"A lie told to the world becomes history. A lie told to yourself becomes identity."— Found scrawled inside a burned-out ledger, Author Unknown
2:03 A.M. – Zayen's House, Basement Room
The folder lay open on the table.
Kabir flipped through the pages in silence. Every line he read was a cut across his faith in the system he had bled for.
Black ops deployments. Fabricated terror cells. Civilians mislabeled as threats. And buried in the annex pages — a man named Vihaan Mehra.
Zayen's father.
A high-ranking AI strategist once responsible for a billion-dollar defense automation deal — until he disappeared after testifying against three senior officials.
On paper? A suicide in the Western Ghats.
Reality?
Vanished without a body. Without investigation.
And now... he was a redacted name in the same operation Kabir had once monitored.
"Why are you showing me this?" Kabir asked, his voice low.
"Because they made me watch what they did," Zayen replied. "And now someone's continuing the killings in my name."
Elsewhere – A Private Server Vault, Delhi
A line of code blinked once.
Then, without any external command, a hidden drive decrypted itself.
Inside:Archived news stories.Access logs.Kabir Sharma's personnel file.And a hitlist marked "Phase Two."
Zayen's photo was at the top.
The second name?
Kabir Sharma.
Back in the house
Kabir stood slowly, processing the timeline.
"Who else knows this?"
"No one," Zayen replied. "Not even the people hunting me."
"They think you're the original Red X."
"I never was."
Kabir turned toward the board, where old kill scenes were pinned.
"If you didn't start this… who did?"
Zayen looked up. His voice dropped.
"I think there's someone else using the system."
"The surveillance?"
"No. The idea."
Kabir froze.
This wasn't about vengeance anymore.
It was about control — of narrative, of fear, of who deserved to live.
And someone had weaponized the myth of Red X as a cleansing ghost.
Outside, on the adjacent rooftop
A drone hovered silently, lenses trained on the window.
Inside the van below, a gloved man watched the feed.
"Both targets confirmed," he said.
"Do we engage?" the driver asked.
"Not yet. Let the story build."
4:11 A.M. – Kabir's Safehouse
Later that night, Kabir activated a long-retired neural profiling tool. It mapped motive based on patterns, geography, and psychological residue left in crime scene behavior.
He fed in all six recent kills.
It ran for twenty-seven minutes.
When it stopped, one phrase blinked on the screen:
"Subject is not acting alone. Psychological profile fractured — mimic origin probable."
Underneath that:
"Primary suspect: Kabir Sharma"
Kabir stared at the screen.
The system thought he was the killer.
And in the city's eyes?
That's exactly what was beginning to spread.
Final Scene
A man stood inside a burning room.
On the wall, charred and cracked — a chalkboard barely intact.
He reached forward and drew one last red check.
This one was different.
It curved left.
Zayen's curve.
But the hand wasn't Zayen's.
As the fire swallowed the room, the man turned
Gloved.
Smiling.
Unseen.