INTERNAL COUNCIL — EMERGENCY SESSION May 29th, 2032.
Paris, UES.
Underground Level 7.
03:21 The room felt different this time.
Not in structure — the round table, the fifteen chairs, the diffuse lighting that illuminated without comforting.
But in atmosphere.
There was a tension the previous meeting had not possessed.
The previous meeting had been about a mystery.
This one was about a pattern.
Aldren Mous stood.
Not behind a podium — there was no podium.
He stood beside the screen, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the image the Area 51 emergency camera had captured before losing signal.
A man.
Sitting among ruins.
Eating ramen.
Surrounded by fire.
Singing.
— That — said Aldren — is what the camera managed to record.
Silence.
A different kind of silence from before.
Not the silence of people processing new information.
The silence of people processing the fact that the information they possessed was insufficient for what they were seeing.
Vorath had his arms resting on the table.
He stared at the image with an expression that, for a one-hundred-and-forty-three-year-old Orc with SS-grade Ghoj, was the equivalent of restrained disbelief.
— Area 51 — he said.
— EX classification.
— EX classification — Aldren confirmed.
— Thirty-eight minutes.
— Thirty-eight minutes.
The exact same duration as Base 121.
— Coincidence?
— asked Dumas Rei.
His tone made it clear he did not think it was.
— It’s a message — said Yselith Faern without hesitation.
— The identical duration is deliberate.
This isn’t operational efficiency.
It’s communication.
They’re telling us the two events were carried out by the same decision, with the same effort, and that the effort used was exactly what was necessary and no more.
— Which is more disturbing than if it had taken less time — said the Dwarven representative, in the dry voice of someone who preferred problems he could quantify.
— Far more disturbing — Yselith agreed.
Aldren advanced the slide.
The image changed to the transcript of the audio captured by the emergency cameras.
“If this street, if this street, belonged to me…” — It’s a children’s song — said Aldren.
— Two events — said Dumas.
— Two different individuals, assuming they are different.
Two outfits sharing the same color palette — black, red, yellow.
Two completely distinct methods of destruction.
Two identical durations of thirty-eight minutes.
And a song in Portuguese sung among the ruins of an American base.
— The Katta Beshlik — said the feline hybrid slowly, as though constructing the sentence while speaking it — is conducting a guided tour of our most sensitive installations.
Silence.
— With identification badges — said Vorath.
Everyone looked at him.
— Captain Angola claimed responsibility for Base 121 live, in front of forty countries, using the group’s name.
— The Orc spoke slowly.
— This one — he pointed at the image of the man with the wooden hat — allowed himself to remain visible on the emergency cameras.
He didn’t destroy the emergency cameras.
He knew they were there.
He stayed visible on purpose.
Aldren looked at Vorath with the expression of someone who had just heard his own conclusion spoken aloud by another person.
— They want to be identified — he said.
— They want to be feared — Dumas corrected.
— Under conditions.
They’re showing us what they can do.
To the most protected bases.
In whatever time they choose.
Without casualties of their own.
Without visible effort.
— He looked at the image of the man eating ramen.
— And with a calmness that is itself the clearest message of all.
— What is the message?
— asked the representative of the Minor Entity category.
Dumas looked at him.
— That they could have done worse.
And chose not to.
The silence that followed was the longest of the meeting.
Aldren Mous stared at the image for several more seconds.
The man with the wooden hat.
The fire.
The ramen.
The song.
— I want identification — he said.
— I want to know who this man is.
I want to know what the song means in context — whether it’s personal, whether it was chosen deliberately, whether it’s a second layer of messaging we still haven’t interpreted correctly.
— And the world powers?
— asked Dumas.
— The United States will want a response.
Area 51 wasn’t merely a CORG base they destroyed.
It was American territory.
American soil.
Sixty-one years of classified American history.
— Have the United States contacted us already?
— Three times since twenty-three hundred yesterday.
The Secretary of Defense.
The CIA Director.
And — a pause — the White House direct line.
— What did we answer?
— That we are investigating.
— Let that remain the answer for another forty-eight hours.
Dumas opened his mouth.
Closed it.
He knew, like everyone else in the room, that forty-eight hours was time the United States would surrender with very little grace.
— And Angola?
— asked Yselith.
— The direct line the President requested during the previous meeting?
— Established.
Unofficial.
Direct.
— She opened the notebook for the first time since entering the room.
— The Angolan government responded within six hours.
Which, by itself, is information — they knew we would contact them and were prepared.
— What did they say?
Yselith read from the notebook.
— They said, and I quote because the wording matters: Angola appreciates the contact.
Angola is available for dialogue.
Angola recommends that such dialogue be conducted with the mutual respect that characterizes relations between sovereign nations.
Silence.
— Sovereign nations — Vorath repeated, in a tone that was not humor but stood close to it.
— That is the Angolan government — said Aldren slowly — telling us they know what their people are doing.
And that they are not apologizing for it.
— A pause.
— And that if we wish to speak, we must treat Angola as an equal.
Not as a territory of secondary interest.
— Which is what they’ve always been — said the feline hybrid, with a directness that was not cruelty.
It was diagnosis.
— Which is how we’ve always treated them — Aldren corrected.
And there was something in the way he said it — quiet, factual — that was not exactly remorse, but was honesty about what CORG had been for decades toward certain parts of the world.
He closed the screen.
He stood in the center of the room, between the table and the now-dark display, with the fifteen members of the Internal Council looking at him.
— Two bases.
A Captain who publicly claims responsibility before the world.
A warrior monk who eats ramen among the ruins of what he destroyed and sings while waiting for cameras to record him.
A government that responds within six hours using precise diplomatic language.
— Aldren looked around the table.
— This is not a group losing control.
This is a group executing a plan.
Pause.
— What I need to know — what this organization needs to know before anything else — is why.
What they want.
Why they destroyed those specific bases.
Why now.
Why in this manner.
— And if their plan is not compatible with the stability CORG exists to maintain?
— asked Dumas.
Aldren looked at him.
— Then we have a problem for which we need to begin building a response.
Knowing that any force-based response against individuals who destroyed an EX-class base in thirty-eight minutes, while eating and singing, is a response we must calculate with extreme care.
Silence.
— And if their plan is compatible?
— asked Yselith, with the quiet voice of someone finally speaking the possibility the others were avoiding.
Aldren did not answer immediately.
He looked toward the place on the screen where the image had been.
A man.
Ruins.
Fire.
Ramen.
A song.
— Then — he said at last — we have a different problem.
Because it means there are threats in this world that they know exist and that we still haven’t seen.
Somewhere, in a country the world had decided did not matter, a man wearing a wooden hat set down an empty bowl.
He looked toward the horizon.
And smiled to himself — with the patience of someone who knows the next move was decided far longer ago than the others could possibly imagine.