Giriraj's POV
"Sit," Chhayika says, disrupting the array of my thoughts. The voice, no, not even that, the weight in her voice told me this was going to be messed up as hell. She turned slowly, each movement coiled with a restraint that might not last.
"You knew," she said.
I didn't answer. Not right away.
"You knew, and you let me walk back into Rudra's circle like I hadn't already bled for his tests." Her voice didn't rise, but something about it shook the space between us.
My eyes didn't flinch. "I suspected."
She laughed, a soft yet bitter sound. "No. No, you knew. You said it yourself in that room. You knew what he was doing. You just didn't stop it."
I stood again, slowly, as if even my movements were choosing not to escalate her rage. "He was testing the limits of your control. If I had interfered too early, he would have changed course. Disappeared. Or worse, accelerated."
"You didn't interfere at all," she said. "Not when he ran simulations using people I trusted. Not when he gave rebirth to the Fatima lie. Not when I stood inches away from killing myself trying to pass another one of his unspoken trials. You watched."
"I gave you all the info I had, just not the instincts. That is what we don't share," I replied in a stoic voice. Any tremble would be a weakness, a lethal weapon.
"Oh, is it? Is it, Mr. Pradhan? Because it wasn't this way ever. Only I am responsible to keep all deals and promises even when I am bleeding. Me chasing ghosts is dumb, you hiding things is plot, wow. This level of hypocrisy is not even in official politics, Mr. Pradhan." Her voice was not a manipulation disguised as a caress, rather a sword without a sheath.
"I watched to keep you alive," I said, voice low but steady. "I watched because I didn't know how deep it went, who was involved, and Rudra was not even a part of my imagination, Chhayika."
She cut me off, dismissively. "Don't you dare say you did it for me." She raised her head to look into my eyes, not face but eyes, and when she was still unsuccessful, she practically screamed, "SIT, and if you leave the seat again, I will rip you apart."
She could also stand, right? But being the great man I am, I sat down.
"You know what, you are right. You followed your instincts because you defined me, a strategic failure. I am dumb, isn't it, Mr. Pradhan? You know what? I need to kill a part of mine, the part that trusts you, because in our world there is no trust, no 'us'."
And ouch, that stings. It does. Like, calm down baby girl, you are waging war alone. Another point that I will let you win, but still...
She spoke again, hindering my thoughts once more.
But this time her voice softened, but only a little. "Do you know what it does to someone to question their own rage? To wonder if they're wrong to feel hunted, if they're just too broken to trust? You didn't just keep a secret, Giriraj. You made me doubt the one thing that's kept me alive... my instinct."
That shut me up. I looked away. Not in guilt. Not in avoidance. Just quietly.
"You should have told me," she said again. "You don't get to decide which truths I can carry."
There it was. Not a scream. Not a breaking point that shattered glass. Just a line drawn in sand that would never be redrawn.
She didn't wait for permission, or comfort, or understanding.
She just walked away.
I wanted to scream and say, Chhayika, I know I am wrong but calm down, please, I forced words out, but only my mouth moved. They never came.
She looked back, trembling, but the fire in her eyes, the eyes widened not in shock but rage, unfiltered.
She spoke in a low, shaking voice, the kind one speaks to scare the other person. She didn't intend to, but I was already losing my wits.
"I am not weak, Pradhan. I am not a physical war machine. I am a warrior. Information you gave, thank you Mr. Intel, now wait and watch my instincts, my strategy, my silence."
Chhayika's POV
I didn't run. I didn't break things. I didn't cry. That would be too easy, too loud. And when you are me, rage never comes in a scream. It walks in with silence, with the knowledge that you are going to war but you no longer care if you survive it.
I reached my safehouse before the sun even decided whether it wanted to rise. The room was cold. Not weather-cold, just the kind that settles in places that are used to betrayal. I sat. Opened the laptop. No music, no distraction, no extra tabs. My fingers moved before my thoughts even caught up. No need for full sentences. No time for that.
Just syntax, firewalls, exploits, command lines, port floods, backdoors.
I had left B. Tech behind years ago, traded it for boots and blood, but the codes didn't forget me. My fingertips still remembered the shortcuts most people never learned. Before RAW, before Fatima, before all this, I had a 48 LPA offer on my table and three internship pre-placements. And now I was here. Writing malware in my mother tongue. I didn't need clearance. I didn't need confirmation. I just needed one thing, one chance to pull the thread.
And I knew where to pull from.
Azhar Khan. Brother to the man I once wanted to save. Ghost to the country that once couldn't find him. But I had looked him in the eye. That is all I ever needed. Not data, not CCTV footage. Just the twitch of a jaw when something is denied, the glance that lingers when pain is offered as currency. The man ran on two fuels, pain and pleasure. And right now, he had both.
I tracked one of the proxy accounts he had used to fund one of the shell hospitals in Rawalpindi. It was inactive now, but the digital dust was still there. Patterns. Device locations. I didn't need to know the exact hospital. I just needed to know where his mind would go if he had to hide in plain sight, play god, play messiah.
Pain and pleasure. Pleasure in watching life bend to his orders. Pain in remembering he had once been second to someone else's dream.
He wouldn't choose a remote bunker or some deeply encrypted site. No, Azhar would choose irony. Something poetic. Like a women's hospital. A place where life begins, where women are weakest, where no man would suspect a war criminal to hide in plain sight. It fits. Too well.
I shut the laptop.
Picked up a burner phone.
And called the man who owed me more than loyalty.
He answered on the third ring, not with a greeting, just breath. I didn't wait.
"You owe me your family's life. I am cashing that in now," I said calmly. "Nothing dramatic. One aim. Azhar Khan. He'll be at the address I just sent. It's a female hospital. Do not touch him. Just make sure no one else can either. Surround the building. Quiet. Untraceable. He walks out, he gets caught. He doesn't walk out, we pull him with force. No heroism. No flags."
The line was quiet. He didn't argue. I hung up.
Then I sent a Morse code ping to another number. One I hadn't used since my Fatima days. A cyber café owner in Quetta. Officially just another Pakistani civilian. Unofficially, ours. He'd know how to read three words in code. Short bursts.
"Azhar. Cross. Border."
No address. No date. No time. Just information. He would move accordingly. He always had. I deleted the trail in less than six minutes, switched SIMs, shattered the phone.
Then I changed. Plain cotton, dull scarf, bandaged wrist to mimic a recent injury. In the mirror, I looked like a refugee. Not a threat. Not even remembered. That was the point.
Delhi to Jammu. Then road. Then foot. Then wind.
You don't wait when you know the fire is spreading. You walk straight into it, doused in silence.
It took me thirty-eight hours to reach the outer ring near the LoC. I had no official permission. I didn't ask for one. Used a forgotten mule route the BSF abandoned years ago. I could feel the static in my bones. This wasn't strategy anymore. This was something older. Something primal.
By the time I reached the hospital, it was night. Not the kind of night that has stars. The kind where you feel eyes on you even if the world is asleep. I slipped into the building through the back, through a crumbling maintenance shaft barely wide enough for me to breathe in. One wrong step and I'd be under debris.
But it was worth it.
Second floor. Room 212. I had no confirmation. Only instinct. But instinct has never failed me, not when it mattered. I stood outside that door for four minutes. Listened. Then entered.
Azhar was alone. Unarmed. Reading a Quran with a cracked spine. The absurdity almost made me smile.
He looked up. His eyes widened for less than a second.
"Fatima?" he asked, voice confused, almost amused.
"No," I said. "Not anymore."
Then I stepped forward and jabbed the syringe into his neck. He struggled, but the dose was calculated. Enough to drop him without killing. No pain. Just silence.
I caught him as he fell. Dragged him to the back. Used an old nurse's trolley to wheel him through the basement. No one saw me. No one would remember. That's how these places work. Patients vanish. Files go missing.
By the time I reached the edge of the city, a vehicle was waiting. Not ours. Just enough plausible deniability. I loaded him in. Bound him tight. Covered him in blankets like a sleeping civilian. Two fake IDs. A doctor's note. One border post left to cross.
And I crossed it.
No bullet was fired. No name was taken.
I reached the Indian side just before sunrise. Handed Azhar over to the first military detachment near the advance post. No ceremony. No call for backup. Just me, him, and one file I had kept folded inside my coat since I left, his full confession, pieced together from years of notes, voice distortions, mimicry, and a hacked call between him and the woman who pretended to be me.
Proof. Finally.
The officer took him in. Stared at me for a moment. "Where's your team?" he asked.
I looked past him, towards the mountain line.
"There was no team," I replied. "Only instinct."
And then I walked away. Not because it was over. But because now, it was just beginning.
Giriraj's POV
Where the hell has she gone?
And why, why the hell is it so difficult this time to trace even a shadow? Barriers on barriers. Ghosts where I used to find trails. Damn it.
Wait.
Now I get it.
She used her skills, didn't she? Not to escape, not really. But to show me my place. Oh, man. This woman. She must have gone without backup. That's her pattern. But whose help would she have taken? Riya, maybe, or one of those quiet women from the Assam ring... No. No, wait. I need to shut my brain up because it keeps saying Aariz. Keeps whispering his name like it has any right to exist between us.
What the hell, Chhayika? Trust me, if that dumbshit has landed between you and me, if you went back to that unfinished chapter, I swear, I am not letting you or him rest. Ever. That is my promise. I have stayed patient. Silent. But I will not let a third name crawl into what only belonged to two.
I groan, my throat dry, jaw clenched. The silence in the room is thick like smoke from old wars. And that's when the door opens. Not slammed. Not stormed. Just slowly pushed.
And there she stands.
So dull. So quiet. Clothes like shadows. Hair tied like she never cared if it existed.
She looks at me. No apology. No rush. Just the precision of someone who walked through hell and came back with her spine straighter than ever.
"Look carefully, Mr. Pradhan," she says, her voice too calm. "No bruises this time. No blood. No ghosts. No chase. Just a prey and a predator."
I say nothing. She doesn't give me space to speak anyway.
"How did you like my hunt? Or wait... were you too busy tracking me? Tsk, tsk," she clicks her tongue, just once. Mocking. But beneath that, something else. Something that hurts.
"I already handed Azhar over. You're not a compulsion, Mr. Pradhan. You're just a choice. You don't know my ways. You can't overpower me. That is it."
Her voice doesn't shake. Not even for a second. It's held with pride. Pressed tight like fresh bandages on old wounds. Too fast-paced, like she wants to prove something. Like she needs me to see it before I interrupt. Before I try to take it away.
Look. You lose. I win.
And damn it, I do feel proud.
Seeing her safe. Standing. Not broken. My brain finally settles. I feel guilt clawing at me from inside my chest, but the joy of seeing her alive and undefeated, God, it overpowers everything.
I want to tell her she did good. That she doesn't always have to carry that rage. That the war can end, even if it never started with her.
But I don't say it. Because this time, I'm wrong.
She isn't here for praise.
She isn't.
Not all pieces are ours... because some people can never be a piece.
❀✧✸✩✺✧❀✩✸✧✺❀
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Until next time,
~ Kshyatri