Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

No one answered; the communication system no longer existed.

Someone lit a small area with a lighter, and the chief of staff's face flickered in the firelight. His lips trembled as he opened a paper emergency manual, flipped through a couple of pages, and then closed it again.

The manual does not contain an emergency plan for "all electronic equipment in the base being destroyed by reverse EMP from seawater".

In the harbor, the situation on the USS Ronald Reagan is slightly better.

As a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan's core systems have the highest level of electromagnetic shielding. The reactor and main propulsion system were undamaged, but the problem was on the outside.

The seawater around the ship is still conductive.

Those blue rays did not disappear; they wove together a dense, high-voltage grid below the waterline of the Reagan. It didn't require very high voltage—220 volts from a household outlet would suffice—but it covered the entire hull of the aircraft carrier.

The first to notice the problem was a sailor on the starboard side. He habitually put his hand on the metal railing, and the next second he was thrown out, hitting the back of his head on the deck, his eyes rolled back, and he passed out.

"Don't touch any metal!" the damage control officer's roar echoed across the deck. "Everyone, wear insulated boots! Wear rubber gloves!"

Five thousand crew members were crammed onto an aircraft carrier that could not dock, could not lower its gangway, and could not even touch the railings.

Three nautical miles away, the destroyer Yan'an remained quietly stationary.

Major General Liu Yuanzheng received a signal forty seconds before the EMP was launched.

The signal was not transmitted via radio, but through the seawater that the ship's hull was in contact with.

The vibrational frequency of water molecules is encoded into a set of extremely simple Morse code, which translates to only eight words: turn off electrons, water film protection.

Without hesitation, Liu Yuanzheng adjusted his cognitive framework after the girl in the hospital gown stopped the entire port with a single finger.

He ordered all non-essential electronic equipment to be shut down, and a thin film of water spontaneously adhered to the outside of the ship, enveloping the entire destroyer in an insulating cocoon.

EMP came and went, leaving the Yan'an ship unharmed.

White House Situation Room.

The president's coffee cup shattered on the carpet, the brown liquid soaking a patch.

He stared at the large screen on the wall, which showed a live global broadcast: Yokosuka base was pitch black, with only sporadic firelight shining through the building windows; the USS Ronald Reagan was lit up, but no one was on deck; and at the edge of the harbor, that small white figure stood at the end of the dock, the sea beneath his feet shimmering with a ghostly blue light.

Three red encrypted lines lit up simultaneously: Paris, London, and Berlin.

"Let's pick up Paris first."

The French president's voice came through the loudspeaker, without pleasantries or diplomatic language; his first words were: "What exactly are you doing?"

"We are handling it..."

"Handle? You used EMP to blow up your own base, and the whole world is watching it live. Seven hundred million people, you heard me right, seven hundred million people are watching your Pacific Fleet get rubbed into the ground by a little girl."

The president did not respond.

"We are withdrawing all signatures." The French president's tone left no room for negotiation. "From this moment forward, the French Republic will no longer maintain any form of coordination with the United States regarding the affairs of Frédéric de Fontaine. In addition, I personally suggest you take a look at Twitter's trending topics."

The line is broken.

The phone in London was still flashing; the president didn't answer, but he could already guess what it was about.

Yokosuka Port.

Coleman walked out of the command center.

There was no elevator, so he took the stairs. Seventeen floors, each one dark. The emergency light battery had burned out, and only the moonlight coming through the stairwell window could barely illuminate the steps beneath his feet.

When he reached the lobby on the first floor, he saw that the soldiers who had been suspended in mid-air by the water whips had been lowered down. The water had receded, the ground was wet, and the air was filled with the mixed smell of rust and burnt wires.

"Put down your weapons."

The captain of the guard glanced at him: "Sir?"

"The weapon is useless, the bullets won't fire, are you going to hit her with the butt of the gun?"

The captain of the guard opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Coleman walked to the small boat dock at the port and untied the mooring line of a six-meter-long rubber patrol boat.

The engine was electrically started, so it naturally wouldn't start. He rummaged through the cabin for two spare paddles, inserted them into the paddle rack, and started paddling.

Commodore America, watched by 700 million viewers worldwide, rowed a non-motorized rubber boat toward the girl in a white hospital gown at the dock.

As the propeller blades cut into the still sea, he felt a strange resistance.

Water is liquid, but its resistance is far greater than that of normal seawater. Every stroke of the oar requires a lot of effort. His uniform was soaked with sweat, and his epaulets reflected a faint light in the moonlight.

Funina didn't look at him.

Her attention was elsewhere.

Three nautical miles to the northwest, the outlines of the Yan'an and Jinggangshan ships were faintly visible in the night.

The signal lights on the bridge are flashing; they are internationally recognized light signals that simply indicate: We are ready to receive.

Funina glanced down at her bare feet. The rough concrete surface of the dock hurt her feet a little. She wiggled her toes, and a thought flashed through her mind.

Water surged up from the edge of the dock.

They converged, stacked, and compacted at Funina's feet, rearranging the hydrogen bonds between molecules, and the liquid water gained the load-bearing capacity of a solid without changing the temperature.

A bridge grew out from beneath her feet.

The transparent bridge deck, made of pure water, is three meters wide and half a meter thick, extending straight from the edge of the dock to the northwest.

The bridge deck has fine, flowing ripples on its surface, but the structure is strong enough for trucks to drive on.

The bridge stretched out, crossing the still harbor, the bow of the USS Ronald Reagan, and the dangerous waters covered by blue electric fences, before settling securely on the foredeck of the Jinggangshan landing ship.

Three nautical miles, five and a half kilometers.

A 5.5-kilometer-long bridge spanning pure water was built in 30 seconds.

Zhou Ruo stood at the bridgehead and looked down. The bridge surface was transparent, and she could see the still seawater below and the schools of fish swimming in it. The fish were also frozen in place, maintaining their swimming posture, with no change in the angle of their fins and tails.

"Can you walk?" Zhou Ruo asked, her voice a little weak.

As Funina stepped onto the bridge, the heels of her court shoes made a crisp clicking sound on the crystal-like surface. She glanced back at Zhou Ruo and reached out her hand.

"Of course you can walk."

"My bridge is stronger than the marble floor of the Fontaine Opera House."

She paused, then added, "It's a little slippery, so hold on tight."

Zhou Ruo took her hand, and the two figures walked further and further away on the transparent bridge. Below them was the still Pacific Ocean, and above them was a night sky filled with drones.

Coleman stopped rowing.

The rubber boat gradually slowed down on the sea surface with great resistance and finally stopped 20 meters in front of the dock.

He watched the two figures recede into the distance, looked at the impossible transparent bridge, and at the other end of the bridge, where the Chinese naval honor guards were lined up on the deck of the Jinggangshan.

He retrieved the oars into the boat, placed his hands on his knees, and sat there motionless.

No one came to accept his surrender.

The girl didn't look at him once from beginning to end.