Then he noticed the timestamps weren't random.

But that night, he left the computer unplugged. And on his bedside table, he wrote one thing on a sticky note:

In it, one line of text appeared, typed letter by letter:

Leo disabled the driver. Windows screamed at him. “If you disable this device, your system will no longer support power management. Are you sure?” He clicked Yes.

He didn't touch the mouse. He didn't breathe. The monitor flickered again, and a Notepad window opened by itself.

The next morning, he told his team lead he needed to reimage the machine. “ACPI driver acting up,” he said with a dry laugh.

Nothing worked. At 3:14 AM, the computer would rise again.

The problem was, no sensor should be screaming.

3:14 AM. 3:14 AM. 3:14 AM.