“Twelve milliseconds?” Leo muttered. That was faster than his naked connection.

The cursor blinked on Leo’s screen like a metronome counting down to disaster.

Leo was proofreading his thesis when a new message appeared in the extension’s panel. Not a pop-up ad or a nag screen, but a single line of text: “You have used 847 GB this session. Unusual pattern detected. Upgrade to Turbo Max Pro for ‘uncapped’ access?”

The turbine icon vanished. So did the speed. But the upload continued for another thirty seconds—a final data burst to some server in the Baltics—then stopped.