The office was dim except for the glow of computer screens and the faint hum of an old ceiling fan. Anchal Rathod leaned over the table, palms pressed against a map of Delhi dotted with red pins and scribbled notes. Around her, the team shifted restlessly, the smell of strong tea and printer ink mixing in the cramped space.
"This isn't like our usual jobs," Pawan muttered, arms crossed as he leaned against the filing cabinet. "Missing spouses, fraudsters, corporate leaks, those we can handle with paperwork and patience. But this," He gestured toward the mess of clippings spread out across the table. "This is SynerTech. A billion-dollar monster. And we're poking it with a stick."
Sumit, tapping idly at his phone, smirked. "You mean we're poking Kairav, the golden boy. Corporate darling by day, God-knows-what by night." He flicked his eyes up at Anchal. "And you're the one who told us to dig, so don't start with second thoughts now, Pawan."
Anchal didn't look up from the map. "I don't have second thoughts. I'm reminding you all that this isn't a sprint. The Ridge incident, Ritika's disappearance, Kairav's sudden rise, it all connects. But we won't see it if we rush. We need them to slip."
Mansi, sitting cross-legged on the couch with a laptop balanced on her knees, typed furiously. Her eyes didn't leave the screen. "And they will. No corporation this big run clean. I've already found three shell companies tied to SynerTech funneling money into 'research divisions.' The accounts don't line up. Too neat."
Suchitra, flipping through a notebook filled with handwritten timelines, sighed. "Money trails and shell firms don't bring Ritika home. Her parents hired us for answers, not conspiracy charts. It's been weeks. If she's alive, time's slipping."
The words cut through the room. For a moment, only the fan's-tired whir filled the silence.
Anchal straightened slowly, meeting Suchitra's eyes. "You think I don't know that? I see her photo on this wall every day." She tapped the pinned picture of a smiling girl with a schoolbag slung over one shoulder. "But rushing gets us sloppy. Sloppy gets us caught, or worse, buries us before we know the truth."
Pawan shifted uncomfortably. "She's right. The enemy we're playing against… they don't care if one PI vanishes in Delhi. We're expendable to them."
The burner phone on the desk buzzed. Everyone glanced at it, tension snapping across the room. Anchal picked it up, thumb swiping across the cheap keypad. The message glowed in the dim light:
Update? Any leads? S
She read it aloud, then tossed the phone back onto the table. "Shivam again."
Sumit snorted. "He's impatient. Like he thinks we can break into SynerTech HQ tomorrow and walk out with a confession."
Mansi glanced up, frowning. "He and his group don't get it yet. Surveillance isn't action-packed. It's hours of boredom and seconds of opportunity."
Anchal typed a short reply, the click of the buttons sharp.
Patience. This takes time. Let the enemy make mistakes., R
She set the phone down with finality. "He'll understand eventually."
Later that night, the team piled into their beat-up white SUV, the kind that blended into Delhi traffic without drawing attention. They parked near SynerTech's glass headquarters, the building's sleek steel lines glowing under floodlights. From the shadows across the street, it looked less like an office and more like a fortress pretending to be friendly.
Sumit adjusted the long lens on the camera, snapping pictures of employees leaving late. "Look at them. Smiling, carrying laptops, gossiping about their bonuses. No clue what kind of experiments their bosses are running under their feet."
Suchitra logged timestamps into her notebook. "We've tracked three of the execs' routines now. Same cars, same departure windows. Boringly predictable."
"Predictability is good," Anchal murmured, eyes fixed on the revolving glass doors. "It tells us who matters, and who doesn't."
Pawan sipped lukewarm tea from a thermos, scanning the building's perimeter through binoculars. "Guards aren't military-trained. Corporate security at best. The real secrets aren't up top anyway. They're underground."
The SUV fell quiet again, the city noise filtering through closed windows, honking horns, the distant rumble of an auto-rickshaw. The work was slow, dull even. But beneath the monotony, a current of tension thrummed.
Anchal scribbled something in her notebook: Level ten? She didn't know where the phrase had come from, an overheard whisper, a leaked memo, but it stuck in her mind like a thorn. She underlined it twice, hard enough to dent the page.
The burner buzzed again. Another check-in. Another impatient ping from Shivam's group. Anchal didn't even read it this time. She pocketed the phone and muttered, "They'll get their answers when we have them. Not before."
In the cramped SUV, her team nodded silently. They were used to the grind, to the long nights that felt like dead ends. But all of them knew the truth Anchal carried in her silence: it only took one slip, one overlooked detail, to crack a façade as big as SynerTech's.
And they were watching. Waiting.