The cardboard was brittle as ancient leather. Inside lay a single PDF printed on onion-skin paper—hundreds of pages, stapled and bound with army-green string. But the paper wasn’t the story. The story was the USB drive taped to the inside cover. A black, unmarked stick, military-grade, from an era when USB meant ‘unbelievably stupid’ more than ‘universal serial bus’.

He looked at the USB drive. Then at the box marked .

Lahti leaned closer.

“Sir,” Lahti said, voice flat. “This is a joke. A cold-war psyop.”

The PDF opened.

“Or,” Virtanen said, reaching for the USB drive, “he was exactly what he said he was. A bus driver. Who loved this country more than the generals ever did.”

“Bus driver?” Lahti snorted.