1 David
"I AM A FUCKING IDIOT," David said out loud.
He was currently sitting in his office at the headquarters of RAW. He was cursing himself as he had made a very huge mistake…
David has always been a fan of puzzles. So he was naturally a fan of the Rubik cube. He knew how to solve different sizes and types of puzzles in every genre. And as a cube enthusiast, he became very excited when he saw that a whopping 25❌25❌25 cube had just come to the market. He had solved the older version of the cube so he thought that he would be able to solve this too. So he ordered the cube.
This puzzle was very big and heavy. The cube itself was very hard to solve, but when combined with the delicate nature of its parts, this cube soon became a nightmare for him. He had been sitting in his office and had been trying to solve the cube for 10 hours now. Every once in a while a small piece would pop out of the cube. Then David had to push the piece inside gently so that it would not disturb the tiny other pieces of the cube.
After 10 hours of struggle, David's fingers were hurting very badly. His head felt like it could split open any moment now and an alien will pop out of it. But he was very close to solving the cube. He was angry at himself as he should have thought this through before he scrambled this monstrosity. He should have brought this cube home and then nicely tucked it away in his showcase. He should have not scrambled it. And that was his mistake…
As David was about to solve the cube for good someone knocked on the door of his office….
"Damn… Come on in!" David yelled. He felt angry as the knock almost made him pop out another piece from the puzzle.
The door of his office was flung open and his secretary walked in. She was a beautiful woman in her thirties and she was like a good friend to David. She came in with a very big smile on her face and said…
"I told you to solve that thing at your home. If you do it in the office then you were bound to get disturbed." She said.
"Yeah Yeah… What do you want?" David asked.
"Your presence has been requested in the bridge." She said.
"Bridge? Why?" David asked.
"I don't know. They need a person with level-5 clearance there. And you are the only one that is in the building. So they called you." She said.
"Oh, man…" David said while being annoyed. He got up from his chair and started heading towards the bridge.
RAW is an intelligence agency in India. In this agency, there are basically 5 levels of clearance, where level-1 was the lowest and level-5 is the highest. The people with level-5 clearance were the topmost people in the organization. They are basically the big shots that took part in every major decision-making of the agency and this country. And David was one of those people.
David was in charge of directing all the tactical missions that their agency takes in. Directing the mission meant that he needed to make the whole plan of the operation and then guide his team about the objective of the mission.
The bridge was the special room that was used for reconnaissance and spying most of the time. So he was rarely called on the bridge. Another reason for not being called often was because the bridge comes under the leadership of a man that he does not like very much. So he was rarely summoned there. But if the agency had a tactical situation in its hands, then he assumes command of the center…
It was nighttime in India and the person in charge of the bridge was not present there. And according to the rules if something very major occurs then the next person with level-5 clearance should be consulted. That is why David had to go to the bridge.
As David got to the bridge, the two armed guards that were guarding the main door of the bridge saluted David. He nodded his head acknowledging their salute and went towards the number pad attached by the door. David then punched in the secret code to open a panel adjacent to the number pad. The panel had a retina scanner inside it. David scanned his retina and the door to the bridge opened before him
***
As David walked inside he saw that the whole atmosphere of the room was chaotic. There were several computers in the room which were all operating at once. Personnel in the room were murmuring amongst each other and phones were ringing constantly. The big screen at the end of the Bridge was showing a scene of a big compound on fire.
The live feed of a compound on fire looked was taken from above. Seeing the quality of the feed, David knew that it was either taken from the satellite or by some sort of drone. And his current bet was this photo was taken by a satellite…
Seeing the compound David assumed that some sort of terrorist attack must have taken place. He assumed that this picture must be from another country. After all, if this attack would the whole agency would have been chaotic by now. He noticed that at the top of the screen there were some coordinates were being shown. David take look at the coordinates and determined that this must the picture from a North American region.
David then walked up to the officer in charge of the bridge to get the status update…
"Hey, Ronnie what is the fuss about?" David asked a middle-aged man which was also the officer in charge of the bridge.
"Sir," Ronnie said while saluting David.
"At ease. Now please someone would tell me what the hell is happening over here?" David asked.
"Sir, approximately half an hour ago we found out about this," Ronnie said while gesturing towards the big screen.
"Which country?" David asked.
"America sir," Ronnie said.
"Oh damn… So how many casualties? And who the fuck did even have the balls to pull off like this? Look at the picture. The whole goddamn compound has been blown away. Did we receive any chatter information about such an attack from intelligence?" David asked.
"Sir, were you not informed of the details?" Ronnie asked.
"What details? I came here because someone requested for level-5 clearance personnel on the bridge." David said.
"Oh… I am sorry. You see this is not what you think it is. This picture is of a military base in Hawaii." Ronnie said.
"Wait what?" David asked. He was shocked by this information.
"Yes sir. This right here is the base." Ronnie confirmed it.
"What the fuck? How? How the hell were they even to get in the base? And look at the building. It looks like they strategically place the bombs to decimate the whole building… This is just insane. Do we know who did this?" David asked.
"No… We have no idea what did this. And one more thing sir." Ronnie said.
"What?" David asked.
"We suspect that this was the job from a missile," Ronnie said.
"Say what now?" David asked.
"Yes. We were not able to confirm the location from which the missile was fired. But we are 100% sure that this was the job of a missile." Ronnie said.
"100% sure?" David asked again.
"Yes sir," Ronnie said.
As soon as Ronnie confirmed that this was indeed the work of a missile, David closed his eyes. He started thinking about what it could mean? What kind of consequences will it have? And most important of all he would like to understand what kind of effect will it have on India? Then David opened his eyes as he made his decisions. He then walked up to the middle of the room. In the middle of the room, there was a microphone. David then switched it on and then started speaking…
"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention, please… We have a little bit of a complicated situation on our hands. Whenever someone takes a shot at the biggest man in the pub then that is bound to break the fights all over the bar. And the same thing happened approximately half an hour ago. Someone took a shot at the strongest country in the world…" David said. Then he took a deep breath and started speaking again.
"Now as we don't have a lot of information. But based on what we have heard here are your instructions. Team-A is to go and alert all the forces currently deployed at our border. And raise their security alertness to level-3. And give all of the instructions to prepare for a level-4 scenario.
Team-B is to contact our allied agencies and pool our knowledge together. We need to know who did it? There are not a lot of countries that could pull off this feat. So I want answers to what did this? And why did this happen? And also contact our analyst's department to check whether they could give some intel on this.
And finally Team-C. Divide yourself into two equal teams. One part of Team-C will keep an eye on the situation outside. While the rest are supposed to assist Team-A and Team-B.
Now go." David gave off orders.
As soon as David gave off orders, everyone started following his orders. While David came back to Ronnie…
"Sir prepare for the level-4 scenario? That…" Ronnie hesitated to say the word.
"I understand your concern. But we and America are closely allied forces. And based on how they attacked a military base… That is an act of war." David said in a grave voice.
Both of them didn't say it out loud but this might be the start of world war 3. But they can't make any predictions at the moment. Both of them stood there looking at the monitor…
It was then suddenly David saw that the big monitor started getting converted into small dust particles. Seeing those particles reminded him of how Thanos wiped out people of the universe in the new Avengers movie.
Like it was shown in the movie slowly everything in the room started getting converted into dust. David started to think that maybe was hallucinating. But when he tried to rub his eyes, he found that he could not move his hands.
His whole body felt like it was struck on the spot. He could not move it. And slowly things and people around him also started to fade away. But the most surprising thing was that none of the people reacted to things being converted into dust. It was like they were not able to see that something like this was happening…
Slowly everything got converted into dust, even David's own body. After everything was over all that was left was darkness. And David was stuck in the darkness not able to move any part of his body. But then slowly darkness also started fading away as a bright light came. And then slowly the darkness fully faded away and David found himself sitting on a chair surrounded by white light...
