Aleppo, Syria
Unbeknownst to me and my comrades back in Syrian-controlled territory, a video was broadcast over the internet from what can be referred to as the city with heaviest Islamic State saturation. It serves as a propaganda video of sorts, but unlike the previous films that the Western civilization had ridiculed, an unusually weighty significance was attributed to this one. This location is often referred to as the modern day Stalingrad, so with the inclusion of an otherworldly occurrence, a strong wave of paranoia that struck both those at home, passively watching the evening news, and those out in the field, witnessing the calamity. The video, likely shot from an older-generation smartphone showing a slightly pixelated desert, demonstrated to the world that the supernatural may only not be the child of science-fiction; it may instead be commonplace whilst fighting an organization bent on reversing social evolution and hurling the world back into the Stone Age.
The focus of the said video was a teenage boy who matched most of my characteristics - at least, the ones that made me a scholar at a place like Suvorov - but was clearly of Middle Eastern descent. He was dressed in modern tactical apparel, equipped with some top-of-the-line military equipment. A trained eye and knowledgeable mind could immediately trace his gear back to an official United States manufacturer. The Islamic State had obviously put a good portion of their limited funds into ensuring this boy's militaristic superiority over an average unit, and his smug look was indicative of this fact. After listening to a bunch of unsubtitled gibberish spouted by the cameraman, the teen inserted a magazine of 5.56 NATO bullets into his M4A1 carbine, mimicking the calculated motions of a seasoned American Marine.
The video feed cuts off for a brief moment, but is refreshed as waves of Kalashnikov bullets begin to whiz across an open field. An English caption pops out on the bottom of the screen, revealing that the video is devoted to the name of Allah. As the cameraman chuckles, he signals for the youth to attack. The boy sprints into the line of fire at a speed reminiscent of Mach 1, beginning an assault by opening fire on the attacking Syrian forces. The soldiers have no time to react, or even blink, as bullets shred through them. The teen continues his murderous rampage by ostensibly teleporting around the soldiers and, as if mocking them, strapping his firearm onto his back and using an unconventional method for killing: a sword. He initially removes limbs as he pleases, but mostly uses the advantage to sloppily decapitate the soldiers. After approximately two minutes of slaughter, the camera feed cuts out, which can be pegged out to the battery dying. The carnage was enough for the teen to single-handedly win the battle for his side, but the record of his gory victory would shake the world far beyond the battlefield.
The Pentagon (Washington, D.C.)
If "manic" had never been used to describe the seemingly constant commotion around the hub of the Department of Defense, even a casual observer would find it applicable this day. Workers who aren't on their feet - shuttling printed documents, handwritten notes, and verbal messages between superiors with high-security clearances - are typing furiously or fidgeting in their chairs while juggling multiple calls, all of them urgent. They work as if their lives depend on it, as in all of their minds, something much more critical - national security - does. The elevators oscillate between floors like excited electrons, the halls are congested, and printers belch out conglomerates of paper and ink by the hundreds. Someone here requests a call to the President; their secretary informs them that the line is busy. Someone there demands to be driven to Langley to see what Central Intelligence knows, only to be told that their contact in Langley is already en route to them. Someone else rummages through filing cabinets and computerized records feverishly. Another paces and groans, indecisive as to whether to order field assets to be pulled or seek the level-headed advice of a seasoned Admiral at Strategic Command in Omaha.
New intelligence is always met with a flurry of activity, especially when it turns out to be actionable. But when information too new and too astonishing to be immediately useful arrives on the doorstep of the Defense Intelligence Agency, housed in the Pentagon, the building threatens to self-destruct. The new IS propaganda film was snapped up for analysis as soon as it appeared online, and initially, it aroused no unusual concern. The battle scenes were indeed outlandish, but knowing that the Islamic State had at its disposal more advanced video editing and processing software than any other terrorist entity they'd dealt with in the past, the DIA's technical analysts were prepared to pick the video apart and show the fighter's apparent "teleportation" to be little more than cleverly edited special effects.
Tremors of trouble were first felt when the video's code turned out to be unexpectedly straightforward. The only edits the analysts could pinpoint were trimmings and rearrangements of recordings, the kind of thing that any person with a camera and a computer could achieve. They could say nothing for the long, uncut stretches of the film that clearly showed the object of the videographer's interest in one spot and an instant later in another, leaving destruction in his wake. They announced their findings - that the otherworldly video showed no markings of high-caliber manipulation that they could identify - with obvious trepidation. They expected to be ridiculed, to be banished to their computer rooms until they figured it out.
Instead, panic descended. A generic statement had been prepared for the new film for a press secretary to deliver to the media, but it was scrapped and the polygonal fortress remained tight-lipped. Experts of myriad topics were dredged up from across the country and consulted over every means of communication that could be made secure. The Pentagon called on the National Reconnaissance Office to see if perhaps the designers of covert satellites could pick up on something they had missed. The entire Intelligence Community was turned on its head.
The public was told nothing.
Now, the Director of the DIA, Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, sits alone in his office, the door deliberately locked. He is, after all, human, and loneliness can often serve as a respite from crushing pressure. One ear aches from the... passionate lecture about his agency's lack of preparedness for the unexpected that he'd gotten from the Secretary of Defense, who would have preferred to give it in person but had already been engaged elsewhere when the analysts' bombshell had been dropped. The other is ringing from an almost identical - but decidedly more panic-stricken - lecture from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was given in person.
There was something that the enemy on the other side of the planet was using that they could not identify. They were going up against something - some weapon - that they couldn't root out, couldn't track and destroy, couldn't counteract on the battlefield. They couldn't say where it had come from or how it operated because, frankly, they didn't have the slightest indication of what it could be.
Someone knocks on his door and he looks dully at the knob, expecting it to turn and someone to fly in with yet another urgent cable from a field agent one of his subordinates has reached out to for a report. Whoever stands on the other side knocks again, heavier this time, and he recalls that he locked the door before sitting down. He plants his elbows on the desk, rests his head in his hands, and blanks out the commotion around him for a few moments.
He stands, straightens his back, breathes deeply, moves toward the door, and mentally prepares himself for what lies on the other side, not entirely sure of who he'll meet - or what he'll say - once he gets there.
10 Downing Street (London, England)
Alex Younger, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service and known among his colleagues simply as C, straightens his tie in the mirror and tries not to look as flustered as he feels. Out in the sitting room, he hears the soft clatter of someone setting out the customary tea service. Everything too official to be done in a cold, drab office must always be done over tea. He takes one last glance into the mirror and begins to question if caffeine is really appropriate at a time like this. But he is, after all, British, and what tradition dictates must be followed.
He slips back out into the room and into his seat, making an effort to go unnoticed. He is flanked by advisors, who studiously rifle through files in their laps and on the low table before them as they await the Prime Minister's arrival. Younger sighs and squeezes the bridge of his nose. The flurry of activity over the course of the past twelve hours has left him exhausted, and he has yet to brief his new PM about the emergent situation and, out of necessity, about an operation that he was only told of a year beforehand.
The door on the other side of the room opens and he looks up. A group of three secretaries of some sort enters, looking just as preoccupied as his own two. They take their places across the table, leaving a couple of chairs conspicuously empty. They wait in tense silence until a fourth assistant pulls the door open and steps back into the hall on the other side of the threshold. Theresa May, British Prime Minister for only a matter of months, enters the room and everyone - Younger included - rises to their feet. Hands are shaken, cordialities exchanged, seats taken, tea poured. May appears blissfully unaware of the state of affairs or else naïvely confident in her subordinates' capabilities.
Younger quickly grows tired of the formalities, nods to one adviser to begin arranging the necessary documents, and launches into the little lecture he's roughly prepared. "Ma'am," he begins, a little unsure, "I'm certain you've seen the new recruitment video published by the Islamic State yesterday."
She nods in response, her tongue too busy with her Earl grey to speak.
"There are certain... elements of it that we believe to be cause for concern."
"The teleporting jihadist?" she replies, a faint smirk on her face.
Younger stiffens slightly, inwardly appalled that she could find any of this amusing. He reminds himself that she doesn't know very much about the true situation yet. He nods and continues. "Despite the obvious casualties sustained by the Syrian forces, our biggest concern is, in fact, the apparent 'teleporter.' Our analysts have concluded that the images are genuine, not edited, and a few close advisers of mine who have been dealing with top-secret classified affairs for some time have informed me that it is likely that the IS forces who produced the propaganda film now have in their possession a particularly unique weapon."
May freezes, her teacup halfway between the saucer and her lips.
Unphased, Younger soldiers on. "Two months ago, IS forces took control of a rather arid area in the North of the country, which ordinarily wouldn't be very significant. But there were a few archaeological digs in that region that had been abandoned rather haphazardly when it became too dangerous for the involved scientists to be there. The excavations were left open, unfilled, and as far as we can tell the researchers just took the absolute necessities and jumped ship. I don't mean to antagonize them, of course, but they left everything they uncovered to the elements and the conquerors. We believe that this is where IS happened upon the mechanism that this most recent film shows in use."
May sets her tea down, uncrosses her legs, recrosses them, and leans forward. "What 'mechanism'? For God's sake Alex, don't beat 'round the bush."
Younger nods solemnly and takes a copy of a schematic that one of his attentive assistant's hands to him. He passes it on to the Prime Minister, who studies it at arm's length. It is a modern photocopy of an old blueprint, and the object it depicts is not easily recognizable. She scoffs sheepishly. "I'm not looking at it upside down, am I?"
Younger shakes his head. "No, Ma'am. It is an unusual machine, I'll admit, and I don't fault you for not being able to identify it. I myself only saw that a year ago, and haven't yet been given the privilege of holding the real thing."
May glances at him sideways. "You've been in office longer than a year."
"Indeed ma'am," he replies, sitting up straighter. "What you are now viewing is referred to by our researchers - the few civilian keepers of the secret, if you will, who've been working for me without my knowledge - as a Chronos artifact, for its ability to act on the progression of time. It fell into the hands of the Crown during the First World War, when one of our own men - Lawrence; you know of him - discovered one in a rather similar context in what is now Syria. His background in archaeology, I'm sure, helped him to recognize it as potentially useful, and he certainly put it through its paces."
"He did?"
"Not him exactly. He instructed one of his favorite auxiliaries in its operation and... and used him quite like we use a number of our foreign covert assets today, although now we do so with a considerably greater amount of discretion."
"Oh." May nods thoughtfully. She understands despite her intelligence chief's necessary avoidance of direct reference to the subject.
"A few of his notes on the object did get loose, in part because he wasn't very stringent about their organization while he was deployed. One could effectively argue that he was a bit preoccupied. However, he did leave very detailed specific instructions to Cummings - chief of my organization at the time, as you would know - about its functioning and the necessity of its preservation for future use. It was kept in a splendid state and brought out again during the Second World War, then once more - very briefly that time - during the Cold War between the Americans and the Soviets when hostilities got a bit too close to the Crown's interests. It was kept under such tight wraps that, despite being an asset of the Secret Intelligence Service, the C in office would only be informed of its existence when it would be needed in the field."
May settles her hands in her lap and tries her best not to appear nervous.
"And that was how you came to be informed?"
Younger hesitates slightly, not wanting to delve too much into that incident, but nods as expected.
"Yes ma'am, I was notified immediately before the commencement of an operation involving the Chronos artifact about one year ago."
"And did it work?"
"The mechanism did, yes, but..." He pauses. "Our operative was killed in action."
"Oh."
"But we recovered the instrument, and it remains in a secure location. It required some restorative work, the techs tell me, but it is currently stable."
She leans forward again.
"What exactly does this Chronos machine do, Alex?"
"Simply, ma'am, it slows time, giving the operator the ability to act without consequences at the normal pace of reaction and retaliation."
She nods slowly, satisfied for the moment but still clearly skeptical.
"We know that we have one of these mechanisms in our possession, and are not at all worried that it may fall into the wrong hands, but judging solely from this video that has been released, we can only conclude that another has been discovered and put to use by the Islamic State."
May suddenly goes pale and her voice begins to quiver.
"If I understand you correctly, Mr. Younger, you are saying that one of these time-slowing machines that we have been using as an exclusive advantage is now in the hands of the most dangerous terrorist organization currently in existence on this planet?"
Younger simply nods in the affirmative. A leaden silence falls over the room.