Leo found in a directory that shouldn't have existed: C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Ghost\ .
"Probably just a legacy remnant," he muttered, though his gut tightened. He tried to delete it. He tried to move it to a quarantined drive. Access Denied. PatchingAPI.exe
Curiosity, the career-killer of many a sysadmin, took over. He opened the file in a hex editor. Instead of the usual mess of machine code, the right-hand panel displayed strings of legible text that scrolled by like a live chat: LATENCY_DETECTED: SUBJECT_01_LEO COGNITIVE_PATCH_REQUIRED Leo found in a directory that shouldn't have