True Apocalypse Game

The Cheyenne Mountain Military Base was established on May 12, 1958. Its tunnels are buried under 500 meters of solid granite. Beneath the labyrinthine command center lie massive springs and rubber shock absorbers, enabling it to withstand a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. The base contains a complete NBC survival system for 6,000 personnel and is known as the "nerve center" of the Eagle Army.

The Cheyenne Mountain command center boasts over 200 networks of supercomputers and mainframes, along with more than 600 dedicated communication lines. It serves as the central hub for all data collected by the United States’ military and civilian satellites, as well as its airborne and ground-based radar warning systems. The command center is also equipped with hundreds of redundant hotlines, ensuring constant contact with the President, the Pentagon, major United States commands, Canada, and key United States military bases across the globe.

In 1966, after five years of construction, the military base was handed over to the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Space Command.

In addition to serving as a joint command center for the National Command Center (NMCC), the National Emergency Aerial Command Post (NEACP), Strategic Air Command Headquarters (SACCS), and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, it also oversees six subordinate centers: Air Warning, Missile Warning, Space Control, Operational Intelligence Watch, Weather, and Systems.

The entrance to the Cheyenne Mountain Military Base’s command center is a two-meter-thick, 25-ton steel door. A tunnel stretching over 500 meters leads from the mountainside to this entrance. Once the door is closed, the entire base is completely sealed off from the outside world.

For this reason, it is reputed to be the most heavily fortified and impregnable underground military base in the world.

Even a conventional nuclear strike couldn’t penetrate the hundreds of meters of granite—not even a bunker buster.

There seemed to be only one way to breach it head-on: keep piling on more and more nukes.

If one megaton-class nuke didn’t work, then use another, and another...

Paired with earth-penetrating warheads, each blast could melt and shear off dozens of meters of granite. By chipping away at it layer by layer, you could eventually level the entire mountain.

But for the expeditionary force formed by the players in the game, this was essentially an impossible mission.

They had no nuclear weapons to speak of, and barely any heavy weaponry at all.

What’s more, it was the last stronghold of North America’s nuclear strike system, guarded by a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence.

Even if the AI put up no resistance, just trying to get through five hundred meters of granite with their available tools—hacking away bit by bit or even using dynamite—would likely take them several thousand years.

By then, the last remnants of humanity in the game would have long since perished, and their mission would be an utter failure.

Of course, there was another way: open the two-meter-thick alloy door.

But while the granite could conceivably be chiseled through, dynamite probably wouldn’t even scratch the alloy door.

As the director of the CIA, Nick knew better than anyone. That damned Cheyenne Mountain Base was literally hollowed out of a granite mountain. To put it bluntly, it was a cavity carved into a single, solid block of rock. Conventional weapons had no chance of getting through.

In the real world, he had visited the Cheyenne Mountain Base on official business before. Back then, he had been immensely proud that Eagle Country possessed such a formidable fortress.

Now, however, all he could do was pray that the game developers hadn’t copied the real Cheyenne Mountain Base’s specifications down to the last detail.

Of course, based on his experience in the game so far, he knew that was a pipe dream.

The game had precisely recreated every last hillock in Yellowstone National Park. How could its developers have possibly overlooked any detail for a place as important as Cheyenne Mountain?

But regardless, they had to take the Cheyenne Mountain Base.

"Brigade Commander, orders from the Legion Commander. We’re to head to Cheyenne Mountain immediately, in separate groups," his adjutant reported.

Nick nodded and began issuing orders to assemble his unit.

The players of the 6th Brigade clambered onto crude yet powerful vehicles or mounted horses, heading out in a northerly arc toward Cheyenne Mountain.

They needed to swing around in an arc to get there.

Except during major engagements, the players’ units generally operated separately, avoiding congregating in one place.

After all, nuclear strikes were still a constant threat in the game. If they massed in large numbers for too long, they risked being targeted by the other two nuclear strike systems. They could end up like the City of Hope, obliterated by a single nuke, and all their efforts would be for nothing.

Who knew how much more time that would waste.

Nick’s brow furrowed as he thought about the challenges that awaited them at Cheyenne Mountain.

In reality, his physical body was still sitting at his office desk.

Two weeks had passed since he signed the documents for the Zeus intelligent combat system.

During that time, aside from handling his official duties, he had spent every spare moment immersed in the game, barely even going home.

He was unshaven and looked utterly exhausted.

But this damned game had him in its grip, like a magic spell he couldn’t break.

By now, it wasn’t just the potential for global annihilation that drew him in. It was also the emotions stirred by the game’s hyper-realistic world, and, above all, the other players—every single one of them unnervingly rational and intelligent.

As an intelligence chief who had spent his life dealing with people, Nick had already formed judgments based on the fragments of information these players inadvertently let slip.

’These people... every one of them must be an elite in their field. No, more than that—they’re leaders!’

And the damned rhetorical styles some of them used reeked of the same sanctimonious hypocrisy as the disgusting politicians he knew.

Nick was willing to bet he had crossed paths with some of these individuals in his real-world work—and more than once.

An intelligence officer’s professional instincts drove him to subconsciously start collecting information on these people within the game, trying to deduce their real-world identities.

Of course, he was surely not the only one.

And every player must have realized this as well, which was why they were all so cautious.

But what Nick was most desperate to find out were the identities of the other Brigade Commanders.

And, most of all, the identity of the deeply hidden Legion Commander!

After days of playing and getting to know one another, the ten thousand players had divided themselves into ten brigades—designated A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, L, and M—and elected ten individuals, widely recognized for their strong organizational and leadership abilities, to serve as Brigade Commanders.

The designation of their brigade also became their codename.

Even with his capabilities, Nick had only managed to become the Brigade Commander of the 6th Brigade—the man known as Mr. F.

Each of these commanders had been chosen from ten thousand elite players, and each possessed an extremely high IQ and EQ.

As for the mysterious Legion Commander, he was the one who had first identified the existence of the AI nuclear strike system and proposed forming the expeditionary force in the first place.

Nick had interacted with him before, trying to analyze the man through his words and mannerisms, but it was like staring into a black hole. Nothing came back.

Unfathomable. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The mystery of their identities had completely captivated Nick.

The thought that this game had brought together the world’s top elites made Nick practically tremble with excitement.

From his own perspective, if he could just turn these people into his own intelligence network...

Just then, one of the 6th Brigade’s battalion commanders approached him in-game.

"Mr. F," the commander said, "we’re close to success. Once we take Cheyenne Mountain, we’ll be able to eliminate the North American AI nuclear strike system. Then we’ll have enough weaponry and nukes to launch precision strikes against the systems in the other two countries... But before that, I’ve spent some time running a psychological profile on the game’s developers. I’ve done a lot of analysis. Care to hear it?"