November 10th, 2038.

"...Most of the remaining services have finally been restored today after the series of electromagnetic pulses took them off line. The EMP's were the result of detonation of several nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. It is still unclear what caused the accidental release of nuclear weapons in China. Fortunately the U.S. and several European countries who were accidentally targeted in the attack were able to destroy the weapons before the reached the ground. All countries involved worked quickly to determine that this was indeed an accidental attack, thus avoiding escalation into full scale nuclear war.

It is still unclear if the accidental nuclear attacks have any relation to the terrorist attacks on Washington D.C. and Plattsburgh New York, or the failed attack on New York City, which was foiled at Fort Tilden.

The U.S. house intelligence committee is scheduled to have a closed door deposition from the President this morning. We have come to learn that the subject of the deposition will unsurprisingly be related to all of the recent attacks, as well as the accidental release of nuclear weapons...."

John Miller turned the screen off at that point. He had seen enough news for the day. John knew with the series of events which had unfolded, the media would be furiously investigating. He had already been informed of several attempts to contact members of his administration. Of course given the amount of panic which had been caused by these incidents, John knew he could rely on the people who knew the truth of the matter to remain silent. They did not wish to fan the flames.

John had nearly addressed the American public about the nuclear threat, but when the Code Blue forces emerged victorious over the Red Tide that had been rendered unnecessary. Now, in order to prevent more fear, he needed to keep certain details about what had happened out of public knowledge. He knew congress would be on board with this as well.

John was not looking forward to his deposition in front of the intelligence committee today. He knew that it was not going to be pleasant. But it was something that had to be done.

"Sir are you ready to head out?" John's secretary of staff asked.

"Yes I am ready to go." John replied.

John headed down the hallway of the Whitehouse. It had been restored to its previous state in rather rapid fashion. There were no visible bullet holes, all the blood had been cleaned up, and any stains had been painted over. It was as if nothing at all had happened there. This felt a bit eerie to John. It was as if they had cleared away the memories of what had happened.

After John reached the Whitehouse lawn, a limo awaited him. John's secret service team now included some Code Blue soldiers, as an added precaution. He was learning the names of these new agents as quickly as he could. There was one whose name he knew right away though, Jeffrey. After seeing Jeffrey's bravery during the fighting on Fort Tilden, John had decided Jeffrey needed to be a part of his protective service.

Jeffrey stood outside the limo and opened the door for John. As John got in he looked up at Jeffrey and nodded his head in thanks.

"Good luck today sir." Jeffrey said.

"I am definitely going to need it. Thank you very much." John replied.

The limo took off in the direction of capitol hill. John could feel himself tensing up more and more the closer he got. John's stress levels had come down significantly since the Red Tide had been handled, well at least mostly handled. But that was about to change as he walked into the halls of congress. Now that the danger had mostly passed, what was left was anger.

Along with John, the house intelligence committee had requested that general Howard attend as well. As John was pulling up he looked over and saw that general Howard was arriving too. So he wasn't skipping out on the incoming grilling either. John took a deep breath and got out of the car.

After walking down the hallways of congress, John found himself inside a sealed off room, where the business of the committee could take place without threat of leaking information. John sat down next to general Howard, where the committee had placed them. He looked over at general Howard, who gave him a brief smile.

The general had told John that he would take the heat that day, but John wouldn't hear of it. The general was in deep trouble, it was true, but John deserved whatever he got as well. After all John should have passed on information about this program when he had discovered it's existence. It was John's choice not to.

"Hello Mr. President and general Howard, we are glad to see you here today." Representative Matt Turner said.

"Yeah right." John said under his breath.

"Today is going to be a long, long day. But let us start on a less negative note. First we would like to know how the operation is going to root out the remainder of the Red Tide terrorists." Matt began with.

"As you know representative Turner, we have the entire Code Blue force involved in the search, with the exception of the Code Blue members who have joined the secret service for Presidential detail. Thanks to the estimates provided by Qi Lian, we believe that there are approximately 750 or so Red Tide terrorists still unaccounted for. We know they are on the run and are trying to blend in because our team has discovered several of them. Thus far we have not captured a single one, they have all been killed. It appears that none are willing to be apprehended, they would rather die. The search for the remaining 750 or so terrorists will remain an active mission until all have been discovered. We do not wish to risk another series of events like what happened last month." John replied.

"No indeed, we do not need another month like October of 2038. Now please inform us of the current state of affairs for the CIA, NSA and FBI." Representative Turner requested.

"For all of those agencies we are actively working to recruit as many new people to the ranks as is possible, given the current funding situation. As you are well aware, it takes a long time from the recruiting process to becoming an employee of those agencies. For any essential upcoming tasks, the agency leaders and I have decided that the best path forward is to ask some recently retired agents to return to work for a while. At least until we can get one new batch of recruits trained for their positions. So far each agency has had several people agree to come out of retirement for whatever length of time is necessary to get young blood to fill those roles.

As for the recruiting process we have seen the number of applications triple from this period of time last month. It appears that the events of October have led to an uptick in interest in individuals for joining these agencies." John responded.

"Thank you Mr. President, that seems like an excellent update. Are you planning on adding some of the Code Blue soldiers to the ranks of these agencies?" Matt asked.

"We do plan to move some of the Code Blue soldiers into the intelligence community. However for the time being we plan on using the full force, other than the ones in the secret service, in the hunt for the remaining Red Tide terrorists. Once the numbers of the terrorists are at least reduced to a less threatening level, the plan is to start populating the agencies with Code Blue soldiers." John answered.

"Please tell us anything you have learned from Qi Lian that we previously didn't know." Matt implored.

"Ah yes, Qi Lian has been quite helpful to us. It appears that the Chinese government has another group of Red Tide soldiers. This "batch" is only 8 years old currently. It appears that Qi Lian's plan is to take charge of this group upon returning to China. As far as we can tell, China is fine with this plan. Especially after what happened with their first wave of Red Tide soldiers. From what we have learned through our back channels, the Chinese government no longer wants anything to do with this program. If there is one thing that the Chinese government hates, it is not being in full control.

That reminds me, sorry to drift a bit off subject here, but we have learned a bit more about China in the process here. Since the intelligence agencies have now had a keen focus there, we have discovered that the Chinese government is quite interested now in developing war robots. I mean more interest than they had before. From what we have learned they seem to be working on the development of artificial intelligence which can be used for these type of machines. It seems they now prefer the idea of having obedient machines to super humans who might not be so obedient. This is a development we plan to keep our eye on moving forward." John replied.

"Yes this is definitely something to keep an eye on. I certainly don't want to imagine a world where the Chinese government has military robots running around unchecked." Matt said, while turning to one of the other members of the committee.

"Please mark that down as an action item on our end, we will have to see if we can increase funds for DARPA in the next budget reconciliation. As I recall DARPA has several related programs to what the President just described up and running right now. We should push them to add more." Matt said, addressing one of the other members of the committee.

"Finally before switching gears into the more unpleasant reason you are here, I would like to know how the intelligence infrastructure projects are coming along. Do you need any support from us in that arena?" Matt asked.

"The infrastructure projects are going well. As you know, we already had a significant amount of fund allocated for upgrading the technological infrastructure at each of the agencies. Though I am sure we will eventually need more funds than were originally allocated, it seems as though the EMP's have only allowed us to accelerate the infrastructure upgrades. The EMP's served to destroy a lot of the older technology that was in need of replacement anyway, with the exception of the AI systems, which will now need to be rebuilt. The NSA has designated this a primary task for their coders, and so they are working quickly to get all the AI systems back on line for each of the prospective agencies.

Also the group is hard at work remaking the AI systems for the nuclear football. We wanted to work in a contingency plan for override in case something similar happens to what happened in October again." John answered.

"I am glad to hear that. You will have to let us know moving forward if and when more funds are needed for the infrastructure upgrade. Now before I pass the questioning over to my fellow committee members, I would like to start on the more unpleasant reason you are here. The program, code named Code Blue, is a program that we now know has existed since the year 2020. For 18 years congress has been left in the dark about the existence of Code Blue! There are many reasons why there are issues with this. First off, congress has been providing funds for 18 years to a program that it did not know existed. Secondly congress is the only body given the powers to make war under the constitution. Thus we should have knowledge of ALL things related to warfare. So I will begin with you general. Why has congress been left in the dark about a program that has existed for 18 YEARS?" Matt asked.

"Well representative...." The general began.