Chapter 26
By the look Narishma’s giving us, I know we’re not going to like the plan. At all.
With a sigh she starts "So far, what’s been agreed on is that every military base, every supernatural group of significant strength, every coven, every Pack, even the Mage Corps and the School of Magic are going to designate a zone for themselves. A zone they’ll be in charge of protecting from behind the scenes until it’s necessary to take the lead. It’ll have to be small enough they can actually do it, and anything outside of a protection zone will become a no man’s land if local forces can’t deal with any incidents. If a group can get to incidents in the no man’s land it’s for the best. However, they will only be expected to take care of their designated regions."
Shocked understanding hits me. This is the Pack Business that Alpha Petros needed to take care of. This is why he had to leave immediately tonight instead of staying to visit, he’s got to decide how much land the pack can protect and inform all the important residents, both human and lycan, that things are changing.
Then decide how to work with or replace the local government and police forces. There’s no military base besides the national guard on or too close to our Pack, so it will all be on Petros.
"What of the Task Force members?" Jake asks. "Are we to disband and go home?"
"Not yet. The combined councils and the remaining human government that hasn’t abandoned their duties to hide somewhere or been killed have agreed the Task Force is still needed. You’ll all be working independently, or in small groups of your choosing, to maintain order. Whether it’s a portal, a riot or a disease outbreak, the Task Force has authority to deal with it. Just don’t cause more troubles, or you may well end up stripped of your positions. In practice, very little will change."
Wow, just wow. What do we even say to this? Thanks for making us the new CIA and FBI combined? At least it’s still within our discretion, so my team can still keep working from the Safe House, doing what we deem important.
"How long do we expect the government to stand?" Someone asks, bringing me back from my reverie.
"I don’t expect it’ll fall entirely, but we’re expecting widespread riots and local disruptions even before portal incidents. More and more of the portals are stabilizing, turning into these time locked dungeons as the official releases are calling them. Not many are opening like the ones we’ve been seeing here, to other worlds entirely. So we’re going to try to stabilize the ones we can, in case things really go south and staying on Earth full time becomes untenable."