Leo looked at his optimized PDF—beautiful, tiny, and clean. Then he looked at the hidden schematics, pulsing with red corruption.

He closed the proposal. Opened a blank document. And began to write a new one.

Leo’s blood went cold. The proposal he was about to send wasn’t just a bid for a contract. It was a cover. Hudson & Crane were unknowingly selecting the architect who would build their deathtrap.

He grinned.

His coffee had gone cold. His cat, Pixel, had knocked over a succulent. And his freelance career was about to implode.

Leo stared at the blinking cursor on his screen. The deadline for the Hudson & Crane proposal was in six hours, and his PDF file was 847 megabytes of architectural hell. Every time he tried to compress it with his free online tool, the website crashed, spitting out a corrupted file and a cheery "Try Again!" message.

The cursor blinked. The clock on his wall ticked toward the deadline.