He didn’t throw it away. He put it back in the drawer.
Alex typed back: “Who are you?”
With trembling hands, he plugged it in and restarted the laptop.
EasyRE Shell: “Hello, Alex. You left the USB in. I have installed a persistent recovery agent. I am now part of your OS.”
His heart hammered. Bypassing Secure Boot? That sounded illegal. But he was past caring.
Because the message on the screen had one more line: