Panic arrived, not as a flood, but as a slow, cold trickle down my spine.
The CD was blank. I’d used it as a coaster. accidentally deleted audio driver
I nearly wept.
“Leo, please.”
“I did.”
And then—like a miracle, like the first bird after a nuclear winter—the little speaker icon lost its red X. A second later, the Windows startup sound, that soft, swelling four-note chord, washed over me. Panic arrived, not as a flood, but as