Following the second minister's frantic refusal to assume the presidency, a wave of pure panic swept through the government officials and their families, leaving them with an ominous premonition of the imminent collapse of their comfortable lives. Conversely, the vast majority of the country's population secretly triumphed and rejoiced at this chaotic turn of events.
The emergency government session, originally scheduled for 8:00 AM, had to be postponed until noon because no one in the cabinet had slept a single wink that night. According to the line of succession, the Minister of Defense, Clement, was next in line to become Acting President. Among ordinary citizens—and within political circles alike—Clement was universally considered the dimmest minister in the entire cabinet. Furthermore, he heavily abused alcohol. Rumor had it that he had once been a mere grocery store manager, which was where he originally met the late President. Konstantin had always preferred appointing his close friends, relatives, and unthinkingly loyal cronies to vital state positions, completely disregarding their professional capacities or intellectual limitations.
Minister of State Security Walter knew far more about the man than anyone else. Over the years, he had repeatedly sent confidential briefs to the President detailing Clement's massive financial fraud within the Ministry of Defense.
Once everyone had taken their designated seats, Minister Walter, assuming the role of chairman officially declared the Minister of Defense, Clement, as the new Acting President, in accordance with the Constitution. No one protested, least of all Clement himself.
In truth, no one expected him to object, as his poorly concealed lust for raw power and boundless ambition was a secret to no one. Even so, Clement harbored vague doubts and creeping fears about ascending to the office. Over the past forty-eight hours, in a desperate bid to relieve the mounting stress and steady his frayed nerves, he had polished off five bottles of whiskey, leaving his face looking significantly more swollen and bloated than usual today.
"Mr. President... Mr. President..."
The sharp voice of Minister Walter abruptly snapped him out of his alcohol-fueled daze. Clement did not immediately realize that the title was being directed at him.
"I propose that you take your proper seat," Walter added, gesturing coldly to the grand armchair where President Konstantin had always sat when presiding over cabinet meetings.
The two previous interim presidents had deliberately avoided sitting in that cursed chair. However, due to his limited intellect, Clement had never paid any attention to superstition or bad omens. Slumping into the leather throne, he looked around the room lordly, his eyes flashing with a sudden, arrogant superiority.
President Clement—now that sounds truly grand, he thought to himself, a smug grin tugging at the corner of his lips.
Meanwhile, the majority of the ministers stared back at him, quietly trying to calculate exactly how many days he would last in the position. After all, their own survival and fortunes hung entirely in the balance.
Following a brief recess, Minister Walter read aloud a highly classified report prepared by his forensic staff regarding the death of President Konstantin. The fact of his sudden, hyper-rapid combustion was impossible to deny, even if explaining it from a rational, scientific viewpoint remained difficult. Nevertheless, the report presented a terrifying hypothesis: it suggested that an external driver—a highly concentrated electromagnetic beam or a specialized high-frequency radiation burst—was necessary to initiate the internal combustion of the human body. Under its focused influence, the atoms and molecules within living cells would begin to vibrate violently, activating a localized process of cold nuclear fusion that effectively incinerated the human frame from within.
The investigators and experts probing the incident suggested that it was precisely as a result of this technological or psychic influence that President Konstantin had been reduced to ash.
The exact source of this radiation had not yet been located. This weaponized emitter was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, entirely mobile, and its functional range remained dangerously unknown.
Since the active investigation was ongoing and the terrorists who had committed the assassination were still at large, Minister Walter offered a strategic proposal for the safety of Acting President Clement: he recommended dispatching him on an immediate diplomatic tour of South America today to visit several friendly regimes. Every single minister in the room unanimously voted in favor of the proposal, and promptly concluded the meeting.
Minister Walter chose not to deliver his other intelligence brief regarding the chaotic events of the previous evening. No one had expected such a sudden, foolish act of desertion from Minister Bartosz, so the special services had not kept him under tight surveillance.
Information about what had actually transpired at the government airfield following Bartosz's televised resignation remained remarkably scarce. It was evident that he had intended to flee the country but was intercepted by Bolek, Walter's own Deputy Minister, who had caught wind of the plot. Consequently, Bartosz and his wife had supposedly returned to their private estate under a strict house arrest assigned by Bolek.
However, according to Bolek's personal bodyguards, the Deputy Minister had told them that he intended to fly the seized aircraft to a secondary airfield, ordering his guards to drive there by road to meet him. Bolek had never touched down at that location and had since vanished without a trace. Neither his wife nor his mistress had any knowledge of his whereabouts. There were absolutely no radar reports of aviation crashes. Furthermore, the location of the airport customs inspector—whom Bolek had summoned on board the jet to inspect Bartosz's illicit luggage—remained completely unknown.
Minister Walter quietly shelved this logistical puzzle for another time. He ordered his agents to continue all tracking attempts to contact his missing deputy, and then returned his full attention to finalizing the logistics for Clement's urgent departure to South America.
A loud knock woke Bolek up. He did not immediately understand where he was, but within a second, his memory rushed back, and he opened the door to his hotel room. A security officer informed him to wait for Minister Mozi's call and handed him a smartphone. To communicate with foreign nationals in this Republic, the authorities used English, a language Bolek knew exceptionally well.
A minute later, the video link rang, and the Minister's face appeared on the screen. After an exchange of formal greetings, Mozi expressed deep surprise at Bolek's sudden, unannounced arrival.
"A crisis arose in my country that forced me to leave urgently," Bolek said, choosing his words with care. "It is highly likely that I will ask you for political asylum. I will share the finer details later during our meeting." He then requested the Minister to order his men to transfer his luggage—ten heavy suitcases—from the airfield to the hotel.
"You can keep the plane for yourself," Bolek added casually. "Just ensure it does not fly anywhere outside of Africa; otherwise, the aircraft could be confiscated. It would be best to... get rid of the flight crew. Eliminate them entirely."
Noticing the flash of shock and the silent question written across his interlocutor's face, Bolek waved it off. "Don't worry, I'll explain everything later."
They agreed to meet and speak in three or four hours, as Minister Mozi was currently in the capital and occupied with state matters. Seeking to shake off his exhaustion, Bolek lay back down on the bed to take a nap and quickly drifted off again.
He was awoken a second time by the melodious ringing of the smartphone. Minister Mozi informed him that a staff car was arriving to transport him directly to the presidential palace, citing several urgent matters that required immediate sorting out. Bolek had visited the palace multiple times before and knew the security protocols perfectly: there were two separate metal detectors at the main entrance, followed by a rigorous physical search. Because of this, he deliberately left his leather briefcase—and the silenced pistol inside it—hidden in his hotel room.
On his way down through the lobby, Bolek spotted a hotel manager he recognized and asked where his luggage had been placed.
"What luggage?" the manager asked, visibly surprised.
"Ten suitcases were supposed to be delivered here for me," Bolek said, his voice tightening.
"No one has brought anything of the sort," the manager replied.
This isn't good, Bolek thought, trying to forcefully suppress a sudden, rapidly growing knot of anxiety in his chest.
When he stepped outside, the air-conditioned coolness of the lobby vanished instantly, replaced by a wave of hot, torrid air that hit his face unpleasantly. The drive to the palace took only a few minutes. At the main entrance, two security officers he had met on previous visits were waiting for him. Following a thorough, meticulous search and checkpoint screening, they led him deep into the labyrinthine building, eventually arriving before a set of massive double doors. One of the officers stepped inside and returned a moment later with Minister Mozi.
After an exchange of greetings—which struck Bolek as uncharacteristically lukewarm on the Minister's part—Mozi spoke. "There was an issue with your luggage. Customs refused to clear it without a physical inspection, and now they have quite a few questions."
"I see," Bolek replied, forcing a confident smile. "I am certain we can resolve any misunderstandings and come to an arrangement."
Mozi offered a slight nod and invited him inside.
The room was expansive, dominated by wide metal utility tables pushed against the walls. Resting on top of them were Bartosz's suitcases, completely sawn in half, alongside their glittering contents. As they entered, several men in crisp military uniforms turned and fixed their eyes on Bolek. Standing among them, he immediately recognized President Jelani.
"Ah, and here is our dear guest—Mr. Bolek," the President said, his voice dripping with an overtly false, theatrical courtesy. "Perhaps you were unaware, but it is strictly forbidden to bring foreign currency and luxury jewelry into our Republic without paying the mandatory customs duties. Contraband faces one hundred percent asset forfeiture. Is all of this yours?" he asked, gesturing to the dissected luggage.
"Yes—it is mine," Bolek stated firmly. "I am prepared to share. You may take half. A fifty-fifty split."
President Jelani didn't answer. He merely cast a cold, indifferent glance at him.
Suddenly, the brutal reality clicked in Bolek's mind, and he guessed the truth: They are taking all of it. Every last cent.
The calculations flashed through his brain with terrifying clarity. They must have received a security wire from my country about my defection. And there, they probably found the body of a customs inspector on the runway and issued an international arrest warrant on charges of murder and hijacking. Why would they bother sharing these treasures with a desperate fugitive when they can simply kill me and keep the entire hoard?
He knew that if he were in their position, he would have done the exact same thing. The cold anxiety inside him instantly warped into a burning, venomous rage. Bolek bitterly regretted leaving his leather briefcase at the hotel. If he had his pistol right now, he would have shot every last one of them where they stood.
"If this truly belongs to you, then you must possess the cipher—the access code to unlock this beautiful jewelry box," President Jelani said.
The box sat isolated on its own table, its gold and platinum framework sparkling under the room's fluorescent lights. A strip of white paper remained taped to the lid, bearing the handwritten word: Pandora.
Bolek locked eyes with the President, his expression twisted with silent, unadulterated fury, and slowly shook his head.
After murmuring a few words in a low voice to Minister Mozi and the other uniformed officers, President Jelani summoned a security guard and quietly whispered an order. The officer approached Bolek, roughly gripping his forearm without a shred of ceremony, and began dragging him toward the exit.
"You need to administer a soothing injection of that specialized medicine," the President called out to Minister Mozi, a cruel smirk playing on his lips, watching Bolek struggle against the guard's grip. "The very same compound he brought us before to cure our political opponents. He seems entirely too angry."
The heavy iron door of the basement holding cell slammed shut, cutting Bolek off from the outside world entirely. Two guards roughly pinned him by his back against the cold concrete wall, stripping away his ability to move. Standing before him was Minister Mozi, carefully drawing a transparent, oily liquid into a disposable syringe from the exact glass vial that Bolek himself had personally brought as a gift for the Republic's special services six months ago.
What an irony, Bolek's last coherent thought managed to flash through his mind as the needle sank deep into his deltoid muscle. I created this poison myself. I know every single stage of its progression. And now, there is nowhere left for me to run.
The chemical hit his bloodstream instantly. At first, a strange, icy numbness appeared at the injection site, crawling rapidly up toward his neck before crashing into his brain like an avalanche. Bolek felt his thoughts begin to bog down, like the wheels of a car spinning helplessly in thick mud. The "re-education" serum had begun its work—a ruthless, layer-by-layer purging of his neural connections.
First, this stifling, hot day in Africa began to vanish from his consciousness. President Jelani's face, the utility tables displaying Bartosz's dissected suitcases, the solid gold jewelry box bearing the handwritten word Pandora—all of it was suddenly blanketed by a heavy gray haze, losing its color and shattering into isolated, meaningless pixels. Bolek tried to remember why he was even standing in this room, but his consciousness returned nothing but a hollow, blank refusal.
Then, the process plunged deeper, erasing the recent events in his home country. Images of the ascending business jet, the panicked expression on Adelina Bartosz's face, the cold corpse of the customs inspector left inside the cargo container on the tarmac... All of these recent crimes, which he had considered his ultimate triumph, were wiped away like corrupted files from a hard drive.
Who am I? Bolek asked himself silently, but his internal voice already sounded weak, distant, losing all its individuality.
The drug was reaching the absolute core of his personality. In dying flashes, his memories of his years of service within the Ministry of State Security faded away: the secret dossiers on ministers, the offices flooded with dim light, the corridors of the prosecutor's building, and even the face of the deceased President Konstantin. The entire totalitarian monster that Bolek had been a part of for so many years broke apart into formless fragments inside his head. Along with fear and power, ambition, cruelty, and pride bled out of his soul.
In the final second before his consciousness plunged completely into a sterile, white vacuum, two massive, unnaturally blue eyes suddenly erupted in the darkness of his fading mind. Gabrillend's eyes. They stared back at him without a shred of hatred—only with an absolute, cosmic indifference, recording the final elimination of yet another element that had disrupted the equilibrium.
Bolek blinked. The icy fire in his veins subsided.
The guards loosened their grip, and his body slid softly down the concrete wall onto the floor. He sat down, staring blankly ahead with completely clear, empty eyes. There was no longer any rage, paranoia, or fear left on his face.
Minister Mozi put the syringe away and nodded with satisfaction, looking down at the submissive, faceless puppet resting at his feet.
"What is your name, citizen?" Mozi asked in English.
Bolek stared at his own hands for a long time, moving his fingers as if seeing them for the very first time in his life. Then he raised his head, offered a meek, fragile smile, and softly replied:
"I... I don't know. But I am ready to listen."
In accordance with the standard protocol of the local customs inspection, all baggage from arriving aircraft was thoroughly examined and X-rayed. Bolek had been completely unaware of this, as he had always flown in carrying nothing but a single briefcase. Consequently, Bartosz's suitcases were subjected to this exact routine procedure.
Upon receiving an urgent report regarding the suspicious contents, Minister Mozi ordered the luggage to be transported directly to the presidential palace. He was, of course, well aware of the turbulent events unfolding in the homeland of his business partner, Deputy Minister Bolek. Following Bolek's sudden request for political asylum—and his extraordinary wish to have the aircraft's crew eliminated—Mozi had questioned the pilots, extracting the true origin of the suitcases from them. After listening to this intelligence report, President Jelani ordered the suitcases to be forced open. They had absolutely no intention of sharing such immense treasures with a fugitive political emigrant. Under the present circumstances, Bolek was of no further interest to them and utterly useless. Besides, it was glaringly obvious that these suitcases did not belong to him.
President Jelani was in an exceptionally good mood, because today was a day of Great Celebration: the birthday of his eldest son, Afolabi, born to his first and principal wife. Jelani had four wives in total. Out of his fifteen children, Afolabi was considered the most important, designated as the sole heir who would, in the remote future, replace Jelani as president. A grand gift had already been prepared for him—a unique, handmade racing car that was not yet part of his substantial collection. And, of course, he was to receive another decoration: the West African Republic Hero's Medal. Afolabi currently served as prime minister and head of the Republic's government. Jelani's younger brother, who had previously held the position, had tragically perished in a suspicious plane crash a few years prior.
All of Jelani's other children and numerous relatives were similarly employed in key positions throughout the country's government. Furthermore, they held absolute control over the management of every major company and state enterprise. The slightest manifestations of public displeasure with this nepotistic state of affairs were swiftly and brutally crushed by paramilitary police units. The clan of President Jelani had ruled the West African Republic for more than thirty years, and there was not the slightest hint of an early end to their reign.
Let the foreigners play their electronic games, Jelani thought with a deep, silent arrogance as he looked over the stolen gold on the utility tables. In this territory, the flesh is still ruled by the blood.
Minister of State Security Walter sat down in a plush armchair, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled, forcing his body to relax. He had not slept much lately. In addition, he was exceptionally weary tonight after spending hours participating in the frantic preparations for Acting President Clement's departure. Following the televised announcement about assuming office, Clement's plane had finally taken off. Now, carrying a small delegation of trembling officials, the aircraft was heading over the open ocean toward South America.
In truth, Minister Walter harbored deep doubts regarding the scientific validity of the electromagnetic beam theory—the hypothesis that a concentrated radiation burst could effortlessly penetrate walls and incinerate a human body from a vast distance. However, he kept those doubts strictly to himself. Several other ministers, and especially Clement, adored the theory. Clement had visibly cheered up the moment he was cleared to depart from the country, even going so far as to discuss grand plans for the future. He had even ordered his staff to begin drafting a architectural project for the construction of a massive, opulent new presidential residence.
Let the fool build his sandcastles in the sky, Walter thought, his jaw tightening in the quiet office. He is running toward a horizon he will never reach.
The suffocating feeling of anxiety and imminent danger refused to leave Minister Walter. Thus, despite a severe headache and general malaise, he decided to stay overnight in his office to personally maintain direct communication with the President's plane.
Hearing the sharp buzz of the intercom, he opened his eyes with immense reluctance and pressed the button. His assistant informed him of an urgent, highly secure video call routing in from the West African Republic. Walter booted up his main desk monitor and was greeted by the face of a highly agitated, unfamiliar military officer bearing the rank of colonel. They had likely crossed paths before during one of Walter's previous state visits to the Republic, because the colonel recognized his face instantly.
"Mr. Minister Walter!" the officer blurted out, barely restraining his frantic excitement. "We are encountering an catastrophic crisis here! You must explain what all of this signifies!"
"What crisis? What am I supposed to explain?" Walter asked with a sharp trace of irritation and discontent. He was already drowning in his own domestic catastrophes.
The colonel began to babble hysterically, gesturing wildly with his hands, but in his excitement, he had relapsed into his native tongue. Walter cut him off with a harsh, sweeping gesture and demanded that he speak in English. Realizing his error, the officer went silent for a few moments, visibly trying to collect his thoughts. He clearly did not know English very well.
"I had better just show you everything," the colonel finally stammered, turning his video camera to capture a neighboring command monitor.
Soon, playback feeds from outdoor surveillance cameras filled Walter's screen. The grand entrance to the presidential palace was completely visible, flanked by two parked ambulances. Scattered across the asphalt nearby were the limp, lifeless bodies of guards and paramedics. The feed cut to another internal camera, displaying a massive reception hall with corridors branching out in multiple directions. People lay motionless across the polished marble floors. The image on the screen shifted several more times, but the grim tableau remained identical: people lay immobilized, collapsed in unnatural, frozen postures.
The colonel turned the video camera back toward his face, his eyes wide with panic . "How do you explain this? What does it all mean?"
Because Minister Walter had been utterly preoccupied with the rapidly unraveling crisis inside his own country, this extraordinary incident in a distant, friendly republic alarmed him, but not deeply. Furthermore, a video feed could easily be fabricated. To believe an incident of this scale was real, he required more substantial facts and official verification.
"Where is Minister Mozi?" Walter asked instead of offering an answer. "I want to speak with him immediately."
"He was inside the palace," the colonel replied, his voice shaking. "Along with the rest of the ministers, the cabinet officials, and the military command. Today is the birthday celebration for President Jelani's eldest son. There is no communication with him, nor is there any signal coming from anyone inside the palace at all. A couple of hours ago, an emergency ambulance was summoned to the grounds. People had suddenly begun to collapse, suffocating and losing consciousness. Shortly after their arrival on the scene, the doctors also stopped responding to radio checks."
"I see... understood," Walter muttered, rubbing his temples as he tried to concentrate. "And who exactly are you?"
"I am Colonel Abubakar—we have met before," he answered quickly. "Tonight, I am the officer on duty at the Ministry of Defense. Every other senior officer is currently trapped inside the presidential palace."
"Yes... I see... But why are you cross-examining me about an incident that occurred inside your own palace?" Walter pressed coldly, his suspicion flaring.
"Why?! How can you ask why?!"
The colonel switched back to his native tongue out of sheer excitement, but caught himself and forced his words back into English. "Because this morning, your personal deputy, Bolek, arrived at our airfield carrying a mountain of luggage! As I was told, his visit was entirely unexpected. Customs processed the cargo and subsequently transported all ten suitcases directly to the presidential palace."
The colonel leaned closer to the lens, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper and his face pale. "The moment they forced open a specific jewelry box, the outbreak began. I reviewed the internal surveillance footage myself. People began to choke on the air and fell unconscious within seconds. The very last message transmission we received from the physician who arrived on the call was this: 'Some form of highly lethal virus is operating here. Immediately seal and block all entrances and exits from the palace.' The police forces have already executed his advice. What was inside that box, Minister Walter? What happened there? What are we supposed to do?"
The monitor went silent, leaving Walter staring at the trembling colonel. The puzzle pieces of the previous night—Bolek's sudden desertion, the missing customs inspector, the stolen suitcases—instantly slammed together in Walter's mind.
So that's where he is, Minister Walter thought, hearing about his deputy Bolek's sudden arrival in the West African Republic. At least one piece of the puzzle had finally clicked into place. However, the colonel's continuing account of the horror unfolding inside the palace revealed another, far more severe problem. Without offering a reply, Walter leaned back in his armchair and closed his eyes. The frightening supposition forming in his mind, combined with a rapidly intensifying headache, made it nearly impossible to concentrate.
So Bolek flew there on Bartosz's plane, Walter calculated, his mind racing through the logistics of the defection. And Bartosz apparently took something with him. There was some kind of jewelry box in his luggage.
He opened his eyes and addressed the colonel on the screen. "Can you show me what this jewelry box looks like?"
"I'll try right now," the officer answered.
After a brief delay, a live feed of a room appeared on the screen, showing metal tables pushed against the walls. On the surfaces of these tables, he could clearly see piles of jewelry, thick wads of cash, and various other things. Several people lay motionless on the floor closer to the exit. The jewelry box rested on one of the tables. Walter tensed, leaning closer to the monitor.
"Can you zoom in on it?" he asked, his voice suddenly going hoarse.
The image of the jewelry box expanded until it filled the entire screen. All remaining doubts vanished; he recognized it instantly. A frightening presumption had just transformed into a dreadful, horrific reality. Embossed faintly upon the lid was a single word: Pandora.
Minister Walter felt as if a physical blow had struck his head. His vision darkened, and the pressure in his temples spiked violently.
My blood pressure has jumped. I need to take a pill immediately, he thought, his hand trembling as he reached into his desk drawer.
Through the sharp ringing in his ears, he heard the colonel's panicked voice: "Mr. Minister—is it some kind of virus? Why did your man bring it to us? What are we supposed to do?"
Walter remained silent for a long time, fighting the waves of nausea, before he finally spoke. "Do not do anything yet. Do not allow anyone into the palace, and do not let a single soul out of there. I need to investigate something on my end first. I will contact you back shortly."
He swallowed one blood pressure pill and slid another beneath his tongue. He couldn't afford to wait for the medication to take effect. A few moments later, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with a napkin, he dialed the personal number of the former Minister of Economics, Bartosz. They had sustained a reasonably good relationship over the years, even celebrating a few holidays together. They had met and spoken just yesterday. Therefore, the moment Bartosz answered the phone, Walter bypassed any pleasantries and cut straight to the chase.
"I have been informed that after your resignation, you attempted to fly abroad and carried several suitcases of luggage with you. Is this true?" Walter demanded.
Realizing it was utterly useless to deny the facts, Bartosz cracked. "Yes, it's true."
"Yesterday afternoon, you were inside President Konstantin's executive office," Walter pressed on, his voice dangerous. "He kept a specific jewelry box inside his secondary safe. It is gone now. Did you take it?"
"But yesterday I was the President," Bartosz stammered, attempting to justify his actions. "It was my office, and everything inside it belonged to me. That is why I took it."
Without offering a goodbye, Walter slammed the receiver down, terminating the call.
"What utter fools!..." he shouted aloud, unexpectedly striking the mahogany desk with his fist.
"Pandora" was the highly classified code name for a weaponized, ultra-lethal virus synthesized inside his own Ministry's most secretive laboratory. Better than anyone else on the planet, Walter knew exactly what the global consequences would be if it ever spread beyond a controlled containment zone. The virus had been engineered strictly to protect the country from potential foreign military aggression, invasion, and occupation. It is better to be ready for war, even if you desire peace, the old doctrine dictated.
However, the virologists had made a catastrophic error during the mutation phase or had simply overdone the payload. The weaponized virus had turned out to be far too deadly. It didn't just enter the respiratory system through the air; it could penetrate the bloodstream directly through contact with bare skin.
During the dark trials, the experimental primates had died within ten to fifteen minutes. The mortality rate had been a flawless one hundred percent. According to the laboratory's computer models, the exact same timeline would apply to humans. Furthermore, the pathogen multiplied and metastasized exponentially fast. It was highly likely that the airborne particulates could be carried over vast distances by the wind.
Until today, its true, real-world destructive capability had remained untested. But judging by the sweeping lethality observed inside the West African palace, this virus was vastly more lethal than any of their theoretical estimates had ever suggested. It represented an existential, mortal danger to the entirety of human civilization. There was no protective vaccine, no antidote, and no medicine in existence.
The ruling military council, headed by the Commander-in-Chief, President Konstantin, had never intended to employ it against an enemy army except as an absolute last resort. The mere geopolitical threat of its existence, they assumed, would safeguard the country from external invasion forever.
Yet, a couple of months ago, President Konstantin had ordered Walter to bring one specific ampoule of the virus directly to his office, offering no explanation for the request. In a pressurized, secure containment cylinder, shaken but bound by duty, Minister Walter had delivered it himself. The long metal cylinder had not fit into the standard safe slots. Without thinking twice, the President had pulled out a beautiful, gem-inlaid jewelry box—supposedly a recent gift from some foreign diplomat—and casually deposited the lethal ampoule inside it...
The Pandora box, Walter realized, a cold spike of dread piercing through his exhaustion. It wasn't a metaphor.This is the global catastrophe the League warned about on television through that strange man, Gabrillend. A violation of the equilibrium...
Walter sat locked in thought for a few agonizing minutes, weighing the fate of an entire continent on his shoulders, before he finally placed the call.
There is no alternative. If that containment breaches, we are looking at an extinction-level event, he reasoned grimly as the connection re-established.
"Listen to me very carefully, Colonel Abubakar," Walter said, forcing himself to speak slowly and distinctly the moment the officer's terrified face reappeared on the monitor.
"My former deputy, Bolek, has just been declared a premier state criminal. The report is accurate: he carried a weaponized, lethal virus directly into your territory, stolen from our primary biological research facility. His exact motive remains unknown. It is highly probable he intended to broker a sale to your leadership, but the payload deployment failed. I must impress upon you that this pathogen is an existential threat—not merely to your people, but to the entire world. Everyone currently inside that palace is already dead."
He paused for a brief moment, letting the horrific weight of his words sink into the colonel's mind, before continuing with absolute, cold authority.
"Here is what you must do, Colonel. You must immediately launch a total aerial bombardment of the presidential palace. Raze the entire structure completely to the ground, and then systematically incinerate the entire blast area with napalm. If you fail to execute this order right now and the virus migrates outside the palace perimeter, it will become necessary to incinerate your entire Republic."
In the evening of the same day, as the clock hands marched relentlessly toward midnight, Alexey Petrovich stood by his living room window, parting the heavy curtain with a single finger. The city below resembled a disrupted anthill, thrashing in the final agonies of pure panic.
The military patrols, which only that morning had tried to project an aura of absolute strength, were now acting erratically, completely starved of clear orders from the command center. Directly beneath Alexey's window, a heavy army truck packed with internal security troops had ground to a halt in the middle of the intersection. The platoon leader—a pale, young lieutenant—was frantically shouting into his radio, but the speaker returned nothing but the dead hiss of static. The Ministry of Information and the special services had completely lost control of the airwaves. The soldiers in the back of the truck weren't checking the papers of pedestrians; they simply smoked gloomily, casting frightened glances up at the darkened windows of the surrounding high-rises.
They don't even know who they are protecting anymore, Alexey Petrovich thought, a harsh, cold smile tugging at the edge of his lips. The dictator has been turned to ash, his successor has fled in terror, and the army has been abandoned to guard a vacuum.
"Alexey, look at this," Elena called out quietly from the far side of the room.
On the screen of their television, which they now kept running constantly, the familiar evening propaganda had vanished, replaced by rolling gray bars of interference. The screen flared a blinding, radiant white for a fraction of a second, and through the crackle of static, the familiar, low-frequency hum of the League began to bleed into the room. The authorities were desperately trying to jam the signal, but the chaotic shuffling within the ministries meant that half the state transmitters had been completely powered down by deserting personnel. The regime's informational shield had shattered.
"The new Acting Chief... Clement. They announced that he flew out for an official state visit," Tatyana said as she walked into the room. "They are calling it a diplomatic mission. But the people on the street are saying he simply ran, just like Martin."
"Clement..." Alexey shook his head, a flash of pure contempt crossing his eyes. "The Minister of Defense… A friend of mine told me about him. His guards were whispering that the man can't even string two coherent words together without his advisers prompting him. They appointed the dimmest one, thinking he would act as a lightning rod. They are all running! The mere threat of our collective focus scares them to death. The entire tower is collapsing from the top down. The drops have already become a torrent. A system built on fear cannot function when the creators themselves are terrified."
Alexey Petrovich stepped away from the window and turned back to face his family. His right hand still carried the residual, comforting warmth of Gabrillend's 'quantum-vacuum pulse', like a hand that had spent hours resting near an open hearth. The ghostly, subterranean blue light had completely receded.
"They think a distance of thousands of kilometers will save their new puppet, " he observed, recalling his hours of research regarding the holographic information field of the collective consciousness. "Most likely, they are still frantically searching for some kind of transmitter or something like that. They still haven't understood that the emitter is us. And for the raw energy of human thought, there is absolutely no difference between a concrete bunker in the capital and a plane flying high over the open ocean."
"Alexey, what do we do now?" Elena asked, her eyes tracking over toward the shelf where the old encyclopedia sat, the remaining envelopes of ministers' photographs still tucked securely between its pages.
"We wait," Alexey Petrovich answered calmly, watching as the silhouette of the man with the piercing, supernatural eyes began to form through the white veil of the television screen once more. "The League's signal has been launched. The System is destroying itself, drop by drop. All we have to do now is wait for the current to wash this country clean."
The President's plane, which had been flying smoothly for some time, was hit by turbulence once more and fell into an air pocket—this time deeper than any of the others. There had been a clear weather warning about severe thunderclouds and rough air currents along the route, of course. However, the pilots, after a brief discussion, had decided to proceed with the flight as scheduled. Acting President Clement had zero desire to alter their course for a lengthy flyby around the thunderhead, let alone turn back. He cursed out loud, dropping his whiskey glass yet again as the downdraft jolted the cabin.
"Mr. President Clement—behave yourself," his red-haired secretary, Elsa, said in a stern but teasing voice.
The two of them were alone in the spacious presidential stateroom. Adjacent to it was the security detail's cabin, followed by the main salon for the rest of the traveling officials.
It went without saying that everyone in the administration knew she was his mistress. Clement had divorced his wife, Barbara—who was currently living with their daughter in Italy—a few years prior. Elsa was wholly satisfied with her lifestyle and her role as the secretary-lover of the chronically intoxicated and dim-witted Clement. She paid no attention to the judgmental, sidelong glances of the staff. He was a Minister, after all, and possessed a vast array of privileges that she happily enjoyed by association. Elsa considered herself far smarter than anyone else around them, though those others did not share that opinion at all.
In her free time, she loved to paint and had even arranged an exhibition of her artwork using Clement's administrative and financial backing. Those who monitored the Ministry's internal affairs were well aware of her quiet involvement in various financial frauds and her acquisition of illegally obtained luxury apartments. In reality, she used Minister Clement purely for her own enrichment.
But now, following his sudden appointment to the presidency, the paradigm had shifted. Being the companion of a clueless drunkard was one thing—but the wife of the President was quite another matter entirely. State trips abroad, formal meetings with the wives of foreign world leaders, and high-profile dinners surrounded by the most influential figures on the globe were all suddenly within arm's reach. So too was a boundless wardrobe from the world's most fashionable luxury brands.
"Dear," Elsa said in a gentle, cooing voice, "perhaps that is enough for now." She glanced meaningfully at the bottle of whiskey resting in a secure holder on the table.
Clement hadn't drank a single drop of alcohol all day because of the political turmoil on the ground. But upon boarding the plane and seeing the executive cabin's private bar stocked with an impressive selection of spirits, his mood had instantly improved. Under Elsa's disapproving gaze, he had promptly poured and swallowed half a glass of his favorite whiskey—to soothe my nerves, as he always claimed to her.
Clement was rather condescending when it came to her commanding demeanor; truth be told, he even liked it sometimes. He nodded obediently, picked up the fallen glass, placed it on the table, and pushed it far out of reach. Now that he was trapped in mid-air, she was the sole close and loyal person among a delegation of cold officials whom he barely knew. For no apparent reason, Clement suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to hug her, bury his face in her stomach, and completely stop thinking. However, he restrained himself.
Elsa was delighted by his unexpected obedience. She was almost one hundred percent certain that, after this diplomatic trip abroad, she would finally be able to persuade him to register an official marriage.
"Dear—can we land in Paris on the way back?" she asked, adjusting her posture. "We have a small house in France. I haven't been there in ages, and you have never visited at all."
In truth, the property was a small chateau. It had been purchased a few years prior with money embezzled from the Ministry of Defense and registered under the name of Clement's cousin.
"France is no banana republic," Clement answered, leaning back against the leather seat. "To fly there on an official state visit, one must arrange the logistics at least a month in advance, I suppose."
"But you're the President now," Elsa insisted, dismissively waving her hand. "You can simply issue an order to land for a brief layover, or come up with some urgent state business."
If things get worse at home, a clean escape route is exactly what we need, Clement thought, a cold flash of survival instinct cutting through the alcohol.
"Perhaps it would be better if you flew to France on a separate civilian aircraft afterward," he said aloud. "You could live there for a week or two, rest."
"How smart you are, dear," she asserted, blowing him a kiss across the cabin.
"And what time is it now... darling?" Clement asked. He had never called her that before. He had taken off his own expensive Swiss wristwatch at the urgent request of the presidential medical team's psychologist. He had handed it over to her for safekeeping, commanding her to be extra careful with it, since the timepiece was worth a fortune.
"Half past eleven," Elsa replied, checking the watch. "But you were told: you don't need to worry or think about the time. It seems to me that what happened to President Konstantin was just some bizarre, freak accident—a tragic coincidence. The wiring shorted, a fire broke out, and he burned down. And even if those terrorists did it using some kind of beam, as you said, we are currently thousands of miles away from them over the ocean. Nothing can touch us up here. Don't worry, darling. Just don't think about it."
She's right. The sky belongs to me now, Clement reassured himself, closing his eyes as the engines hummed softly in the dark. The League cannot reach a moving target at thirty thousand feet.
Clement offered a silent, compliant nod. However, despite all the assurances and guarantees of safety, a strange, inexplicable feeling of anxiety gradually intensified within him. The inexorable, merciless flow of time pursued its course all the same.
"I need to step out for a moment," Elsa murmured, her skin prickling with a sudden, unprompted chill. "I'll be right back."
The corridor of the aircraft felt narrow, claustrophobic. On her way back, she caught a glimpse through the half-open door of the neighboring presidential guards' cabin and noticed an array of various fire extinguishers stacked inside.
"What is the meaning of this? Why are there so many fire extinguishers here?" The words tore from her throat, sharp and trembling with sudden panic.
The two guards sitting inside didn't look up immediately. "Orders," one muttered, his voice flat, devoid of life.
"What orders? Who ordered you?" she demanded, a desperate, commanding edge bleeding into her voice as she tried to claw back control.
The guards merely exchanged a slow, knowing look. This was the elite guard unit of the late President Konstantin. Clement's personal bodyguards had not been allowed on this trip due to a cited lack of qualifications. In the past, Clement had frequently passed minor instructions and assignments to his men through his secretary, and they had been forced, with great reluctance, to obey her. But this presidential guard squad consisted of high-ranking officers. They were not at all ready, nor did they burn with the desire, to take orders from some secretary—even if she was the mistress of the new President. Like many others, they held a very low opinion of his abilities, and jokes about his secretary routinely circulated among the ranks. They didn't even bother to stand up when she entered.
"Ask the detachment chief," the guard finally spat, his eyes cold.
Let's see how you sing when I become the president's wife, Elsa thought, her lips tightening with anger. She had certainly not expected such blatant disrespect from the bodyguards.
Walking into the main salon of the aircraft, she spotted the commander of the guard detachment and requested that he step aside with her. Everyone in the cabin turned to watch them.
"Why have you gathered so many fire extinguishers here?" she hissed, her voice a lethal, frantic whisper.
"By order of Minister Walter," the commander replied, his face an unreadable mask.
"But he promised, he guaranteed us complete safety if we flew away! The terrorists with their beam cannot harm us up here," she hissed, her fingers dug into his sleeve. "Remove everything immediately before Clement sees it. Mr. President Clement... it will make him nervous and worried."
The commander leaned in, his voice dropping into a guttural, terrifying register that made her blood run cold. "Listen to me, dear Mrs. Elsa. I was there in the residence when President Konstantin turned to ash. The fire didn't fall from the sky. It erupted from within his ribs. The temperature was extremely high. I very much doubt that it had anything to do with an electromagnetic beam. It was an otherworldly, supernatural event—and the threat of it happening again, unfortunately, still persists. As long as we don't know who did it or how, no one is safe. Therefore, I must decline your request. The fire extinguishers stay where they are."
Elsa realized it was completely useless to argue further. Slightly frightened and deeply unsettled by his words, she returned to the presidential stateroom.
While she was gone, Clement had sought asylum in a bottle. A full glass of whiskey had rendered him a limp, vacant mass on the leather sofa, his eyes glued to a violent American action movie blasting from a massive monitor. He lived for this—the raw, thoughtless brutality of no-rules prize fights and war films. It was the only thing loud enough to drown out his own cowardice.
Elsa looked at him with growing concern and a creeping sense of apprehension. She poured herself a glass of sticky, blood-red strawberry liqueur and sat down in an armchair, deliberately pushing it far away from the sofa.
"What time is it now?" he asked again a few moments later, his eyes never leaving the screen.
"Darling, let's not pay attention to the time. It's just unnerving. I'm sure we have an eternity ahead of us," Elsa said. In truth, she was driven by a desperate urge to know how many minutes were left until the midnight deadline—yet she was terrified of the answer.
The other passengers on the plane also felt the misgiving and anxiety tightening around them with every passing minute. The commander of the presidential guard had been personally present during the supernatural immolation of President Konstantin, and despite strict orders from Minister of State Security Walter to keep quiet, he had shared the horrifying details with the delegation.
No one had forbidden the members of the presidential delegation from looking at their watches. They checked them frequently, but this constant tracking only intensified a suffocating internal tension.
At five minutes to twelve, all conversation ceased. A graveyard silence swallowed the cabin, pressurized and heavy, broken only by the deep, demonic drone of the jet engines tearing through the night.
Those final minutes seemed to drag on unbearably long, stretched into a lifetime, warping reality. Finally, midnight arrived. Everyone remained frozen; some exchanged tense, darting glances like trapped animals.
One minute passed. The engines roared.
Two minutes. Still alive.
Three minutes.
In the main cabin, a politician let out a ragged, trembling sigh, his shoulders slumping as relief washed through the rows. The danger had passed.
Suddenly, a piercing blood-curdling female shriek shattered the booming, ominous silence, causing nearly everyone on board to flinch and jump out of their seats.
The bodyguards stationed in the passenger cabin rushed toward the president's stateroom, the door to which had already been thrown open to reveal a nightmare. Inside, through thick, billowing clouds of rising smoke, they saw the body of President Clement lying on the sofa, completely engulfed in flames. A blinding, roaring geyser of blue-green flame erupted directly from the center of his chest, raining blinding sparks and chunks of melting, incinerated flesh onto the floor.
The scream had died in Elsa's throat, choked out by pure, paralyzing horror. She was pinned flat against the stateroom wall, her spine digging into the rivets as if she could melt through the metal to escape. Her jaw unhinged, working silently, trying to form words or whimpers that wouldn't come. She was entirely captive to the nightmare, unable to tear her wide, bloodshot eyes away from the melting silhouette on the sofa.
Around her, the world dissolved into chaos. The guards had transformed into faceless, insectoid monsters behind their heavy rubber respirators. One of them racked a massive chemical fire extinguisher, unleashing a violent, blinding jet of white powder directly into the heart of the blue-green inferno. It did nothing. The impact only fed the frenzy, causing the supernatural sparks to detonate outward like a swarm of angry, incandescent hornets.
Before the backdraft could consume her, a rough hand clamped onto Elsa's arm. A guard violently hauled her backward out of the furnace, dragging her trembling body through the threshold and slamming her down into a folding jump seat directly opposite the stateroom door.
Inside the burning cabin, the squad leader waged a desperate, losing war. He lunged forward with a heavy industrial canister, spraying thick chemical foam over the incinerating remains. A sickening, malicious hiss echoed through the air—the sound of fat rendering and bone splintering. The smoke didn't just rise; it mutated, thickening exponentially into a black, greasy fog that swallowed the stateroom whole and began pouring into the main passenger salon like a living entity.
Suddenly, the aircraft shuddered violently, banking into a sickening, steep hard side-slip. The gravity shift broke something loose inside the smoke.
A heavy, round object tumbled out from the haze, wetly bumping and rolling across the floorboards. It stopped with a dull thud right against the cabin's side panel—directly between Elsa's boots.
It was Clement's head.
The blistering heat had completely melted his hairpiece away, leaving a blistered, bald skull charred to a mottled grey. One milky, bulging eye rolled upward, staring directly into Elsa's shattered soul, while the other sat ruined, warped in a completely different direction. A blackened, swollen tongue hung limply from his agape, jaw-snapped mouth, licking the floorboards. As the plane continued to vibrate through the turbulent air, the head rocked and swayed on the deck, twitching as if the dying nervous system were trying to speak to her.
This isn't real. Wake up. Wake up, Elsa's sanity fractured, splintering into jagged pieces as the dead face shifted closer. He was the President. He was the most powerful man. He was supposed to keep me safe.
A deafening, primal shriek ripped from her lungs—a sound so sharp and full of absolute agony that it pierced through the insulated bulkheads and echoed into the cockpit.
The guard commander lunged out of the billowing smoke, his boots slick with ash. Before she could draw breath for another scream, his heavy, leather-gloved hand slammed over her mouth, brutally crushing her lips against her teeth. Her voice cut off into a suffocating gurgle. Looking down at the horrific, charred trophy between her feet, the commander didn't hesitate. With a brutal, unceremonious swing of his heavy combat boot, he kicked the dead president's head like a piece of trash, sending it rolling back into the roaring flames of the stateroom.
Through the shifting, oily fog of the main cabin, a pale official stumbled forward. Keeping a terrified distance from the blistering heat radiating from the door, he shouted over the deafening roar of the jet engines and the crackle of the fire: "An order just came through from Minister Walter! We are to abort! Turn back immediately! Reverse the course right now!"
The commander gave a single, tight nod, turning his heel to march toward the cockpit.
The words broke the spell holding Elsa down. She bolted upright from her seat, her voice rising into a shrill, hysterical frantic wail. "No! No! I don't want to go back! Please, take me to France! Take me to Paris! I order you! Do you hear me? I am imploring you!"
The guard commander froze. He slowly turned his head, fixing her with a glare so utterly devoid of humanity, so freezing, that the air caught in her throat. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed back into the jump seat.
He stepped toward her, his shadow swallowing her whole. Reaching up, he pulled down his rubber protective mask, leaning so close that his hot, panting breath scalded the skin of her ear. When he spoke, his voice wasn't loud. It was a low, lethal whisper that carried the terrifying weight of an executioner's blade.
"Listen to me very carefully, lady," he rasped, his eyes burning into hers. "You are absolutely nothing now. Do you understand? If you don't shut your mouth this exact second, I will order my men to wrap you head-to-toe in duct tape and shove a gag into that seductive mouth of yours. Furthermore, you will spend the entire return flight locked inside that burning stateroom with what's left of him. So shut up, sit right there, and don't even think about moving."
The absolute authority in his voice crushed her. She shrank back, paralyzed with fear.
Throughout the rest of the fuselage, reality had fully collapsed. The specialized emergency disposal bags, standard for sudden cabin illness, became a desperate currency. Multiple high-ranking officials were on their knees, vomiting repeatedly, the sound of their retching swallowed by the engines.
But it wasn't the suffocating chemical smoke that broke them. It was the smell. A heavy, sweetish, profoundly sickening odor had begun to saturate the plane's recycled air supply, coating the back of everyone's throats—the unmistakable, unforgettable stench of burning human flesh, trapped in a metal tube thirty thousand feet in the air.
The cockpit of the presidential airliner was flooded with the crimson glare of emergency indicators as the aircraft banked sharply over the raging ocean. The flight crew fought desperately to stabilize the multi-ton machine, forcing it onto a reverse heading that plunged them straight back into the violent heart of the thunderhead.
"We have severe electrical interference!" the co-pilot shouted over the deafening rattle of the fuselage, his fingers flying across the navigation console. "Instruments are throwing cascading errors! Wind shear is pushing us down!"
The captain didn't answer. He gripped the control yoke with a white-knuckled intensity, staring out into the pitch-black abyss ahead, illuminated only by erratic, jagged forks of lightning.
Thousands of miles away, inside the suffocating silence of his office, Minister of State Security Walter stood frozen before his main tracking terminal. The room smelled heavily of the medicinal tang from his blood pressure pills and the bitter dregs of cold coffee.
His eyes were glued to the satellite radar screen. The digital icon representing the presidential flight had spent the last two hours moving steadily toward the edge of the map. Now, it had executed a tight, mathematically perfect u-turn. It was heading straight back toward the capital.
They are coming back, Walter thought, his chest tightening as a sudden wave of nausea hit him. Clement is dead. I know he is dead. The script is repeating itself exactly.
He tapped the communication array, trying to force a channel through to the aircraft's cockpit. "Flight One-Zero-One, this is Homeland Command. Report status. Do you copy?"
The speaker did return static.
Walter let go of the microphone. He stumbled back until the edge of his mahogany desk hit his thighs. He looked out the heavy glass window of his office, down at the dark, silent capital below. The military trucks were still idling at the intersections, their headlights cutting through the drizzle. The radar icon on the screen continued its steady, automated march backward, inexorably confirming the inevitable end of the totalitarian regime.