"My duck blood is ruined."
Vivian's voice carried the kind of deadly calm that preceded mass extinctions as she stared at the carnage scattered across the Maybach's interior. What had once been her precious takeout—three extra servings she'd saved up for like a broke college student—was now a grotesque mixture of soup, glass shards, and automotive debris. The bridge around them looked like a war zone, smoke rising from drone wreckage, but all she could focus on was twenty-five dollars' worth of destroyed perfection.
A crackling speaker from nearby drone debris continued its mocking broadcast: "Target eliminated. Mission accomplished."
Vivian reached over and ripped the speaker apart with her bare hands, metal cutting into her palms.
*They destroyed my lunch. Every single one of them is going to burn.*
"Ma'am, we need to evacuate immediately," Marcus stammered from somewhere behind the twisted metal, his voice shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. "The authorities will be here any moment, and if they find us—"
Vivian ignored him with the kind of focused intensity that suggested someone was about to witness digital genocide. She pulled out a military-grade tactical knife and began prying open the Maybach's destroyed control panel, sparks flying as she brutally yanked out wiring harnesses with the precision of a surgeon and the delicacy of a wrecking ball.
*Time for some old-fashioned biblical justice. An eye for an eye, a server farm for a soup.*
Blood dripped from her cut palms as she extracted the core processor chip from the nearest drone wreckage and jammed it into her improvised interface. The connection sparked to life, and her eyes took on the cold glow of someone about to commit technological mass murder.
**[JUDGE SYSTEM: VENGEANCE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]**
**[TARGET: HELLFIRE COMMAND CENTER]**
**[ATTACK TYPE: DIGITAL APOCALYPSE]**
**[ESTIMATED CASUALTIES: TOTAL ANNIHILATION]**
**[PERSONAL MOTIVATION: EXTREME FOOD RAGE]**
***
Three miles away, in the underground command center known as Hellfire, a dozen hackers were popping champagne and celebrating their successful assassination attempt. Monitors displayed the smoking wreckage of the bridge, and their leader—a scarred man who went by "Reaper"—raised his glass in a toast to their tactical brilliance.
"To the death of Lucien Pei and his mysterious bitch bodyguard!"
The celebration lasted exactly thirty-seven seconds.
The first wave hit their servers like a digital tsunami designed by an angry god. Three hundred million access requests per second slammed into their network with the force of a nuclear weapon, turning their supposedly impenetrable firewalls into digital tissue paper. Emergency alarms shrieked as server after server began overloading, their cooling systems failing under the impossible computational load.
"What the fuck is happening?" Reaper screamed as sparks began shooting from every piece of equipment in the room like a Fourth of July celebration in hell.
The second wave was pure, concentrated malice. Every screen in the facility displayed the same image—a high-definition close-up of spilled duck blood soup, accompanied by text that scrolled in letters three feet tall:
**"YOU TOUCHED MY FOOD. NOW I'LL SCATTER YOUR ASHES TO THE WIND."**
The voice that accompanied the message was female, cold, and carried the kind of promise that made hardened criminals reconsider their life choices.
"It's just one woman!" Reaper shouted over the chaos. "How is one fucking woman doing this?"
Servers began exploding in sequence like dominoes made of fire and molten metal. Each detonation sent showers of sparks and burning debris across the command center. The hackers ran for the exits as their multi-million-dollar operation burned around them, but the doors had been digitally locked from the outside.
The last thing Reaper saw before the final explosion was a message that burned itself into his retinas: "Next time, order your own takeout."
Within five minutes, the entire facility was a smoking crater that would puzzle investigators for years.
***
Back on the bridge, Vivian's system cheerfully calculated the results of her rampage like a particularly vindictive accountant:
**[MISSION COMPLETE]**
**[ENEMY HARDWARE DESTROYED: $35,000,000]**
**[PERSONAL INVESTMENT LOST: $25]**
**[RETURN ON INVESTMENT: 1,400,000%]**
**[SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION: CONSIDER CAREER IN FINANCIAL TERRORISM]**
*Satisfying, but still not enough. I want their entire bloodline to apologize to my soup.*
"Magnificent work."
Lucien's voice was rough with pain and something that sounded suspiciously like arousal. Despite the blood trickling from a cut on his forehead and the way he favored his left shoulder, his storm-gray eyes burned with the kind of dark excitement that suggested he'd thoroughly enjoyed watching her commit digital mass murder.
He pulled out a cigarette with his uninjured hand and held it to her lips, his thumb brushing across her cheek to wipe away a smudge of oil and debris. The touch was gentle, intimate, and completely at odds with the destruction surrounding them—like a lover's caress in the middle of a battlefield.
"You burn so beautifully when you're angry," he murmured, his voice carrying the kind of dark appreciation that made her pulse spike dangerously. "Remind me never to touch your food. I'll buy you an entire duck farm as compensation."
"Cash equivalent," Vivian replied without missing a beat, though something about his touch made her skin tingle in ways that had nothing to do with her system's energy transfer.
*Always negotiate up. And ignore the way he's looking at you like he wants to devour you whole.*
But before Lucien could respond with what was undoubtedly going to be another inappropriately seductive comment, her system erupted in warnings that made her blood crystallize:
**[S-LEVEL THREAT DETECTED]**
**[ORGANIZATION "TOWER" HAS BEEN ALERTED]**
**[YOU ARE NOW A PRIORITY TARGET]**
**[ESTIMATED SURVIVAL TIME: SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTENED]**
**[RECOMMENDATION: RUN. RUN NOW.]**
*Shit. I just painted a target on my back the size of Texas and lit it on fire.*
The sound of approaching sirens cut through the air like knives. A convoy of police vehicles was racing toward the bridge, led by a man whose reputation preceded him like a plague warning. Detective Captain Yan Zheng—the kind of cop who could smell guilt from three miles away and had never met a case he couldn't crack with the persistence of a bloodhound and the moral flexibility of a saint.
"Ms. Johnson," Lucien said quietly, using her cover identity while his arm slipped around her waist with possessive casualness. "I believe we're about to have some very inconvenient company."
Yan Zheng's sharp eyes swept the scene with the precision of a forensic scanner, taking in every detail of the destruction. When his gaze landed on the improvised wiring in Vivian's blood-stained hands, his expression shifted to the kind of predatory satisfaction that suggested someone was about to be arrested for cyberterrorism and possibly treason.
"Interesting hobby you have there, miss," he said, stepping closer with the confidence of a man who'd just found his smoking gun. "Care to explain why you're holding what appears to be evidence of illegal network intrusion and possibly domestic terrorism?"
*Time for the performance of my fucking life.*
Before Vivian could formulate a response that wouldn't end with her in a federal supermax prison, Lucien moved with fluid grace. His arm tightened around her waist and pulled her against his chest with possessive force, the contact sending that familiar electric charge through both their systems like a live wire.
**[ENERGY TRANSFER INITIATED]**
**[LIFE FORCE: +1 HOUR]**
**[NEURAL STABILITY: RESTORED]**
**[SIDE EFFECT: INCREASED PHYSICAL AWARENESS]**
"Officer Yan," Lucien said with the kind of calm authority that came from owning half the city and having the other half on his payroll. "My secretary was just playing Snake on her phone to calm her nerves after the terrorist attack. She's been severely traumatized by the explosion and is barely coherent."
Vivian immediately understood the assignment and threw herself into the role with Oscar-worthy commitment. Her entire demeanor shifted from digital assassin to helpless victim in the space of a heartbeat. Tears welled in her eyes as she buried her face against Lucien's chest, her voice breaking with perfectly manufactured terror.
"It was so scary!" she sobbed, her body trembling against his with calculated vulnerability. "The loud noises and the fire and the blood... I just wanted to play a game to feel better! I didn't know what else to do!"
*If I don't win an Emmy for this performance, the system is rigged.*
Yan Zheng's eyes narrowed with the suspicion of a man who'd heard every lie ever invented, but Lucien's reputation and political connections made direct confrontation inadvisable without concrete evidence. After a tense moment that felt like an eternity, he stepped back and waved them through with obvious reluctance.
"Get her medical attention," he said grudgingly, his tone suggesting he'd rather be conducting a very different kind of interview. "And next time, maybe choose a safer route for your business meetings."
As they climbed into the backup vehicle Marcus had summoned, Vivian immediately dropped the helpless act and returned to her usual cold efficiency. The tears vanished like they'd never existed, leaving only the kind of calculating intelligence that made smart men nervous and stupid men dead.
Lucien watched the transformation with obvious fascination, his lips curving into a smile that suggested he was enjoying this deadly game far more than was healthy for anyone involved.
"The Tower organization," he said quietly as the car pulled away from the bridge, his voice carrying a note of anticipation that bordered on excitement. "I've been wondering when they'd finally notice me."
He leaned back against the leather seat and closed his eyes, but his smile remained—sharp, dangerous, and full of dark promise.
"This should be... entertaining."