"Mr. Ross, call for the people of New York to evacuate—do it under the pretext of a terrorist attack…" After weighing it back and forth for several minutes, President Obama finally gave the order.
Calling it a terrorist attack was a convenient cover. What if the aliens never showed? What if they struck some other country, some other region instead?
In a situation like this, Obama had precious little room to maneuver. All he could do was pray for God's mercy—that he wouldn't be forced out of office the moment he'd stepped into it. He hadn't even finished a full month of his term.
Contact the New York city government. Contact the National Guard. Mobilize the garrisons nearby, recall discharged soldiers back to service, hand out weapons. The carriers stationed along the East Coast were all ordered home, and the missile silos scattered across the Western Hemisphere went to top-level combat readiness.
The moment the President switched the country into wartime alert, the Pentagon ordered every garrison in the land to stand ready.
"Mr. President! The intelligence is confirmed—an alert posture isn't enough anymore." On the screen, the Secretary of Defense seemed to be receiving a report from his staff. He turned his head, murmured a few questions, and quickly faced the camera again, his expression grave.
He transmitted the latest satellite imagery for them to see. The Chitauri vanguard had already crossed into Mars's range, and the military satellites had captured these cosmic pirates on film.
A squad of Chitauri drifted past the lens. They wore metal masks, and the skin on their faces looked less like skin than some fusion of metal and flesh—the very thing that let them survive in the vacuum of space.
They were baring their teeth, grinning. The one in the lead even pointed at the military satellite so his companions could see, and they let out a round of silent, mocking laughter. Their contempt for humanity's level of technology was on full, undisguised display.
The government officials and generals who had rushed to the room were laying eyes on aliens for the first time.
There was no denying it: the Chitauri were ugly enough that no one, looking at them, would ever mistake them for friends. Worse, these things were intelligent, organized, and armed with advanced technology. As it sank in that Earth was staring down a catastrophe, every face in the room went dark.
Politics, compromise, alliances and betrayals, trading favors—all the things these men were so very good at meant nothing in front of the Chitauri. The only thing left to do was roll out the artillery and pick up their guns.
"Move to a wartime footing, now. How you set up the defensive lines is your problem. In five minutes I'm going on television." Obama ground his back teeth, his voice trembling as he issued the order, and shot a glance at his aides—get Air Force One ready. Once the speech was done, he needed somewhere to hide, the better to lead America's soldiers and civilians in their continued fight.
Watching him tell his wife and children to pack their clothes, Daisy suddenly remembered something. "Mr. President, halt the markets first. Freeze the data."
Director Daisy's entire fortune was basically tied up in stocks. The moment word got out that New York was about to be overrun by aliens, those shares would crash all the way back to the 19th century.
Her words jolted everyone. These days, people with no exposure to the stock market were rarer than hen's teeth—and as for this crowd inside the White House claiming to have no dirty money, nobody believed that for a second.
A whole crowd of them, generals included, immediately backed her up.
"Commander Johnson is right!"
"Halt the markets now, Mr. President—give the order!"
"You can't hesitate, Mr. President! The survival of the nation rests on this!"
They shouted themselves hoarse, practically ready to block Obama's exit until he gave the word.
Obama couldn't fight the will of the room, and he wasn't about to pick a fight with all of them. He gave the order at once—markets closed. As for the reason, they'd let the Federal Reserve cook one up.
Everyone watched as Obama settled behind his desk, ready to begin his televised address. This time there was no need to hack any root servers—two phone calls, and the White House had taken over every broadcast channel, every livestream, every network platform.
The speech was short and to the point. Tax cuts, industrial support programs, the Afghanistan withdrawal—not one of those old three chestnuts got a mention. For the first time, he cast aside the flowery phrasing and the stirring cadence.
The whole thing carried a single message: humanity's hour of crisis had come, and if you didn't want to end up a corpse, then resist to the bitter end.
The famous talking heads who could normally rant for thirty minutes over the President so much as picking his nose fell collectively silent. For the first time, the commentators didn't seize on Obama's policies to score points—they'd all been struck dumb by the news of aliens.
Aliens? Living, breathing aliens were coming? Not one or two, but thousands upon thousands.
Most people's first reaction was disbelief. But as the government slowly came to accept the news and began issuing evacuation orders down the chain, and the NYPD deployed in full to keep order, the public finally believed it.
The news was spreading through the crowds at an outrageous speed.
The mayor of New York sent word almost immediately: evacuating a city of over ten million in barely an hour simply couldn't be done. No supplies had been prepared either—you couldn't expect people to walk out of New York empty-handed. And who would answer for the property they left behind?
"Mr. Mayor, if a full evacuation isn't possible, then get people down into basements, subway stations, any underground facility they can find. There's a high chance the fighting happens right here in New York." Daisy knew the mayor—they'd spoken a few times. Clearing the city in an hour truly was a brutal ask, but not clearing it wasn't an option. All you could do was your best and leave the rest to fate.
She thought for a moment, then went on. "The battle won't last long. Three days at the most. Either we beat the enemy, or…"
She didn't say what the "or" was. If the military was wiped out to the last man, then any civilian who survived after that could thank God for it. Their belongings? Who'd have the luxury of worrying about those—and besides, the Chitauri had no use for their dollars and bank cards. That was the last thing those things wanted.
Once Obama finished his speech, he left the military and S.H.I.E.L.D. to organize the defense and counterattack, then boarded Air Force One with his wife and kids and got out of there.
Daisy didn't linger either. S.H.I.E.L.D. had a mountain of things to handle, and she still needed to reach out to the mutants. If she could, she wanted to find Magneto too—against the Chitauri, Erik alone could do more than the entire Avengers roster put together.
Midtown High School.
One minute after the speech ended, Coulson was back at the school.
In this timeline he hadn't been run through by Loki, and with Daisy having commandeered Zephyr One as her personal ride, Coulson had things comparatively easy. One more agent at S.H.I.E.L.D. made no difference, and one less didn't either—so after a quick word with Nick Fury, he headed back to the school to organize the students' evacuation.
Knowing his own combat rating wasn't high, and that once the aliens came he might not be able to protect that many kids, he pulled in Agent May to help. She'd only just finalized the divorce with her ex-husband and had been sidelined lately herself.
May had grown much thinner, her cheeks hollowed out, and her high cheekbones gave her a keep-your-distance air. She didn't turn down Coulson's request—she agreed on the spot.
Working alongside the school's teachers and custodians, the two of them started herding the students toward the nearest subway station to shelter. The ordinary kids were easy enough. It was the handful of troublemakers who were going to be a headache.