New Orleans smelled like powdered sugar and exhaustion.
At least, that's how Ryan Bruce described it while standing in line at Little Oaks Preschool's annual bake sale—holding a tray of overcooked, slightly lopsided chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting and a unicorn ring jammed into each one like a crown. His four-year-old daughter, Faith, had insisted on the unicorns. His eight-year-old, Holly, had offered helpful critique, which mostly consisted of her calling them "gross little sugar blobs."
Now, Ryan stood in a gymnasium filled with folding tables, crying toddlers, and militant moms with walkie-talkies. He wore a crayon-scribbled "#1 Dad" sticker on his chest and had a smear of green glitter across one cheek, courtesy of a "family art booth incident" that he didn't want to relive.
"Daddy," Faith said, tugging his sleeve with the intensity of a kid mid-emotional crisis, "someone took the pink cookie. The pink one. With the face."
Ryan blinked. "There was a face?"
"It was smiling," she said, eyes welling up. "It was my cookie."
Holly rolled her eyes, arms crossed. "She dropped it. I saw the whole thing. It fell, she screamed, and now she wants revenge."
"I want justice," Faith corrected.
Ryan knelt down between them, cupcake tray still in hand. "Okay, listen. I'll make a new cookie. Better cookie. Bigger eyes. Maybe… laser eyes."
Faith looked mildly intrigued. Holly looked like she was already writing a dramatic essay about how she was surrounded by chaos.
His smartwatch vibrated. Three pulses. He shifted the tray to one arm and flicked his wrist to read the screen, hiding it from the girls like it was just another boring weather update.
ONYX CORE PRIORITY ALERT
Asset WRENZ detected: Uptown NOLA Broadcast Tower
Threat Level: RED
Suspected cyberstrike within the hour
Immediate response required
Discretion is survival –Siena
Ryan's stomach dropped.
The Uptown tower. That's where Emily worked. Live, on-air, in the middle of a Saturday segment about rising crawfish prices and spring fashion. If Wrenz was involved, this wasn't a simple hack. It was something far worse.
"Dad?" Holly tilted her head. "Are you okay? Your face did the weird thing again."
"What weird thing?"
"The face where your eyes go all 'mission mode' and then you lie terribly."
Ryan forced a crooked smile. "No weird face. Just remembered I left… uh, the better cupcakes in the car."
Faith gasped. "Laser eyes?"
"Even better," Ryan said, already backing toward the exit. "Stay with the bake sale mom. I'll be right back."
"Are you coming back before the cookie judging?" Holly asked, suspicious.
"Definitely," Ryan said, lying through his teeth.
Then he turned and walked—brisk but casual—out the back of the gym, where the air smelled a little less like frosting and a lot more like danger.
End of Chapter One.