~ Trust breaks. The hunter becomes the hunted ~
By 10:30 AM, Kabir Sharma was no longer tracking the killer.He was being tracked.
Neha had disappeared after the Ulsoor meeting, and her official comms went dark an hour later. Kabir didn't need confirmation — that one encrypted message had said everything:
"Agent compromised."
Compromised. Framed. Or expendable.
He walked through the surveillance hub beneath Infantry Road, his old turf, pretending he still belonged. A stolen clearance card from a junior analyst gave him seven minutes before the sweep team noticed.
He moved fast.
He accessed the terminal labeled "Red X - Null Watch."Only three people had access to it.
He was supposed to be the fourth.
Inside were motion timelines, metadata pings, and… private footage.Unapproved feeds. Hidden cameras. One in his apartment. One outside his regular gym. One at a coffee shop he'd only visited twice in two years.
"They've been watching me this whole time," he whispered.
Then he saw something else.
A file labeled:"ZAYEN_98.MKV"
Click.
It opened to grainy footage of a classroom — a boy seated alone, drawing on a blackboard. His back was to the camera. Silent. Focused. He wasn't vandalizing. He was… designing something.
Symbols. Stick figures. Xs. Checkmarks. Diagrams.
And then — he paused.He turned just enough for Kabir to see part of his face.Soft jaw. Lean frame. Teenager.
"Who the hell are you?" Kabir murmured.
Then the boy pulled out a red chalk stick.He circled a name.
Kabir Sharma.
The screen went black.
Elsewhere, on a windswept rooftop in Koramangala...
Zayen stood beside a rundown water tank, adjusting the strap of his backpack. His eyes weren't angry. Just tired.
He took out a piece of chalk, crouched, and drew a line on the concrete — slow, horizontal, deliberate.Then a vertical stroke crossing it.
Another checkmark. But not for a victim.
This one meant "close."This one meant "the eye has seen too much."
Behind him, a man in a helmet — a scout from an unnamed intel division — pulled a silenced pistol from under his jacket.
Zayen didn't move.
He didn't need to.
By the time the man raised the weapon, Zayen was already gone.A pipe creaked. A door swung.And on the wall behind the scout, written in blood-red chalk:
"Too slow."
Back in the surveillance bunker, Kabir downloaded the Zayen video.He heard footsteps coming down the hall — fast, armed, official.
He shut the terminal, hid the burner drive, and slipped out through a side vent he'd memorized years ago.
As he emerged into sunlight, he didn't smile.But he whispered, just once:
"Zayen. So it is you…"
Somewhere deeper, under an abandoned railway platform...
Zayen watched the same surveillance footage on his own screen.He saw Kabir watching him.
And for the first time…
He smiled.