He tried to click 'Cancel,' but the cursor moved on its own, hovering over the button. A text box appeared at the bottom of the window, flickering in a font that looked like jagged bone:
The screen didn't go black. It went white—the bright, sterile white of a fresh drive being formatted. As the progress bar finally hit 100%, Elias felt a strange lightness in his chest, as if his own history was being moved to a Recycle Bin that he could no longer reach.
Elias considered himself a digital ghost. He never paid for software, and he certainly never left a trail. His latest conquest was a cracked copy of , ironically downloaded to scrub the remnants of a previous "free" antivirus that had started acting like a stalker.
By morning, the laptop was found on a clean desk in an empty apartment. It was factory reset, pristine, and ready for a new user. There were no leftovers.