Crimson Fangs Van – En route to North Bandra – 02:04 HRS
The roads were empty.
Mumbai was never truly asleep, but parts of it played dead when monsters came out to breathe.
We were heading into one of those parts now.
North Bandra. The so-called ghost zone.
Agnidwar.
It wasn't on any map. No postal code. Just whispers passed between cart pushers and sleepless gang lookouts who knew better than to cross the white-painted alleys.
"Ten minutes," Danny called from the driver's seat.
His voice cracked the silence like a matchstick in a morgue.
Yash was loading his knife belt beside me. Meena's voice crackled over the comms from the hideout, feeding us real-time visuals. Vijay hadn't said a word since we rolled out. His eyes were locked on the streetlights as they flickered past.
"You sure about this?" Danny asked me.
I didn't answer.
Because I wasn't sure.
But I knew one thing:
If we didn't take the fight to her, she'd drag it straight through our bones.
---
Agnidwar Perimeter – 02:17 HRS
The van stopped just shy of a collapsed flyover. Ruins of half-demolished buildings surrounded us. But this wasn't slum decay. It was methodical. Stripped.
Every signboard was whitewashed.
Every CCTV pole had been cut.
It was like someone erased the neighborhood... but left the air behind to haunt us.
I stepped out. The silence wasn't dead. It was listening.
"Yash. Left flank. Danny, rig fallback charges near the van. Meena, keep thermal on loop. I want eyes on every movement."
I turned to Vijay.
"You're with me."
He nodded once, calm now—like the storm inside him had found focus.
---
Inside Agnidwar
It started with fire.
Not flames. Symbols.
Burned into the walls of an underground tunnel entrance. The same coiling serpent we'd seen on Raaka's envelope—this time wrapped around a blazing sun.
"The Serpents didn't just build this," Meena's voice crackled in my earpiece. "They've been worshipping it."
Yash clicked his mic. "No power grid detected. But I'm picking up EM pulses from deeper below. Could be military-grade labs or shielded network centers."
Of course.
Because this wasn't a hideout.
It was a temple.
To something no sane person should follow.
---
Deeper Inside
The tunnel opened into a chamber.
Steel and concrete fused with relic architecture. Like someone grafted a government bunker into an ancient ruin.
Red lights pulsed from the floor. And in the center—
—a girl.
Not older than thirteen.
Hooked to wires. Breathing shallow. Monitored by silent men in white coats with Serpent insignias.
"What the fuck..." Danny whispered from the feed.
Vijay froze beside me.
"That's not a hostage," he said softly. "That's a message."
Because when we stepped closer, the wall behind the girl lit up.
A projection.
Dozens of images cycling rapidly. Faces.
Ours.
Meena's.
Yash's.
Mine.
Diya's.
Each face lingered... studied by an AI tracking algorithm.
Then the screen stopped.
Zoomed in.
Amit Rathore – TARGET CODE: 07-G
Vijay Singh – TARGET CODE: 03-F
Danny. Yash. All of us had codes.
"What is this place?" I muttered.
Yash's voice came in like a gunshot. "Get out of there. Now. I just intercepted a transmission. The place is a hive. That girl? She's not alone down there."
Boom.
The lights went out.
---
The blast came from the ceiling vent.
Gas. No smell. No time.
My eyes stung. My lungs burned. I grabbed Vijay and dove behind a crate as bullets sprayed the chamber like rain.
"EMP just knocked Meena's comms offline!" Danny screamed.
Figures emerged from the shadows—dressed in black, serpents etched across their masks. They didn't fight like street thugs. They were trained. Clinical.
But we were faster.
Vijay went straight through the first one's ribs with his crowbar.
Yash took down two with knives before vanishing into the smoke.
Danny ducked low, dragged the girl off her table, and kicked a flashbang into the main hallway.
I moved on instinct. Pistol. Two rounds. Center mass.
Click. Empty.
A blade came flying.
Missed me by inches—but not the message carved into the blade:
"You came too early."
---
The smoke parted.
And there she stood.
White shawl over her head. Barefoot. Calm.
Her eyes met mine.
And everything in me froze.
Because it wasn't just that she radiated control.
It was that I knew her.
Somewhere.
Somehow.
Not from this life maybe… but from a page I thought had burned with my past.
"You're not ready," she said.
Then raised a hand.
The girl Danny rescued screamed. A high-pitched, unnatural wail. Like a signal.
It hit us like a wave.
Vijay dropped to one knee.
Yash held his ears.
Meena's voice burst through again: "They're jamming neural frequencies—GET OUT NOW!"
I fired one shot toward the woman.
She was gone.
Like she'd never been there.
---
We ran.
Carrying the girl.
Danny slammed the van into reverse as bullets lit the ruins like strobe lights. Meena remotely reactivated the drone turret, and it laid down cover fire as we peeled out of Agnidwar.
Back into the night.
Back into uncertainty.
But not empty-handed.
---
Back at the Hideout – Dawn
The girl was unconscious, but stable.
Danny ran scans—bloodwork, microchip tags.
She didn't belong to the serpents.
She was taken.
From a shelter three years ago. Reconditioned.
Weaponized.
Vijay sat in the corner, silent again.
I stared at the map.
Agnidwar had been real.
And now?
Now we had confirmation that the Serpents weren't just trying to take the city.
They were trying to rewrite it.
Systematically.
Digitally.
Psychologically.
And that white-shawled woman?
She wasn't just a leader.
She was the architect.
---
UNKNOWN LOCATION
Raaka stood beside the other child, operative in the red-lit chamber.
The screens now showed footage of the raid.
The Fangs' escape.
The woman walked in behind them.
"You gave them a piece too soon," Raaka said.
The woman smiled faintly.
"No. I gave them a question."
Raaka frowned. "About the girl?"
"No."
She stepped forward.
"About me."
She leaned close to the monitor, where Amit's face stared back in grayscale.
"Let's see how Amit reacts when he learns who I used to be."
---
TO BE CONTINUED
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