The first months after Max's death were quiet — her people mourned and scattered.
The Fugazis took a job protecting an ambassador in Afghanistan.
After Danny disappeared for a week with no communication, he stuck around the Carmichael residence and did odd jobs for people in the city.
Alexei returned to Russia to continue regular operations at his actual job as an agent in the GRU.
Phoenix went off on her own to take time away from everything and grieve.
Winston spent weeks being debriefed by not only his superiors at the FBI, but the higher-ups in Interpol.
And Sebastian Berkshire continued to run his campaign for prime minister.
—
Three months after Max's death, things started to get interesting.
A pre-existing, but previously quiet cyber terrorist group known as KNIFE emerged; they attacked various cities across the whole of Asia. Sometimes they would shut off power grids, causing weaknesses in systems that allowed for people of power to be exposed — in many cases, attacked — because of the sudden lack of security. Sometimes they would shut down buildings and then drop formerly secure files — be they from corporations, the government, or personal, onto the internet for the world to see.
Pyromaniacs seemed to tear through Argentina, to a point where the sight of smoke leaking into the sky guaranteed fatalities that day.
The European branches of Interpol found themselves knee-deep in missing persons cases. All signs pointed to human trafficking, but whenever they would catch one guilty party, they found themselves without enough evidence for a conviction.
The FBI found that they were mysteriously losing ground on their mafia-related cases. No one was sure what was going on; it almost seemed like the mafia had insider information, as though they operated just a step or two ahead of the federal agents in order to evade arrest.
Phoenix emerged from mourning in order to take on KNIFE. Their leader was Ueda Kaori, a cunning young woman and a vicious cyber criminal. Phoenix had faced Ueda before ... only a few months before the incident in Beijing. In fact, the only reason that KNIFE had stayed quiet for so long was because Reznor had dropped a virus into what he could find of their system, effectively screwing them over until they could rebuild.
Danny called Oscar when he heard about Argentina, and while Oscar was aware, he didn't hesitate to tell Danny that he had his hands tied with other issues — there was a reason human trafficking didn't seem to be picking up in South or Central America. Oscar didn't have the time or resources to take a trip down to Argentina to stop a bunch of pyros, no matter how much he may have wanted to.
Harper was loathe to investigate what was going on with the FBI where the mafia was concerned, but she was determined that someone should do something. So she volunteered to do a psych eval on the agents that seemed to be tripping up. With a bright and perceptive psychiatrist staring them down, the agents who were failing to outsmart the mafia seemed to get a little better at their jobs.
Harper didn't question it ... but she did ask her partner in the Bureau — Conor Deckard — if she could have security increased at her home.
