the parts of Earth's society and conditions that they concerned themselves with. Currently, the most significant was the "Defcon 2" Light at the top of the Military Status board. China had reacted badly. Initially, they had just done as nearly all industrialized nations had and shut down all power and internet-related support after putting out stories of hackers, viruses, and cyber-attacks and giving those stories enough time to circulate.

The problem is, it wasn't going to be enough, and the current status crippled authority action as much or more than it "protected" the public from becoming part of the problem. As soon as the military and law enforcement agencies could get ready, they would turn the power back on and start the purge of all network devices under full martial law rules - but that would take another day or two to fully prepare, and they still had to determine who to blame. They all knew, of course, that the situation was far beyond the technical capacity of any Earth humans, so it was probably best to just make use of that fact, but now China's reaction gave them another option.

China had gone nuclear - literally. They had EMP-bombed themselves - without regard to the splash effects on all nearby nations, or the global satellite systems. Certainly that was the most effective way to manage the situation, by taking out all devices that could connect to the mystery signals, but the USA was not prepared to go nearly that far - yet, at least. In the meantime, thousands of military and security agents were being formed into teams to investigate what this new "App" could do to and for the people who used it.

"What's the latest?" the Chairman asked the lead investigator,

"Well, most of our teams had to spend most of their points to re-locate their Home Base within the USA, though we have several infiltration units setting up bases in other nations where they know the local languages and customs. The big problem will be with those civilians who have points enough to create a virtual connection - in which case they will no longer need internet devices and we will have no way to detect their usage of the alien network. Our other big problem is with the Home Bases themselves, which appear to be visible and operable only for their owner. Essentially, sir, anyone using the alien system has the potential to become their own super-villain with their own secret base."

"And what do we know about the Powers so far?"

"Almost nothing, sir, except that each one has been fairly directly related to the Pathway taken. Most of our agents that have gotten that far have not yet been able to gain a Power, since no set number of points is required to gain one, and we are using most points to explore other avenues. We do have a man who is able to become invisible for a few seconds at a time, and another who can now SEE strong electromagnetic fields. But we have no real knowledge of the scope or limitations of Powers available."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"And what about command abilities? Can we force people to comply?"

"Yes and no, sir. We can force people to give us access, or to spend points, by the usual means - but THEY have to initiate the access or spend the points, we can't do it for them. Also, they can terminate our access immediately once we no longer have a hold on them. Point transfer doesn't seem to be possible, so the best we can do to apply a tax (for example) would be to have them buy something for us in the Shop menu."

"And the Quests?"

"All Quests we have seen are very specific to a person's Pathway. A spy will have to acquire information, a cop will have to solve crimes or make arrests, even a thug has to go out and hit people. Setting up a controlled situation doesn't seem to give much Quest progress. But Quests and direct Pathway progress seem to be the only reliable ways of gaining more points at this time - further research and experimentation is ongoing"

"Very well, then. Please prioritize the detection and access to Home Bases over all else, and then further experimentation with Powers. The rest of you, have your action teams ready to detect and destroy all active public wi-fi capable equipment, and close the borders to all foreign nationals until it is determined if they have a Home Base within the USA or not. The new part of the public story is going to be that hacked wi-fi is now capable of causing brain damage to those in the vicinity, including hallucinations and paranoia, and that we are worried about it being a first step towards remote mind control."

"Covert ops and research teams, have all agents operate in teams of three or more, sharing mutual log-ins on a regular basis of no longer than 8 hours. Enforcement teams will operate in rotating pairs under the same rules. Power will start to be restored at noon eastern time - I know it's not enough time but be as ready as you can. Meeting is adjourned."

The Chairman got up and turned away - he'd done his public duty and (like all of them) knew it would fail to contain the situation. The real objective, of course, was to buy time. He and the rest of his shadow group needed to get their Pathways, get to their bases, and start assessing how to control the new reigns of power for the soon-to-come new world. He himself had already chosen the Mastermind Pathway, and was level 4. Hidden, of course. His base was in northern Scandinavia, but that had left him the points to buy the virtual access ability and still have a good reserve for whatever the investigators found most useful. Having a base that far out of the country was no problem for someone with his connections, and being far outside the USA might be a perk later on as events unfolded.

The air force jet was fueled and ready to go by the time he made it back to base, and he was well on his way to Europe before dawn, eastern time.