Arjun understood. He had seen this before—backdoor credentials baked into flashing tools, silent APKs injected during bootloader unlocks, IMEI registries that leaked to fraud markets. A free tool was never free. It was a toll road where you paid with someone else’s security.

He picked up the Redmi 9A. A young woman had brought it in two days ago. She said her little brother had locked it trying to guess her password. She was crying. Not because of the phone—because the last photos of their mother were inside, and the brother was seven, and he didn’t understand death yet.