Dev stared at his phone for a moment after the call ended. Then he let out a heavy sigh, swung his legs out of bed and reached for the lamp on his nightstand.
The light clicked on. He squinted against it, rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm and scrolled through his contacts.
He stopped at one name. Priya. He stared at it. His thumb hovered over the call button. He did not press it.
"Priya," he muttered to himself. "She's going to kill me. She's actually going to kill me. She told me last week — she said, 'Dev, if you ever wake me up before seven, I will personally erase your existence from the internet.' She meant it. She absolutely meant it."
He put the phone down. Picked it up again. Put it down. "This is insane. It's midnight. Rahat's lost his mind. Why are we doing this? Why are we—"
He picked up the phone again.
"Okay. Okay. I'll call her. But I'll call her last. I'll call Meera first. Meera's nicer. Meera won't kill me. Meera will just be annoyed. Annoyed is survivable."
He scrolled down. Meera. He pressed call.
[ Beep..Beep...Beep ]
"Dev." Meera's voice was flat. Not sleepy. Just flat. "If you are calling me at midnight to tell me the network went down again, I swear—"
"It's not the network."
"Then what is it?"
"Rahat wants us to find the unknown entity."
A long silence. "At midnight."
"Yes."
"Rahat wants us to hunt for a hacker at midnight."
"Yes."
"Did he say why?"
"He said he doesn't like unanswered questions."
Meera let out a slow breath — the kind of breath a person takes when they have decided, against all better judgment, to cooperate.
"Fine. I'll start pulling logs from my end. But you're buying me breakfast for a week."
"Deal."
"And Dev—"
"Yeah?"
"You're calling Priya, right?"
Dev swallowed. "I was hoping you would."
"No."
"Meera—"
"No. Absolutely not. I value my life. You call her, Bye.. Bye. Rest in peace."
"Meera, she'll kill me."
"Then die with dignity." She hung up. Dev stared at the phone. Then he sighed, scrolled down to Priya's name and pressed call.
It rang once. "Dev." Priya's voice was ice. "Do you have a death wish?"
"No, I have a message from Rahat."
"At midnight."
"Yes."
"What does he want?"
"He wants us to find the unknown entity."
There was a pause so long that Dev checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped. "Priya?"
"I heard you." Her voice had shifted. The ice was still there but underneath it was something else curiosity, maybe. "He wants us to find the person who stopped the attack."
"Yes."
"Okay."
Dev blinked. "Okay?"
"I said okay. Send me the access logs. I'll start from my end. And Dev—"
"Yeah?"
"Tell Rahat he owes me. Big."
"I'll tell him."
"He owes me so big that if he doesn't pay up, I'll make his coffee cold for the rest of his life."
"That's what I said."
"You said that?"
"I said it first."
"Then you owe me too."
"I — okay. Fine. I owe you."
"Good. " She hung up.
Dev lowered the phone. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment. Then he got up, walked to his kitchen, poured himself a glass of water and drank it in one go.
"This is my life. This is what I do. I work for a man who doesn't sleep. And somehow — somehow — this is the best job I've ever had."
He set the glass down and walked back to his bedroom. The hunt had begun.
[UNKNOWN LOCATION ]
The room was not large .... The walls were bare concrete, unpainted, streaked with faint lines of moisture that had dried and darkened over years.
The only furniture was a heavy wooden desk near the far wall and behind it, a high-backed leather chair. The chair was turned away from the door.
A man sat in it. His back was to the room, his posture still, his hands resting loosely on the arms of the chair.
The light from the bulb did not reach his face.The door at the far end of the room creaked open ... A girl stepped inside.
She was young — perhaps twenty-one . Her hair was tied back in a tight knot, Her hands were trembling. She tried to hide it by folding them in front of her.
She closed the door behind her. The click of the latch sounded like a gunshot in the silence. She did not move forward, her eyes fixed on the back of the chair. Her mind was racing. He knows.
He already knows. He always knows. He knew before I even walked in. He knew the moment I failed. He knows everything.
Her hands pressed tighter together. She could feel her pulse in her fingertips. What is he going to do to me?
She had heard the stories what he did to people who failed. He doesn't shout. He just…decides. And then —
I should have run. I should have run the moment I realized the mission was compromised. No. If I ran, he would have found me.
Stop. Stop thinking. Stop thinking. You're making it worse. Maybe if I explain. Maybe if I tell him that the target was protected,that someone interfered — maybe he'll understand.
"Did you find it?"
"N-no, sir." The words came out small. Broken. Barely audible.
Silence. Then — a movement. Too fast to follow.
Something cut through the air — thin, whistling past the girl's ear before she could even flinch.
A pen. It struck her cheek.
The pain came a heartbeat later. Sharp, burning, a thin line of heat spreading across her skin. She gasped, one hand flying to her face. Blood.
It dripped down her jaw, staining the collar of her shirt. She stared at her hand. Then she looked up at the chair.
The man had not moved .... His hands were still resting on the arms of the chair. It was as though the pen had thrown itself.
"One task, one simple task. And you could not even do that." The girl's knees buckled. She sank to the floor, one hand still pressed to her bleeding cheek.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I tried. I swear I tried. But they were—"
"Stop.You failed. That is all that matters. Not why. Not how. Not what you tried. Failure is failure. "
I should have been better. I should have been smarter. I should have — Her body gave out before her mind could finish the thought.
She crumpled sideways onto the cold stone floor, unconscious before she hit the ground. The man in the chair did not turn around.
Instead, he raised one hand — a small, almost lazy gesture and snapped his fingers once.
The door at the far end opened immediately.
Two men stepped inside. They were dressed in dark clothing, their faces blank, their movements efficient. They simply walked to the girl, lifted her between them, and carried her out.
The door closed behind them.
-------
Maya closed the door behind her. The soft click of the latch sealed her inside and walked to the dressing table.
She reached up, pulled the silver hairpin free, and let her hair fall. She picked up the wooden comb and began to draw it through her hair.
[ Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. ]
The mirror rippled. Maya's hand stopped mid-stroke, she watched—the reflection that stared back at her was not her own. Yama.
She stepped through the glass the way someone steps through a doorway. Half in this world, half in the other. Her edges shimmered faintly, like heat rising off summer stone.
She leaned in. Close. Too close. And pressed a soft, slow kiss to Maya's cheek — "You know, thanks to you, I actually had a good time."
Maya didn't react. Her hand resumed its slow strokes through her hair. "Did you."
"I did." Yama's smile widened. "But you know what would have made it better? You should have burned their entire system down."
Maya's comb paused. Just for a second.
"Think about it. All those computers. All that data. Gone. Just like that." She snapped her fingers.
Maya resumed combing. "You're insane."
"I'm fun. There's a difference."
"There isn't."
"There is. You just don't appreciate me. You're not even going to ask me why I came out?"
"No."
"I came out because I wanted to congratulate you. For doing something interesting for once." Yama's voice dropped, softer now. Almost fond.
"You walked into that building. You sat in that office. You ate those chips like a good little girl. And then—" Her smile sharpened. "That's the most you thing you've done in months."
Maya's comb stopped."I was bored."
".... Bored." Yama repeated the word like it was a delicacy. "You undid a high-level intrusion in four minutes because you were bored."
"Yes."
"Maya."
"What."
"I love you. I don't say it often. I know. But I do." Yama's fingers traced the edge of the mirror's frame.
Maya set the comb down on the dressing table. Then she looked up — not at Yama but at her own reflection. "You're being weird."
"I'm being honest."
"Same thing. Hum...Yaya."
"What."
"Your head."
"What about my head."
"Why is it always filled with strange thoughts?"
"What?" Yama gestured vaguely toward her own temple as if tapping into Maya's mind.
"You know. The quiet ones. The ones you don't say out loud. The ones you think I don't notice."
Silence.
"Do you think I don't wonder? Do you think I don't ask myself the same questions you do? " The mirror shimmered faintly. "What do you think I am?"
Maya's lips parted. For a moment, it seemed like she might answer. Then she closed them again.
Yama waited. Nothing.
The red-haired girl sighed — a soft, almost disappointed sound. "You never answer that one."
Maya set the comb down. "Some questions don't have answers."
"Or — you just don't want to say them out loud." Yama stepped back from the mirror. "It's fine. It's fine. "
"Anyway why are you asking me that?"
Yama was silent for a moment. Her fingers traced the frame of the mirror — "..... Nothing. Nothing happened."
Maya turned slightly on the stool. "Then why?"
Yama's gaze dropped. "I just thought... maybe you don't love me anymore."
Maya's brow furrowed—not the small, controlled twitch she usually allowed herself. "What did you just say?"
"I said—"
"You heard me." Maya's voice was calm, "Why would you ask me something like that?"
"Because you never say it back ... you never say anything. You never tell me what I am to you. You just...let me exist. Something you tolerate."
Maya stared at her. "...Is that what you think?"
"I don't know what to think. That's the problem. I don't know. And I don't like not knowing."
Maya's fingers curled against the dressing table.
"...Yama. Stop talking like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're not—" Maya stopped. Pressed her lips together. "You're being strange tonight."
"Really. It's fine. You're tired. You should sleep. Sleep . It's late. " Yama stepped back from the mirror's edge.
"Yama."
Her form began to shimmer faintly, the way — it always did when she was preparing to withdraw. "It's late. Good night, Maya."
Maya watched her reflection ripple. "Good night."
The mirror showed only Maya, her hair loose, her eyes fixed on her own reflection.
She stood there for a moment. Then she turned away. The navy shirt and black trousers were folded neatly and placed on the chair by the window.
She walked to the bed. Turned down the covers. Sat on the edge for a moment, her hands resting on her knees. Then, slowly she lay down, pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. Closed her eyes.
The night pressed gently against the windows.
------
The world inside Maya's mind was not dark. It was beautiful — terrifyingly, impossibly beautiful.
A vast garden stretched in every direction. It had no sky, no horizon and no door. It existed only —because her mind had given it somewhere to exist.
The ground was soft with pale that shimmered faintly under a sky and the flowers. Spider lilies. They bloomed everywhere—thousands of them, millions of them. They swayed gently.
And above them, moving through the garden like a thought she could not control, Yama drifted, her red hair streaming behind her like liquid fire, her blue eyes bright and wild and utterly, terrifyingly alive.
She spun in the air, arms outstretched, her voice curling through the silence like smoke. "Mmm. You know what I love about this place?"
The lilies swayed toward her. "You can't leave."
Her smile was dreamy. Wrong. Unsettling. She drifted lower, her fingers trailing through the petals.
"You would never leave me. You couldn't. You wouldn't even want to. You're mine, you know, you've always been mine."
Her voice dropped, intimate and sharp at the same time a whisper with teeth. "Mine. Only mine."
She stopped drifting. She stood in the middle of the endless field, surrounded by crimson red.
"You think you can belong to someone else? You think you can walk through their house, sit at their table and pretend you're one of them?"
She took a step forward. The flowers parted around her.
"No, Your heart is mine, your mind is mine. Your silence is mine. Every breath you take — Every thought you hide, they are all mine. Before you had a name, before you had anything at all. "
Another step.
"So why — why do you keep looking at them like that? Why do you let them call you 'sister'? Why do you sit in his office and eat his chips and let him look at you like—"
Her hands curled into fists at her sides. "...Like you matter to him."
She exhaled slowly. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. Almost calm. Almost kind.
"You belong to me. You always have. You always will." Her smile returned — beautiful, terrifying. "And if you ever forget that....I'll remind you."
She lifted her hand. A spider lily drifted up from the ground and settled in her palm — her voice was soft. Almost tender.
"I hear your footsteps in an empty room,
See your shadow underneath the moon.
Every little silence sounds like you,
Every road I take somehow leads through."
She pinched one of the petals and tore it off. The red petal fluttered down, disappearing into the field below.
"I tried to bury every thought of you,
But the deeper I go, the more they grew.
You're the whisper underneath my breath,
The sweetest kind of beautiful unrest."
Another petal. Tear. Fall.
"I don't know where you end and I begin,
You found the darkest place beneath my skin.
I close my eyes but you're still there—
Like a secret hiding in the air.
Your name is running through my head,
Like a melody I can't forget.
I see your face in every light,
I dream of you every night."
Her voice grew softer. More intimate.
"Maybe it's love, maybe it's madness,
Maybe it's heaven dressed up as sadness.
Whatever this is, I can't let go—
You're the only thing my heart will know.
I count the stars, they spell your name,
Every constellation feels the same.
The world keeps turning, people come and go,
But you're the only place I want to know."
The lilies around her swayed faster now ... The crimson light pulsed — a heartbeat, a drum, a warning.
"I don't need a reason anymore,
I don't remember who I was before.
You're a fever underneath my skin,
A war I lose just to feel you win."
The last petal. She held it between her fingers for a long moment — the final piece of the flower she had destroyed.
She let the last petal fall. It drifted down, slow and red and beautiful, and landed in the endless field of spider lilies.
[MORNING. 10:00 AM ]
The morning light fell through the tall windows of Fahad's study in pale columns, settling across the polished floor like something poured rather than shone.
He stood by the window with his back to the room, one hand in his pocket.
The other holding a photograph he hadn't looked at in fourteen years. It was old. A small child with dark eyes and a ribbon in her hair, sitting on a garden bench. The photograph had been taken three days before she disappeared.
Fahad's thumb moved once across the edge of the frame. Then he set it down on the desk, slowly as though it might break.
"Sister, you came back to us after all these years. This isn't just a welcome gift."
He looked at the photograph one last time. "It's proof ..... Proof that she'll never have to wonder whether she belongs again."
[TWO FLOORS BELOW ] Fahim sat at the long mahogany table with a medical journal open in front of him and a pen resting untouched beside it.
He had not turned a page in twenty minutes. On the table beside the journal lay a small black case.
He had spent three hours the previous night reading about nerve damage, about sensitivity, about what a person loses when their hands are covered every day.
"She wears gloves," he murmured. "She wears them every minute . She never takes them off. Not once. Not even to eat."
He looked toward the window. "If she is going to live here, she should not have to hide her hands."
[THE GARDEN] Fahish sat on a stone bench beneath the old mango tree with a sketchbook open on his knee.He had been drawing for two hours. But not the garden.
A girl. Not the girl from the corridor. Not the girl from the breakfast table. Not even the girl from the doorway.
A girl with her hair down, standing before a window, looking out at something no one else could see.
He had drawn her from memory. From the single moment he had seen her through the crack in the door, he looked at the sketch for a long time.
The he closed his sketchbook and pressed it flat against his chest, holding it there as if the pages themselves might escape and reveal what he had drawn.
He looked around the garden once — left, right, behind him — "I'm not telling anyone." He stood up. Tucked the sketchbook under his arm.
"If Faha finds out I'm writing something for her, he'll never let me hear the end of it. He'll call me dramatic, he'll roast my ears off with his mockery. "
He started walking toward the house... "And I'll have to sit there and take it. Every word. Every joke."
He stopped at the garden door. "Nobody finds out. Nobody."
----
The Problem Was...Everyone wanted their plan to remain a secret, no one would let the others know. Their egos simply wouldn't allow it.
Because if one brother discovered another had carefully chosen a gift If one brother found out another had spent hours —The teasing would never end.
It would follow them to their graves. It would be brought up at weddings. At family dinners for the next fifty years.
The Sunayana brothers were many things. Disciplined. Brilliant. Ruthless in business. Fearless in the face of danger.
But above all they were brothers. And brothers do not under any circumstances, allow other brothers to see them being soft.