RONAN Displayed before me were dozens of people, or at least they looked like people. Each one was broadcasting updates to followers about the state of emergency. Their faces floated in neat rows, voices overlapping as feeds competed for attention. Most of what they said meant nothing. The same rumors. The same recycled warnings. Half-known facts repeated until they sounded like truth. Everyone sharing what they had heard, almost no one sharing what they actually knew. Every so often, something different slipped through the noise. Carefully shaped sentences delivered with calm confidence. Steady voices hiding sharp intent. Words chosen not to alarm too fast, but to settle quietly into the mind.Ideas planted slowly, allowed to grow. The goal was clear. Turn concern into fear without the audience realizing it was happening. The faces delivering these messages belonged to politicians, law enforcement officials, celebrities, trusted news personalities. Names people believed in. Faces people trusted. Not a single one of them was real. The individuals existed somewhere in the world, but they were not the ones speaking. Whatever intelligence sat behind these broadcasts wore their identities like masks. Their voices, their mannerisms, their expressions had been copied perfectly. What had happened to the real versions of them was impossible to tell. Even though their images hovered inches from my face, none of them were actually present. One senator froze in the middle of a sentence. Her lips stopped moving. Her eyes locked forward. Then her face began to break apart. Color drained away first. Shape followed. Edges softened and collapsed until all definition vanished. The background dissolved into nothing, leaving only a wireframe construct shaped like a human head, bobbing gently as if it were still alive. The audio continued without pause, calm and authoritative, even as the image failed completely. Elena reacted instantly. Her hands moved fast through her holographic interface, fingers slicing through menus and command layers with practiced urgency. Another feed flickered. A sheriff’s image fractured in the same way. Visual integrity collapsed, revealing the same hollow wireframe beneath the illusion. Both screens went dark. My gaze shifted to Elena.“What just happened?” The feeds snapped back online. Both figures reappeared at the exact same moment. Both apologized for the interruption. The words were identical. The tone was identical. Each blamed the disruption on damage to the global network infrastructure. They spoke in perfect synchronization, like mirrored reflections reading from the same script. “That happens every time I get close to shutting them down,” Elena said. Frustration pressed into every word. “They adapt fast. They reboot. Then they push the propaganda right back out like nothing happened.” Focus narrowed. The situation felt heavier with every second. “What do you think it wants?” “For now, it’s balancing fear and trust,” she said. “Nothing extreme yet. That’s how these psy ops always work. You don’t shock people. You warm them slowly. By the time they realize they’re scared, they don’t remember when it started.” Virtual vision activated. Supervisor access opened without resistance. Elena’s counter-program copied into my system, along with her logs and raw data. Everything she had gathered, every failed attempt, every adaptation the system had made. “This is going to the rest of EWO,” I said. “They need to see this. You did solid work.” A faint frown pulled at her mouth. “Save the praise for when I actually stop them. I still don’t see the end game, but they want confusion. Contradictions. They want people questioning everything they hear.” “Keep me updated,” I said. “Anything that shows intent helps narrow the source faster.” “Bet it’s the damn Russians,” she muttered. An eyebrow lifted without thinking. Pain flared immediately. Fingers moved to the sealant over my head wound, pressing lightly as the ache pulsed.“Why Russia?” “Who else?” she said. “India might have the capability, but not the nerve. NATO is being reinforced. The Euros are already on edge. North Korea wouldn’t risk dragging us into their territory. That leaves Russia.” “Putin does enjoy provoking us,” the thought slipped out. She nodded, a dry chuckle following. “And it’s not like he hasn’t done this kind of thing before.” Attention shifted across the tent to the intelligence section. Analysts worked in tight clusters, eyes locked on glowing displays. Streams of data flowed in from American military and diplomatic facilities across the world. Only two organizations still maintained clean, verified communication. The military and the state department. Their systems relied on quantum encryption. Hard to crack, though not impossible.Strategic-level communications were among the most secure ever created. Still, they traveled the same physical routes as everyone else. Radio waves. Undersea fiber optic cables. Paths that could be disrupted, interfered with, or attacked. Another data stream mirrored the first. This one moved slower. Less data. Far more important. Quantum Entangled Communications. QEC traffic flowed between US Armed Forces divisions and key facilities worldwide. Both traditional classified encryption and QEC used quantum research, but only QEC was truly secure. Entangled particles reacted to one another instantly, regardless of distance. No signal traveled between them. No transmission existed to intercept. No physical line could be tapped. Perfect security, unless the device itself was captured.That stream existed to verify everything else. To separate truth from deception. Every confirmation told the same story. This was not just an American crisis. Every continent was burning. Major cities were under siege by local militant groups. Governments were overwhelmed, forced to respond to thousands of smaller events instead of one clear enemy. False information flooded every channel. Social media. Television. Radio. Every digital system twisted into a weapon. The world had become fully digital. That meant the world could be rewritten. Only three regions remained unverified. India. Russia. The broken remnants of communist-controlled mainland China. Satellite passes from the National Reconnaissance Office were limited, but what little imagery made it through showed the same pattern repeating again and again.Fires. Urban combat. Entire districts collapsing into chaos. And everywhere, the same reports followed. Humanoid robotic killing machines. They were rare, but their appearances were deliberate. Every sighting mattered. Every target revealed something about the enemy’s thinking. This was not chaos. This was not randomness. This was design. And whatever was behind it was watching.