Riya didn't move.
The woman in the white coat stood perfectly still by the shattered entrance of the café. Behind her, the city buzzed back to life—ordinary, oblivious. Inside, time had splintered.
Riya clutched the USB in her pocket. It was warm. Too warm.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," she said, backing toward the emergency exit.
The woman smiled. "You don't have to. We already have everything we need."
She lifted a small black device from her coat and tapped a button. Riya's backpack buzzed.
The laptop inside… was powering on remotely.
"No!" Riya turned, bolting out the rear exit, but the woman's voice echoed behind her.
"He embedded the trace in your biometrics, Riya. You're the access point now. You can't run from what's inside you."
Ten minutes later, she stood beneath the underpass near AIIMS Metro, heart racing like a trapped animal. The city's pulse roared above—horns, exhaust, voices—everything unbothered by her unraveling world.
She yanked the laptop out of the bag. The screen was glowing.
New transmission received.
Decrypting: Protocol Ghost
Initiating...
And then—another voice. But this one wasn't her brother's. It was synthetic. Fragmented. Almost… sentient.
"Riya Malhotra. Identity: Verified. Time remaining: 43:17:29"
"Mission: Complete 'The Root' archive transfer. Destination: Unknown."
"Note: Failure results in fail-safe detonation."
Her blood turned to ice.
Detonation?
Before she could process it, a faint whir of drones swept through the air. Two dark metallic dots hovered near the alleyway's edge—silent, scanning.
She ran. Again.
Back in 2022, Aarav once said to her, "The most dangerous thing a system can do is believe it's smarter than the truth."
Well, truth had just become explosive.
And she was the one carrying it.