Chapter 7 - The Breached Perimeter
The move we had been anticipating finally came on a freezing Tuesday night, exactly three weeks after the photograph incident.
It was 2:14 AM. The digital clock on my bedside table glowed in the dark as a soft, rhythmic hum filled the room. Suddenly, a sharp, piercing alarm tone echoed through the master suite—not a loud house siren, but the low-frequency tactical alert signaling a perimeter breach on the north sector.
I sat up instantly, my heart hammering against my ribs. I slipped out of bed, grabbed the heavy security tablet my father had programmed for me, and tapped the camera feeds.
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The screen flickered to life. A single figure clad in dark, heavy clothing was slipping silently through the shadows near the old greenhouse. He wasn't scaling the main security gate; he had used a duplicate electronic passcard—an old master credential from his brief, superficial integration into our family years ago that had somehow escaped our digital purge.
Ryan. He wasn't carrying a firearm—he was too cowardly for that—but in his gloved hands, he held a heavy plastic container smelling faintly of gasoline and a box of long-match igniters. His intent was crystal clear: he was going to burn the house down with us trapped inside.
