He clicked. The screen went black for a heartbeat before a sterile, white progress bar stretched across the center.
The cursor blinked rhythmically, a tiny neon heartbeat in the dim glow of Elias’s apartment. He had been scouring the deepest, unindexed layers of the web for weeks, chasing a digital ghost. Then, a single encrypted link appeared in his inbox from a sender with no name. He clicked
