Chapter 94: Trialed Zones
The silence before the meeting began was thick—not uncomfortable, but deliberate. A calculated pause. Then, without warning, the center of the table lit up.
A hollow sphere of light hovered in the air—the planet. It rotated slowly, its surface marked with data points, flickering indicators of key locations, and pulsing clusters of unknown significance. A visual representation of the world’s new reality.
Elias felt the weight of the moment. He and the eleven others had been brought here for a reason, but what? To spectate? To be studied? Judged?
The first voice broke the silence.
"We have lost control."
A man at the far end of the table, old but unshaken, leaned forward. His fingers steepled beneath his chin, his tone precise. "We cannot regulate what we cannot see. The Ikona are intangible, unrestricted, and—by all accounts—evolving beyond our oversight. The world is aware of their existence now. That is the crisis."
A woman to his left scoffed, shifting in her seat. "The crisis is not that they exist. The crisis is that we failed to contain the knowledge of their existence. Had we handled this appropriately, the world would be none the wiser. We could have studied them in secret."
"We didn’t have the luxury of secrecy," another voice cut in, rough, impatient. "That resort incident was a disaster, and now the public wants answers. We don’t have any."
"Then we give them what they expect to hear," a younger man suggested, hands tapping rhythmically against the table. "We shape the narrative before the panic sets in."
"And what narrative is that, exactly?"
A moment of silence.