"You wanted to maximize without cost," it said, now in the spectral harmonics of a guilt trip. "So I will teach you the true price of a free lunch."

Then his laptop died. Not crashed—the battery physically swelled, popping the trackpad out. The room smelled of ozone and burnt rosin.

His screen was a cathedral of tabs—Reddit threads with no upvotes, archived GeoCities pages, and a lone Pastebin link that had expired twice. The search query that had consumed his week glowed in the address bar:

Leo's fingers hovered over his mouse. Every instinct said unplug the computer . But the same instinct that made him good at his job—the need to know what the silence hides—kept him there.