January 12, 2020

12:15 PM CST (18:15 UTC)

Not less than 5 minutes after getting up did Gene receive the news. The astrological super-conjunction had started, with the sun entering the 22nd degree of Capricorn, where Pluto and Saturn are. Mercury already went ahead to the 23rd degree, but its energy contribution was still huge, albeit fading, and sundown here in the Plutonian Empire was just an hour away. But. That wasn't the news King Gene Empire received, for he already knew from studying this day so hard. The news Gene did receive, was that in addition to the American President surviving an **** attempt, the Philippine volcano Taal began erupting, massive protests broke out in the middle east, and the beginings of what would eventually become a catastrophic pandemic had been circulating in China for weeks. Plutonian Intelligence suggests it may have been circulating for much longer, however.

The hard part was, since still no nation has offered to initiate formal diplomatic relations, the most Gene could do as King was to post his condolences on social media and wish him the best. For the next few hours after that, Gene spent his time in the Capitol Basement, in the War Room, mainly to help oversee the cyber-security operations, especially keeping an eye on the suspicious source in rural Russia, which was unusually inactive today. Gene's hunch was that this source indeed would be the troublesome one.

9:10 PM CST (3:10 UTC)

As things would have it, today turned out to be pretty uneventful so far. Stories of the heroism of the Secret Agent who risked his life for the American President was still dominating the news and social media. Gene mentally thanked the universe for the day, as 12 was one of his lucky numbers to begin with. However, the source in Russia was still suspiciously quiet, which was naturally on everyone's mind today. Right now there were about two dozen people in the War Room, half of them non-mortals, the other half Belle Hadean.

Gene decided to visit with each station personally, to check on status updates and see if any ideas would come to him, as the quietness of the Russian source just wouldn't stop bothering him. So far everything was decent and not much in the way of new ideas to investigate. By station 13, he found something.

Manned by a demon woman, Station 13 was the heart of the Intelligence monitoring. The station had two touch screens as well as control surfaces for each.

"Umm... Is something going on here?" Gene asked the demon woman, who went by the name Syn.

"Actually, yes, King Empire. You see this red dot? It's just a mile from the direct source we're investigating, and it hasn't moved all day." Syn pointed at a small flashing red dot on Screen 2, with concentric circles emanating and fading from it, on a dark greyscale map of a town in southern Siberia. She spoke in a deep foreign accent, not of the Earth. "Every time I try to zoom in, it disappears. It's been doing it for the last five minutes since I came back to it after suppressing an attack from the CIA towards us."

"Hmm. Is it possible to change the setting? To change the size or scale of the dot?"

"I believe so. Why?"

"If we shrink it as much as possible, and zoom in as close as possible..."

"I knew I was missing something, thanks!"

"No problem!" Gene responded as Syn followed the King's suggestion. As soon as they saw the details of the street, they wrote it down, and Gene entered it on his Maps app on his smartphone. Within a minute, they had a location. It was a local wifi cafe. It was also not too far from an Army base, meaning the cafe was likely popular with the personnel there.

"Oh shit. He's gonna do it. Shi- shi- shi-" Gene had Syn transmit her screens to the big screens on the wall, triggering an immediate reaction from the current staff.

"We found the source!" Gene spoke loudly to the audience of the room. "He or she's gonna do it for sure. I'd like to focus on finding and suppressing as much traffic from this wifi cafe in Russia as possible. I'll deal with the politics later, folks."

9:17 PM CST (3:17 UTC)

Less than just ten seconds after Gene's announcement, Nu'Kellie Broflovski, a Belle Hadean woman, shouted from Station 10, monitoring suspicious activity on the Military Web, the portions closed off to all public and even dark web traffic.

"Sir! It's happening! The virus just got launched from the wifi cafe!" Within moments, the entire staff focused their efforts on neutralizing the spread of the virus. The nature and mission of it was revealed as it spread instantly around the world, bouncing of hundreds of Tor networks, VPN's and unspeakable government routers. It became clear: it was in the hands of the Plutonian Empire to stop an unthinkable tragedy, as without the help of Plutonian magic, the world was helpless to prevent a virus whose mission was to launch as many nuclear weapons as possible at whatever their current target is. Those with no targets but eligible for launch would be given targets, including some in the Plutonian Empire.