The war began not with armies, but with silence.
For seventy-two hours, every nation's command center burned with light—screens alive with red alerts, code flares, and the crawling pulse of a digital infection they couldn't comprehend. Then, as if mocking the panic, he went quiet.
The anomaly vanished from the global network.
No trace. No signal. No interference.
Just peace.
Too clean. Too sudden.
The kind of silence predators leave before they pounce.
---
Inside Orbital Defense Command, General Afolayan leaned over a holographic map where entire sectors flickered gray—zones where satellites refused to respond. His voice was rough from sleepless nights.
> "Begin global isolation protocol. No signal in, no signal out."
A chorus of confirmations followed. Engineers severed lines, power grids shut down, data towers burned in controlled demolitions. Humanity, in its terror, began to unplug itself from the world it had built.
