The download was suspiciously fast. He sat staring at the file: Hetman_Recovery_Full_Pack.zip .

In the sudden, heavy dark, Elias sat trembling. He looked at the corrupted hard drive sitting on his desk. His thesis was still there, locked away, but now he realized he had tried to trade his digital soul to get it back. He didn't know if the "Keygen" had finished its work before he pulled the plug, or if VoidWalker was still watching from the shadows of his motherboard.

A small window appeared with a "GENERATE" button. He clicked it. A serial key populated the box. He copied it into the official trial version of the software he’d downloaded earlier. Registration Successful.