Pci Ven_10ec&dev_8136&subsys -

Liam felt the cold realization sink in. The SUBSYS field wasn't missing. It was being hidden . This wasn't a network card. It was a backdoor etched in silicon, a phantom node that could listen to everything on the bus—every keystroke, every memory access—and report to a listener that had no return address.

That was millions of devices. Routers. Printers. Smart TVs. Point-of-sale terminals. Liam’s hand hovered over the tweezers. pci ven_10ec&dev_8136&subsys

But Liam knew. Somewhere, in the blind spot of the hardware specification, between the vendor ID and the device ID, a ghost had made its home. And it had chosen his reflection as its vendor. Liam felt the cold realization sink in

"Who built you?" he whispered.

The fan stopped. Complete silence. Then, from the onboard speaker—a speaker that wasn't connected to any OS—came a single, clear ping . Not a network ping. The sound of a sonar. This wasn't a network card