The Pentagon
The five-sided fortress is bordering on apoptotic. What mania was inspired by the so-called "teleporting jihadist" of the IS propaganda team pales in comparison to what has descended on the intersecting halls of the city-within-a-city this day? The threat of a terrorist with time-altering capabilities would be enough to terrify even the most jaded television analyst, but a Russian... a Russian killer with that power could turn even an experienced officer's knees to jelly. It was as if the universe thought that the Islamic State - with the newly bestowed authority to manipulate time against all comers on the battlefield - wasn't enough.
It had not been a good few days for the Eagle.
Initially, the already-drained technical analysts at the DIA - who now had the immense pleasure of weaponry and security analysts standing over their shoulders at all times - had approached the new IS broadcast involving the Russian youth as nothing more than a typical execution, the kind they used to inspire fear and feign supremacy. They had some apprehensions, of course, since their last encounter with an IS production had left them dumbfounded, but what they were best prepared for were images of a bloodbath streamed in real time.
The boy had been captured, they claimed, near the city of Palmyra at a boarding school for foreign students. They called him a murderer, alleged that he was not only responsible for the death of one of their officers but for the killing of droves of civilians - a heinous accusation by any standard - and therefore crimes against God Himself.
A few analysts genuinely felt for the kid, facing such a gruesome end to his life at such an early stage in it. But judging from the way he looked - and where and how they'd supposedly found him - he didn't seem like the average object of sympathy. Whoever he was, he refused to die quietly.
They interviewed him in a rather disorderly passion, more for the benefit of the camera and their motives than any semblance of a true trial. When he answered, he did so in a grim voice, his eyes never meeting the camera. He refused to give them the dignity of eye contact and the equality that would imply, and his responses - though in Russian - were short and palpably sharp.
After only a few minutes of attempted proselytizing by the man with the blade, any sympathy for the young man disappeared. He launched his own attack, and, with the same stunning speed and accuracy as the fighter from the film, did precisely to his captors what they had intended to do to him.
There was a feeling of relief among the analysts that the boy had escaped, though it was extremely short-lived. It dawned on them that they - and a good chunk of the world that had tuned in to feed their morbid fascination - had witnessed yet another demonstration of the use of a device they still had no name for and no response to.
To add to the confusion, the boy had not only evaded but slaughtered and humiliated his immediate killers, but had evidently survived fighting his way out of the base to freedom. One person, with whatever weapon he'd had before taken from him, could not hack his way out of a base swarming with terrorists the way he had without external assistance. They acknowledged, of course, that while he was alone he wasn't unprepared, that whatever technique or tool he used - that his adversary had also apparently mastered - had made it possible for him to make it out alive. And while his very existence was a complication, he wasn't out on his own. He was a Russian, yes, but could very well have been a vigilante from their forces who'd broken rank and was no longer a part of their standard effort.
What happened in the hours following the disastrous broadcast confirmed his escape and solidified the theory that he was in fact working directly for his flag and its commanders, 'special powers' and all. The technical analysts leapt to redeem themselves for their lack of knowledge concerning the Russian's weapon by using the stream to locate the base, thinking that perhaps some sort of attack could be launched.
By the time they'd filtered the information out of what code they could access and relayed the data to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, their efforts had already been rendered futile. Someone had beat them to it. The NGIA responded to their message by saying that they'd found the base in question using the NRO's satellites, but that it would no longer be a threat.
The kid had gotten out, somehow relayed the coordinates of his captors' location, and gotten his homeland's firebirds to bomb it into oblivion before anyone else could move.
Now the Pentagon scrambles to right its rapidly capsizing vessel. Its silence on the matter of the propaganda film went relatively unnoticed by the media, but this... this will require a response, especially now that their adversary across the Pacific is critically involved. In an office on one of the upper floors, a hive of political consultants, speech writers, analysts, and anyone else willing to contribute buzzes with activity. They try desperately to put together a suitable statement. They know it ought to be something stern that acknowledges the emergent dangers - time control and Moscovian aggression alike - but also something that approaches them calmly and reassures listeners of the control that the military, intelligence community, and entire government have over the situation. Still, they struggle not to sound alarmist.
Someone here places multiple calls simultaneously to the CIA, the Deuxième, the Mossad, MI6, and even the FSB to see if anyone knows anything and is willing to share even the smallest mite of knowledge. No one who answers knows anything; the last two calls ring out. Someone there rushes down to the ground floor and climbs into a car to be chauffeured to the White House. Someone else throws their hands in the air and looks for faults in the Agency's computer software, thinking in desperation that there must be some element of advanced editing that was missed - in the propaganda film and even in the live stream - that can explain this colossal mystery. Another finally places a call to StratComm. The call cuts short without an answer; they return to normal duties with their nerves in an even less stable state.
An area analyst with extensive experience in the Far East - and more specifically, Russia's influence - slides into his cubicle and hides behind a disheveled mountain of documents, hoping not to be disturbed. He reaches for one phone on his desk, thinks better of it, and lifts the receiver on another, one with three extra cords running out the back. He presses it to his ear and takes a small comfort in the droning regularity of the dial tone. But he has no time to secure his personal sanity; he dials a memorized number quickly and waits as the call goes through.
There's a click - someone's picked up - and a series of barely audible beeps before a voice answers.
"Is this absolutely necessary?" a strained female voice sighs.
"Unless you've been living under a boulder, I'd think you'd share my judgment that yes, it is."
Neither voice has time for formalities. The nation has no time for formalities; the current state of affairs is a matter of business or death, so business is all that they spend their oxygen on.
The woman's voice grumbles something indecipherable, then returns with renewed intensity.
"Alright then, give me what you've got, what you think I need to hear."
The Defense analyst fumbles with papers on his desk, trying to assemble some coherent statement, then gives up and rests his head in one hand.
"I was hoping, honestly, that you'd have something to tell me."
"Nonsense," the woman scoffs. "Central never gets anything like whatever you must have on that stream before Defense does; we're civilians, remember. You're the ones that handle all the battlefield ridiculousness. If anybody's more in the loop about this Russian kid, it'd be you, not me. Assuming, of course, that's what you've called about…"
"Is there anything else right now?"
"Hardly."
The Central Intelligence analyst is nestled in her comfort zone - a cubicle in the Eastern Europe section of the fifth floor of the headquarters in Langley, Virginia - just as her friend and counterpart is huddled at his desk. She is as much a Russian expert as he; she is just as lost for understanding or strategy as he is. Like a wrinkled safety blanket for a young child, her chaotic desk serves as reassurance that madness is normal in nature, and therefore should not be feared as harshly as a human might be inclined to fear it. It is contradictorily calming, and as she leans back in her chair, the receiver of her own many-cabled secure phone sandwiched between her shoulder and her head, she traces its irregularities with her eyes. If only there was something there that she could see, something that could somehow help…
She is jolted out of her pessimistic reverie by the voice of the Defense analyst.
"What would you advise me to do? At some point, someone's going to come to me looking for advice, and what am I supposed to tell them? That I, the one person who's supposed to be able to make sense of what's going on - whose entire career has been spent being paid to understand what's going on - doesn't know any more than they do? That I can't make anything more of what data we have than any normal person on the street could? What… What do I do?"
"Now isn't the time to be thinking about your career or your integrity of your reputation," she replies coldly.
"Politics are your forté, not weapons technology. The issue now isn't a Moscovian policy or anything like that, it's a weapon, a tool, so you can't be found fault with for not knowing what it is. Just… Just do your best. That's the most anyone can ask of you and the only advice I can offer."
She allows her voice to trail off as she thinks.
"Isn't there anybody there in the building who's a weapons historian of some kind? Couldn't somebody backtrack into what we at one time knew with certainty that the Russians had, then follow the trail into what little we know now and… maybe… extrapolate what it could be? How it could work?"
Her suggestion is met by silence, broken after a long pause by a heavy, deep sigh.
"It's an idea," her colleague replies, "and right now, we're running on empty. Ideas don't win wars, but they get us closer, and right now, if we can get an idea that might lead somewhere meaningful, we'll take it."
He hangs up before his lack of energy can make even more of an impression on his friend. He doesn't like being like this, so lost and drained and intellectually vulnerable. And he isn't alone in that.
The Eagle, in its entirety, is nearly exhausted.