(V-03: 能动性反转 | 风格D: 硬汉派/黑色电影)

The cigar was cold, and the coffee was colder. I sat in the War Room of the Aegis Complex, staring at the red dot on the holographic map. The dot was the "Void-Eater," and it was moving toward us with the patience of a glacier and the appetite of a god.

My name is Jack. I’m the man they call when the problem is too big for a diplomatic cable.

The generals wanted to wait. They wanted to "study the phenomenon," "establish a dialogue," and "prepare the populace." In my experience, "dialogue" is just a fancy word for waiting to be slaughtered. I didn't believe in dialogue. I believed in the first strike.

"We can't just launch everything we have at something we don't understand, Jack," the Secretary of Defense had told me.

"That's the beauty of it," I replied. "If we destroy it, we don't need to understand it."

I didn't wait for the committee's approval. I had the codes, I had the loyalties of the orbital battery, and I had a death wish that had been simmering since the Gulf War. I ordered the "Sledgehammer" protocol. Ten thousand antimatter warheads, launched in a synchronized burst, aimed at the heart of the Void-Eater.

For three minutes, the world held its breath. We watched the telemetry. The warheads hit. The explosion was a supernova in miniature, a flash of white light that momentarily blinded every satellite in orbit.

"We got it," the technician whispered. "It's breaking apart."

I lit a fresh cigar. For the first time in a month, I felt like I could breathe.

Then the telemetry changed.

The Void-Eater didn't break. It didn't even flinch. Instead, the explosion had acted like a dinner bell. The entity, which had been drifting in a state of semi-dormancy, suddenly woke up. It didn't just accelerate; it leaped. The distance that was supposed to take a decade to cross was vanished in a heartbeat.

The strike hadn't destroyed the monster; it had simply told the monster exactly where the food was, and that the food was spicy.

I watched the monitors as the first tentacles of the Void-Eater brushed against the moon, shattering it into a million pieces of white porcelain. The alarms in the bunker began to scream, but I just leaned back in my chair.

I had tried to play God, and God had just replied with a hunger that could swallow the sun. As the ceiling of the bunker began to buckle under the impossible gravity, I took one last drag of my cigar and smiled.

At least I didn't have to listen to another committee meeting.

***

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