After spending $110,000 supporting my family, I returned from a 21-day Navy mission to find my father giving my $4 million Lake Tahoe villa to my sister—but one message from my attorney was about to turn their champagne celebration into a nightmare.

The room seemed to drop ten degrees.

"You're lying," I said, keeping my weapon steady despite the icy dread creeping into my chest. "Tartarus was an electronic warfare listening boat."

"Under the original Navy specs, yes," Victor smiled, stepping aside to reveal the central terminal. On the screen was a live bathymetric display of the Pacific seabed. A flashing red beacon pulsed directly at the tectonic boundary of the San Andreas fault line off the Northern California coast.

*SEISMIC INJECTION ARRAY: ARMED.*

*TIME TO DETONATION: 04:59... 04:58...*

"The syndicates who funded my resurrection don't care about Cold War telemetry, Marcus," Victor whispered, tapping the tablet against his palm. "They care about market chaos. A localized 8.2 magnitude seabed rupture collapses West Coast commercial shipping and wipes out half a trillion dollars in maritime trade within twenty-four hours. My short positions on Pacific transport indices are already locked."

"Step away from the console!" I roared, lunging forward.

Victor didn't flinch. Instead, he slammed his palm down onto a hidden emergency switch beneath the desk.

Heavy armored blast shutters slammed down across every doorway and window, sealing the server bay in total, airtight isolation. Simultaneously, a sharp, hissing sound echoed from the overhead ventilation grates.

*HALON GAS SUPPRESSION SYSTEM ENGAGED. OXYGEN DEPLETION IN SIXTY SECONDS.*

"Neither of us is leaving this room, Marcus," Victor said, his smirk vanishing into a feral, desperate snarl as he drew a compact ceramic pistol from beneath his coat. "Let's see who runs out of breath first."