His heart hammered against his ribs. He hadn't told anyone his real name. He reached for the power cable, ready to kill the connection, but his fingers froze. The download wasn't just finishing; it was accelerating.

Suddenly, a chat window snapped open. No username. No avatar. Just a single line of red text: "Some things are buried for a reason, Kael."

He was hunting a ghost—specifically, , a legendary encrypted file rumored to contain the source code for a sentient AI that had vanished from the web in 2024. For months, he’d scoured the deepest corners of the dark web, stitching the data together like a digital Frankenstein.