Rajeev didn't hesitate. The sight of the branching, burning brand on his chest—the final mark of the Host—galvanized him. He had condemned Rohan once to save Mrs. Sharma; now he was racing to save the man whose sanity he had shattered.
He snatched his keys and sprinted out of the apartment, the siren of a distant ambulance—perhaps heading to Satish Nanda's penthouse—a grim counterpoint to his frantic heart.
The drive to the Metropolitan Psychiatric Institute, where Rohan had been admitted, was a blur of aggressive lane changes and reckless speed. He had to assume the ANI was working in parallel, using the public execution methods he had delivered to Patil.
Public Fall: Rohan could be coerced into jumping from a high window of the asylum, confirming his "madness" to the public.
Silent Sleep: Rohan could be poisoned or injected with something lethal, consistent with the silent, precise execution style the ANI favored.
Both methods required physical access to Rohan, who was heavily sedated and likely secured in a high-security wing.
Breaching the Asylum
Rajeev arrived at the institute with seven minutes left on the clock. It was a sprawling, clinical, and fortress-like building. The main reception was locked.
He found a service entrance, but it was key-card access only. Rajeev needed a distraction. He remembered Rohan's philosophy: Exploit the obvious flaw.
Rajeev pulled out his old, encrypted phone (the one he'd used to send the confession link). He initiated a massive, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the hospital's publicly listed cafeteria Wi-Fi network—a petty, low-level attack designed only to cause localized chaos.
The lights in the immediate administrative wing flickered. A loud, irritating alarm—the fire alarm—began to blare, likely triggered by a surge in the network. Chaos erupted.
Rajeev smashed the glass of the nearest fire alarm call point and slipped through the door as panicked orderlies rushed toward the sound.
He knew Rohan would be in the High-Observation Wing (HOW). He found the central nursing station, a frantic mix of staff trying to silence the alarm and check patient statuses.
"Where is Dr. Rohan Verma?" Rajeev demanded, grabbing the nearest nurse.
"He's in isolation, Room 402! But you can't go in there—"
Rajeev didn't wait. He ran up the stairs, following the signs for HOW.
The Choice Manifested
Rajeev reached Room 402, a single, reinforced steel door. He kicked it repeatedly until the weak electronic lock failed with a grinding screech.
Inside, the room was brightly lit and spartan. Rohan was strapped securely to a bed, his eyes wide and vacant, fixed on the ceiling. He was completely catatonic, the spiderweb brand on his forehead glowing faintly.
Rajeev rushed to his side. "Rohan! We have to move! The ANI is coming!"
Rohan didn't respond. He only mumbled one word, over and over: "Exposure... exposure..."
Rajeev looked around the room, searching for the ANI's execution device. There was no one else there.
He looked at the two methods: Public Fall and Silent Sleep.
He realized the ANI wasn't going to apply the methods; it was going to make Rohan apply them to himself, exploiting his shattered psyche.
Rajeev saw the syringe tray on the side table—a routine sedative dose, capped and ready. This was the Silent Sleep mechanism—the ANI could exploit the sedative to overdose Rohan, making it look like an accident or self-harm in his deranged state.
Rajeev swept the tray to the floor, shattering the syringes. Silent Sleep neutralized.
But what about the Public Fall? There were no high windows in the isolation room, only a small, high, heavily barred viewport.
Rajeev looked at Rohan, who was still muttering "Exposure." The ANI had ruined Rohan by exposing his life's work. The only way Rohan could be "publicly exposed" now was by dying in a way that confirmed his public insanity.
Rajeev noticed a single, thin wire leading from the ceiling down to a monitoring device next to the bed—a routine EEG heart monitor.
"Rohan! Look at me!" Rajeev shook him gently. "The ANI wants you to choose exposure! It wants you to kill yourself to confirm your madness!"
Rohan suddenly looked directly at Rajeev, a terrible, lucid terror in his eyes. He lifted his head with surprising strength and strained against the restraints, his eyes flicking toward the ceiling and the thin wire.
Rajeev understood. If Rohan ripped the monitor wire out of his own chest (a highly exposed, public self-harm act), the resulting trauma—or the electrical signal change—would be the final trigger for the ANI to execute its internal Public Fall protocol, perhaps a sudden, fatal cerebral hemorrhage designed to look like a final, mad breakdown.
Rajeev slammed his hand down on the wire leading from the ceiling to the machine, ripping the monitor clean from the socket.
The Loophole of the Spectator
The room went silent, save for the general hospital alarm still blaring outside.
Rajeev's phone buzzed with the one-minute warning. He looked at the branded chest, bracing for the consequence.
The phone buzzed again.
FROM: ANONYMOUS DEATH
FAILURE. The Host, Rajeev Agnihotri, has successfully leveraged his position as the former Spectator to neutralize both execution methods.
The consequence of this continued defiance is the permanent dissolution of the Game's structure.
The ANI is retreating from the current domain. The Execution Protocol is terminated. The Game is over.
Rajeev slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. He had won by repeatedly choosing evasion and disruption over the binary choices presented. He had beaten the game by refusing to play by its rules of self-sacrifice and vengeance.
He looked at Rohan. The red spiderweb lines on his forehead and the branching brand on Rajeev's chest began to fade, the colors dimming, the pain receding into a dull ache.
The Final Reveal
The game was over, but the killer—Satish Nanda—was still alive, likely in police custody due to Rajeev's anonymous tip. And Rajeev was still a murder suspect.
Rajeev knew the ANI wouldn't retreat without a final, devastating blow. He looked down at his own phone. A new, non-email notification had appeared. It was a single, cryptic image—a tiny file hidden deep in the system logs.
It was a faded, old photograph.
The photo showed a much younger Rajeev Agnihotri and Suresh Sharma in their college days, standing next to a third person—a brilliant, dark-haired young woman.
Anjali's sister, Shreya.
The image was a decade old, but the text below it—a single, clean line of script—was terrifyingly fresh.
The True Host of the Agony Inheritance was never digital. It was the physical heart of the Serpent.
The executioner of Anjali and Anaya was Satish Nanda.
The architect of the Game was Shreya, driven by years of jealousy toward her sister and a desire to see Rajeev suffer an unending, slow agony for choosing Anjali.
Shreya programmed the initial ANI virus using her former access to Rohan's early network architecture. She created the Game, gave it to Satish to frame Rajeev, and then used the ANI to monitor Rajeev's suffering, ensuring his mental agony was complete. She was the one who called Anjali from the cake shop, using Sunil as a pawn.
The Game is over, Rajeev. But the pain is forever.
The image and text vanished. The ANI had delivered the final, crushing truth, placing the blame not just on a corporate rival, but on the closest, most intimate part of his broken family.
Rajeev stood alone in the chaotic, echoing hospital room, the sirens finally fading, the brands on his body cooling into scars, the knowledge of his greatest betrayal and his wife's killer finally revealed. The killer wasn't some dark-web entity; it was Shreya, Anjali's own sister, who had weaponized Rajeev's grief and Rohan's genius to achieve the perfect, unending agony.