"Lily, sweetheart, Daddy's going to show you the most amazing magic trick ever," Ethan whispered as he pushed through the heavy fire door into the emergency stairwell, his voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins like liquid lightning. "But you have to close your eyes and count to ten for the magic to work."
The thick steel door sealed behind them with a sound like a tomb closing, cutting off the warm light from the hallway and plunging them into the harsh fluorescent glare of the emergency lighting. Lily giggled with delight, completely unaware that three trained killers were climbing the stairs below them like death ascending from hell itself.
"Really, Daddy? What kind of magic?" she asked, bouncing in his arms with the excitement of a child who still believed in miracles.
"The kind that makes bad people disappear," Ethan said softly, gently covering her eyes with his large hand. "Now count backwards from ten, and don't peek no matter what you hear, okay? Promise Daddy."
"I promise! Ten... nine... eight..."
The moment Lily's innocent voice began the countdown, something fundamental shifted in Ethan's entire being. The gentle father vanished like smoke, replaced by something cold and lethal that belonged in nightmares and classified military files.
**[DING!]**
**[SUPREME DAD SYSTEM - COMBAT MODE ACTIVATED]**
**[THREAT ASSESSMENT: 3 A-RANK MERCENARIES DETECTED]**
**[WEAPONS: SUPPRESSED FIREARMS, TACTICAL GEAR]**
**[DAUGHTER SAFETY: PRIORITY ALPHA]**
**[RECOMMENDATION: ELIMINATE ALL THREATS]**
Behind the fire door, Roxanne Sterling pressed herself against the wall, her heart hammering like a machine gun as she watched through the reinforced glass window. She'd followed them out of pure legal curiosity, but now she was witnessing something that would haunt her dreams forever.
Three men in black tactical gear were moving up the stairwell with the fluid precision of professional killers, their suppressed weapons gleaming under the emergency lights like instruments of surgical death.
"Seven... six... five..."
---
On the count of "five," Ethan struck.
His foot lashed out like a piston, connecting with the electrical panel in an explosion of sparks and shattered plastic. The stairwell plunged into absolute darkness, broken only by the eerie green glow of battery-powered emergency strips that cast everything in an otherworldly light.
"Four... three... two..."
In the darkness, Ethan became something that defied human limitation. He moved like liquid shadow, like death given form and purpose. The first mercenary never saw him coming—one moment he was scanning the darkness through night vision goggles, the next his arm was bent at an angle that violated every law of anatomy, the bone snapping with a sound like breaking kindling.
The man's scream died in his throat as Ethan's elbow found his solar plexus with surgical precision.
"One... zero! Did the magic work, Daddy?"
The second killer spun toward the sound of his partner's collapse, finger tightening on his trigger, but Ethan was already there. A knee strike to the chest caved in ribs like an eggshell, sending the man crashing into the concrete wall with enough force to crack the reinforcement.
The third mercenary broke completely, his training evaporating in the face of something that moved faster than human reflexes should allow. He fired blindly into the darkness, muzzle flashes strobing like lightning, but Ethan was everywhere and nowhere, a ghost made of violence and paternal fury.
The killer's last conscious thought was the feeling of iron fingers closing around his throat like a mechanical vise.
Roxanne watched through the glass, her brilliant legal mind struggling to process what she was seeing. Men trained to kill were being dismantled like broken toys by someone who moved with inhuman speed and precision. Her knees buckled, and she had to grip the door frame to keep from collapsing.
---
"Daddy, can I look now? Did you make the bad people disappear?"
Ethan flicked the emergency lighting back to full power, and the stairwell blazed with harsh white light. He stood exactly where he'd been when the countdown started, not even breathing hard, while three unconscious forms lay crumpled in the shadows beyond Lily's line of sight.
"The magic worked perfectly, princess," he said, his voice returning to the gentle tone of a loving father. "All the bad people are gone."
Lily clapped her hands in delight. "You're the best magician ever, Daddy! Can you teach me how to do magic too?"
"When you're older, sweetheart. Much older."
As he spoke, Ethan knelt beside the unconscious leader, his fingers finding a metal badge hidden in the man's tactical vest. The insignia made his blood run cold—a single eye surrounded by tentacles, the mark of The Abyss Watcher.
They'd found him faster than he'd expected.
The fire door burst open, and Roxanne stumbled through, her face white as paper and her hands shaking like autumn leaves. "You... you killed them. I saw you kill three men with your bare hands."
"Killed?" Ethan's eyebrows rose in mock confusion. "Ms. Sterling, I think the stress is getting to you. These hotel workers obviously had too much to drink and fell down the stairs. Happens all the time in places like this."
"Don't lie to me!" Roxanne's voice cracked with hysteria. "I saw what you did! That wasn't human! You moved like... like..."
"Like what?" Ethan stepped closer, and suddenly the temperature in the stairwell seemed to drop twenty degrees. His eyes held depths that spoke of violence beyond imagination, of capabilities that existed in the shadows between governments.
"Like nothing at all," he said quietly, his voice carrying undertones that made Roxanne's survival instincts scream warnings. "Because nothing happened here. Three drunk employees slipped and fell. That's all anyone will ever know. That's all anyone will ever remember."
He leaned closer, close enough that she could smell the danger radiating from him like heat from a forge.
"Because if anyone remembers anything else, if anyone suggests that something different happened here tonight, they might not live to see tomorrow's sunrise. Do we understand each other, counselor?"
Roxanne nodded frantically, her legal training completely overwhelmed by the primal terror of being in the presence of an apex predator who was barely restraining himself from violence.
---
Twenty minutes later, Ethan sat in the back of a taxi with Lily sleeping peacefully in his arms, her small hand still clutching the napkin full of golden fried rice. To any observer, they looked like a normal father and daughter heading home after a late dinner.
But in his palm, hidden from view, lay the crushed remains of the Abyss Watcher badge—a message sent and received.
**[DING!]**
**[CRITICAL ALERT]**
**[ABYSS BEACON ACQUIRED - COORDINATES FULLY EXPOSED]**
**[ENEMY FACTION "GLUTTONY" MOBILIZING]**
**[HIGH-VALUE TARGET APPROACHING: ETA 3 MINUTES]**
**[THREAT LEVEL: EXTINCTION CLASS]**
Ethan's smile was sharp as a blade and twice as dangerous. He crushed the badge into metal powder that scattered in the wind like ash from a crematorium.
"Perfect timing," he murmured to the night air. "I was still hungry anyway."
The Supreme Dad System hummed with anticipation:
**[COMBAT PROTOCOLS STANDING BY]**
**[DAUGHTER PROTECTION: MAXIMUM PRIORITY]**
**[WEAPONS FREE]**
**[LET THEM COME]**
In the distance, the sound of helicopter rotors began to echo through the city like the beating wings of mechanical vultures. The real war was about to begin.
And Ethan Blackwell was ready to paint the streets red with the blood of anyone who threatened his daughter.
The sleeping child in his arms stirred slightly, murmuring "Daddy" in her sleep, and his expression softened with infinite tenderness.
For her, he would burn the world.
And tonight, he might just get the chance.