The green webcam light turned red. The real Elias lunged for the power cable, yanking it from the wall, but the monitor didn't go dark. It stayed lit, powered by something other than electricity.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, his webcam light flickered to life—a steady, unblinking green eye. Elias froze. He hadn't opened any recording software. He moved his hand to cover the lens, but before he could touch it, a window popped up in the center of his monitor. It wasn't a registration prompt. It was a video player.
Elias wasn't a thief; he was a filmmaker with a vision and a bank account that currently sat at negative twelve dollars. He needed to record his final thesis project—a live-streamed digital performance—and the trial version of Debut had just expired, slapping a giant, ugly watermark across his masterpiece.