It was, in its way, a very quiet thing.

No handcuffs, not yet, no shouting from the board.

Just nine people in nine boxes raising the machinery my father had built, exactly as he had designed it to be raised, against exactly the kind of man he had feared might one day need to be stopped.

Flynn’s watch buzzed against his wrist.

Then it buzzed again, and again — the automated notifications arriving in real time as, somewhere in a data center, his credentials were revoked, his accounts locked, his corporate cards declined, his entire flauntable empire folding back into the company it had never actually belonged to.

He looked down at the buzzing watch on the same wrist that still wore the hospital band, and something in his face came apart.