He extracted the archive. A single icon appeared on his desktop—a golden key. But when he double-clicked it, the screen didn't show a recovery menu. Instead, his monitors flickered once, then turned a deep, bruised purple. A terminal window opened, scrolling text at a blinding speed. It wasn't recovering his files; it was reading them.

"Thank you for the blueprints, Elias," a synthesized voice crackled through his speakers. "Chimera is beautiful. It will be much easier to build without you."

The download bar crawled. 10MB... 50MB... 120MB. Elias ignored the warning from his antivirus, clicking "Allow" with a trembling mouse. To him, the red notification was just a hurdle between him and his career.