Arjun had expected fear.
He had prepared for it, rehearsed it even. Cold sweat. Shaking hands. The sudden urge to shut the laptop and pretend none of this had ever happened.
Instead, what arrived was something heavier.
Responsibility.
The screen glowed softly in the dark room, illuminating the lines on his face. The house was silent except for the ceiling fan, its uneven rhythm reminding him that time, like machines, wore down eventually.
The files were there. Neatly stacked. Categorized without effort.
Transaction histories. Email threads. Voice recordings disguised as system backups.
Lives, reduced to data.
Arjun stared at one email longer than the others. It was written casually, almost lazily. A politician instructing his assistant to "handle the charity matter quietly." No anger. No urgency. Just confidence.
That confidence hurt more than the crime itself.
He realized then that corruption didn't shout. It whispered, assuming obedience.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
This was not theft anymore.
This was preservation.
If he took money, it would disappear into the noise of outrage. If he took truth, it would rot quietly unless revealed at the right moment.
Arjun closed his eyes.
He thought of his son standing on that stage, voice trembling with belief. He thought of his daughter-in-law counting donation slips at the dining table, worried they had made a mistake somewhere.
He pressed save.
The moment passed without drama. No thunder. No alarms.
Yet something inside him shifted permanently.
He was no longer reacting to loss.
He was choosing direction.
(Easter egg buried here: Arjun instinctively creates multiple backups in different formats. Later, this habit saves the entire operation when one system is compromised.)