I was sitting in the deepest shadow of my room, reviewing the logistical flow chart of the entire Corvini compound I had mentally mapped over the last week. The humiliation had fully curdled into a cold, diamond-hard resolve. I was no longer a dreamer. I was a weapon waiting for deployment.
The suffocating punishment, Asrit's forced stillness, was shattered by the softest sound I knew. The electronic lock on the door thunked open, followed by the quiet footsteps I instantly recognized.
John Corvini walked in.
No guards. No preamble. No condemnation for the wasted week. The temperature in the room changed instantly, shifting from the cold of concrete to the inescapable heat of absolute authority.
John stood over me, looking down without judgment, his eyes calm and assessing.
He simply said, "Arpika has been captured by Mancini. Bring her home."
And just like that, I was not being punished. I was being activated.
The sheer, staggering magnitude of the order sent a cold thrill through my chest. Pranav leads. John wasn't testing my structural integrity; he was testing my capacity for ruthless action.
He assembled the mission team with surgical cruelty. Sanvi was the blade, her restrained fury finally granted an outlet. Sathwik was the shield, the quiet certainty that would absorb the consequence. Gautham, sweating profusely before we even left the compound, was coming too. Not because he was useful, but because John wanted to see what pure, distilled fear could create in him.
For the first time since the botched fish market heist, I was unleashed. The silence Asrit forced on me became my fuel, cold, sharp, terrifying. I didn't waste time on elegant formations or strategic retreats. I didn't plan to impress Asrit or Sam. I planned to overwhelm.
My plan was not elegant. Not refined. Not strategic in a military sense. It was the desperate response of a trapped animal who knew the only way out was to shatter the cage with layers of simultaneous, contradictory noise.
"We don't need stealth," I hissed to the team in the van. "Stealth is predictable. We need frantic, layered chaos."
I laid out the structure.
Fake entry routes. Set off multiple alarms on the north perimeter, drawing the primary guard complement into a useless sector.
Timed noise. Deploy timed explosives, cheap firecrackers and smoke canisters, at the main gate five minutes later, forcing the remaining guards to assume a full frontal assault.
Misdirection. Sathwik takes the eastern maintenance tunnel, creating noise and damage, forcing a three-minute lockdown sequence.
Misfires and lies. We enter through the roof, using the cover of the initial chaos. My commands will be deliberately contradictory, shouting orders for retreat and charges simultaneously on two different channels, scrambling their internal communications.
It was a plan designed not to impress, but to overwhelm the enemy's capacity to think. Everything was wrong, loud, sweaty, and off-balance, which was exactly why it would work against Mancini's disciplined, predictable defense.
The infiltration was messy, loud, and felt like a suicidal frenzy. We dropped onto the slate roof of the mansion during the confusion of the north perimeter alarms.
The moment the explosives detonated at the front gate, Pranav was shouting commands, his voice ringing with forced authority, weaving desperation into strategy. He didn't care about the integrity of the plan; he cared only that it created enough cover to keep them moving.
Sanvi was magnificent. She moved like a feral animal finally allowed off her leash, her suppressed rage weaponized into pure fluidity. She ignored my frantic commands to hold positions, instead carving deep, destructive lines through the compound's interior, drawing fire and generating the vital chaos that kept the main force divided.
Sathwik was exactly what I needed: a walking wall. He absorbed blows, deflected gunfire with his own body mass, and kept moving, a silent, relentless presence. He didn't question the layered insanity of the plan; he just executed his singular function. Keep the leaders alive.
Gautham was a liability, but even his fear had utility. He stumbled, he broke, he panicked, but in the cracks of his pure terror, his survival instincts sharpened. He found the unused service elevator I had mentioned as a theoretical route and dragged Sanvi's attention to it during a momentary stall, a piece of raw intelligence born from his innate need to flee.
We were a storm of flaws, a perfectly dysfunctional machine moving through a house of structured violence.
The final hallway was narrow and guarded. Sanvi took out the two remaining guards with a speed that left only dark smears on the mahogany paneling.
The door to the holding room was kicked open.
Arpika was strapped to a chair, her dress torn, her face bruised, a thin trickle of blood near her mouth. But her eyes, cold, hard, and utterly undefeated, locked onto us.
And she smiled. A savage, predatory smile through the blood.
It was on. The mission was no longer about rescue; it was about survival, and the cold, terrifying realization of what we had become.