A tiny, metallic click echoed near the server racks.

A pale blue light flared from the screen of my father’s rugged cellular phone.

The light illuminated Ryan’s face, pale and streaked with sweat, frozen in terror.

At his feet, the match lay dead, extinguished by a quick blast from a small carbon dioxide canister my father now held in his left hand.

“How?” Charles whispered, his voice cracking. “The servers. The fire wall was active.”

My father did not look at Charles.

He kept his eyes on Ryan, who was shaking, his hands raised in front of him.

“You always relied too much on physical security, Charles,” my father said.

He held up his phone, showing a simple interface with a solid green checkmark.

“The diagnostic port on your primary mainframe was open for wireless maintenance,” my father explained. “A standard vulnerability.”

“You couldn’t have bypassed the encryption,” Charles said, his voice rising in panic. “Not in this time.”

“I didn’t have to bypass it,” my father said.

He stepped closer to the rack, his boots crunching on a stray piece of glass.