Inside the United States Senate, it was an absolute mess, with senators screaming at one another, accusing each other of inaction, and generally behaving more like participants in a circus than members of one of the most powerful institutions in the world. Whatever decorum had once been associated with the office had been thoroughly destroyed during and after the second Trump presidency, leaving behind an institution where shouting was often considered more useful than compromise. The situation had only become worse as the years passed, with each political faction becoming increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone outside its own circle. To an outsider, the Senate floor looked less like a place where the future of a country was decided and more like a battlefield where everyone had forgotten what they were fighting for.
The situation was made even worse by the fact that most senators had effectively become mouthpieces for the corporate lobbyists who funded their careers. Those senators could be replaced surprisingly easily if they stopped following the interests of the corporations and organizations they represented, which gave them a strong incentive to remain useful to their sponsors. As a result, being loud had become one of the most effective ways to protect their position, because a senator who constantly appeared on television and captured public attention was much harder to quietly replace. It did not necessarily matter whether what they were saying was intelligent, useful, or even true, as long as people were talking about them.
Not that the public really cared anymore, at least not in the way politicians liked to pretend they did. Public interest had certainly been reignited during the last few years as various policies had finally made it easier for ordinary people to live their lives and own things again after nearly fifty years of being trapped inside what many had jokingly called the subscription model of society. Almost everything had become something people rented rather than owned, and even basic necessities had slowly been transformed into recurring payments. The changes had created some genuine enthusiasm among the population, but decades of disappointment had left behind a deep distrust of anyone claiming to represent them.
Even many of the rights people had gained during those fifty years had not been granted because corporations suddenly cared about ordinary citizens. More often than not, one corporation had simply discovered that weakening another corporation would give it an advantage, and the public happened to benefit from the resulting conflict. The loud minority that remained deeply loyal to one political party or another continued to defend their preferred politicians and repeat their messages, but most of the population had grown thoroughly disillusioned with the entire spectacle. They were tired of watching wealthy people argue on television while they struggled to pay their bills, lived from paycheck to paycheck, and accumulated debt simply to maintain an ordinary standard of living. Politics had become another form of entertainment, and most people had stopped believing that changing the actors would change the play.
Because of that, the average American no longer cared very much about who ran for president. There was little reason to become emotionally invested when anyone who somehow managed to become genuinely independent and dangerously popular had a habit of turning up dead under suspicious circumstances. If an independent candidate became too influential, it was not unheard of for that person to be discovered with two bullets in the back of the head, after which the authorities would calmly declare the death a suicide. Nobody seriously believed those explanations anymore, but most people had also learned that believing something and being able to do anything about it were two very different things.
Yet there was one thing that could still make people turn on their televisions in the cities that still had electricity. The increasingly serious problems appearing inside the various secret realms had made people nervous, especially because everyone remembered what had happened in Europe three years earlier. They had watched the reports, heard the rumors, and seen enough footage to understand that secret realms were not simply strange new places containing valuable resources. They could become disasters capable of threatening entire countries, and the American public had no desire to experience the European situation firsthand.
There was also the growing problem involving the military, and that frightened people far more than they were willing to admit. The American military remained the one institution that still gave many citizens a reason to believe their country could survive the changes occurring around the world. It was still powerful, it was still competent, and despite everything else that had gone wrong, it had continued to protect the country. Being a member of the armed forces had consequently become one of the few occupations that automatically earned a significant amount of respect, while military service also provided a level of stability that many ordinary Americans could no longer find elsewhere.
That was why Luke's arrival on the Senate floor immediately attracted attention. "Enough!" Luke yelled as he walked into the chamber with a photograph in his hand, deliberately allowing a small amount of his aura to leak from his body. Under normal circumstances, such a thing should not have been possible for him, because Luke had gone to considerable lengths to hide his cultivation level and prevent anyone from realizing how quickly he had progressed. Revealing even a small portion of it was therefore a risk, but he had reached the point where he no longer had the luxury of worrying about subtlety.
His life was on the line, and he needed the senators to stop their pointless arguments long enough to listen to him. Fortunately, the sudden pressure rolling across the room achieved exactly what he wanted. The shouting gradually died down as senators turned toward him, some looking confused while others immediately became suspicious of the strange sensation they could feel in the air. Luke did not give them enough time to recover before raising the photograph in his hand and preparing to deliver the words he knew would make every politician in the room pay attention.
"I have with me evidence of people who are sabotaging our secret realms, taking the profits for themselves, and not paying us anything in return!" Luke shouted as he slammed the photographs onto the Speaker's desk. The photographs were immediately collected and projected so that the rest of the Senate could see them, and the reaction was almost instantaneous. The senators who had been prepared to continue their arguments suddenly became silent as they realized what Luke was accusing someone of doing. Whatever their political differences might have been, the idea that someone was stealing money from them was something they could all understand.
Luke had found the magic words.
He continued his rant, describing the intruders as criminals who were exploiting America's secret realms while deliberately avoiding the proper authorities and refusing to provide the country with its rightful share of the profits. He accused them of undermining American sovereignty and treating the homeland as though it were merely another piece of land available for exploitation. With every accusation, the mood inside the Senate became increasingly hostile toward the unknown intruders. Luke pushed the senators toward the conclusion he wanted, arguing that these people should be declared public enemy number one and killed for invading the homeland.
Meanwhile, inside an office that definitely had not existed before, another conversation was taking place. There had been no door or window in that location previously, yet there was now a perfectly ordinary-looking office occupying the space, and anyone who walked through its entrance would find a man seated behind a desk. He was surrounded by paperwork and looked exactly like a professional lawyer preparing for an important meeting. The unnatural nature of the room was almost impossible to notice unless someone already knew that it should not have been there.
The man wore a full three-piece suit that was grey with thin stripes running through it, giving him the appearance of someone who belonged in a prestigious law firm rather than a mysterious room hidden inside the United States Capitol. His short haircut made his blond hair look particularly neat and proper, while his blue eyes gave him an appearance that could almost be described as Viking-like. In some ways, that comparison was not entirely inaccurate, because his ancestors really had practiced that trade long ago. Despite his imposing appearance, however, his expression remained calm as he looked across the desk at the person speaking to him.
"And you are sure that they will not kill me for this?" the blond man asked calmly. "Because if the situation is really as bad as you describe, then what I am about to say is going to be pretty bad." He looked toward the man seated across from him, although calling the person a man was based entirely on the voice he could hear rather than anything he could actually see. With people like these, appearances could never be trusted, and the blond man had already learned that assuming someone was exactly what they appeared to be was a good way to end up dead.
In fact, he already knew there were at least four other people somewhere inside the room. He simply had no idea where they were, despite having spent enough time there to become increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that he could not locate them. The room itself appeared completely ordinary, yet something about the people occupying it made ordinary rules seem irrelevant.
"Oh, no, they will absolutely try to kill you," the unseen man replied with a chuckle. "But we will make a big enough commotion that we can slip away unseen, so long as you stick to your talking points." His tone made it clear that he was not particularly worried about the situation, and he seemed to find the blond man's concern more amusing than frightening. From his perspective, there was little reason to doubt that their plan would work, especially considering the people who had been assigned to assist them.
The blond man was not exactly someone who looked easy to kill, either. Besides his good looks, he was also six feet tall and quite muscular, giving him the physical appearance of someone who could handle himself in a fight. More importantly, he had grown up inside one of the Great Houses, and none of those families had survived for generations by raising paper tigers. The people who came from such families were expected to possess the strength, discipline, and confidence necessary to survive situations where ordinary people would have already panicked.
"That should not be a problem," the blond man assured him with a grin. "I assure you, it was quite an effort on my part to secure this job." Getting selected had not been a simple matter, because his own house had spent an entire day debating who would be sent to the United States Capitol. In the end, he had been chosen because everyone involved considered the assignment important enough to warrant someone capable of handling the pressure. More importantly, humiliating the United States was something they were all looking forward to.
"Good, then let's get this show on the road," the unseen man said. His voice carried a note of amusement as he continued, "The matriarch was pissed that she could not participate personally, so the faster we can get to work on our list, the better." As he spoke, the atmosphere inside the room gradually changed, and the people hiding within it allowed their bloodlust to seep outward. The pressure was subtle at first, but it was more than enough to make the blond man's instincts scream that the people surrounding him were far more dangerous than ordinary cultivators.
Yikes, they really are as fearsome as the rumors claim, the blond man thought as he felt the bloodlust filling the room. He could not help but feel relieved that people like this were on his side, because facing them as enemies would have been an entirely different matter. With that thought, he stood from his chair, adjusted his tie, and straightened his suit before walking toward the newly created doorway. His expression remained calm as he stepped out of the strange office and began walking toward the United States Senate, where the next part of their plan was about to begin.