Prologue

  Bash scrolled through a list of potential targets the same way people scrolled through dating apps. No... no... maybe... no. Hmm. What's this?

  A nothing burger. An old server with MD5 encryption. It'd been a while since he'd bothered cracking one this basic. Shrugging, Bash dug through his old scripts until he found what he needed. "Wow, who wrote this crap?" He paused. "Oh, right. I did."

  A couple of clicks, and he was in. "Ha! I win again!" He leaned back slightly, smiling at nobody. Victory was victory, even when the opponent was a helpless password from 2004.

  Searching through the server, he found nothing. And more nothing. But something was definitely wrong here. He could feel it, that familiar itch. This thing was just way too clean, like bleached bones at a crime scene.

  There it was, hidden behind the empty directories, a not-at-all-suspicious folder.

  Bash opened it and stopped scrolling. “What the hell?” It was several seconds before he understood what he was looking at.

  Images of a grainy, concrete hallway painted that dead bureaucratic beige. Two men in lab coats dragging a woman between them. Not on a stretcher, but by her arms.

  A spreadsheet with nicely color-coded rows. Dates. Names. Status columns that said terminated.

  That itch at the back of his mind wasn't an itch anymore. It was a scream.

  Bash didn't think. He grabbed the laptop he was using and threw it. The machine hit the far wall and exploded, scattering keys and screen fragments across the room. He sat there, breathing hard, the room suddenly dark except for the glow of a clock that read 3:17 AM.

  "Oh, God." The words came out small. I had my VPN on, right? He replayed the session in his head. Yes. Definitely yes. Probably yes. Maybe.

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  This had to be a bad dream. It had to be. He'd fallen asleep at the keyboard again, and none of this was real, and in the morning he'd wake up and feel stupid for getting spooked by some edgelord's art project.

  ***

  BWONK! The alarm jolted Bash awake, loud enough to rattle his teeth.

  Fumbling with the security monitor on the nightstand, he pulled up the camera feed. On it, four figures in tactical gear advanced up the cracked walkway, rifles held with casual precision.

  SWAT teams at least had the decency to wear badges. These guys wore no insignia, all matte black with jagged helmets, motocross gear crossed with horror props.

  His mind raced through a catalogue of bad decisions. Sketchy websites. Angry exes. None of it warranted a kill squad… Unless he hadn’t been dreaming.

  They were already at his front door, giving an almost polite jiggle of the doorknob, a pointless courtesy.

  It’s fine, as long as I don’t invite them in, everything should be alright… But everything was, in fact, not alright. The door breach was anticlimactic. Not the battering ram Bash had imagined, but the soft clunk of a hydraulic spreader that easily defeated his expensive security lock.

  They entered in a formation straight out of a first-person shooter, so tight that Bash could feel it constricting around his chest.

  Every instinct told him to flee. Bash hit the floor and scrambled across the room on all fours, his feet snagging on loose cables. Grabbing the handle, he yanked himself into his converted walk-in and slammed the door behind him. His panic room was built to survive a zombie apocalypse, not Mad Max.

  Bash felt, rather than heard, when they breached his bedroom. Covering his head, he dropped to the floor as silenced rounds punched through the wall all around him. Each impact was a muted pop that showered him with drywall dust. “Of course. Spend ten grand on crypto, but not on bulletproof walls. Great investment strategy.”

  Something stung his thigh, and fire spread outward, sharp and relentless. He howled, the sound raw, animal, humiliating. His vision blurred with tears before he dragged in a breath, forcing out a rasping laugh. “Awesome. Now I’m poor and ventilated.”

  On the other side, Bash heard a metallic click and the unmistakable smell of propellant. The closet wall exploded inward, shrapnel tearing through him and leaving his ears ringing. The white-hot pain from earlier was nothing compared to the migraine splitting his skull.

  One of the intruders walked forward, through the blown-out hole, and raised their rifle, the barrel stopping inches from his forehead.

  Bash was running the last subroutine he knew. Comedy. With a trembling hand, he forced his bleeding arm upward. Not to block. Not to beg. But to dab. A sloppy, lopsided dance move performed with death staring him in the face.

  [ Click ]