In a deep chamber beneath the Kremlin, long after the mental broadcast had ended and world leaders scrambled to react, Russia's own leadership gathered in the oldest way they knew how… behind closed, reinforced doors, surrounded by silence and concrete.
At the head of the conference table sat President Viktor Anatolyevich Lebedev, a tall man with hard cheekbones, military poise, and sharp silver eyes that missed nothing. His suit was jet black, simple and plain in design as his power was not derived from expensive tailoring, but the air of command he carried.
The room was filled not only with ministers, but generals, industrial oligarchs, tech magnates, and two silent elders who hadn't spoken publicly in decades.
The lights dimmed, and Damon's speech was replayed in full on a reinforced holoscreen, this version stripped of its emotional cadence and reduced to raw transcript that was parsed through Russia's AI-driven linguistic deconstruction suite.
