Her grandfather’s letters? Green. All of them. The video of her sister? Green, even the thumbnail showed a tiny blurry figure taking a wobbly step. Her thesis? Orange, but recoverable—a few corrupted vector lines in the CAD files, but the core work was there.

Maya didn’t scream. She just sat there, staring at the empty folder icon, the cursor blinking like a metronome counting down her sanity.

File type? She selected “Pictures,” “Documents,” “Video.”

Gord shrugged. “That just erased the address book. The files are still in the building. Recuva goes room to room, knocks on every door, and asks, ‘Hey, is anyone still living here?’”

The results screen displayed a list that made her gasp. Thousands of files. Some with their original names. Some with randomly generated strings. Many marked with green circles (excellent condition), some with orange (damaged but recoverable), a few with red (overwritten, likely gone).