Washington, D.C., Emergency Operations Center.
Just minutes after the disaster at the Pentagon, the President, his bodyguards, the Vice President, and other important figures had all been urgently transferred to this secret command center.
There were no windows here, only cold alloy walls.
The flickering screens played footage from the moment the five enormous metal drop pods fell to the moment four-star General Gordon Mack and Colonel Chester Phillips were abducted by giants clad in heavy metal armor.
Finally, the footage froze on the horrifyingly huge crater outside the Pentagon.
Another screen showed the Seventh Fleet sailing through the Pacific Ocean after suffering a mysterious strike from space. The sea surface looked like a block of tofu, with an enormous chunk brutally scooped out by some unseen spoon.
The Oval Office regulars—the Chief of Staff, the National Security Advisor, and the few core aides—were all pale-faced, as though their souls had been drained away, staring at the scene before them that resembled God's judgment.
The President's expression shifted constantly.
After gathering intelligence and verifying it through multiple sources, the aides had finally pieced together the cause of the attack.
At the Pentagon, under the direction of the old-school military leader Gordon Mack, these foolish military representatives had bypassed every monitoring and decision-making system to carry out a secret military operation without presidential authorization or Congress's approval.
The operation was codenamed Forge, and its initiators were Gordon Mack and Chester Phillips.
Its objective was to seize Zero Matter, which was reportedly suspected of containing limitless energy. Gordon Mack had intended to control that inexhaustible power and thereby establish the military-industrial complex's absolute dominance.
He had wanted to reshape the power structure of the nation and even human civilization.
The result was obvious.
Their plan had failed—a complete, catastrophic failure!
Not only