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

The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing room on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

The heavy oak door was locked from the inside, and security personnel at both ends of the corridor cleared all unauthorized personnel to a distance of thirty meters.

There were no cameras or stenographers in the hearing room; only twelve senators sat around the arched platform, looking down at the lonely witness stand below.

Patterson sat in the chair, dressed in a crisp, dark blue military uniform. The medals on his chest gleamed coldly under the overhead light, and his back was as straight as a steel bar.

Military Commission Chairman McAuliffe took off his reading glasses and wiped the lenses with a cloth, moving very slowly.

"General Patterson, we'll only discuss three things today."

He put his glasses back on his nose and opened the folder marked "Top Secret" in front of him.

"First, Operation Orion."

Patterson's jaw muscles twitched slightly, but only slightly.

McAuliffe didn't look at him; his gaze was fixed on the documents.

"A ten-ton tungsten rod, with a terminal velocity of Mach 15, was precisely guided from near-Earth orbit to strike the National Museum in Cairo."

He turned the page.

"And the result?"

Patterson spoke, his voice steady.

"An unknown energy entity appeared in the sky above the target area, rewriting the gravitational constant of the projectile to a negative value, and the tungsten rod flew back into space along the original trajectory."

Senator Warren, who was sitting third from the left, leaned forward.

"Rewrite the gravitational constant? General Patterson, do you know what you're talking about?"

"I know, Senator."

Patterson's gaze was fixed straight ahead.

"That's exactly the problem."

McAuliffe tapped the table with his knuckles.

"The tungsten rod flew back, but that's not the worst part."

He pulled a photo out of the folder and held it up to face Paterson.

The photo shows a bronze mechanical pterosaur with a wingspan of over 20 meters tearing through the titanium alloy armor of a space platform.

"The Orion orbital launch platform, which cost $3.4 billion, was torn to scrap metal by this thing like opening a can."

McAuliffe slammed the photo on the table.

"Moreover, the entire process was captured by a retired Chilean teacher using a civilian telescope, resulting in fourteen high-resolution photos that were forwarded 20 million times within forty minutes. Three international image verification agencies confirmed that there were no traces of fabrication."

He took off his glasses and looked directly at Patterson.

"What was your official explanation again? Satellite decommissioning and disintegrating?"

Patterson did not avoid that gaze.

"The intelligence assessment at the time believed that revealing the truth would trigger uncontrollable social panic."

Warren gave a cold laugh.

"Panic? General Patterson, now that 2.3 billion people worldwide have seen those photos, do you think the panic has been controlled?"

Patterson was silent for two seconds.

"no."

McAuliffe turned to the second tab of the folder.

"The second thing, the Deep Sea Overlord."

He read out a string of numbers.

"Costing $200 million, this is the flagship unmanned deep-sea submersible at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) base in Guam. It is designed to reach a maximum depth of 12,000 meters, has a titanium alloy pressure hull, and is the world's most advanced deep-sea intelligence gathering platform."

He raised his head.

"Where are you now?"

Patterson's answer was clearly carefully worded.

"It lost contact 8,000 meters below the Mariana Trench. The pressure reading on the hull instantly exceeded the maximum in the last frame of data. The communication link was completely lost, and the debris cannot be recovered at present."

Senator Grant, who was sitting on the right, leaned forward.

"What did you photograph before you went missing?"

Patterson paused for a second.

"Seven photos, the third of which shows a blue beam of light extending upwards from a deeper area."

Grant stared at him.

"and then?"

"And then the equipment was gone."

Grant slammed his pen on the table with a sharp crack.

"Two hundred million dollars, seven photos, a blue light, and then nothing."

He leaned back in his chair.

"General Patterson, what is your official conclusion?"

"Sudden structural failure under extreme high-pressure conditions at a depth of 10,000 meters in the deep sea."

Grant glanced at McAuliffe, then looked back at Patterson.

Do you even believe it yourself?

Patterson did not answer the question.

McAuliffe turned to the third tab page, this time his movements noticeably slowed down.

"The third thing."

He pushed a satellite screenshot to the edge of the table so Patterson could see it clearly.

The picture shows an aerial view of the Sanya naval port, with the figure of a young man in black circled in red.

"Mirror One, who was caught in the core of the Holy Grail explosion during the Tokyo Bay Incident, is confirmed dead in all assessment reports."

McAuliffe lowered his voice by half a octave.

"He is now alive and well at the military port of the Rabbit Country, and has been taken away by them with the highest level of security, receiving special political treatment."

He took off his glasses and placed them on the table, then crossed his arms.

"Our intelligence system was completely unaware of this until a telephoto image from the periphery appeared on an overseas social media platform."

Warren picked up the conversation.

Who took that photo?

Patterson's Adam's apple bobbed.

"A field agent for a business investigation firm, whose client chain was traced back to an indirect connection with a CIA forward agency."

Warren raised an eyebrow.

"So, our own outside agents took the photos, but the official intelligence system was slow to react?"

"Yes, Senator."

McAuliffe closed the folder and placed his hands on the cover.

"General Patterson, let me summarize today's events."

He held up one finger at a time.

"First, the $3.4 billion space-based weapon platform was torn apart by a bronze dinosaur, and the whole world saw it. Our lies were exposed on the spot."

"Second, the $200 million deep-sea probe was destroyed while carrying out an intelligence mission without congressional authorization, and the wreckage could not be recovered."

"Third, a superhuman individual who was presumed dead was resurrected on the enemy's territory, and our entire intelligence system went blind."

He pulled three fingers back, clenched them into a fist, and placed it on the table.

"Is there anything else you'd like to add?"

Patterson stood up, the folds in his military uniform drawing sharp lines under the light.

"Mr. Chairman, I would like to add just one point."

His gaze swept across the faces of the twelve senators.

"Conventional military means have become completely ineffective when facing conceptual-level forces. Continuing to use old ideas will only create more $3.4 billion worth of scrap metal."

He paused for a moment.

"We need to change our battlefield."

The hearing ended in silence.

Three hours later, in a windowless conference room deep in the Pentagon's E-ring corridor, Patterson pushed a two-page memo to the center of the long table.

The National Security Council's deputy advisor, the liaison officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Pentagon's Under Secretary of Policy all looked down at the document.

The memorandum is extremely restrained in its wording, with its core content consisting of only one sentence: to establish a cross-agency tracking and attribution mechanism for global conceptual-level anomalies, with the same priority as anti-nuclear proliferation.

Three pens were used to sign their names within fifteen minutes.

Patterson put the signed memorandum into his briefcase and zipped it up.

"Project codenamed Hunter, with the Defense Intelligence Agency coordinating overall, the CIA in charge of human infiltration, the NSA in charge of global communications monitoring, the National Reconnaissance Office in charge of satellite image analysis, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in charge of anomaly analysis, and the Treasury Department's Financial Intelligence Division in charge of tracking financial chains."

He stood up and pushed his chair back under the table.

"Six agencies, one chain of command, and all outputs are delivered directly to my desk."

The deputy minister in charge of policy looked up.

"Where does the budget come from?"

"Black accounts, but audited by Congress."

Patterson picked up his briefcase and walked towards the door, stopping at the doorknob.

"Get the launch briefing on my desk by 8 a.m. tomorrow, with the CIA analysis report attached separately."

The next morning, Patterson sat in his office and opened the launch briefing. The last three pages contained the CIA’s independent assessment.

His gaze fell on the key judgment marked in red at the end.

The three events in Congo, Dhaka, and South Sudan, which occurred within 72 hours of each other, all possessed conceptually exclusive triggering conditions, were precisely targeted at global hotspots of suffering, triggered explosive global emotional waves, and all exhibited a strong sense of communicative design.

The analyst added a handwritten note below the text: This doesn't seem like the natural revival of ancient artifacts; it's more like someone deliberately creating and deploying new conceptual weapons.

Patterson placed the briefing on the table, pressing his right index finger on the last four words.

The behind-the-scenes creators.

He stared at those four words for a long time, the morning light of Washington outside the window shining through the gaps in the blinds onto his knuckles, creating a play of light and shadow.

Photos of the Sanya naval port exposed a CIA-backed operation, which was tactically a failure.

But it proved one thing: Mirror One is indeed alive and was indeed received by the Rabbit Country with the highest political treatment.

For Project Hunter, that is not the end.

That was the first example of a reverse teaching method.

Patterson closed the briefing, picked up the encrypted phone on the table, and dialed a number.

"Langley, Project Hunter is officially launched. First priority: find the person behind the creation of the conceptual weapon."

He hung up the phone, locked the briefing in the safe, and turned the combination lock.

The lock on the safe clicked shut with a dull metallic clang, like some kind of announcement.

This covert battle has only just begun.