Chapter 103: Scorched Earth

Chapter 103: Chapter 103: Scorched EarthDetroit, Michigan – Ford Motor Company Executive Boardroom

Rain struck the glass with a quiet rhythm. Inside the chrome-accented boardroom, tension buzzed like static.

"Run it again," said Douglas Hanley, Ford’s Director of Global Strategy. His jaw was tight.

On the central screen, a looping teaser video showed the Bull ZS-1—a sleek, aggressive electric sports car, lime with gray gradient. Its acceleration footage ended with a shot of the battery core spinning in a stasis unit.

The label pulsed beneath it: SOLID STATE BATTERY. Range: 1,100 km. Charge: 0–100% in 8 minutes.

"Where the hell did they come from?" one executive muttered.

"They’re not even based in a Tier 1 industrial nation," another said. "They’re Filipino."

Hanley replied flatly. "Doesn’t matter. They’re backed by Bytebull, and that means we’re no longer dealing with a startup. We’re dealing with a tech conglomerate disguised as a car company."

A younger analyst chimed in. "Bull ZS-1 is the size of a Porsche 911. Design language is Lambo-esque—overengineered for attention. But the battery specs... nothing close exists in mass production."

"Tesla?" someone asked.

Hanley shook his head. "They recently partnered with them. Bytebull’s got a solid-state monopoly now. Tesla’s working closely with them in exchange for priority supply."



Silence.

Then Hanley added, "We’re six years behind, minimum."

Toyota R&D Facility – Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Shuzo Takahiro, Head of Future Mobility Division, stared at the patent filing on his screen. It was real.

He turned to his assistant. "This will gut half the EV timeline we planned through 2020."

"But they’re patenting it," she offered.

"Yes. For a royalty." He smiled faintly. "They know they’ve cornered the temple gates. And they’re selling incense to pilgrims."

He stood and walked to the internal conference room. "Schedule a call with NEDO. And inform the Ministry—Japan will need to negotiate re


BMW’s CTO tapped his pen. "We can’t license directly. Not unless Germany invokes special industrial conditions. Philippines is under U.S. protection. They’re practically untouchable unless we move through American proxies."

"Intel?"

"Already too late. Tesla moved first."

Beijing, China – Strategic Science Committee Office

Dark-paneled walls. Low lighting. Three men sat across from one another. The air was heavy with the smell of black tea and silence.

The man in the center spoke slowly.

"Bytebull is now the largest solid-state patent holder in the Pacific Rim. They’ve also entered talks with South Korean and Japanese infrastructure funds. Their influence is growing. Their country is aligned with American naval power. The Philippines is becoming Taiwan 2.0."

The second man replied, "We could consider... diplomatic pressure."

The third, older, frowned. "Diplomatic pressure will fail. The Americans are reinforcing the South China Sea. And they just rewarded the Philippines by reinforcing this tech alliance. Even Israel is floating their satellites through Filipino ports."

A long pause.

The central figure lifted his gaze.

"Then we will wait. We monitor. And if Bytebull crosses into weaponization, we expose them. Let the world panic."

Seoul, South Korea – Samsung HQ, Semiconductor Division

Cho In-suk, VP of Emerging Tech, paced.

"This is it," he said. "CNT transistors at commercial scale. That’s the next leap. Forget Moore’s Law—Bytebull just jumped to the next canvas."

The other engineers nodded.

"They want a co-production agreement," Cho continued. "I want to give it to them. I also want Seoul’s backing. Call the Ministry of Trade."

Tel Aviv, Israel – Intel Advanced Defense Liaison Office

Colonel Avi Segal tapped the hologram of Bytebull’s new EV chassis. "That’s not a sports car. That’s a delivery vector. Swap the drivetrain, it’s drone-ready. Swap the architecture, you have a mobile railgun."

The Israeli defense tech agent across from him raised an eyebrow. "So what do we do?"

"Nothing. Bytebull already shares research contracts with Tesla and SpaceX. America has locked them in."

Segal smiled. "But if they build their own military wing—we watch. And we remind them that innovation without oversight is provocation."

Manila, Philippines – Bytebull EV Megafactory Phase I

Rain streaked down the scaffolded metal towers. Sparks flew as fusion welders bonded the exoskeleton of the final wing.

Inside a dryroom, two engineers looked over a master schematic of the Bull ZS-1 assembly line.

"Tesla’s giving us full support for the CNT chip architecture," one said.

The other nodded. "What about battery replication?"

"Fully localized. Raw materials from Mindoro. Royalty fee required for external licensees. No reverse engineering allowed."

They looked through the transparent cleanroom glass at the lime ZS-1 frame gliding along a magnetic track.

The Philippines wasn’t just producing EVs anymore.



It was stepping into empire-grade manufacturing.

And the world was already behind and someone is fuming.

----------------------

Wallenbern Estate, New York

The room was cloaked in the scent of aged paper, cedar smoke, and history soaked in power. It was a museum of conquest masquerading as a study—walls lined with ancient manuscripts, war trophies from six continents, and artifacts looted from dead empires. But none of it could protect Robert Wallenbern now.

On the desk—a vast slab of mahogany that once belonged to a U.S. president—the communicator hummed to life. It cast a cold, blue-green pallor over the room as the holographic feed stabilized.

The figure that appeared in the projection towered unnaturally tall. Her form was alien: scaled, sharply featured, robed in silken organic matter that shimmered like insect chitin. Her eyes—vertical slits of molten gold—blinked sideways, not with impatience, but with the finality of judgment.

Robert was already kneeling.

The man who once dictated oil prices to nations, who whispered in the ears of presidents and commanded media like a sovereign deity, now bowed with his face lowered to the floor, hands clasped tightly, his mouth dry with fear.

The voice of Apostle Krill Khians slithered into the room. It was not loud. It didn’t need to be. Her sibilant whisper carried more gravity than gunfire.

"Robert Wallenbern. Your family’s long service to the great Krill Mainu approaches its conclusion."

Robert didn’t move.

"A new power has emerged," she continued. "Their efficacy surpasses your legacy. Their allegiance is more... functional. Bytebull will take your seat at the Celestial Concordance."

His knuckles whitened on the silk rug. His jaw clenched with the force of a dying star.

"You will relinquish all control: Project Orion, the oil syndicates, the global surveillance web you so proudly claimed. These assets now belong to the future."

Robert still said nothing. The humiliation was a living thing in his chest, clawing at his ribs.

"Consider it severance," Krill Khians said, her golden eyes glinting. "A gift for becoming obsolete."

Then she vanished. The light died. Silence filled the vacuum left behind.

He remained kneeling for a moment longer.

Then, with a guttural roar, Robert stood. He grabbed an obsidian idol from his desk—a priceless pre-Columbian artifact—and hurled it at the bookshelf. It exploded into shards that rained across the carpet.

"Get me Jean and Andre," he growled into the intercom. "Now."

3 Hours Later

They arrived silently. The estate was electronically dead—no Wi-Fi, no signal, no whispers from the digital world. Phones were sealed in signal-killing pouches and handed off to armed security who didn’t speak.

Jean and Andre descended into the undercroft without a word, led by instinct and dread.

The cellar was colder than memory. Overhead, a single hanging bulb cast long shadows across the ancient stone and dust.

Robert sat at the head of the table like a dethroned monarch.

"Our empire is gone," he said without preamble.

Jean crossed her arms. Andre didn’t meet her eyes.

"You," he turned his glare on Jean, "with everything at your disposal. You let a startup from a forgotten island nation reduce your global tech firms turn to dust. You failed to acquire them. You failed to destroy them and now they will destroy us. But I’m not gonna let that happen."

Jean’s jaw locked, but she didn’t answer.

"And you," Robert snapped at Andre, "your goddamn pathetic jealousy of your sister failed to fucking see the large fucking picture, thinking it would do any good raising the gas prices. You believed the world could be manipulated by energy pricing and now the public sentiment on renewable energy sources and electric vehicle is rising" he jabbed a finger at his face, "Because you fucking suck dick, you pathetic piece of shit!"

Andre flinched but said nothing.

"We can still retaliate," Jean offered. "Our media networks, our lobbying wings—we can smear Bytebull as rogue tech. Tie them to Chinese black sites. we can trigger panic."

"We’ll engineer a rolling blackout," Andre added. "Blame cyberattacks. Kill their recharge capacity. Tank confidence in EVs globally."

Robert’s fist slammed the table, echoing like a war drum in a crypt.

"Do you listen to the fucking word I said?!. The game has fucking changed!"

He calmed himself down for a moment and placed a ring on the table—heavy, golden, and etched with the Wallenbern crest. The ouroboros devouring its own crown.

"Our seat at the Divine Concordance has been passed to another. The Deep State has cast us down to shit. They will expect us to handover everything including Project Orion to which I invested my blood, sweat and fucking piss. Just to fucking satisfy the Cabal."

He crossed to a sealed vault embedded in the wall. A single key turned, revealing a briefcase and two black cylinders inside.

"Of course we’re gonna give it to them and last thing we have left to give... is hell."



Jean and Andre stared.

"You will go," Robert continued, voice calm now, a quiet king walking into his own funeral, "and carry out the last directive. Contact our sleeper agents in Pyongyang and execute order: Scorched Earth. When their missile launches—targeting Seoul, Manila, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, San Francisco, everywhere in the fucking world including the ISS—the world will erupt. But that’s only part of the plan. Its high-altitude EMP detonation will scatter shards of kinetic metal into the upper atmosphere. The International Space Station will be destroyed. So will every satellite caught in low orbit. If we can’t have everything, no one will."

Andre stepped back, uneasy and worried. "What about you father?"

Robert smiled for the first time in the entire evening.

"I will detonate the catalyst myself. A buried thermonuclear warhead beneath this house. The entire new york city will engulf in flames and of course, Uncle Sam will always retalliate. All reason is off the table and HELLO WORLD WAR 3."

His eyes gleamed with something between madness and purpose.

"The sky will go dark. GPS, surveillance, military uplinks—gone. What follows is biblical. Everything will go to fucking hell, Their black sites will have no access to supply chain if the entire fucking world goes to shit. Save for the Solar Warden Fleet who just watches from above like the planet is a fucking zoo, but they’ll eventually die too after a period of 10 years without supply."

Jean’s voice was a whisper. "What about us father?"

"The cryopod site in Greenland will keep your bodies preserved for thousands of years. Gold. Weapons. Blueprints. History. The legacy of Wallenbern kept under the ice. The world will burn, and from its ash, our house will rise again and you will see to it that you will rule the next generation of humanity."

He looked at them both.

"Go forth, my children." he said.

"Scorch the earth."