Viktor exhaled. He didn't smile. He simply opened the photo gallery. And there they were—a tiny, red-faced infant wrapped in a hospital blanket, timestamped three years ago. Mr. Petrov’s whole world, safe.

[SCAN] : CHIP: MT6582 , CPU: ARMv7 , REV: 1.2

Viktor connected the brick. The PC made a hollow dunk sound. Unknown device. He ran the tool as administrator. A Spartan gray window opened, its interface a masterpiece of utilitarian ugliness: blocky Cyrillic labels, checkboxes for Root , Backup , Write Memory . It looked like software from a crashed Soviet space station.

Inside was a single executable: MTK_Droid_Tool_v2.5.3.exe .

Viktor checked it.