Chapter 7 - The Master Key
Ethan stared bravely down the dark barrel of the gun, his breathing ragged but his mind racing for a solution.
"Do not do this, Marcus," Ethan said softly, refusing to show fear.
"Those people upstairs have absolutely nothing to do with Derrick's crimes."
"They are parasites, Ethan," Marcus spat angrily, his finger tightening dangerously on the trigger.
"They worship the very monster who tried to brutally murder me."
Suddenly, a heavy metal server panel crashed to the floor directly behind Marcus.
Derrick had miraculously managed to stand up and hurled a loose metal tray at Marcus's head.
The distraction was only a split second, but it was all the time Ethan needed.
Ethan swept his leg out in a brutal arc, catching Marcus behind the knee and sending him crashing hard to the floor.
The gun fired wildly into the ceiling, taking out a row of overhead fluorescent lights in a shower of sparks.
Ethan scrambled to his feet and lunged for the dropped weapon, but Marcus was much faster.
Marcus kicked Ethan hard in the ribs, rolling backward gracefully and retrieving the pistol.
Instead of aiming at Ethan again, Marcus aimed directly at the central cooling column of the primary mainframe.
"If I cannot have my revenge slowly, I will take it all at once!" Marcus screamed in unhinged rage.
He fired twice directly into the heavy, pressurized coolant pipes.
Highly conductive fluid sprayed everywhere in a massive geyser, coating the glowing servers.
Alarms immediately began shrieking throughout the room at a deafening, terrifying pitch.
"Critical core failure detected," the robotic voice announced coldly over the sirens.
"Catastrophic thermal event imminent in exactly four minutes."
Marcus laughed maniacally as the heavily damaged servers began to spark and actively catch fire.
"The whole house is going to burn to the ground, and no one gets out alive!" Marcus yelled over the chaos.
He backed away rapidly toward a secondary, hidden escape hatch built into the floor.
"Goodbye, Ethan," Marcus sneered, dropping the empty gun and diving headfirst into the escape chute.
Ethan ignored the fleeing madman and rushed desperately to the sparking master terminal.
He had to reroute the emergency power to the heavy blast doors upstairs before the entire mansion exploded.
He typed furiously into the keyboard, but a new, terrifying prompt flashed on the screen, denying him access.
"System override requires Master Key Level Zero authentication," the screen read in harsh, blinking red letters.
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Ethan froze, realizing the only physical Master Key was stored on an isolated drive in his apartment miles away.
The countdown timer hit three minutes, and the actual flames began to lick at his boots.
