The day my wife was forced to put on a wedding dress.

"Bang!"

I kicked open the rusty iron door of the Aurora Island slums.

"Eileen!" I called out her name, my voice hoarse. It had been five years. The stench of gunpowder from the Deep Sea Suppression Mission still clung to my combat boots, but in this moment, all I wanted was to embrace my woman.

In a dark, damp corner, Eileen was fiercely shielding a frail, emaciated little girl.

The little girl shared my deep, dark eyes. That was my daughter.

"Don't touch us!" Eileen looked up in terror, her white-knuckled grip locked tight around a rusted shard of iron.

My Adam's apple bobbed. I was just about to step forward and reveal my identity when my gaze suddenly locked onto something.

Horrifyingly, embedded into the slender necks of both Eileen and my daughter were dark gray metal collars.

Beep— Beep—

A dark red command light flashed in sync with some sort of pulse frequency, like the flicking tongue of a venomous snake.

"What is that?" I stared at the faint red glow, my voice trembling.

They were military-grade micro-biological bombs. Upon detonation, they would instantly be reduced to a mist of blood.

Before she could answer, the wooden plank wall behind me suddenly collapsed with a crash.

"You actually dare to default on Mr. Julian's debt?"

Three thugs in military-industrial uniforms smashed through the wall. The bald brute leading them grabbed Eileen by the hair, violently dragging her out into the waterlogged mud.

"Let my mommy go!" my three-year-old daughter screamed, flailing her little hands and biting at the bald brute's pant leg.

"Get lost, you little bastard!" The brute raised his mud-caked combat boot, aiming a kick straight at my daughter's fragile chest.

He was courting death.

My joints cracked loudly as murderous intent shattered the cage of my rationality.

As the Commander-in-Chief of the Blackwater Fleet, it would take me a mere tenth of a second to crush the cervical vertebrae of these three pieces of trash into powder.

I pushed off the ground with explosive force, shattering the bricks beneath my combat boots inch by inch.

But in that exact fraction of a second, the micro-communicator hidden deep within my ear canal let out a piercing screech.

"Commander! Stop!" The Blackwater Fleet Chief Technology Officer's voice, cracking with sheer panic, cut directly into my auditory nerve.

"The collars are tethered to Julian's heartbeat! The frequency is bio-synchronized!"

My boot froze dead in mid-air, a mere half-inch from the back of the bald brute's skull.

"You cannot forcefully remove them! Killing Julian will also trigger an instant detonation!"

"We need time to decrypt the full-frequency signal! If you make a move now, the Madam and the Young Miss will die!"

The warning from the earpiece acted like a high-voltage current, instantly and forcefully locking down all my movements.

For the lives of my wife and daughter.

I bit down on my molars so hard that the heavy taste of blood instantly filled my mouth. I forcefully drained away the armor-shredding power surging through my limbs and loosened my clenched fists.

"Don't hit the child!"

I let myself collapse into the muddy water, covering my head with my hands while letting out a trembling plea, perfectly disguising myself as a cowardly scavenger whose legs had been crippled by deep-sea radiation.

The bald brute paused his attack, turning his head to stare at me groveling in the mud.

"Raynor?" Eileen stared at me in disbelief, a sudden spark of light igniting in her dead, hollow eyes.

It was the hope of someone grasping at a final lifeline in absolute despair.

"Oh? If it isn't the piece of trash who went missing five years ago!" The bald brute planted his foot heavily on my back, grinding my face—which was already pressed against the mud—even deeper into the filth.

"Did the deep-sea radiation ruin your legs? Now you're groveling on the ground like a dog!"

A heavy iron pipe swung down, whistling through the air.

Thud!

It landed squarely on my back. I deliberately dropped all my bodily defenses, allowing the iron pipe to smash against my fragile joints as agonizing pain radiated through me.

"Fight back! Aren't you a man?" The other thugs swarmed in, raining down a storm of kicks and blows upon my body.

Cupping my head in my hands, I curled up in the muddy water like a true coward, letting their steel-toed boots trample my skull and allowing the filthy sludge to fill my mouth.

"Stop hitting him..." Eileen sobbed, throwing herself forward, only to be brutally kicked aside by another thug.

"I beg you, he's sick!"

Through the reflections in the muddy puddles, I locked my eyes onto Eileen. I wanted to stand up. I wanted to tell her that I had returned with an army of thousands at my back. But all I could do was listen to the technology officer's trembling voice in my earpiece:

"Decryption progress at one percent... We need more time..."

I had no choice but to endure.

"Cripple him!" The bald brute raised his iron pipe and smashed it ruthlessly against my knee.

Crack.

"Ahhh—!" I let out a feigned, bloodcurdling scream, my body writhing in simulated agony.

The thugs finally grew tired. Sneering, they spat directly onto my head.

"What a spineless piece of shit. Let's go. We'll report back to Mr. Julian and tell him Eileen's trash of a husband is back. We can toss him into the underground gladiator arena for some entertainment."

Cursing and swearing, the thugs looted the last remaining scraps of food in the room before turning and leaving.

Inside the cramped ruins, the only sound left was the dripping of rain.

I lay in the freezing mud, covered in blood, my legs dragging limply behind me. With great difficulty, I lifted my head to look at Eileen just a few steps away.

Eileen was slumped on the ground, tightly cradling our trembling daughter in her arms.

She looked at me.

The faint spark of hope that had just ignited in her eyes when I kicked the door open—that desperate yearning to be saved—was now extinguishing bit by bit.

She looked at my mud-caked face, my crippled legs, and how I had just been beaten like a dog without putting up any fight.

There were no hysterical questions, nor were there any tears.

Eileen simply withdrew her gaze numbly, resting her chin on our daughter's hair. The light in her eyes had completely turned to dead ashes, leaving behind nothing but a despair heavier than the depths of the ocean.