He paid the ransom. Of course he did. He bought Bitcoin from a machine in a gas station bathroom and sent it into the void. Two days later, a decryption tool arrived. It restored his files—except for the projects containing the guitar track. Those were gone. Wiped. Replaced with a single audio file: a nylon guitar playing a slow, melancholy arpeggio, then a whispered Russian phrase he later translated: "The crack is always sharper on the return."
The file name follows a standard pattern used on illegal torrent trackers and warez websites: Crack.Ilya.Efimov.Nylon.Guitar.KONTAKT.rarl