The private jet of the American delegate flew over the Pacific Ocean, heading towards Washington. In the executive cabin, furnished with the latest technology, the US delegate thoughtfully twirled a glass of ice in his hands. His gaze was fixed on a folder stamped "TOP SECRET: PROJECT ZERO".

  "Hmm, something is wrong with Mira," he muttered, looking out the window at the clouds. "She is hiding Subject Zero. Why is she hiding him? In theory, he is the one who should have been leading this mission into the Depths, not her. Maybe something happened to him? Is he sick? Or, even worse, is he no longer in our world?"

  The assistant sitting opposite him opened a laptop and brought the only clear frame onto the large screen.

  "Sir, after his intervention in Los Angeles, we haven't seen him again," the assistant reported. "But we managed to capture footage from an orbital satellite and surveillance cameras. He stood in place for literally a couple of seconds after he destroyed that creature. That time was enough to confirm the description: white hair, piercingly blue eyes. But the face in the photo... take a look."

  The delegate narrowed his eyes. In the image, the teenager's face seemed to be covered by a haze, his facial features blurring as if reality itself resisted the attempt to capture him.

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  "This distortion again," the delegate dropped displeased. "But according to other sources from our secret archive... he is... ahem... a teenager. The information is still being verified by the analytics department."

  "What is there to verify?!" The delegate abruptly set his glass on the table. "All our archives, starting from the fifties, say the exact same thing. This 'boy' destroyed Kaiju where our hydrogen bombs only fed them. Even though we recruited the best military personnel and pumped billions into the bio-suits of the Legions, even their power isn't enough to guarantee us dominance."

  He smiled predatorily.

  "But the power of Subject Zero... If we get him. If we can control him. Then we won't need alliances with Russia or China. We will be able to dictate the rules to the whole world. What about the agents? Any results?"

  "Not yet, sir," the assistant replied. "Yokohama is the eye of a needle right now. Our agents are actively searching for any teenager matching the description, but Mira has established an unprecedented level of counterintelligence protection there."

  "Excellent," the delegate leaned back in his seat. "We must be first. Before the Russians with their sentimentality and the Chinese with their childhood grievances find him. We must find a way to get our hands on him. A boy who can change the landscape with a snap of his fingers... he must belong to America."

  The plane entered a zone of turbulence, but the delegate didn't even notice it. He was already imagining how the world would bow before the power that they would call "US property".