"Everyone stay back!" Dr. Chen screamed, waving her medical bag like a weapon as panic rippled through the crowd of parents gathering at the school gates. "This child has been exposed to a highly contagious pathogen with a ten-minute incubation period!"
The lie spread faster than wildfire.
Igniting primal parental fears.
Transforming concerned mothers into an angry mob.
Cell phone cameras flashed like strobe lights, capturing what they believed was a medical emergency but was actually an assassination attempt disguised as public health theater.
"Get them away from our kids!" someone shouted.
"Call the CDC!" another voice demanded.
The mob mentality took hold with terrifying speed, transforming rational adults into a swarm of accusation and fear. Hands reached out, voices rose in panic, and the circle of hostility tightened like a noose around a father trying to protect his daughter.
That's when Lily saw the syringe.
The sight of the needle gleaming in Dr. Chen's hand triggered memories that should never exist in a five-year-old's mind—dark basements, cruel women in white coats, pain that lasted for hours while nobody came to save her.
Her small body began trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.
Her tiny fingers clawed at Ethan's pants leg with desperate strength.
"Daddy," she whispered, her voice breaking with terror that cut through his heart like a rusty blade, "the bad needle lady... she's going to hurt me again, isn't she?"
**[DING!]**
**[SUPREME DAD SYSTEM - CRITICAL EMOTIONAL TRIGGER]**
**[DAUGHTER'S TRAUMA RESPONSE: MAXIMUM DETECTED]**
**[RAGE CONVERSION PROTOCOL: ACTIVATED]**
**[NEW ABILITIES UNLOCKED]**
**[PASSIVE SKILL: ABSOLUTE DOMINION - GOD'S FORBIDDEN ZONE]**
**[ACTIVE SKILL: THIRTEEN NEEDLES OF HELL - DEATH'S INVITATION]**
---
Dr. Chen struck like a viper.
Her hidden needle shot toward Lily's carotid artery with surgical precision.
The crowd's chaos provided perfect cover for murder disguised as medical intervention.
The needle's tip came within millimeters of piercing innocent skin.
Ethan's fingers closed around the syringe shaft like a mechanical vise, stopping the weapon's momentum so completely it might as well have struck solid steel. The needle trembled in the air, frozen between life and death, between a father's protection and an assassin's intent.
"Impossible," Dr. Chen breathed, her eyes widening as she tried to push forward with strength that could have driven the needle through concrete.
It didn't move a single millimeter.
Ethan's gaze met hers, and she saw something in his eyes that made her blood turn to ice water—the kind of cold fury that belonged to ancient gods deciding which civilizations deserved to survive another day.
"You made a mistake," he said quietly, his voice carrying the finality of a judge pronouncing a death sentence. "You threatened my daughter with the one thing that terrifies her most."
His fingers tightened.
The sound of crushing metal mixed with breaking bone.
Both the military-grade syringe and the assassin's fingers crumbled like sand castles hit by tsunamis.
Dr. Chen's scream of agony cut through the crowd's noise like a fire alarm announcing the end of the world.
Before she could fully process the destruction of her hand, Ethan had already claimed the broken needle's remains. His knee drove into her solar plexus with enough force to lift her feet off the ground, and the jagged metal found its new home in the pressure point beneath her armpit.
"This technique is called 'Questioning the Heart,'" he said conversationally, as if discussing the weather while performing surgery without anesthesia. "It won't kill you. But it will amplify every pain receptor in your body by ten thousand percent."
---
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
Dr. Chen collapsed like a marionette with severed strings, her body convulsing as nerve endings fired signals that redefined the concept of suffering. The gentle breeze felt like razor blades. The touch of her own clothing became liquid fire. Even breathing turned into an exercise in surviving hell.
She tried to scream.
But the pain had stolen her voice.
Leaving only silent gasps that looked like a fish drowning in air.
The crowd fell silent, their anger replaced by primitive fear as they witnessed something that belonged in medical textbooks written by demons.
"Stress response therapy," Ethan explained calmly to the stunned parents, his voice carrying the authority of someone who could rewrite medical science with his bare hands. "Sometimes extreme situations require extreme treatments."
He knelt beside Roxanne, who was still struggling with her injured ankle from the earlier chaos. His touch was gentle as summer rain as he found the correct pressure points, and within seconds she was standing without pain.
"How did you—" she began.
"Medical school," he said simply, lifting Lily into his arms with infinite tenderness. "You pick up a few things."
The crowd parted like the Red Sea as they walked through, parents pulling their children closer while staring at the man who'd just performed a miracle disguised as casual kindness.
As they passed the writhing form of Dr. Chen, Ethan paused.
The assassin's lips were moving soundlessly.
Forming words that only someone trained in reading lips could understand.
"Water... source..."
The words hit him like lightning striking twice in the same place.
**[CRITICAL ALERT - CITY-WIDE THREAT DETECTED]**
**[WATER SUPPLY CONTAMINATION: VX-3 VARIANT CONFIRMED]**
**[LOCATION: COASTAL CITY WATER TREATMENT PLANT #3]**
**[PRESSURIZATION CYCLE: 119 MINUTES REMAINING]**
**[ESTIMATED CASUALTIES: 3.2 MILLION CIVILIANS]**
**[THREAT LEVEL: EXTINCTION EVENT]**
---
The temperature in Ethan's eyes dropped to absolute zero as the full scope of the enemy's plan became clear.
They weren't just hunting him.
They were willing to commit genocide to flush him out of hiding.
Three million innocent people. Mothers, fathers, children who'd never done anything worse than forget to recycle or jaywalk across empty streets. All of them marked for death because someone wanted to play games with a father's love.
Lily stirred in his arms, her small hand reaching up to touch his face with the trust that only children possess—the absolute faith that daddy would always keep the monsters away from her dreams.
"Daddy?" she whispered sleepily. "Are we going home now?"
"Yes, princess," he said softly, his voice warm as summer sunshine despite the arctic fury building in his chest. "We're going home. But first, daddy has to take care of some very bad people who want to hurt other children like you."
The Supreme Dad System hummed with apocalyptic intent:
**[MORAL CONSTRAINTS: PERMANENTLY DELETED]**
**[MERCY PROTOCOLS: OFFLINE]**
**[OBJECTIVE: TOTAL WAR]**
**[AUTHORIZATION: WEAPONS FREE]**
**[PATERNAL PROTECTION MODE: UNLIMITED]**
Ethan looked down at his daughter, then at the city skyline where three million people were going about their daily lives, completely unaware that death was flowing toward them through the very pipes that brought life to their homes.
Some lines should never be crossed.
Some games should never be played.
Some fathers should never be pushed past their breaking point.
The enemy had just learned the difference between hunting a man and awakening a force of nature that wore a father's face.
The war was about to escalate beyond anything they had imagined possible.
And when the smoke cleared, only one side would be left standing to tell the story of what happened when someone threatened to poison a father's world.
The clock was ticking.
119 minutes to save three million lives.
But first, he had to make sure his daughter was somewhere safe.
Because what came next would redefine the meaning of divine retribution.