Vidhi's Pov
Her eyes scanned the warehouse again, recalibrating. Whoever this was—they weren’t bluffing. They were watching. Live. Real-time.
And not just watching. Guiding. Testing.
Vidhi’s breath came out slower now, not out of calm, but calculation. She retraced her path, gun raised again, following the barely-there footprints toward the rusted stairwell.
The elevator was a death trap. She wouldn’t risk it.
She took the stairs two at a time, boots silent on the cracked concrete. Every landing creaked like it remembered violence. As she reached the level above, a gust of air slipped past her cheek—too cold, too clean for a place like this.
She was close.
A door at the end of the hallway hung slightly ajar. The gap between wood and frame flickered with faint light. Unnatural. Blue.
She adjusted her grip, nudged the door open with her shoulder, and stepped inside.
What she saw stopped her cold.
A projector flickering against the far wall—silent footage looping, grainy and timestamped. A hallway. A woman—Pranali Mehta—running. Stumbling. Looking back.
Vidhi didn’t blink.
The Raven didn’t just know she was here.
They wanted her to see this.
To understand.
Vidhi didn’t blink.
The footage looped again. Pranali Mehta’s face—bloodied, terrified, lit only by the harsh flicker of overhead fluorescents—looked straight into the camera before vanishing into darkness.
Vidhi stepped closer. The projector rested on a dusty crate, cables running haphazardly into a portable battery. No sound, just the soft mechanical whir as the footage repeated.
Her pulse spiked.
This wasn’t just surveillance.
This was a message.
The kind you leave for someone you know is coming.
To the left of the screen, on the crumbling wall, someone had scrawled something in red ink—no, not ink. It was dried, cracked. Faded.
“THERE ARE NO HEROES HERE.”
Vidhi crouched near the crate, inspecting the setup. Everything was too clean. No fingerprints, no personal traces, just sterile efficiency.
She glanced back at the footage, narrowing her eyes. Something was off about the timestamp. The date—
Three days ago.
That couldn’t be right.
Pranali had been reported missing over a month ago.
Either the footage was faked… or someone was deliberately screwing with the timeline. With her.
FLASHBACK — ONE WEEK AGO
The air in the conference room was thick with tension. Files scattered across the table, red markings slicing through names, dates, crime scene photographs.
Vidhi stood at the head, sleeves rolled to her elbows, posture rigid. The whiteboard behind her had Chandawar Massacre written in bold. Underlined. Circled.
“She’s the only one who hasn’t turned up,” the intern said, hesitant. “All the others are accounted for.”
“She was last seen exiting the courthouse after the pre-trial deposition,” Vidhi replied. “Then vanished. No CCTV after 5:03 p.m., no calls, no card swipes. It’s like she dissolved.”
“But the trial moves forward… right?” the junior associate asked, fidgeting with his pen. “I mean… the court hasn’t postponed anything.”
Vidhi’s jaw twitched. “That’s exactly the problem.”
She turned, gesturing to the whiteboard, where the names of the four witnesses were listed under government protection. Or so they’d been told.
“This case was never going to be clean. It’s tied to land, elections, and a politician who has a seat waiting for him in the Union Ministry. If any of the testimonies get through… he burns.”
A heavy silence.
“They’re already shifting the blame onto the local police. The investigating officer was transferred last week. And I got a call from the Registrar General, asking me if I was ‘comfortable’ arguing this case.”
That was when the room changed. You could feel it—like the walls pulled in a little tighter.
Vidhi had seen enough corrupt games to know what that call meant. Someone up top wanted her to fold. To drop the case. To play safe.
She didn’t.
Then came the moment everything began to turn.
Two days later, a file—one of the key evidence binders—went missing from her locked cabinet. No break-in. No forced access. Just gone.
Later that evening, she got a message:
“Drop it before she ends up like the others.”
She didn’t need to ask who she was.
Pranali.
The only one still missing.
BACK TO PRESENT
Vidhi stared at the footage. The timestamp mocked her.
Three days ago. But Pranali had been gone for over a month.
And now, on the day of the final hearing… four bodies were discovered. Including hers.
Freshly dumped. Cleaned up. Staged.
Someone was rewriting the story in real time. Deleting and adding scenes as they pleased.
Her fingers hovered over the phone screen, but she hesitated. Her inbox had become a war zone—50 new messages. Each one from a different number. New threats. New whispers. Same voice, same message: We’re watching you.
It was a game now. Hide-and-seek. And she was losing.
The phone buzzed again.
Unknown Number:
“You’re finally paying attention.”
Vidhi's hand curled into a fist. She'd deleted—no, blocked—hundreds of these numbers. But the game always reset. New number. New message. No face. No name.
She didn't bother answering. She never did. She wasn’t playing along anymore.
The irritation burned through her. The same sick feeling of being taunted by someone who was always one step ahead. The messages felt like relentless stabs in the dark.
The worst part? She was starting to hate the sound of her own phone buzzing. It wasn’t just a phone anymore—it was a weapon. A ticking time bomb.
Fifty numbers. Fifty new voices. The last time she checked, it had been an hour since the last message.
The phone buzzed again. She ignored it.
It buzzed again. She clenched her teeth.
Another buzz. Her thumb slammed the power button.
She dropped the phone onto the table, the anger and helplessness in her chest bubbling up.
This—this game—had to end. But how? When the only thing the man behind the screen seemed to want was to drag her deeper into his sickening little labyrinth?
That wasn’t a question for now.
Right now, she had to find the truth about the bodies. About Pranali. And about who—or what—was making her into a puppet.
The Raven?
She wasn't sure. All she knew? They were watching.
And she wasn’t about to wait for them to make the next move.
____________________________________________
ELSEWHERE~
He watched the screen flicker, her silhouette frozen in the grainy black-and-white CCTV feed. She was angry. Frustrated. On the edge of snapping.
Good.
She was meant to be.
He didn’t smile—he never did. But he felt it in his spine, that familiar click when a piece slid into place. Fifty numbers today. Tomorrow? Maybe sixty. Maybe a hundred. Each one handcrafted. Each message designed not to scare her—no, that was too crude—but to unsettle her.
He wasn’t stalking her.
He was training her.
For what? That depended on when she cracked.
He tapped the side of his phone, scrolling through the log.
Messages sent.
Delivery confirmed.
Location: pinged.
She wouldn’t trace them. She never could. She’d already tried.
And he had already watched her fail. More than once.
FLASHBACK
Six days ago. Vidhi’s Apartment.
“Okay, wait. What if we run it through two simulators this time? Maybe even re-route it through the firm’s secure server?” Adhvika's fingers flew across her laptop, frustration bleeding into her voice.
“Adi, we’ve done this. Five times,” Vidhi said, holding up a sticky note—numbers, names, dead ends. “Every single number dies after it texts. Burner SIMs, all prepaid. And you know what’s worse? They’re not even from the same tower regions. It’s like—”
“—like someone is using multiple nodes across the city. Like they want us to get close but never close enough.”
Vidhi gave a humorless smile. “Like a damn breadcrumb trail to nowhere.”
The laptop beeped. Error. Again.
Adhvika slumped back, staring at the ceiling. “I swear, I was this close to breaking one last week. The number traced to a hotel in Andheri West. But when I got there—”
“The building had burned down two hours before.” Vidhi finished the sentence for her.
A beat of silence.
“I think we’re being messed with. For sport.” Adhvika’s voice was quiet now.
Vidhi didn’t answer.
Because she’d already accepted it.
FLASHBACK ENDS
But there was something else tonight—something he hadn’t expected.
She’d stopped playing.
No more responding. No more flinching.
Interesting.
Maybe she was evolving.
He leaned back, gaze flicking to a wall of screens. One of them was paused—grainy metro station footage. Kiaan and Adhvika, now gone. Another screen showed the four cold bodies dumped at the city morgue, tags already attached.
He zoomed in on one screen. Vidhi’s face.
Not afraid. Just furious.
He admired that. Almost admired her.
Almost.
But this wasn’t about admiration. This wasn’t even about her.
This was about The Raven.
The one who thought they were in control.
He knew otherwise.
Because the game didn’t start when the Raven appeared.
It started long before that.
And if Vidhi thought the Raven was the endgame—
She had no idea she was still in the opening act.
____________________________________________
Kiaan’s POV
The air was thick with tension. Kiaan’s pulse raced, a low hum of adrenaline thrumming in his veins. His eyes darted across the abandoned streets, the city skyline looming dark and indifferent in the distance.
Adhvika was on his left, scanning the horizon, but they both knew what they were looking for. Or, more accurately, what they weren’t finding.
“Vidhi’s not picking up,” Kiaan muttered under his breath, barely audible over the hum of their steps. “She shouldvhave been here by now. Or at least answered.”
“She’s out there somewhere,” Adhvika replied, a sharp edge to her voice. Her lips were pressed thin, her expression one of frustration more than worry. But beneath it—Kiaan could sense it—was something more primal: concern. For Vidhi, for themselves.
“Out here somewhere,” Kiaan repeated, his voice taut. “We’re playing her game, not the other way around.”
Adhvika glanced at him. “What are you getting at?”
He stopped walking for a moment, the weight of the words sinking in. “Do you realize how many of those coordinates we’ve followed are dead ends? Even the first one we went to... nothing. All that graffiti? It wasn’t even real. I checked.”
“I know,” Adhvika murmured, her eyes narrowed in thought. “But those numbers... they kept coming from places with one common link— the Raven.”
The name was like a spark to dry tinder, igniting something that burned low and steady in his chest.
“Are we just supposed to ignore that?” Kiaan asked, his voice a little louder now, a challenge in his tone. “The Raven? Whoever the hell he is, he’s playing a game with Vidhi... and us.”
“I’ve been trying to reach her for hours,” Adhvika said, shaking her head. “She’s not picking up her phone. The messages have gone dead. If she were playing us... she would’ve responded by now.”
They walked on in silence for a while, both lost in the weight of what they had yet to discover.
Kiaan glanced up, noticing a series of neon lights flashing from a nearby alley. “That’s the fourth building,” he muttered, half to himself.
He was exhausted—both physically and mentally—but there was something compelling him forward. It was the same thing that had pushed him through the first dead end, and the second, and the third. Whatever had happened at the metro station... it wasn't supposed to be like this.
“This isn’t random,” he said abruptly, turning toward Adhvika. “We’re being led somewhere. And it’s not just to Vidhi.”
Adhvika’s eyes darted to meet his. “You think the Raven’s playing us?”
“No,” Kiaan answered. “ We are the bait.”
____________________________________________
Adhvika’s POV
She hated this. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to call it quits—to go back to the station, find a safe spot, and wait for Vidhi. But something about the night had a different flavor. The air felt charged, like the calm before a storm. Adhvika wasn’t usually one to get lost in paranoia, but tonight... tonight was different.
The city felt like a maze. The buildings blurred together, each one appearing the same, each corner just slightly different enough to make her second-guess every move. She tried calling Vidhi again. No answer.
“Damn it,” Adhvika muttered. She shoved the phone back into her jacket pocket. “Still nothing.”
“You’re trying too hard,” Kiaan said. “Relax. Let’s focus on getting to that last spot.”
Adhvika wanted to snap at him, but she stopped herself. He wasn’t wrong. It was just... difficult. Everything they’d seen tonight, every corner they’d turned, just felt like another setup. Another false lead. And the longer they were out here, the more she could feel the pressure mounting.
She glanced at Kiaan again. His jaw was clenched, his expression hardening with every step, but he wasn’t looking at her. His focus was entirely on the path ahead.
“What do you think is really going on, Kiaan?” she asked, a beat of hesitation before she spoke.
Kiaan didn’t look back, but she could hear the tension in his voice. “The Raven... he’s manipulating the entire situation. We’re getting dragged through the mud while he sits on the sidelines, watching us burn out.”
“But why us?” Adhvika pressed. “Why this game? Why are we the ones in the crossfire?”
“Because we’re the ones who can get close,” Kiaan answered. “Vidhi’s too sharp for him to get to. But we—we’re just pawns.”
____________________________________________
Kiaan’s POV
They were quiet for a while as they walked back through the underpass near the old metro station—no longer running, no longer of use, just hollow concrete and stale air. Kiaan kicked a loose pebble off the sidewalk, the silence settling comfortably between them for a few minutes.
“That place gave me the creeps,” Adhvika muttered.
Kiaan gave a half-smirk. “You? Creeped out? That’s new.”
She elbowed him lightly. “Don’t push it.”
He pulled out his phone again, thumb hovering over Vidhi’s name. He’d already called three times. Still no response.
“Nothing?” Adhvika asked.
“Nope.” He tapped on the tracker app he'd discreetly had running ever since Vidhi went off the grid. “But... wait.”
He zoomed in. “Signal’s back.”
“What? Where?”
“Her apartment,” Kiaan said. “It pinged her phone at her flat. Not more than ten minutes ago.”
Adhvika blinked. “So she was just there?”
“Looks like it.” Kiaan’s voice was hopeful, but he was already starting to feel a tightness in his gut. “She must’ve slipped past us.”
Adhvika looked back toward the metro station. “Then let’s go. If she went home, she’s either regrouping or waiting for us.”
Kiaan nodded, and they took off down the block toward his car.
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That's it for today.
Guys I'm traveling too much recently,
that why there is soo much delay in chapter release.
Please forgive me. 😔🙏🏻
Do vote and comment and let me know how the was chapter.
bui~ 🐹
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