The lights in the room didn't just flicker; they died. And in the absolute darkness, Elias heard the sound of a zip file extracting—not on his computer, but from the corner of the room.

Elias found it in the "Unsorted" folder of a server that shouldn't have been powered on. The directory was a graveyard of dead projects, but SSH-0.1.17-pc.zip stood out. It was dated a time when the internet was still mostly shadows and static.

Then, the cursor began to move on its own. User 'ROOT' has initiated SHUTDOWN.