Ethan stood perfectly still in the center of the intersection as three Apache helicopters circled overhead like mechanical vultures, their targeting systems painting red dots across his chest.
"Target acquired," the lead pilot's voice crackled through military frequencies. "Hellfire missiles armed and ready. Engaging hostile."
Two streaks of death screamed toward him at supersonic speed.
Warheads designed to vaporize everything within a fifty-meter radius.
In the underground toy store across the street, Roxanne watched through security monitors as certain death approached the father of her... what was he to her now? The man who'd just saved three million lives with a phone call and rewritten the laws of physics like they were suggestions?
"Daddy's on TV!" Lily squealed with delight, pressing her face against the screen with the innocent joy of someone who believed the world was full of magic and wonder. "Why are the big dragonflies chasing him?"
Ethan's voice came through the store's speakers, warm and gentle despite the missiles bearing down on him like the wrath of gods who'd forgotten mercy existed.
"Princess, daddy's going to show you a magic trick. Watch the super big dragonflies paint a love heart in the sky!"
He pulled out his ancient flip phone.
Casual as ordering pizza.
Deadly as nuclear winter.
**[CRITICAL ALERT - HYPERSONIC DESTRUCTION IMMINENT]**
**[HELLFIRE MISSILES: 2.7 SECONDS TO IMPACT]**
**[ACTIVATING: SKYNET OVERRIDE PROTOCOLS]**
**[HIJACKING: MISSILE GUIDANCE SYSTEMS]**
**[MODE: CHILDREN'S DRAWING APPLICATION]**
The missiles stopped three meters from Ethan's face.
Just... stopped.
Hovering in mid-air like deadly hummingbirds that had forgotten how to be deadly.
Their orange exhaust flames shifted to cotton-candy pink, sparkling with glitter that definitely wasn't standard military issue.
---
"What the hell?" the lead pilot screamed into his radio, his voice cracking with the kind of panic that came from watching reality break down in real time. "Command, our missiles have gone rogue! They're... they're drawing something!"
Ethan swiped his finger across his phone screen like he was playing a casual game, and the two missiles responded like obedient pets trained by someone who understood that love was more powerful than destruction.
They traced a massive heart in the sky.
Their pink contrails shimmering with bioluminescent particles.
Turning the afternoon into a fairy tale written by someone who believed in happy endings.
In the toy store, Lily clapped her hands with pure joy that could have powered the sun and made angels weep with happiness. "It's so pretty! Daddy made the dragonflies draw me a love heart!"
Roxanne stared at the screen, her legal mind trying to process what she was witnessing while her heart whispered that some miracles were too beautiful to question. Military hardware worth millions of dollars had just been turned into... art supplies for a five-year-old's entertainment.
But Ethan wasn't finished with his performance.
"Dance," he said into his phone, his voice carrying across frequencies that shouldn't have existed and commanding obedience from machines that had been designed to kill without question.
The three Apache helicopters immediately lost formation, their pilots fighting controls that no longer obeyed human commands. To the opening notes of Swan Lake—somehow broadcasting from their own speakers—the war machines began an aerial ballet that would have been hilarious if it weren't absolutely terrifying.
The lead helicopter attempted a pirouette.
The second tried a grand jeté that nearly sent it into a building.
The third managed something that might have been a curtsy if curtsies involved twenty million dollars worth of military equipment performing interpretive dance.
"This is impossible!" the squadron leader shouted, his voice breaking with the strain of watching his entire understanding of reality crumble like a house of cards in a hurricane. "Our entire flight system has been compromised! We're dancing to classical music!"
---
Ethan raised his phone toward the toy store's security camera and smiled with the warmth of someone who'd just given his daughter the most expensive magic show in human history.
"Take a bow, gentlemen."
All three helicopters tilted forward in perfect synchronization, their rotors creating a thunderous applause as they acknowledged their audience with the grace of performers who'd just realized they were part of something larger than warfare.
Then they fired their chaff dispensers in a coordinated burst, filling the sky with metallic confetti that sparkled like the world's most expensive fireworks display designed by someone who understood that beauty could triumph over violence.
Within seconds, they were fleeing toward the horizon, their flight control systems permanently scrambled and their pride in tatters, leaving behind only the fading echo of classical music and the memory of missiles that had chosen love over destruction.
But in Ethan's enhanced vision, warnings flashed like emergency beacons announcing the arrival of something far worse than military hardware:
**[EXPOSURE METER: 92% - CRITICAL THRESHOLD BREACHED]**
**[GLOBAL KILL ORDER: ACTIVATED]**
**[HUNTER DESIGNATION: "WRATH" - MAXIMUM THREAT LEVEL]**
**[STATUS: LANDED AND OPERATIONAL]**
**[ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 47 MINUTES]**
Ethan ignored the alerts and took the elevator down to the toy store, expecting to find his daughter laughing at the magical show he'd just performed for her entertainment and wonder.
Instead, he found Roxanne and Lily huddled in the corner.
Their faces pale with terror that had nothing to do with dancing helicopters or heart-shaped missile trails.
On the counter between them sat an opened package.
One that his system had intercepted and delivered despite his security protocols.
A black card lay beside it, its message written in elegant script that dripped with malicious intent: "Since missiles can't kill you, do you dare accept this 'gift' you've been searching for these past five years?"
Ethan's blood turned to liquid nitrogen as he flipped the card over.
A small piece of red leather was taped to the back.
Patent leather.
From a designer high heel.
The same shoe his wife had been wearing the night she disappeared into a hell that had lasted five years and counting.
---
The scent hit him as he approached the package—metallic, organic, wrong in every way that mattered to someone who'd spent five years searching for traces of the woman who'd given him everything beautiful in his world.
His enhanced senses could identify the components: fear, pain, and something else that made his hands shake as he reached for the contents with movements that belonged to someone approaching his own grave.
**[BIOMETRIC ANALYSIS: CONFIRMED MATCH]**
**[DNA SIGNATURE: 99.7% PROBABILITY]**
**[SAMPLE AGE: APPROXIMATELY 72 HOURS]**
**[SUBJECT STATUS: UNKNOWN - PRESUMED ALIVE]**
Lily's small voice cut through his horror like a knife through his heart, innocent and trusting in a world that had just revealed new depths of cruelty.
"Daddy, why do you look so scared? Did the magic trick go wrong?"
Ethan forced his expression back to gentle warmth, though his eyes had become winter storms that promised the end of worlds and the rewriting of reality itself through pure paternal fury.
"No, princess. Daddy just... daddy just got a message from some very bad people who don't understand that some games should never be played with a father's heart."
The Supreme Dad System hummed with apocalyptic intent that made nuclear weapons seem like children's toys:
**[THREAT ASSESSMENT: PERSONAL - MAXIMUM PRIORITY]**
**[EMOTIONAL STATE: BEYOND RAGE - ENTERING DIVINE WRATH]**
**[AUTHORIZATION: UNLIMITED VIOLENCE]**
**[OBJECTIVE: TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF ALL THREATS]**
**[MERCY PROTOCOLS: PERMANENTLY DELETED]**
Someone had just made the mistake of threatening not just his daughter, but the memory of the woman who'd given her life to bring that daughter into the world.
The war was about to become personal in ways that would redefine the meaning of vengeance and remind the world why some fathers were more dangerous than natural disasters, nuclear weapons, and the wrath of gods combined.
And somewhere in the city, a hunter called "Wrath" was about to learn why you never, ever threaten a father's family.
Not if you wanted to survive the lesson.
The clock was ticking.
47 minutes until the ultimate confrontation.
But first, Ethan had a promise to keep to his wife.
A promise written in blood and sealed with five years of searching.
The hunt was about to become the hunted.