The fall was silent.
So silent it seemed the world had stopped breathing with her.
One moment, Maya stood among them, pale and unreadable as always; the next, her knees buckled, and her body folded as if struck by some unseen weight. The marble floor caught her with a cruel, echoing thud.
For a heartbeat, the great hall was frozen.
No one moved. No one breathed.
And then—chaos erupted.
"Maya!" Mahi's scream shattered the hush, raw, tearing through her throat. She stumbled forward, sari unraveling, gold bangles clattering down her wrist as she reached desperately for her daughter.
"Get water! Call the doctor!" Fahad barked, though his voice cracked with panic. He pushed past a servant, nearly toppling him in his haste.
The twins, Fahish and Faha, darted toward their sister at the same time, colliding with each other in their rush, their faces drained of all color. Farhan froze by the doorway, wide-eyed, unable to move, his fists clenching and unclenching.
Even Mahim, who seldom allowed emotion to rule his face, faltered. The lines around his mouth deepened as he stepped forward with heavy authority, though his stride lacked its usual certainty.
But Rahi moved first.
He broke through the crowd with a force that startled even the guards.
before any of them could reach her—
Rahi was already there.
He had moved with a speed born not of instinct but of memory. His knees hit the marble with a crack, his arms sliding beneath her shoulders with a gentleness that belonged to someone who had practiced this gesture before. His voice broke through the cacophony, sharp and frantic, a single name torn from his chest:
"17B! Don't you dare leave me—don't you dare!"
name struck like lightning.
The guests gasped. To them, Maya was daughter, sister, mystery. But to him, she was a number. A code. A scar carved in glass and steel.
The words struck like lightning.
The family froze mid-motion, as if the number itself had turned the marble floor to glass beneath their feet.
Mahi blinked, tears trembling in her lashes. Naya clapped a hand to her mouth. Fahad, in his haste, stumbled to a halt, staring at Rahi as though he had spoken blasphemy.
"Rahi…" Mahi whispered. "Why—why are you calling her that ?"
But Rahi didn't answer. He pressed trembling fingers to Maya's throat, searching, pleading, until at last he felt it: a faint, fragile pulse, flickering like a candle in storm. Relief burst through him in a shuddered breath.
"She's alive," he murmured. His voice was breaking apart, but his grip on her was unyielding. He leaned closer, lips brushing the shell of her ear. "Stay with me, 17B. Stay. You survived worse than this—you survived everything. Don't let them take you away now."
The others surged closer in panic, but his roar stopped them.
"Back! All of you—back!"
The hall fell silent at the thunder in his voice.
They had never heard Rahi like this—not composed, not collected, but raw and feral, like a cornered animal defending something more precious than his own life. His eyes, sharp with fury, cut across each face, daring anyone to disobey. Mahi's hands quivered in the air, caught between reaching for her daughter and obeying the stranger's command. Even Mahim, ever the iron presence, stilled at the sharpness of Rahi's glare.
"Don't touch her!" His tone cracked with rage. "Don't even dare. She doesn't need your hands. She doesn't need your pity. Where were you when she screamed herself hoarse in a cell of glass? Where were you when she bled for your silence?"
Mahi's hands hung in the air, trembling, paralyzed between love and shame. Fahad's fists curled until his knuckles whitened, but he could not step closer. Even Mahim, towering and stern, faltered at the venom in Rahi's glare.
Rahi clutched Maya tighter, as if shielding her from all of them.
"You don't touch her," he said again, lower this time, like a curse. "Not now. Not ever."
The words were not only for them—they were for himself. Because even as he held her, the past returned.
The stench of antiseptic. The hum of electric wires in walls that dripped with condensation. The endless rhythm of boots against steel floors.
And her.
The girl they had called Subject 17B.
He remembered the first time he saw her: strapped to a cold table, skin bruised by restraints, hair clinging to her damp face. She had been barely more than a child, yet her silence had unsettled even the doctors.
While the others cried and begged, she endured.
While the others broke, she remained.
Her body trembled under injections, her veins burned with strange substances, her bones screamed beneath the weight of their machines. But her eyes—those black, depthless eyes—stared at them without yielding.
The perfect subject, they called her.
Not because she never broke, but because she broke in silence. Because her suffering produced results. Because her pain was measurable, recordable, repeatable.
And Rahi, himself a victim, had been forced to watch.
Day after day, experiment after experiment, he had seen her reduced to numbers on a clipboard, scars mapped like constellations across her skin. He had watched her bleed into tubes, convulse under current, collapse against restraints. He had seen the way the doctors smiled—not because she survived, but because she endured long enough to be useful again tomorrow.
And she had survived. Always.
No matter how much they carved, cut, burned, drowned—she lived.
It was that endurance that terrified him.
Because it meant they would never stop.
Now, holding her unconscious form in the mansion's grand hall, Rahi's chest heaved with the weight of those memories. His hand shook as he brushed hair from her face, though his grip remained firm as iron.
"She was their masterpiece," he rasped, voice jagged with fury. "The perfect subject. They cut her open—inside and out—and when she didn't die, they celebrated."
Mahi let out a strangled sob. "Stop… please, stop…"
But he would not. His voice grew sharper, crueler, slicing through the silence like broken glass.
"You want to know what she is? You ask why she doesn't smile, why she doesn't speak? She is the sum of their cruelty. A girl they turned into a machine, a weapon, a shadow. They stripped her of childhood, of laughter, of color—and still she lived. That's what 17B is."
His eyes, blazing with fury, lifted from Maya to the family that surrounded him.
"And you…" His words dripped venom. "You dare call yourselves different. But you aren't. You sat her down, poured poison into her veins, and demanded truth she didn't owe you. You looked at her silence and treated it like rebellion. You wanted to break her open just the same. Tell me—how are you any different from them?"
The accusation thundered.
Mahim stiffened, his mask cracking. His eyes flickered with something unspoken, a shadow of guilt he could not entirely smother.
Fahad shook his head, stammering. "We only wanted—we only wanted to understand—"
"Understand?" Rahi snarled. "No. You wanted to pry her open. You wanted to peel her skin and call it love. That's not love—that's another experiment."
The twins, Faha and Fahish, flinched as if struck. Raya turned away, hands pressed against her mouth. Naya wept openly, shoulders shaking with grief and shame.
Even the servants lowered their heads, unable to bear the sight.
But Rahi's fury burned on, unstoppable.
"You ask why she walks this house like a shadow instead of a daughter. It's because she knows you're no different. You watched her collapse, and your first instinct was to demand more from her. More pain. More truth. You're not family—you're just another cage."
The hall was silent now, suffocating.
Only Maya's shallow breathing filled the space.
Rahi lowered his head, pressing his forehead to her gloved hand. His voice, so fierce a moment ago, trembled into something fragile.
"You don't belong here, 17B," he whispered. "Not with them. Not with their cages. You survived the lab—you don't need to survive them, too."
His shoulders shook, silent sobs wracking through him though no tears fell.
Around him, the family stood shattered, silenced not by his words alone, but by the truth they had always feared to face:
That Maya was not simply their daughter or sister.
She was a victim.
A survivor.
The perfect subject.
And they, whether through ignorance or demand, had forced her to relive the same cruelty she had already endured.
The chandeliers flickered, their crystals shivering as if disturbed by invisible hands. The hall, once filled with light and music, seemed hollow, echoing with only one truth—spoken not by Maya, but by the one who had borne witness to her suffering.
17B. The girl who had survived when she should not have. The girl who endured the unbearable. The girl who had been failed—again and again.
And as she lay silent in Rahi's arms, the weight of her existence pressed down upon them all, until none could lift their eyes.
Not even the chandeliers dared to shine too brightly anymore.