Pranav paced the length of the common room. Twelve steps from the steel door to the back wall. Turn. Twelve steps back.
The air conditioner hummed, a low, mechanical drone that usually faded into the background, but tonight it sounded like a drill pressing into his temple.
On the low table in the center of the room, a tablet—Gautham's lifeline to the outside world—glowed with a news feed. The headline was local, vague, and buried under sports scores: Gas Leak Suspected in Downtown Penthouse. Five Fatalities.
They knew it wasn't a gas leak.
"She didn't ask," Pranav said. He didn't shout. He didn't have the energy to shout. He spoke to the floor, to the scuffed concrete that marked their prison. "She didn't clear it with Asrit. She didn't clear it with Sam. She just… went."
Sanvi sat on one of the benches, her back resting against the cold wall. She had a deck of cards in her hands, shuffling them with a rhythmic zip-snap, zip-snap. She looked bored, but there was a tightness at the corners of her eyes, a gleam that hadn't been there before.
"She handled business," Sanvi said. She didn't look up from the cards. "Mancini's boys were heavy. Now they're light. It's simple subtraction."
"It's not subtraction!" Pranav spun around, the motion jerky. "It's multiplication. She just multiplied the heat on us by a factor of five. Do you understand what 'unsanctioned' means in this family? It means we're not assets. It means we're loose cannons."
He pointed a shaking finger at the door.
"Loose cannons get decommissioned, Sanvi. We are 110,000 dollars in debt, and instead of earning, she's out there starting a war we can't finish."
Gautham was sitting in the corner, his knees pulled up to his chest. He was rocking slightly. He looked at the tablet, then at the door, then back at the tablet.
"The forensics," Gautham whispered.
Pranav stopped pacing. "What?"
"The forensics," Gautham said, his voice gaining a little speed, fueled by his anxiety. "A penthouse. Glass and steel. Controlled environment. If she used a chemical agent, the residue is minimal, but the delivery method implies proximity. DNA transfer. Hair. Fiber. If Mancini has a connection in the coroner's office—and he does, he's held that contract for twenty years—they'll know it wasn't an accident by morning. They'll trace the paralytic. If she brewed it in Kevin's lab…"
Gautham grabbed his hair, pulling at the roots. "Kevin catalogues everything. If the inventory doesn't match, he'll know she stole it. We're stealing from our handlers to kill our enemies. It's a loop. A suicide loop."
"Kevin won't care," Sanvi said. She slapped the deck of cards onto the bench. The sound made Gautham flinch. "Kevin will be glad someone actually used his science for something other than getting high. You two are missing the point."
Sanvi stood up. She walked over to Pranav, invading his personal space. She smelled of stale sweat and old anger, but her posture was relaxed.
"We were dragged into that room," Sanvi said, her voice dropping lower. "We were branded. We were told we're property. Arpika just proved we still have teeth. She walked into the lion's den and walked out with a fur coat. That's not a liability, Pranav. That's a statement."
"It's a death sentence!" Pranav hissed. "We are supposed to be unrefined iron, remember? We are supposed to be learning the system, not burning it down because our feelings got hurt. This wasn't tactical. This was revenge. It was emotional. And emotional is expensive."
He looked at Sathwik.
Sathwik stood by the water cooler, motionless. He hadn't moved since the news broke. He was staring at the water bubbling in the tank, his face a blank slate.
"Sathwik," Pranav said, pleading for a voice of reason. "You know the protocol. You know the chain of command. Tell her. Tell her this puts us all in the crosshairs."
Sathwik turned his head slowly. The overhead light caught the hard line of his jaw.
"The order was to clean up the mess," Sathwik said. His voice was deep, devoid of inflection.
"Exactly!" Pranav threw his hands up. "Clean up the warehouse. Not wipe out the board of directors."
"Mancini is the mess," Sathwik continued, as if Pranav hadn't spoken. "She cleaned it."
Pranav stared at him. A cold knot formed in his stomach. Sathwik wasn't analyzing the risk. He wasn't thinking about the debt or the ledger. He was looking at the result. Five dead enemies. Zero dead Corvini. To a soldier, the math was perfect.
"You're wrong," Pranav said, stepping back, putting distance between himself and the other three. "You're all delusional. You think because she got away with it tonight, it's a victory. But Asuma is upstairs right now, looking at her ledger. She's looking at the noise Arpika just made. And she's going to realize that we aren't just incompetent. We're uncontrollable."
He looked at Sanvi, who was grinning now, a sharp, feral expression that mirrored the violence she craved. He looked at Gautham, who was paralyzed by the terror of the details. He looked at Sathwik, who had accepted the slaughter as a valid operational outcome.
"We aren't a crew," Pranav said, the realization tasting like ash in his mouth. "We aren't New Blood. We're just a cancer. And the Corvini cut out cancer."
Sanvi laughed. It was a harsh, barking sound.
"Better to be cancer than a benign tumor, Pranav. At least cancer kills."
She picked up her cards again. Zip-snap. Zip-snap.
Pranav turned away from them. He walked back to his twelve paces. He looked at the heavy steel door, waiting for it to open, waiting for Vikram or Asrit to come in and deliver the bill for Arpika's night out.
He realized then that he wasn't afraid of Mancini. He wasn't afraid of the police.
He was afraid of them.
His team. His empire. They were fracturing right in front of him. Sanvi was falling in love with the violence. Arpika had become a cold-blooded executioner. Sathwik was a machine that justified any outcome. And Gautham was dissolving into madness.
Pranav was the only one left trying to follow the rules, and in this room, that made him the outlier.
He stopped pacing and leaned his forehead against the cold concrete wall. He closed his eyes.
I am the only one who sees the cage, he thought. And they are all busy sharpening the bars.