My housekeeper's six-year-old son caught me crying alone in my wheelchair and then asked me the one question that all the adults around me had been too afraid to ask. Minutes later, I was begging him to take my money, my mansion, even my entire fortune if it could save the broken man I had become, but he rejected it all, leaned close to my ear, and whispered a secret from my past that I had never told anyone.

The surveillance monitors in my private terminal pinged. Two black Chevrolet Suburbans had pulled up to the security gates at the end of the long driveway.

"Apex Security," I muttered, zooming in on the license plates. "Vance's personal muscle. They're early."

"What do we do?" Rebecca asked, panic lacing her voice as she clutched Sammy's hand.

"They have security codes to the outer gate, but they don't have access to this manor," I said, rapidly typing commands into my independent console. "I isolated the estate's primary hub from the corporate intranet four months ago when I grew paranoid. Every window on the ground floor has motorized steel shutters. Every reinforced door uses biometric access."

With a sharp keystroke, the estate shifted into lockdown. Outside, the low, mechanical drone of steel plates sliding over the French doors and floor-to-ceiling windows echoed through the walls.

"We can't stay down here forever," Rebecca said. "If Vance realizes we're barricaded, he'll bring the police with a court order under Article Seven."

"He won't have the chance," I said. "There is a utility tunnel built during Prohibition that connects the basement of this manor to the old carriage house across the north ravine. It leads directly to an access road near Route 41."

I wheeled my chair over to a steel cabinet in the far corner. Inside hung a specialized mechanical rig—a custom, motorized exoskeleton that a Swiss medical team had delivered six weeks ago. I had refused to even try it on, cursing them out of the house in a fit of rage because it wasn't a 'real cure.'

"Rebecca," I said, pointing to the carbon-fiber braces. "Help me strap these on."

"Ethan, the doctors said—"

"The doctors said I would never walk naturally," I interrupted. "They didn't say I couldn't stand with twenty thousand dollars of titanium and pneumatic servos. Strap me in."

Her hands worked with breathtaking speed. With an engineer's precision, she secured the carbon cuffs around my thighs, calves, and waist, locking the battery pack across my lower back. She synced the neural-cuff sensors around my wrists.

"Now," I grunted, gritting my teeth as I engaged the auxiliary motors.

The hydraulic system whined. A sharp, mechanical groan echoed through the vault as the braces locked. My legs, completely numb to sensation, were hoisted upward by the cold, unforgiving strength of steel.

My head swam. The room spun. For the first time in seven months, I was looking down at the floor from six feet above the ground.

"Ethan!" Rebecca cried, catching my arm as I swayed violently.

"I have it," I panted, sweat instantly beading on my forehead. My balance was agonizingly unstable, relying entirely on the gyro-stabilizers in the frame and my own upper-body strength leaning on a set of heavy forearm crutches. "I have it."

Sammy looked up at me, his eyes wide with awe. "You're tall, Mr. Ethan. Like a robot."