But the upload kept climbing.

Three hours later, the antivirus quarantined a rootkit that had been quietly exfiltrating documents, browser cookies, and crypto wallet keys for eleven days.

For a long moment, Alex just stared at the TrafficMonitor widget, which now displayed a placid in green. Then they opened Resource Monitor. Sorted by network activity.

A chill crawled up their spine. Someone—or something—was pulling data out of their machine. Large files. Encrypted chunks. Silently.

Alex minimized the browser. Task Manager showed nothing unusual—just Chrome (14 tabs), Discord, and TrafficMonitor itself. No suspicious processes. No runaway services.

It was 2:13 AM. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the gaming rig. Alex was scrolling through a doc, half-asleep, when their peripheral vision caught a flicker.

Here’s a short story based around "TrafficMonitor" on Windows 11.