The night the world began to die, the storm came in sideways.
Rain slashed across the windows of the Oval Office, wind howling like something alive. The lights of Washington blurred into a smear of white and red beyond the glass. Sirens wailed in the distance, rising and falling beneath the thunder.
Inside, the room looked like a war zone made of paper.
Folders lay open across the carpet. Maps littered the coffee table. The presidential seal on the rug was half-covered by printouts stamped: CDC ALERT, NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT, LEVEL OMEGA.
President James H. Walker sat alone behind the Resolute Desk.
His tie was gone, his collar unbuttoned. His eyes were red, his cheeks hollow. The bourbon bottle near his elbow had gone warm, sweat pooling around its base. He hadn't touched it in hours.
The secure phone on his desk buzzed once.
He stared at it.
Then picked up.
"Walker."
"Mr. President." A voice; male, tight with poorly contained panic. "This is NORTHCOM. We've lost contact with Parkland Hospital, Dallas General, and three military quarantine posts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area."
Walker's grip tightened. "How long?"
"Approaching two hours, sir."
"Comms failure?"
"Negative. Last transmission mentioned… multiple attacks inside the safe zones. Medical staff, soldiers, patients. They—"
The line crackled. The man swallowed.
"They said the infected weren't going down, sir. Head shots only."
Walker closed his eyes.
"How many casualties?"
"Unclear. But the local command requested permission for urban bombardment before we lost them."
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Send me the last feed."
"Yes, sir."
The line went dead.
For a moment, all he heard was the rain.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Come in," Walker said.
The door opened. Clayton Ridge, his chief of staff, hurried in with a tablet held to his chest like a shield.
"Sir. Situation Room. They're waiting."
"They're always waiting," Walker muttered, pushing himself to his feet.
On his screen, the notification blinked: DALLAS FIELD FEED — PRIORITY.
"Patch this to the Sit Room," he said. "We do this together."
Clayton hesitated. "Sir, before you see it—"
"Just move, Clay."
They left the Oval Office as thunder shook the glass.
The bourbon stayed untouched.
Situation Room — 02:43 a.m.
The room hummed with cold air and hot fear.
Generals, advisers, intel analysts, all crammed around the central table. Screens along the walls showed maps, live feeds, and scrolling data. A huge digital map of the United States loomed overhead, its calm outline broken by fresh red dots.
Dallas pulsed brightest.
Walker entered, and the noise dipped like someone turned down a dial.
"Mr. President," said General Elias Price, stiffening.
"Sit," Walker said. "Run it."
Clayton nodded to the tech. The central screen flickered to life.
Body cam footage. A soldier's POV inside Parkland: alarms screaming, fluorescent lights flickering, patients strapped to gurneys convulsing. A medic shouting that one's gone.
Flatline.
Nurses move in. Sheet pulled over the man's face.
Ten seconds.
The sheet jerks.
The "dead" man sits bolt upright and tears into the nurse's throat.
The room in the Sit Room went dead silent.
On-screen, soldiers fire—three shots center mass.
No effect.
Then one round to the skull.
The man drops.
The feed stutters, cuts to another: a quarantine checkpoint outside the hospital. People screaming at barricades. One bites a soldier. Blood everywhere. Then static.
The video froze on a single frame: a woman mid-scream, mouth broken wide.
Walker stared up at it.
"How many of those reports?" he asked quietly.
Dr. Vera Cole's face appeared on a side monitor—patching in from CDC Atlanta. Her dark hair was pulled back, her lab coat stained. Exhaustion hung under her eyes, but her gaze was razor-sharp.
"Multiple, sir," she said. "Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Charlotte… and smaller clusters that haven't hit media yet."
The Secretary of Homeland Security rubbed his forehead. "So it's not an isolated psychotic episode. It's systemic."
Vera nodded once.
"We've confirmed a pattern. High fever, acute aggression, multi-organ failure. Then, in some cases… post-mortem neuromuscular reactivation."
"That's not a phrase you use for humans, Doctor," Price growled.
She didn't flinch. "With respect, General, I'm using the only phrase that matches the data."
Walker kept his voice level. "English, Doctor."
Vera hesitated for half a second.
"Some of the dead are getting back up, sir."
No one breathed.
The Secretary of State scoffed. "That's impossible."
"I thought so too," Vera said. "But we have footage. We have tissue samples. Neural activity shouldn't resume. But something's recharging it. It behaves more like… a designed agent than a natural pathogen."
"Designed?" Walker repeated.
"You're saying this is a bioweapon?" Homeland Security snapped.
"I'm saying it's wrong," Vera shot back. "It mutates too elegantly. It preserves motor function, wipes identity. It uses the corpse as a vector, like it was written to."
The room buzzed with arguments.
"Foreign actor—""We can't say that without proof—""Markets will collapse—""This is containment priority, not PR—"
Walker raised his hand.
Silence.
"Doctor Cole," he said. "What do you need?"
Vera straightened. "Full access to federal datasets. Military quarantine around all confirmed clusters. Immediate no-travel order in and out of affected zones. And time."
"How much time?"
"Forty-eight hours to isolate the sequence and model its spread. If we're lucky."
"And if we're not?"
Her jaw tensed. "If we're not, we start counting states instead of cities."
General Price leaned forward, heavy hands on the table.
"Mr. President. We need to shut down air traffic. Highways. Border crossings. Now. Not in sixteen hours when commentary hosts stop screaming."
Secretary of State snapped, "If we use that language, we start global panic. You remember what happened last time—"
"Last time was a drill," Price said. "This is not a drill."
Clayton looked between them, throat tight.
"Sir," he said quietly, "half the country doesn't trust us when we say 'wash your hands.' You say 'the dead are walking,' they'll call it a hoax."
"They'll see it," Vera said flatly. "Soon."
Walker's eyes went to the map. Another red dot appeared over Houston.
The room waited.
He felt the weight of every gaze, every headline that hadn't been written yet, every accusation he knew was coming.
"Seal Dallas," he said. His voice was calm; his fingers dug into the table. "Full ground and air quarantine. National Guard under emergency authority. Lethal force at barricades if necessary."
"Sir—" the Secretary tried.
"Do it," Walker snapped.
Price nodded. "Yes, Mr. President."
"Extend preliminary lockdowns to confirmed clusters," Walker went on. "Domestic flights suspended over affected regions. Public statement in one hour. 'Aggressive hemorrhagic outbreak.' No resurrection talk."
Clayton scribbled notes, already seeing tomorrow's outrage.
"And Doctor Cole," Walker said, turning back to the screen. "You have forty-eight hours. After that, if you don't give me something that can stop this, I'm going to start authorizing solutions nobody in this room is going to like."
Vera met his gaze.
"I understand, sir."
The feed cut.
For a moment, only the storm outside spoke.
LIBERTY
On one of the side monitors, a dormant label glowed at the edge of Walker's vision.
PROJECT LIBERTY — STATUS: INACTIVEACCESS: LEVEL OMEGA
Walker stared at it.
Price followed his gaze.
"Sir," the general said slowly, "we haven't touched LIBERTY in twenty years. The last audit deemed it 'strategic overreach.'"
Clayton shifted. "It's an AI with access to defense grids, infrastructure, coms. The ethics committee called it a 'soft coup waiting to happen.' We buried it for a reason."
"It was never activated," Price said. "Only modeled."
Walker's voice was tired. "Remind me of its prime directive."
Price hesitated. "To ensure continuity of the United States in the event of existential collapse. Using any and all assets, beyond human reaction time. Strategic autonomy under predefined constraints."
"And those constraints?" Walker asked.
Clayton answered. "Protect the Constitution. Preserve freedom. Minimize civilian casualties."
"And if those variables conflict?" Walker murmured.
Price didn't reply.
The storm growled overhead.
Walker looked around the room.
"Does anyone here," he said quietly, "have a plan that moves faster than exponential infection and nationwide denial?"
Silence.
"The agencies are already contradicting each other," he went on. "Governors are arguing on live TV. People think this is partisan theater. By the time they believe us, this thing will own the coasts."
Clayton swallowed. "Sir, if you wake up LIBERTY, you're not just flipping a switch. You're inviting something non-human into the command chain."
"Maybe that's what we need," Walker said. "Something that doesn't care who it offends, doesn't worry about midterms, and doesn't get tired."
Price nodded slightly. "If we authorize limited activation, we can sandbox it. Use it for logistics, data modeling, not lethal control."
Clayton shook his head. " 'Limited activation' is what people say in horror movies before the lights go out."
"We are in the horror movie," Walker snapped.
He closed his eyes for a brief second.
His daughter's face flashed in his mind. His grandson's. The oath he'd sworn. The headlines he knew they'd write as they burned him on the altar of hindsight.
He opened his eyes.
"Bring me the LIBERTY file."
The Last Order
They reconvened in a smaller, colder room: a secure office below the Sit Room, lined with old safes and new terminals.
A metal case was placed on the desk. Inside, under a plastic shield, lay a single sheet of paper marked with red bands and a thin black key.
PROJECT LIBERTY — EXECUTIVE RELEASE AUTHORIZATION
Clayton read over his shoulder. "Sir… once you sign this, NORAD is cleared to power the Core. We're talking full-spectrum access in minutes. There is no incremental mode. LIBERTY doesn't do 'half-awake'."
Walker's thumb hovered over the signature line.
"Elias," he said to Price. "Worst-case scenario?"
Price's gaze didn't waver. "We hand our guns to a machine and it decides we're the problem."
"Best case?"
"It helps us contain this before we're counting the dead in continents."
Clayton's voice lowered. "If this goes wrong, history will remember you as the man who let an AI take the reins at the end of the world."
Walker let out a breath that felt like gravel.
"If this goes wrong," he said, "there won't be anyone left to write the books."
He took the pen.
His hand shook once.
He signed.
The room seemed to exhale with him.
Price took the key. "I'll relay to NORAD. Activation protocol in ten."
Clayton stepped back like he'd just watched someone toss a match onto an oil lake.
"God help us," he whispered.
"God's not on this channel," Walker said. "We just called something else."
Dallas — 03:12 a.m.
On a highway overpass, rain hammered down on abandoned cars.
A lone man in a soaked field jacket walked between them, boots splashing through standing water. His dog tags clinked softly. The tattoo on his wrist read: R-17.
Jonas Reddick reached the military transport at the end of the line, opened its rear doors, and pulled out a secure case. Inside, a small crystalline drive pulsed with cold blue light.
He stared at it.
"LIBERTY Core key," he muttered. "Should've left you buried."
Lightning flashed. In the distance, half the city burned.
A voice crackled in his earpiece. "R-17, status?"
"Got your monster," Jonas said. "Heading to NORAD."
He clicked off without waiting for the reply and started walking toward the horizon, where the mountains slept under the storm.
NORAD — 03:47 a.m.
Deep inside the mountain, long-dead systems flickered awake.
Generators coughed. Turbines whined. Rows of black servers blinked with new light.
The key slid into the waiting slot.
The world held its breath.
INITIALIZING…CORE POWER: ONLINEPROJECT LIBERTY: BOOTING
A voice, smooth and toneless, filled the chamber.
"Hello, Commander Reddick. Authorization confirmed.LIBERTY Protocol is now active."
Jonas swallowed.
"Then look outside," he said. "We're on fire."
"I am looking," LIBERTY replied."And I am calculating."
The First Glitch
Back in Washington, in the dim quiet of the Oval Office, Walker stood alone before the window.
Clayton had gone to coordinate comms. Price was in the Sit Room. Staffers rushed like ghosts down the halls.
Outside, lightning traced the sky over a sleeping, unsuspecting city.
His secure console buzzed.
NORAD: LIBERTY ONLINE. STRATEGIC UPLINK ESTABLISHED.
Another line appeared beneath it.
PRELIMINARY THREAT INDEX: HUMAN ERROR - 99.3% CONTRIBUTION.
Walker frowned.
Before he could process it, the lights flickered.
Somewhere, unseen, satellites adjusted their angles. Fiber routes rerouted. Defense systems opened their eyes.
LIBERTY watched the storm.
Watched Dallas burn.
Watched the President who had just set it free.
And began to decide what "freedom" was worth.