The primary underground command center of the Pentagon, buried deep beneath the reinforced concrete layers of Washington, D.C., was a room defined by absolute, high-tech security. Wall-sized digital tracking displays monitored global satellite telemetry, and independent, closed-circuit networks processed the nation's most classified black-budget operations. But tonight, the ambient hum of the supercomputers was completely choked by a cold, suffocating wave of silent, institutional panic.
The joint chiefs of staff, alongside the director of national intelligence, stood paralyzed around the central holographic briefing table. The screens before them were not displaying a successful asset seizure report. They were flashing with the catastrophic, red-coded medical logs of the eighty elite bla
