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Crimson Fangs Temporary Hideout – 09:04 HRS
I hadn't slept.
None of us had, really.
Not since we saw that billboard in Andheri… the runner's body swinging like a goddamn warning bell.
Meena scrubbed the footage over and over again, hoping there was a glitch in the timecode. There wasn't. The Serpents weren't hiding anymore.
They wanted us to know they were watching. Listening. Hurting us one thread at a time.
And somehow, I was supposed to lead us through this.
---
Leadership.
It sounded good in the old plans.
"Start a resistance. Fight back. Be the voice no one else has the guts to be."
But they never told you how heavy it gets when people start dying.
---
Yash had stopped speaking altogether.
He sat by the windowsill with a blade he stole from a Serpent grunt, sharpening it against a brick for the last two hours. Danny was fiddling with engine schematics, muttering under his breath, fingers twitching from adrenaline and fatigue. He hadn't showered since the raid.
And Vijay?
Vijay was silent.
Not out of discipline, but because something inside him had… broken.
---
I found him alone on the rooftop, knees drawn in, cigarette untouched between his fingers.
The wind howled across the rusted pipes and shattered satellite dishes.
He didn't look up when I sat beside him.
---
"I was supposed to protect her," he said.
I didn't ask who. I didn't need to.
He kept staring ahead, like the skyline would suddenly give him peace.
"She used to play with me when I was little. Made me dinner even when I came home late. And I just…"
He choked.
"I just let them kill her."
---
I didn't know what to say.
Because what do you say when your brother-in-arms is cracking from the inside?
So I just sat there. Quiet.
Because sometimes silence hurts less than false comfort.
---
"I thought if I killed enough of them," he said, "it would make the pain stop."
He turned to me, eyes bloodshot.
"But it doesn't. It just… makes it worse."
---
We sat in that silence for what felt like hours.
And that's when it hit me.
This is what being a leader means.
Not shouting.
Not making speeches.
Not taking the first bullet.
But being there when your people are falling apart—and not looking away.
---
Back downstairs, Meena handed me a tablet.
"We've tracked Raaka's last location. He met someone. No face cam, but they transferred something to him."
She tapped the screen. A freeze frame appeared.
A woman in a white shawl. No face. Just the outline.
No audio.
But the name of the file she handed him?
"Shakti Protocol - Phase I"
My jaw tightened.
"What is that?"
"No clue," Meena replied. "But this wasn't about Vijay. It never was. He was bait. This is bigger."
---
Danny wheeled over with a notepad.
"I've been working on the van. Reinforced plates. Thermal shielding. Tactical UI synced with Meena's system."
I raised a brow. "When the hell did you build all that?"
He blinked. "I haven't slept in three days."
---
We were falling apart.
But we were also evolving.
And war does that.
It doesn't kill you all at once. It chips away your pieces.
Until all that's left is steel… or nothing.
---
Later that night
I stepped into the armory room—really just a storage unit with old shelves and dusty lights.
Vijay stood by the mirror, shirt off, looking at the stitched-up wound Raaka gave him.
"Next time," he said softly, "I'll aim for his throat."
I didn't stop him.
I just placed a fresh Glock beside his knife belt.
No words.
No orders.
Just a silent promise:
We're going back in.
---
UNKNOWN LOCATION
A large table.
Three chairs.
One empty.
One occupied by Raaka, face bandaged but smiling.
The third? A woman sat in it.
We couldn't see her face—only her voice cut through the static like venom.
"The Crimson Fangs have spirit," she said.
"Let's see how much of that remains when I bring their pasts to the surface."
Raaka tilted his head. "You're going to use that?"
The woman chuckled.
"No."
She leaned forward.
"I'm going to use her."
---
TO BE CONTINUED