The phone line suddenly went dead. Tonmay’s breath hitched, his body stiffening as he sat back, hands gripping his head. “There’s nothing we can do now,” he muttered, voice barely above a whisper.

  Subhadip shook his head, eyes fixed on the screen. “No. We have to keep going. Look at this.”

  They leaned closer, scrolling through files and videos that revealed layers of corruption: tax evasion, drug smuggling, and the dark web of porn syndication. Each piece a thread tying powerful people to crimes they thought hidden.

  Then a video file.

  They opened it.

  It was Abhijit Mukherjee and a minor.

  He was raping her.

  Tonmay swallowed hard. “This… this is worse than we imagined.”

  Subhadip nodded grimly. “Yes. But it’s what we need.”

  He stopped the video abruptly, shutting down the screen. “This is enough evidence. We can’t back down now.”

  Tonmay looked at him, eyes filled with a mix of fear and hope. “So, what’s next?”

  Subhadip took a deep breath, determination hardening his voice. “We expose everything. No matter the cost.”

  The laptop screen glowed dimly in the corner of Tonmay’s cluttered desk. Folders spilled open—tax records, chat logs, shipment receipts. The room felt still, too still, like the moment before a storm.

  Subhadip leaned forward, scrolling through layers of transactions. Fake business names. Redirected shipments.

  Offshore accounts.

  Tonmay’s voice was dry. “How many names are involved in this?”

  Subhadip didn’t answer at first. His fingers hovered above the trackpad. His eyes were tracing a spreadsheet that didn’t end—names stacked like gravestones.

  Finally, he said, “Too many.”

  A silence pressed in. The kind that didn’t need filling.

  Then Tonmay exhaled, sharp and shaky. “We’re into something bigger then, we could have ever imagined.”

  Subhadip sat back, his hands in his lap. “Good. Let’s show the world what we can do.”

  They exchanged a glance.

  The air in Tonmay’s room crackled with a new urgency. He reached for his phone without a word, thumb gliding over the screen with muscle memory. The call rang thrice before a groggy voice picked up—his cousin, Arnab, a mid-tier journalist with a habit of chasing smoke until it turned into fire.

  Tonmay spoke low, controlled. “Need a press confrence. It could establish your career.”

  A pause. Then the voice on the other end snapped awake. “How soon?”

  “Tommorow morning.”

  Meanwhile, Subhadip remained still, his eyes fixed on a tab open to a Reddit thread titled: “Dark Kolkata: the truth no one talks about.”

  He didn’t look away as he spoke. “Even if your cousin runs the story, it’ll get buried under TRPs and half-baked denials. We light the fuse online first. Make it viral. Let the people know before the press filters it.”

  Tonmay nodded. “We show them the truth raw.”

  “No edits. No anchors,” Subhadip added. “Just reality. Bleeding out in pixels.”

  The plan was no longer a question. It had become an orbit pulling them both in.

  The glow from Tonmay’s laptop cut through the dimness of the room like a scalpel. Rain had begun to hiss softly against the windows—just enough to feel like the city was listening.

  They crafted the post like a manifesto—no names at first, just facts. Cold, unblinking facts. Tax evasion documents, shipment records masked under legitimate business, screenshots of messages laced with threats and coded drops. The pattern was unmistakable—organized, protected, powerful.

  Then came the line that would brand it in memory:

  > "If you’re reading this, we’re already unsafe.But silence is more dangerous than bullets.We are Subhadip & Tonmay. And we’re not backing down."

  Posted a video on Yourtube.

  They posted it on XX, layedit, Inthegram reels with blurred visuals. By the time it hit Mugbook, it was already multiplying. Shares. Screenshots. Anonymous pages reuploading. An undercurrent catching flame.

  Subhadip leaned back, exhaling like a diver breaking surface. “It’s out.”

  Tonmay’s hand hovered near the power key, but he didn’t press it. “We just put a noose around our own neck.”

  Subhadip smirked faintly, the corner of his mouth twitching like a challenge. “Then let’s make sure we drag the devil down with us.”

  Outside, thunder cracked like distant applause.

  The phone buzzed in Subhadip’s hand just as shadows lengthened outside. He took a deep breath and answered.

  “Where are you? You never tell me anything!” his mother’s voice trembled with worry and frustration.

  “I’m at Tonma’s house,” Subhadip said quietly. “We found evidence against some dangerous people—tax evasion, drugs, everything. It’s serious, Ma. We’re in danger.”

  There was a pause, then her voice softened, filled with fear. “My son... you have to be careful. Promise me you won’t get hurt.”

  “I promise, Ma,” he replied, fighting the knot in his throat. “We’re going to keep fighting, but we have to be smart.”

  She sighed deeply. “Do what you must, but please don’t die.”

  As she spoke, black SUVs rolled silently into view outside the window. Subhadip glanced toward the growing threat, heart pounding.

  “Ma...” he whispered, “I’ll be okay. Stay strong for me.”

  With that, the call ended, and the danger closed in.

  “They’re here,” he whispered, the words sinking like lead.

  He turned sharply. “Attic. Now.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Tonmay snapped, fear slicing through his voice like a violin string stretched too tight.

  “Go,” Subhadip barked. “Leave it to me.”

  The room darkened further—not by power loss, but by dread. Then came Himiko, silent as always, her presence like a shift in gravity. No footsteps. Just there.

  “So?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  Subhadip didn’t look at her. “You know.”

  She pointed the revolver, as if violence could ever be clean. “Don’t waste your shots,” she said coolly. Then came the first bang—metal on wood, a door cracking under force. A scream. A gunshot.

  Himiko didn’t flinch. “Tonma’s mother is gone,” she said, voice like ash. “And they’re heading upstairs. They want his little sister next.”

  Time folded inward.

  Subhadip cocked the revolver.

  And all warmth drained from the room like blood from a wound.

  The living room was drenched in an eerie red glow, as if the walls themselves were bleeding shame. Subhadip stepped down with the quiet focus of a hunter, each creak of the wooden stair a war drum to his pulse. The air was thick—too thick. As if the house itself was choking.

  Then he saw them.

  Two men, faces cloaked in perversion. One was hunched over Tonma's mother’s lifeless body, his touch an abomination, violating even in death. The other was trying to peel innocence away from Tonma’s little sister—her tiny fists pounding, her voice hoarse with screams that tore through the walls like razor wire.

  Subhadip's blood froze, then boiled. Time collapsed.

  “Fucking pedo,” he muttered under his breath, the words like a flint spark in dry straw.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Then he moved.

  Like lightning under flesh, he lunged forward—firing the revolver without hesitation. The first shot tore through the man near the child’s bed. It wasn’t clean, but it was loud. Panic erupted like shattered glass. The second man turned, stunned, his pants half-undone, but Subhadip was already there—driven by a rage that had no words, only instinct.

  They clashed.

  The revolver was wrestled out of his hand, clattering to the ground. A blade glinted—where did he get that?—and it slashed toward Subhadip’s ribs. He barely dodged, but the air burned around the steel. Subhadip countered with a blow to the jaw, bones crunching beneath his knuckles like brittle shells. The man fell back, blood spitting from his mouth, but kicked viciously, knocking Subhadip into the wall. Picture frames shattered. Dust rose like ghosts.

  He didn’t stop.

  Subhadip tackled him, fists flying in brutal rhythm. One-two, heads, nose, throat. The man screamed, but it didn’t matter. No sound could buy him mercy.

  Then silence.

  The girl, Tonma’s sister, had curled into a corner, clutching a pillow like a raft in floodwater. Subhadip ran to her, wrapping her in his arms. “It’s over,” he whispered, voice cracking. “It’s over. I promise.”

  But he knew better.

  It wasn't.

  Subhadip stood over the unconscious bodies, his fists trembling, knuckles bloodied and raw. His chest rose and fell like a collapsing roof.

  He looked at his hands—shaking, alive, dangerous.

  “How the fuck was I able to do this?” he breathed, half in awe, half in disbelief.

  Himiko stepped out from the shadows, composed like a storm after it’s passed. “The device doesn’t just help you see truth. It sharpens you. Heightens your instincts. Reflexes. Strength.”

  Subhadip’s brow furrowed. “Even with my body being this… shit?”

  She nodded. “It doesn’t care who you were. It awakens who you’re meant to become.”

  He looked down again, the broken men at his feet. For the first time, he wasn’t afraid of what he could do.

  Only of what he now had to do.

  Subhadip gently took off his own shirt—mud-stained, torn at the sleeve, but still warm—and wrapped it around Tonma’s sister. It draped over her like a curtain on a small stage, hiding the brokenness underneath. Her trembling slowed just enough for him to lift her into his arms.

  Himiko's voice came sharp through the crackling air: “They’re coming. More of them.”

  Subhadip's gaze shot toward the shattered window where distant headlights flickered like hunting eyes.

  No time.

  He burst up the stairs, the girl in his arms, and pulled Tonma out from the attic’s crawl space. Tonma’s eyes were red, rage buried behind exhaustion, but he didn’t speak. He followed.

  “They’ll block the front,” Himiko said, appearing beside them like a breath of wind. “There’s a stairwell. Through the terrace. Leads to the ground behind the water tank.”

  Subhadip didn’t question it. Adrenaline replaced logic.

  He shoved open the terrace door. The night was thick with storm clouds. Each shadow held the promise of death.

  But escape had a shape now.

  And they ran toward it.

  As they reached the boundary wall, breathless and stained with horror, Tonma clutched Subhadip’s arm and whispered, “We can go to Sneha’s place. It’s close. She’ll help.”

  Subhadip froze. The name alone cracked something buried.

  Sneha.

  A thousand memories, half-faded like sun-bleached paper, flashed through him—her laughter echoing down school corridors, the way she once tied her hair with that stupid yellow scrunchie, the single glance exchanged across a tuition bench when the world had gone silent.

  But that was before.

  Before Tonma confessed his feelings for her.

  Before Subhadip decided to erase his own.

  “She’ll understand,” Tonma said. “We’ll be safe there.”

  Subhadip nodded faintly, then paused. His

  eyes darted sideways, away from Tonma. “Wait. We... we left the flash drive. The one with the footage.”“What?”“I dropped it near the window,” Subhadip lied, voice low and tight. “If they find it... everything’s gone.”Tonma hesitated, torn, but then gritted his teeth. “Okay. I’ll go to Sneha’s. You meet me there.”Subhadip gave him a stiff nod, watching as Tonma and his sister disappeared into the shadows, toward safety.He didn’t look back.He couldn’t.

  The first droplets struck like tiny glass needles on the broken rooftop as Subhadip stood still, drenched in silence.Himiko, her voice barely louder than the rising wind, asked, “You lied to him. Why?”Subhadip didn’t turn. His eyes traced the outline of the street below—dark, glistening, breathing danger.“I slipped the drive into his sister’s skirt pocket when we were escaping,” he murmured, voice hollow. “They’ll be searching me, not her. And... I couldn’t face Sneha.”Himiko tilted her head, her synthetic eyes scanning him like storm gauges. “So it wasn’t just strategy.”“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. But strategy came easy after that.”The thunder cracked, slicing the sky in half, and the rain began to pour—cold, relentless, like a cleansing that never truly came. Subhadip stood beneath it, a boy soaked in guilt, resolve, and the war between two kinds of pain: the one he carried, and the one he chose.

  The house stood silent under the storm's wrath, its windows flickering with faint movement inside. Subhadip crouched by the fence, raindrops cascading off his brows like the ticking of a countdown.

  Through the curtains of rain, he saw the lone guard in the backyard. Himiko’s whisper flickered in his ear, crisp and low: “He’s isolated. Now.”

  Without a second thought, Subhadip picked up a heavy terracotta flowerpot—moss-ridden, chipped, but solid—and moved like a shadow through the wet grass. One swing. A muted crack. The man slumped, breathless.

  Himiko guided his hands as he reached down and gripped the pistol from the unconscious man. The cold steel felt foreign but thrilling—an extension of resolve, not rage.

  “Two more by the main door,” Himiko murmured. “They’re smoking.”

  Subhadip didn’t hesitate. With the wind as his curtain and thunder as his cue, he took aim. One shot—clean. The other turned, too slow. Another shot.

  Two bodies fell against the wooden frame, staining it with finality.

  Subhadip limped into the hallway, boots soaked, blood and rain mingling as they trailed behind him. The house reeked of kerosene and smoke. From the direction of Tonma’s room, a dull orange flicker danced against the walls—flames licking upward like the tongues of something hungry and unholy.

  Then—a sudden movement.

  A man burst from the kitchen, wild-eyed, armed. There was no hesitation on either side. Subhadip fired—one, two—just as the man pulled the trigger.

  The bullet grazed Subhadip’s calf, tearing flesh. He stumbled, the world tilting sideways for a second. But the attacker dropped, a spray of red painting the cabinet behind him.

  Pain surged, sharp and molten. Himiko’s voice came soft and clear: “Breathe. You can’t stop now.”

  Smoke curled up the stairs. The fire was growing. But so was Subhadip’s resolve.

  The hallway crackled with heat. Subhadip dragged himself toward the stairs, each step a challenge, but adrenaline carried him like a tide.

  Two more emerged—one from the shadows near the bathroom, machete in hand, the other descending the stairs with a rifle slung across his chest. No time to think.

  He rolled behind the sofa, aimed, and fired—one clean shot to the chest of the machete-wielder. The rifleman panicked, fired blindly, shattering glass. Subhadip shifted, gritted his teeth, and pulled the trigger again. A dry click. Empty.

  He cursed under his breath.

  But the man was close—too close. Subhadip lunged, using the empty gun as a blunt weapon, cracking it across the man’s temple. He went down hard.

  Silence.

  Subhadip leaned against the wall, panting, calf bleeding, smoke stinging his lungs. He looked toward the burning room upstairs and exhaled.

  “We fooled ‘em,” he muttered with a crooked grin. “They thought we’d run. But we brought the storm instead.”

  As Subhadip limped out onto the rain-slicked porch, thunder rumbling low like a growling beast, the streetlights flickered through the sheets of water. His blood mixed with the rain, trailing down the steps.

  Then he saw him.

  Standing under a flickering lamppost like a ghost summoned by memory—same black coat, same silver mask etched with cruel symmetry. The man who had attacked Tonma’s father near Nabapally Park.

  The figure tilted his head slightly, the voice beneath the mask distorted but coldly amused.

  “That little hit near Nabapally... it hurt,” he said, stepping forward through the rain. “But it wasn’t nearly enough to finish me.”

  Lightning flashed.

  Subhadip’s jaw tightened. The bruises on his soul, the blood on his hands, the storm in his chest—he felt them all rise as the masked man approached.

  The rain poured heavier, drumming like war drums on the tin sheds and street gutters. Subhadip dropped the empty gun, its final click still echoing faintly.

  He glanced at the masked figure, whose boots splashed through puddles with calculated grace. The weight of the drenched air thickened as the silence between them cracked.

  Subhadip wiped blood from his brow and muttered, “I guess you won’t be able to help me now, Himiko?”

  Himiko’s voice, distant and faint in his ear, almost lost in the static of the storm, replied gently, “Not with weapons... but the rest is up to you.”

  The masked man lunged first — a fast jab. Subhadip ducked, the punch grazing his hair. He swung low, catching the man in the ribs, but the impact barely fazed him. A quick counter landed on Subhadip’s already wounded calf, and pain flared like fire.

  They exchanged blows — sharp, brutal, primal. Subhadip fought like a man with nothing left but resolve. His fists cracked against bone; his body took every hit like earth swallowing lightning. He gritted through a knee to the gut, grabbing the man’s collar and slamming his head into a rusted iron pole.

  The man reeled, then laughed behind the mask. “You fight like you’ve got something to prove.”

  “I do,” Subhadip growled, blood mixing with rain on his lips. “That I survive.”

  They circled each other under the thundering sky, the street lit by rage and refusal. And somewhere in that dance of pain and will, Subhadip knew — he wasn’t the same boy who had walked out of school weeks ago.

  Subhadip staggered back as a brutal punch sent him crashing onto the wet concrete. The taste of iron and rain filled his mouth. His body screamed in exhaustion — muscles trembling, breath shallow, vision blurred. Each blow that followed thudded like a hammer into his ribs, shoulders, jaw. He was slipping. He could feel it.

  But then — through the ringing in his ears, through the chaos of storm and blood — he heard it.

  That voice.

  Mocking, sharp, slightly broken at the edges. A tone he hadn’t heard in years but had known too well. Subhadip blinked. The masked figure loomed over him, drenched in moonlight and vengeance.

  “I told you,” the man said again, “you can’t beat what’s already dead inside.”

  And that’s when it clicked.

  That voice. That lilt. That bitterness.

  Subhadip’s eyes widened, even before the mask was pulled off.

  Rain streaked over the pale skin. The broken nose. The faded scar above the left brow.

  “Sushanto…?” Subhadip whispered, disbelief cutting through pain like lightning.

  Tonma’s elder brother.

  The rain hammered down as Subhadip struggled beneath the relentless blows. Fatigue weighed him down like a stone sinking in a dark pond. His breath came in ragged gasps, and every muscle screamed for mercy. Just as he was about to lose himself in the storm of pain, a cold, chilling voice cut through the chaos.

  “I was the one who killed our father.”

  The words echoed like a curse. The masked figure’s laugh was manic, hollow — a sound twisted by madness and cruelty. Subhadip’s eyes locked onto the figure’s face as the mask slipped away in the rain.

  It was Sushanto, Tonma’s brother, now a loyal worker of CMC, the very shadow that loomed over their lives.

  The man’s eyes burned with a wild fire as he chuckled, “You never expected me, did you?”

  Before Subhadip could respond, a sudden crash — Tonma emerged from the shadows, gripping a rusted rod. With a fierce yell, he slammed it down on Sushanto’s back. The man grunted but didn’t fall.

  Subhadip watched silently, his mind racing, the storm raging around them. The family’s darkest secrets had come alive in the rain-soaked night, and the fight was far from over.

  Tonma’s fury ignited like a storm unleashed. With every swing of the rod, it crashed down on Sushanto’s skull, echoing through the rain-soaked night like thunder. Each blow was a fierce declaration—rage, betrayal, and years of buried pain unleashed in violent bursts. Sushanto staggered under the relentless assault, the madness in his eyes flickering as the rod hammered home again and again. The rain mixed with the chaos, blurring the lines between fury and justice.

  Subhadip’s voice cut through the storm of violence as he stepped forward, raising a hand to stop Tonma. “Enough.” His eyes searched Tonma’s, steady and heavy with pain. “Why did you come back?” he asked quietly. Tonma’s breath was ragged, his grip tightening on the rod.

  “Why did you lie to me?” Tonma demanded, voice cracking with a mix of anger and hurt.

  Subhadip looked away for a moment, the weight of his secret pressing down. “I lied… so you could survive.” The words hung between them like a fragile shield, fragile but necessary.

  Subhadip wiped the sweat from his brow, his gaze steady despite the pain. “Now, we need to get somewhere safe. Let’s go to her place.” He hesitated, then added quietly, “Before that… there’s something I never told you.”

  Tonma looked at him, wary but curious.

  “My father… before he disappeared, he gave me a secret file. A duplicate of something important.” Subhadip’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I kept quiet because I wanted to be sure when the time was right.”