Desperation led him to the darker corners of the web. He didn't want the official trial; he needed the full power of a recovery suite, and he needed it for free. On a forum filled with broken links and flashing ads, he found it: .
"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."
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.