He emerged from the white smoke, stepping out like a man carved from fire and silence. His eyes gleamed beneath the dim warehouse lights—sharp, intelligent, and dangerous. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He lit it with a flick, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a slow cloud that twisted in the air like a ghost.
"Radhe," he said, the name rolling off his tongue like a command.
"Radhe," he repeated, a smirk forming.
"Radhe."
The name echoed through the empty hall—half introduction, half warning.
He leaned against an old engine block, sparks from his cigarette tip glowing like dying stars. "You want to know who I am? I was a man of machines once. Cars, engines, gears—my world spun on their rhythm. I could make a broken engine sing, tune a machine till it purred like thunder."
He looked down, the smoke curling around him. "Speed was my language. Every night, I'd race through the streets, not for money, not for fame—just to feel alive. My family… they used to laugh at my madness. My mother called me 'her little engineer of chaos.' My sister, Asha, she'd ride beside me sometimes, screaming at every sharp turn."
His jaw tightened. "Then they came—the ones who think power is theirs by birthright. Politicians, corporate tycoons, men in suits who could buy silence with a signature. My father stumbled into something he shouldn't have—proof of their crimes. The next morning, my house was ash."
He crushed the cigarette on the floor, the embers dying beneath his boot. "I was supposed to die with them. But fate had other plans."
Radhe straightened, his face now hidden in the shadows. "For years, I vanished. I studied everything—data engineering, cybernetics, mechanics. I built things the world wasn't ready for. Machines that could listen. Cars that could think. Drones that could kill."
He walked to a table covered in blueprints and glowing circuits. "They thought they buried my past. But I dug it up piece by piece. Each of them fell, one by one. No gunfire, no witnesses—just silence and fear. They called it accidents, suicides, system failures. I called it… justice."
He paused, then smiled faintly. "And now? Now I'm Professor Radhe Rastogi, head of Advanced Robotics at the same university that once rejected me. My students think I'm just a quiet man obsessed with technology. They have no idea that the systems they learn from were once my weapons."
Outside, thunder rolled across the city skyline. Radha walked to the window, his reflection fractured against the glass. "People see me as a teacher now," he whispered. "But inside… the engine still roars. The smoke still burns. Because revenge doesn't end when your enemies die—it ends when your soul finds peace."
He lit another cigarette, the flame flickering like a secret.