HE FOUND HIS DAUGHTER EATING FROM A DOG BOWL... THEN ONE VIDEO DESTROYED HIS FIANCÉE'S ENTIRE LIFE

Marcus raised his hands slowly, stepping away from the stove and placing himself directly between Yuri and the laptop.

"Okay," Marcus said, keeping his tone submissive. "Okay. You win. I'll enter the code. Just don't hurt my daughter."

"Daddy!" a muffled, terrified little voice cried out from inside the iron stove.

"It's okay, Lily! Keep your earmuffs on!" Marcus yelled back, his heart shattering at the sound of her fear.

Yuri gestured with the barrel of his rifle. "Move to the keyboard. Slowly."

Marcus took a step backward. His mind was racing through a million calculations per second. He was outgunned. Hayes was gone. He had five bullets left in his 9mm, which was resting on the counter three feet away. It might as well have been a mile.

He looked around the dimly lit cabin. The high-lumen security floodlights outside were still glaring through the blown-out door, casting long, harsh shadows across the room.

01:45... 01:44...

"Faster," Yuri growled, stepping into the room.

Marcus reached the table. He placed his hands on the mechanical keyboard. He looked up at Yuri. The mercenary was massive, wearing level IV body armor that would stop a pistol round easily. Shooting for center mass was useless.

"What is the code?" Yuri demanded, keeping the red laser sight fixed on Marcus's forehead.

"It's a thirty-two character alphanumeric sequence," Marcus lied, his fingers hovering over the keys. "It takes a minute to type."

"Then start typing."

Marcus began to hit random keys. Click, clack, click.

Under the table, Cassandra laughed weakly. "He's lying to you, Yuri. He's stalling."

Yuri’s eyes narrowed. He took another step forward. "You think I am an idiot, computer boy?"

00:59... 00:58...

"No," Marcus said, his voice suddenly dropping its submissive tone, turning ice-cold. "I think you're standing on a structural weak point."

Yuri frowned, looking down.

Marcus wasn't typing a bypass code. He was accessing the cabin's smart-home hub. With a violent strike of his pinky finger, Marcus hit the ENTER key.

Below the floorboards, the heavy, industrial-grade generator that powered the cabin's off-grid electrical system surged. Marcus had wired a dead-short into the system's massive lithium battery bank during his afternoon preparations.

A deafening, localized explosion ripped through the floor directly beneath Yuri's feet.

The floorboards shattered. Smoke and blue electrical fire erupted upward. Yuri roared in surprise as the floor gave way, dropping him waist-deep into the jagged, flaming hole. His assault rifle fired wildly into the ceiling as he fell.

Marcus didn't waste a millisecond. He lunged for the kitchen counter, sliding across the blood-slicked wood, and grabbed his 9mm pistol.

Yuri, incredibly, was still fighting. Coughing through the acrid smoke, the mercenary hauled his massive upper body out of the hole, raising his rifle toward Marcus one last time.

Marcus aimed with both hands, focusing purely on the gap between Yuri’s helmet and his body armor.

He pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. BANG. BANG. BANG.

Yuri’s head snapped back, his rifle clattering to the floor. The massive mercenary slumped forward, lifeless, sliding back into the smoking crater of the floorboards.

Silence descended on the cabin, save for the crackle of electrical fire and Cassandra’s terrified, whimpering sobs from under the table.

Marcus slowly turned his head toward the laptop screen.

00:03... 00:02... 00:01... 00:00.