New York, noon.
An invisible electronic storm was sweeping through America's largest city.
"Hello? Hello! Why can't I hear anything?"
On the street, a blonde woman irritably smacked her latest-model phone. Only the dead silence of a disconnected line remained in the receiver.
"Damn telecom company! I'm filing a complaint!"
Similar curses echoed from every corner of the city.
Cell signals vanished into thin air, network connections were severed, and every device reliant on wireless communication became an expensive brick at the same time.
The "communications network," the nervous system of modern human society, was falling into unprecedented paralysis.
"Crackle..."
In Times Square, the world-famous giant advertising screen flickered several times before its glossy images were replaced by glaring static.
On Wall Street, at the stock exchange, all electronic trading was forcibly suspended by an unseen force. The red and green numbers froze on the screens like a still oil painting. The traders stared dumbfounded at it all. In less than an hour, the wealth evaporated from the global markets had already reached an astronomical figure.
"Damn it, New York's entire network is practically clogged with garbage data. What the hell is this?"
At the top floor of Stark Tower, Tony Stark stood before a massive holographic display, his expression grim as he observed the abnormal torrent of data flooding through the city's networks.
"More than three hours ago, New York came under unknown, invisible communications control. Whoever did it was extremely covert. No one noticed..."
"More than an hour ago, their activity became obvious. It seemed like they were searching for something."
"Then, over twenty minutes ago, a sudden broadcast storm erupted. Within minutes, an enormous amount of chaotic data exploded across the network, and it's still continuing at a rate of hundreds of millions of megabytes per second...