Chapter 1

"Did you buy a refurbished unit?" Dexter Grant asked.

"I bought it from the official site," I said in a hoarse voice. "It arrived three months ago."

Three months ago, right after I got the laptop, my cousin, Joe Clinton, asked to borrow it.

Back then, he grabbed my arm and said, "Mike, I'm handling editing for a new short video project at work."

His eyes lit up with excitement as he added, "My crappy laptop can't even handle 1080p without lagging. Yours is top-tier. Let me use it for a month. I promise I'll take good care of it."

My mom, Nancy Bennett, chimed in from the side. "Just let Joe use it. He just started working. It hasn't been easy for him."

I hesitated. The laptop cost 7,800 dollars, split into 12 payments of about 650 dollars a month. For someone in design, it wasn't just a tool. It was my livelihood.

However, Joe held up three fingers and swore, "Just one month. I'll return it right after the project. I'll keep it clean. I won't mess with it."

I believed him.

That one month turned into three.

The first month, he said the project was delayed.

The second month, he said he had taken on another project.

By the third month, he told me to stop rushing him.

When he finally returned it, he didn't even show up. He left the laptop at the security booth and walked away.

Although it had been returned, I couldn't help wondering if everything inside was still mine.

"Can you check the internals for me?" I asked Dexter, my voice trembling slightly.

Dexter brought out his tools and unscrewed the back panel. It opened with a click, and his expression immediately froze.

My stomach dropped. "What is it?"

"This is the top-spec model, right?"

"Yeah. The CPU should have a specific laser-etched mark from the manufacturer."

Dexter pointed beneath the heatsink. "Look at this. The engraving is shallow, and the edges are rough. This has been re-etched. And this RAM—the original uses low-profile custom sticks. These are standard ones, and they're already worn."

He flipped one over. In the corner, there was a faint pencil mark.

"Secondhand dealers use markings like this all the time," Dexter said grimly.

He powered it on and ran a benchmark. The results began to pop up one after the other.

The CPU performance sat at the lowest tier.

The memory frequency did not match the specs.

The SSD read and write speeds were only a third of what they should have been.

Even the VRAM had been cut down to 4 GB.

My legs gave out, and I had to grip the edge of the table to stay upright.

"Do you want to call the police?" Dexter asked.

I shook my head and reached for my laptop bag.

"Not yet. I'll go to the official service center first. I need a written report."

I took a few hours off work and took the laptop to an authorized service center. The air conditioning was freezing, but I was still drenched in cold sweat.

A technician wearing white gloves placed the inspection report on the table and slid it toward me.

"Mr. Smith, the results are conclusive. Most of your laptop's internal hardware has been replaced with unauthorized, non-original parts."

He began pointing them out one by one. The CPU had been polished and rebranded to mimic an i7. The memory modules were secondhand. The SSD was a low-quality, off-brand unit.

My voice trembled as I asked, "Can you determine when the replacements were made?"

He said calmly, "Based on the system logs, the original hardware was last detected three months ago. After that, it appears the data was wiped."