Morgan Everett spoke to them all.
"As you are all aware, the organisation Majestic-12 has now been effectively destroyed, as has the Aquinas router. What I am about to relate to you is the chain of events which led up to both of these things. A man named JC Denton came through Paris recently, looking for Nicolette and through her, me. I made contact with him and decided to make use of his... unique abilities in recovering a large amount of gold - the details are unimportant. What matters is that he succeeded, and I had my companion here bring him to my home for a personal meeting.
Associates of Mr Denton had sent me some data in the Grey Death virus, which MJ-12 had designed and manufactured, which I believe they found in Hong Kong. As I had done much of the preliminary work on the virus – though we were planning to use it on augmentations rather than bioweapons – I was quickly able to design vaccine, but only a universal constructor could manufacture it in any useful quantities. I pointed Mr Denton in the direction of Gary Savage, a leading nanotech researcher whose team had nearly completed work on a universal constructor.
JC Denton met with Gary Savage and Denton was able to aid Savage by retrieving certain data needed to complete the universal constructor. He was also forced to rescue Savage's daughter after Majestic-12 had her kidnapped - again, the details are unimportant. Denton also - on my advice, alas - linked up an AI named Daedalus, an old surveillance tool which, ironically, classified MJ-12 as a terrorist group, to the US military networks in order that it might help us destroy MJ-12's intelligence apparatus. Bob Page – the leader of Majestic-12, if you did not know already – had anticipated this move, and another AI of revised design going by the name of Icarus merged with Daedalus to form an awesome supercomputer named Helios, apparently under Page's control – though this was not perhaps entirely the case, as I shall mention shortly.
Page did not plan to allow a universal constructor to operate against him, and opted for a no-nonsense solution: Majestic-12 paramilitary forces seize a missile silo and prepared to launch a missile and Vandenberg Air Force Base, where Savage was working. Denton was able to infiltrate the silo quickly enough to change the target of the missile to Area-51, where both Bob Page and the Aquinas router were. Both were safely tucked away underground, however, so only the surface structures were destroyed. It should be noting that I was aiding and advising JC Denton all this time. What I next advised him to do I will doubtless regret forever: I asked that he go to Area-51 while their defences were weakened and disorganised by the missile attack. An opportunity to end the war then and there, though - how could I allow that to slip away?
In any case, there can be no doubt about Denton's supreme competence and his infiltration was once again successful. What his objectives were, however, became confused. Another of his allies, a criminal scientist working with the Hong Kong triads named Tracer Tong, asked him to destroy the whole facility in order to remove the Aquinas router. Tong believed that the centralisation of technology and power meant that someone would always try to force their will on humanity with it, and that this must always be undesirable.
The real surprise, though, was the third mind that made contact with JC Denton: the AI, Helios. Helios had great power through the use of the Aquinas router, and wished to gain knowledge from Denton's mind and augmentations in order to form a composite being of the two, an absolute dictator. This showed the flaw in Page's apparent masterstroke in defeating Daedalus to form a more powerful AI under his own command: he could not control such a powerful entity. A little late, as far as I was concerned, however.
I, on the other hand, wanted something far less dramatic than either of the others: I simply wished Denton to kill Bob Page. With him gone MJ-2 could never recover from the other blows struck against them already. Their grip could be relaxed in places like here in Paris, their technology turned to constructive use, without any of the chaos we are seeing now.
Whatever his reasons, Denton obviously disagreed with me. In fact, he both merged with Helios and blew up the facility. Helios has little power without the Aquinas protocol, but it has a physical host now - doubtless a mind as powerful as the AI crushed Denton's identity quickly enough. Denton should be considered dead though the body that was once his now lives, so at least he will never have to see the results of his actions.
The world is in ruins. No doubt you have guessed that the chaos you have seen here in Paris was being repeated elsewhere in the world - I can confirm this. Tracer Tong spoke of bringing about a new Dark Age - this is to be desired? We must rebuild this world before madmen such as he can shape it according to their whims, or people will pay the price for centuries to come.
Join with me to help rebuild this world; that is what I ask of you as individuals and as an organisation. The cruel reign of Majestic-2 has been ended, but that is nothing unless we put something better in their place."