Ch:- 2 Heart – Connect

*It has been 6 months since the disappearance of Nupur and her family. The case had gone cold but Ram got a lead. The location of one of the workers from Nupur’s family bungalow.*

In the middle of the city there is a dark un-lit building, covered in fungus from the outside and walls falling apart from inside. Neil, Ram and two more officers are making their way through the building’s corridor. All the apartments are empty in this building, as most of them have caved in on themselves. All of a sudden they hear a door close from the same floor. Neil and Ram rush to the end of the corridor with the two officers following shortly after. From there the corridor continues to the left and the right. Neil is trying to figure out where the sound came from as Ram taps on his shoulder and points at the end of the corridor on the right. There is a door at the end of the corridor with light leaking through the bottom of the door. Neil and Ram make their way to that door and bust it open. Inside the dirty, broken apartment they see the same butler, who greeted them when they went to the bungalow all those months ago. But he looked much different, clothes torn, dirty and his body malnourished. Seeing all the offers he tucks himself in a corner, with his eyes fixed on a single officer. Without a blink, just staring at Ram.

The butler is sitting in the interrogation room, mumbling to himself, as soon as an officer enters the room he goes silent and starts staring at them. Neil, Ram and Jeet are standing on the other side of the glass. Looking through the one way mirror. Jeet says “you guys get one lead in six months and it’s too broken to help us” he turns to Neil, lets out a sigh and says “get him some help… maybe he’ll be able to help us out then”. Jeet pats Neil on the shoulder and leaves the room. Neil turns back at the butler, who’s still mumbling under his breath. Neil suddenly says “Fuck it! Send this mumbling motherfucker to the hospital…maybe once he gets help he’ll actually start talking” Ram had been laser focused on the butler since the beginning, suddenly Ram says “i don’t want to go back” Ram looks at Neil and says “That’s what he has been mumbling since the last hour” Neil looks at the butler and then back at Ram. Neil asks Ram “do you want to go in and try talking to him?” Ram nods his head and says “Nah… you should try talking before we send him off” Neil looks at the butler again and says “fine… I’ll give it a shot”. 

As soon as Neil enters the interrogation room the butler stops mumbling again. Neil places a bottle of water in front of the butler and takes a seat. Neil looks at the butler and asks ” do you remember me ? We met around 6 months ago ?” The butler doesn’t reply, with his eyes still wide open and fixed on Neil. Neil lets out a sigh and says “look we are not sending you back. Or anywhere if I am being honest… in fact we want to help… get you in better shape mentally and physically” The butler starts breathing a bit heavy. Neil continues “before anything, tell me how you are feeling ? Drink some water” the butler shifts his eyes to the bottle of water. Neil continues” don’t worry it’s for you.” The butler slowly reaches for the bottle and grabs it. Neil with a smile on his face continues ” in fact you must be hungry” The butler’s eyes instantly shift back to Neil. Neil continues ” As I said. We are here to help.. but for that you need to help us too… so tell me where is the whole family ?” The butler doesn’t answer. Neil drops his smile and says “okay forget the family” Neil puts a sheet on the table and slides it over to the butler. The sheet has all the pictures and names of the workers from the bungalow. Neil continues “do you know where any of these guys are ?” The butler looks down at the sheet. His breathing gets fast, his body slowly starting to shake and Neil notices this. The butler’s breathing intensifies and he looks up at Neil. The butler screams and tries to charge at Neil across the table. But Neil effortlessly moves aside and puts the butler in a hold. All the other officers rush in but by that time the butler had already passed out. 

The butler is taken to a mental health facility in a police van as Neil and Ram are standing outside the police station. As the van leaves Ram asks “you think Nupur’s father kidnapped all the workers and kept them somewhere so that they don’t speak up” As the van disappears in the distance Neil turns to Ram and says “well could be… But all of the workers ? And a man of his stature would just get rid of them, instead of mass kidnapping. That doesn’t add up”. Ram turns to Neil and says “maybe he has gotten rid of them all… I say we go back to the house… He’s a big shot maybe he has another house where he’s hiding… look it has been 6 months, the house had been untouched and cold for awhile and our only lead is acting like a fucking tool. I say we can at least try… maybe we’ll find something at the bungalow” Neil pauses for a moment, he looks at the organ sky and says “yeah… okay back before dinner though” Ram chuckles and says “yeah don’t worry we are not gonna make her wait”.

Neil and Ram are in their Jeep heading back to the bungalow. Even though that house was an active crime scene, no one had really been there since the last 4 months or so. As Neil is just looking at the sunset through the window Ram says “it’s weird how I don’t ask you this a lot but how has it been with Kashish since you guys moved in ?” Neil smiles and says “well… it’s been very good… it’s just very new to me I suppose… living with someone… getting called out on anything I do…well I suppose the house is much cleaner now…” after a small pause Neil realises what he said and continues “ahh shit was that sexist ?” Ram and Neil both chuckle. Neil turns to Ram and asks “and what about you ? How is your search with the pills going ?” Ram lets out a sigh and says “well no luck yet. But Dr.Vinod said once I am done with the case. Apparently stress doesn’t really help the process” Neil looks out the car window again and says “so I’ve heard”.

They finally reach the bungalow, the sun is almost down. Ram drives into the compound and stops right in front of the entrance. Neil steps out of the Jeep and looks at the bungalow for a minute. Neil is thinking about something, he turns to Ram and says “straight to Ashok’s room and then to his wife’s” Neil turns to Ram who just got off the Jeep and continues “and since we are here… we’ll check the servants floor as well”. Ram looks at the bungalow and replies “i say we start from the top then” The house is mostly taped up from inside with police tapes. Ram and Neil are making their way upstairs, the house has collected dust over the months, so much so that every step they took made a new footprint. As they reach the top floor Neil turns to Ram and says “check the rooms on the right”. As Neil himself went to the left. As Neil is walking down the corridor he looks at the window at the end of the corridor, the Heart-connect building visible through the window and a bit brighter than last time. Neil is approaching the first door, when all of a sudden he hears a loud thud from inside the room. Neil is shocked, he quickly rushes to the door and busts it open with one push. Inside, to Neil’s shock, he sees a lanky guy with a black mask around his face. The guy steps back a bit. Neil notices him starting to panic, he smirks and tells the guy “afraid huh?” Neil takes a few steps forward and continues “there’s no need, just calm down yeah ?” As Neil is slowly walking forward, the guy starts panicking more, seeing that Neil quickly and very carefully hides away his batch. Neil sees that the guy is looking at the window, probably to escape. Neil calmly says “listen don’t make any harsh decisions… I want to just talk”. Suddenly runs up to the room to check. The guy sees Ram, who is in a police uniform and makes his move to the window. Neil tries to grab him but the guys takes a huge leap, throwing him out of the window, he slides down one of the roofs and lands shoulder first on the ground. As the guy is trying to get up and run while holding his shoulder, Ram quickly jumps out the window as well and follows him. Ram falls to the ground as well and gets up as soon as possible. Neil shouts from the window “he’s heading to the grove !” Ram barely catches a glimpse of him entering the grove and quickly follows him. Neil turns his attention back to the room, he looks on the ground. He left footsteps, bearly visible but it does the job. His tracks suggested that the guy entered the room and went straight to the cupboard he was standing by. Neil walks near the cupboard and starts inspecting it. The cupboard mostly has books in it, like novels and textbooks. Neil starts to brush off books, thinking something might fall out of them. And from one of the books, something falls out, a picture. Neil bends over and picks it up. It’s a picture of Nuper with a young guy, who’s body structure resembled a lot with the guy who was here. Neil puts the pictures in his pocket and rushes downstairs. Neil runs out of the house, he looks at the grove but it’s too dark to see anything properly. So Neil gets in his Jeep, he starts up the Jeep and drives it through the lawn. Neil parks the Jeep right in front of the grove, he leaves the car on, lighting up the entire grove. As Neil is trying to look inside the grove, he gets a call. It’s from Kashish. Neil picks up the call and walks into the groove. On the call Kashish asks “Hey. Where are you ?” As Neil is looking around he replies ” I am in the middle of something a bit serious.” As Neil is saying that, he sees Ram, limping back. Neil tells Kashish “I’ll be home soon” and cuts the call. Neil rushes over to Ram, he sees Ram’s disappointed face and figures out that the guy got away. 

Neil and Ram are in the jeep, heading back to the station. There is a very off putting silence in the jeep. Neil is in the driver seat this time, he looks over to Ram. He is texting someone on his phone, Neil’s mood switches from disappointed to angry in a second, he shouts “RAM!” Ram instantly keeps his phone aside and looks at Neil. Neil calms himself down a bit and continues “What happened there ?”Ram looks back at the road ahead, with his head hung low, he replies “He got away. I-I dropped wrong while jumping off. Spraining my foot, I still followed him… till he jumped the fence” Ram suddenly punches the dashboard in rage, which makes the dash pop open and a few things fall down. Neil sighs, he pauses for a moment, thinking what to do next. Ram calms down a bit and says “I am sorry if I sound offensive, Neil… but we can’t let Jeet know this, he’ll put us off the case… for sure.” Neil’s eyes are still fixed on the road, still thinking, he turns to Ram and says “alright… but we can’t hide it for too long… on the plus we know who it is” Neil hands the picture he found to Ram. Looking at the picture he says “he’s from the list of workers at the house.” Neil replied “exactly…but this guy seemed pretty fit, unlike the last one” Ram looks at the picture again, he sees the guys standing with Nupur and says “so she didn’t run alone that night… she didn’t kill the granny alone” Neil nods and says “you get the details on his history, if there is any in our database. I’ll have to check on someone tomorrow, as he might have hid something from me… this will get us close to Nupur for sure. But we are nowhere near finding Ashok and the rest of her family… not until that butler gets better.” Neil lets out a loud sigh, finally taking a breath. Ram looks back at the road and under his breath says “sorry. For what happened today.” After a small pause says “don’t worry about it. After all you did jump out of a damn window after him…so I can cut you some slack.” Neil turns to Ram, seeing Ram holding his legs Neil asks “I’ll drop you straight home.”  Ram nods, refusing the offer, he turns to Neil and says “drop me to the station… we get to the bottom of this as fast as possible… this is just a sprain I’ll manage… you on the other hand should go home.” Neil looks at Ram, he waits for a moment before both of them let out a few chuckles.

After dropping Ram at the station, Neil finally reaches home, he drives up the Jeep beside his house, in a small garage like structure. Neil turns his Jeep off, as he is doing that, he sees under the passenger seat few things that fell down, when Ram punched the dash. Neil reaches down to pick everything up, a few papers, some cards and a Heart-connect pill. Neil picks up the small envelope and chuckles. He puts the envelope in his jacket. Neil closes the jeep and gets his phone out. He dials up Dr.Vinod but he doesn’t answer. Neil puts the phone back in his pocket and starts walking towards his house. The porch is dark, with just some light leaking through the house window. Neil climbs the door, making his way to the porch, he reaches for his key. Neil gets the keys out and opens his door. Barely anything’s visible inside the house, apart from the very little purple light emitting from the corridor. Neil easily makes his way to the corridor. At the end of the corridor he sees his bedroom door open. Dark purple light pouring out of the room. Neil starts walking down the corridor, as he reaches the door to his bedroom, inside he sees Kashish facing out of the window, with a wine glass in her hand and just swaying to some smooth jazz. Neil walks up to Kashish, slowly hugging her from the back. Kashish chuckles and says “busy night ?” As both of them are swaying to the music, Neil replies “I would say more crazy than busy”. Kashish turns around, without breaking his grip, facing Neil now she asks “Hungry much ?” 

The television is on, Neil is sitting on the couch in front of the television. Kashish is heating up the food for him. As Kashish is walking towards the couch Neil asks “what is it ? Smells great” Kashish takes a seat on the couch right beside him. She hands the plate over to Neil and says “chicken rolls”. Neil sees the plate with 3 rolls in it, he picks up one of the rolls, not bothering if it’s too hot or not, he takes a huge bite out of the roll. Looking at that Kashish softly chuckles and asks “rate it. Out of ten. come on” Neil pauses, he looks at Kashish with food filled in his mouth. Neil nods and starts chewing the food in his mouth. After a solid minute or so, Neil is done chewing, when finally he clears his mouth, Neil thinks for a moment. Before turning to Kashish and saying “7 the masala is damn good… like I was confused between 6.5 and 7 cause the chicken was a bit – ” Kashish breaks off Neil by swinging a pillow at his face. In shock, Neil is more worried about the rolls in his hand as the pillow barely affected him. Kashish gets ready to hit him again and shouts “6?!” Neil slowly places the plate down and says “no. I said 7. And I was THINKING about 6 – ” Kashish swings the pillow, smacking it across Neil’s face again. Kashish swings the pillow again. But Neil catches the pillow with one hand and grabs Kashish with the other. “I am starting to think that you don’t know how numbers work” says Neil as Kashish tries to get out of his grip. As Neil and Kashish are having their moment, all of a sudden Neil’s phone rings, he looks around to find it and sees it’s in his jacket near the front door. Neil gets off the couch, making his way to his jacket, he reaches down in the pocket and pulls the phone out. Dropping multiple things on the floor in the process. Neil, not bothered by that, looks at his phone. It’s Dr.Vinod’s call. Neil gestures Kashish to wait and heads out the house. On the call Dr.Vinod says “sorry I couldn’t pick up, I was a bit caught up. So tell me what happened ?” Neil says “We need to meet tomorrow Doc. It’s about Nupur ” Dr.Vinod without any hesitation replies “Okay no problem. Come by 7 then ? Recently it’s a bit more crowded around here” Neil thinks for a second before replying “yes… thanks for taking time out for us” Dr.Vinod on the other end says “Not at all. All the help I can provide”. Neil ends the call and heads back inside his house. Still unbothered by the things on the ground, Neil walks over them, making his way to Kashish. Who’s sitting on the couch, as she sees Neil ignore the thing he dropped on the ground, Kashish looks at him and says “you know you gotta pick that shit up right ?” Not affected by what Kashish said, Neil picks up his plate again and sits on the couch with his one hand holding Kashish. As Neil is about to go back to eating, his phone rings again. This time it’s Ram. Neil picks up the phone and walks over to the window. Before Neil could say or ask anything, over the call Ram says “come to the hospital right now.” Neil confused on the other end asks “what happened ?” Ram replies “the butler… he’s dead… I am on my way to the hospital right now. Leave right away ” Ram ends the call. Neil tries to wrap his head around the situation. The butler is dead. Their only witness for what happened that night is dead. With the case getting even more complicated, the other worker showing up at the house. Who was in perfect shape unlike the butler. With Neil not able to figure out what’s happening, suddenly he feels Kashish arms around his waist. Kashish hugging from behind asks “Work ?” Neil with a significant change in his tone from earlier says “yes.” Kashish tightens her grip and says “don’t stress… you work best when you have a clear mind” Neil stays quiet and lets out a sigh. He turns around and hugs her back. In their little moment Kashish says “you should probably leave” Neil chuckles softly as he agrees, he grabs his coat and gets ready to leave. As Neil walks out of the door Kashish says “I’ll cook something else for you when you come back… and swear to God if you rate it anything below 9 the next case you’ll be solving will be your own murder” Neil turns back laughing at what she said, he finally open his Jeep, gets in and leaves. Once Neil drives off in the distance Kashish closes the door and heads back in. When all of a sudden she steps on something, she can’t see what it is but assumes it’s the things Neil dropped while getting his phone. Kashish turns on the light near the doorway and starts picking everything up. As she is almost done she notices something. A small pink envelope. Kashish pauses for a moment, as she knows where that envelope is from. Kashish slowly reaches for it and grabs the envelope. As she pulls it closer some light from the window falls on it and she can finally see “Heart-connect” printed on it. Kashish turns the envelope around to see Neil’s name printed on the other side. She is shuck, Not knowing what to think of this she sits on the ground with her back to the wall. Holding the envelope, she just looks off in the distance with all these thoughts running through her mind. All this time spent with him, all these connections built with him, all for him to possibly hide things from her. She can still feel the pill in the envelope. So maybe it’s something he got before but never used it. But again it fell out of his jacket, which he was wearing today. Kashish’s face had gone from concerned to almost in tears. She opens the envelope to see a pink pill inside it. But on the inside of the envelope there are two numbers. One number being Neil’s and the other being Heart-connect’s office. Kashish gets an idea. She looks at the watch. It’s 30 minutes past midnight. Kashish thinks for a bit before getting to her feet and grabbing her phone from the couch. She quickly dials in the Heart-connect number and gives it a call. After a few seconds of silence the phone rings. It rings for a few minutes as Kashish gets inpatient. As Kashish is about to cut the call, the call gets answered. Kashish places the phone back on her ear, as a giy from the other end is saying “hello?” Kashish clears her throat and says “Hey.. I wanted to enquire about something if it’s possible” The guy from the other end says “oh hey… I thought there was a network issue or something… haha… tell me how can I help you?” Kashish holds up the envelope in her hand and says “I-I actually have a Heart-connect pill and I wanted to know when it was… umm… withdrawn” The guy on the other end stays silent for a moment before laughing a bit and saying “umm…I am guessing that’s not your pill then ma’am” Kashish thinks for a moment before lying to him by saying “I actually found it in my husband’s… pocket” the guy on the other end instantly says “ohh I am so sorry for this…. But giving out any information on our customers would be against our policy ma’am” Kashish rubs her forehead, getting more And more stressed. As she is about to say something the guy on the other end interrupts her and says ” but I’ll tell you what. Now this is off the records. So I can tell off the bat that you aren’t a member, so as unethical as this is, I really want to help. Now before going ahead with this, tell me. Does the envelope have your husband’s name on it?” After a short pause Kashish replies “yes”. There is a moment of pure silence after that. The guy takes a deep breath and says “take the pill… before you say anything, listen to me. You want to know what all your husband is hiding right ? If everything you experienced with him has been real or not ?  Well this pill has your husband’s DNA after all. It will show everything that it was, it is and what it will be. All the truths… all the lies. Everything.” Kashish doesn’t know what to say. The envelope is still in her hand as she stands there silent. Lost for words. The guys on the phone contines “umm hello ? Ahh carp, now that I think about it I think I said a lot. Hey, sorry to put so much on you. You should just talk it out with your husband. My apologies ma’am” Right after saying that the guy ends the call. Kashish looks at the phone and lightly drops it on the couch. Now with more thoughts running through her head, she looks at the envelope in her hand. All the thought growing on her as she phases out looking at Neil’s name on the pink envelope.

Meanwhile Neil reaches the hospital. He parks his Jeep right next to the entrance. Just a few steps away from where all the hospital employees are gathered.As Neil steps out of his Jeep, he notices Ram’s bike. Ram being the bike fanatic he is, went and bought a Triumph Bonneville on EMI. So it’s not that hard to notice. But In that moment something striked Neil. In a situation like this, why would they call in Ram before him or Jeet ? Neil walks towards his bike and notices the mother and silencer are cold. Neil starts walking towards the crowd, making his way through the people, he can finally see the butler’s body on the ground. Face up on the concrete, with blood splattered all over the ground. Neil looks at Ram standing right next to the body, wearing a full biker outfit. Neil walks up to him and asks “which floor was he on ?” To which Ram replies by just pointing up. As Neil looks up he can see a broken window on the 5th floor, with the cartians flapping through the broken window. Neil looks back at Ram, he can see the expression on Ram’s face that he wanted to say something. Which Neil had probably understood. Neil asks Ram “who called you in ?” Ram hesitates to answer the question, he removes his biker gloves, he looks around at all the people gathered around and says “I think before anything we need to check out his room” Neil looks at the crowd around them and agrees. 

Neil and Ram are in the lift going up. There is an uncomfortable silence between them. Neil suddenly says “So what do you think happened ?” Ram avoiding to make eye contact says “they are saying he jumped out…” The lift reaches the 5th floor. As they both are walking down the corridor to the butler’s room Neil asks again “I asked you what you think Ram”. Ram takes a deep breath and says “I don’t think that’s the case… I think he was…” Neil interrupts him and says “that he was pushed out? Yeah, looking at the distance between him and the building, plus him landing on his back. it’s either that or he took a long ass run up to jump out” As Neil is saying this they reach the butler’s room. Neil opens the door to see a very tiny room, with the broken window at the end of the room. Looking at the room Neil continues “well so much for the run up”. Neil walks into the room, looking around. Something doesn’t feel right. Everything in the room is where it should be, completely neat and tidy. Ram walks over to the window, looking down at the body and the people gathered around it. Suddenly Neil asks “so you didn’t answer my question” Ram turns his head halfway and says “i said he didn’t jump” Neil quickly cuts him off and says “nah… not that question… who called you in ?” Ram turns around, facing Neil and says “Jeet sir. He called me in.” Sudden confusion takes over Neil’s face. Before Neil could says anything Ram continues “he has put you off the case” Neil snaps out of his confused state and shouts “What?!” Bearly making eye contact with Neil, Ram says “I am sorry bu-” Before Ram could finish Neil shouts “No!” Neil furiously walks up to Ram asking “What are you playing at Ram ? Tell since when have you been here at the hospital?” Ram is pushed back a bit, with Neil towering over him and his back almost out the window. Ram holds the edge of the window as hard as possible, trying to push Neil away as he shouts “HEY! What the fuck man” Neil unphased by Ram efforts, with eyes still locked on to Ram, repeats “since when have you been he-” before he could finish someone from behind them shouts “OKAY! THAT’S ENOUGH!” Neil finally moves away from Ram and turns around to see Jeet standing at the doorway. Jeet steps inside the room and says “you know for some reason I knew you wouldn’t take this nicely. All these years of success and all that. But wow this Neil… this is pathetic.” Neil walks forward trying to explain saying “no you don’t get it. I wa-” Jeet puts his hand forward stopping Neil from getting any closer and interrupting him again “I don’t want to know if I am being honest. I saw what I saw and I’ve heard what I’ve heard. What I saw was you threatening your junior officer. And what I heard is you hiding things from your senior.” Neil freezes for a moment, he tries to turn to look at Ram but Jeet continues “don’t look at him Neil. And to be clear Yes I am referring to what happened at the bungalow. To be completely honest I would’ve let that pass as I’ve always trusted your judgement. Had a whole speech ready to go about how you get some rest… lay off this case for awhile… you are getting overworked and all…. But now…” Neil has gone completely silent as Jeet let out a sigh and continues ” You are dismissed Neil. Because you failed at finding Nupur… or her family… and the only witness you had in 6 months has his brain spread on the ground.”  Jeet puts his hand forward and says “badge please… and as for the case… Ram you handle it.” Neil is speechless. He unclipes his badge from his belt, walks forward to Jeet and toses the badge across the floor. Neil walks across Jeet, shoulder pushing him and saying “whatever. You are gonna regret this and you can pick up the Jeep later” as he leaves the room. 

As Neil gets close to the jeep, he looks at where the body was and he gets an idea. He looks up at the window to see if Jeet or Ram are looking. As he sees no one as the window, he rushes to the site. He looks at the blood splatter and manages to find one strand of hair stuck to the ground because of all the dried out blood. Neil picks up the strand of hair, places it in between his napkin and leaves the hospital. As he is driving, he makes a call to Dr.Vinod. Within one ring Dr.Vinod picks up the call and says “hello?” Neil as he is driving says “sorry to bother you this late but this is very urgent… so your pill making process, how does it actually work?” Dr.Vinod replies “no no it’s okay…. Well that’s a rather heavy question…umm… to put it simply with one’s DNA we can kind of trace their past, seeing their behavior, their choices through which we can try to predict what could happen in the future.” Neil after a small pause says “prefect! Where are you now? doc.” Dr.Vinod replies “At the main building”. Neil ends the call and makes his way straight to the Heart-Connect building. 

Meanwhile Kashish has finished her 2nd bottle of wine, still thinking what to do about the pill. Her mind still clouded by the things that guy said on call, she takes another sip of wine, looking outside her bedroom window. The whole city is visible, lights from the city filling up the night sky. But in the middle of that city, now there stands the Heart-connect building, towering over everything in and outside the city. Kashish gets lost in her thoughts looking at the tower. When all of a sudden she finally lands on a conclusion, she can’t take it ain’t more. She grabs the pink envelope, removes the pill, places it in her mouth and washes it down her throat with the last sip of wine in her glass. 

Ch:- 1 Finding Connection

It’s 2:45am. The neighborhood is quiet, the streets are empty. Inside one of the houses there is a loud thud. After a minute or so a girl drives out in a black SUV, the girl is covered in sweat and her eyes wide open. She stops at the main gate waiting for it to open, her hands and legs shaking as she waits for the gate to open. As soon as the gate is open she pushes the acceleration paddle as hard as she can, driving out of the bungalow’s compound.

The sun is up but the weather is still a bit gloomy. A young skinny guy, wearing a brand new police uniform walks into the police station. It’s much darker inside the station, no calls coming in and a small group of people sitting near a table talking about something. As the young guy steps inside the station everyone looks at him, standing near the entrance, the young guy is a bit startled, but soon he sees a huge shadow walking up to him from behind. The young guy turns around to see Detective Neil walking up to him. Neil stops right in front of the young guy. All the other officers in the room gets up and salutes Neil. Looking at all the other officers, the young guy salutes Neil as well. Neil, towering over the young guy says ” at eas Ram… you are the new recruit if I am not mistaking.” Ram puts his hand down and replies “yes sir”. Neil puts his hand forward and says “I am detective Neil”. Ram smiles and shakes his hand. As they are done greeting each other, both of them finally turn around and enter the station. In the station Ram looks at the officers gathered around another officer’s desk. It looks like the officer is telling them a story. The officer has a small envelope in his hand. Ram asks Neil “what’s happening there ?” Neil looks at the desk and at the people gathered around it. Neil chuckles and says “yeah…Dev had matched with a girl on Heart-connect. He had a date with his match yesterday”. As Neil says this he puts his hand on Neil’s shoulder and makes his way to the Department head’s office. As Ram walks off to the table everyone is gathered around. Neil knocks on the door. The inspector inside looks up at Neil and gestures him to come inside. Before Neil could even enter the room properly, the inspector stops what he was doing and says ” good morning Neil. I am assuming you know I called you in to sign you on a case right?”. Neil salutes the inspector and says “I would be disappointed otherwise sir”. Inspector Jeet chuckles and says “so… you know Ashok Sharma right ? Well he’s a personal friend actually, I personally handle his cases because he doesn’t like many people knowing about it but today I am a bit caught up” Neil takes a seat and says “no issue. I’ll take it. What’s the case ?” Jeet leans back on his seat and says “Well his daughter ran away yesterday night and now you’ll have to find her…well you and the new recruit” Neil who was listening very carefully till now suddenly breaks out and says “I should’ve seen this coming” Jeet laughs and says ” not much of a detective are you now” Neil chuckles and says “giving me a partner… making jokes…it’s weird how lightly you are taking his daughter running away” Jeet clams down a bit and says “who are you kidding she’s just a privileged rich kid who’ll coming back when her wallet is empty, pretty sure a partner wouldn’t do any harm..plus I wanted to give the new guy some field experience…. This is the most. Harmless case I can send him on. That too with our oldest, a true vatrent “. Neil pauses for a second before  saying ” I appreciate you calling me old. all while kissing my ass…. sir.” Jeet who had just stopped laughing starts chuckling again. Neil nods and says “fine send me the missing girl’s details, background and everything. I am heading there right away”. Jeet agrees and Neil heads for the door. As Neil is almost out of the room inspector Jeet calls out his name and stops Neil. As Neil turns back the inspector smiles and says “don’t forget to take your partner”. Neil turns and looks at Ram sitting near the table and talking to Dev.

The cloudy sky has suddenly cleared up. On this sunny day Neil and Ram are driving towards the Sharma mansion. Neil, sitting in the passenger seat, turns to Ram and asks “so how was Dev’s date ?” Ram look at Neil for a second before shifting his eyes back on the road and letting out a small chuckle. Ram replies “Heart-connect really did it for him apparently. They clicked very well on the date and at night after taking eachothers pills..what they saw was… well let’s just say positive….he seemed pretty happy with the result”. Neil, who’s looking out of the car window says “Like a kid, getting a dream about his crush”. Ram look at Neil for a second and says “Surprisingly accurate actually” as he focus back on the road. There is a moment of silence, the road is empty as they drive under the open sky. Neil is looking at the vast landscape and the open fields as Ram says “but doesn’t it make you curious though ? What it makes you see… it’s like being able to see a glimpse of your future” Neil who’s still looking out says “Hmph, or just a Dream” Ram quickly replies “well…maybe even dreams are just glimpses of a possible future”. Neil chuckles, looks at Ram and says “I am pretty sure I saw a dinosaur wearing pants and serving wine in my last dream”. Ram replies “wow… sorry to say this sir but… that’s weird as hell” They both laugh for bit before Neil says “yeah well so is that pill”  

Neil and Ram enter a suburban neighborhood. All they could see was huge bungalows with even larger gardens surrounding it. They both slowly drive up the hill, it’s not a very steep and flattens out as they keep driving up. Finally they can see a single bungalow covering the whole top of the hill. Soon they see that the way into the bungalow is blocked by a huge automatic gate. As Ram drives up to the gate he says “Is it just me or are we entering a goddamn castle”. The panel beside the gate lights up and someone in a very formal tone asks “is this inspector Jeet ?” Ram rolls down this window, pops his head out and says “no but he has sent us to assist you with the situation”. After moment of silence the voice from the panel says “umm could you wait for a minute ?” And the panel lights go off. Ram gets his head back in the car and says ” well that’s… weird”. Neil lays back on his seat and says “don’t worry about that, this is probably the first time he let an on duty cop in his house. Usually inspector Jeet personally handles his cases”. Neil turns to Ram who is still looking at the house beyond the gate, Neil asks Ram “does it bother you ?” Ram turns to Neil and says “if by it you mean them hiding all their illegal stuff as we follow their order and wait outside… then yes. Yes it does” Neil chuckles and says “take it easy… he is just a big shot investor if you couldn’t already tell… aside from that he’s also in Jeet’s links”. Soon the gate opens and they drive in. 

It takes them a while to reach the house as they drive by the huge garden surrounding the house. Once near the house, they both can see a guy standing at the door waiting for them. Ram parks the car right in front of the house. Neil gets out of the car and stretches. The guy in a butler uniform walks up to them and says “good afternoon detective… Ashok Sir was really hoping for Mr.Jeet to work on this case, as some would consider this…a personal matter” Neil who’s still worn out by the car ride replies “ahh I understand… but if he doesn’t want people outside his personal space to find his daughter then maybe he should consider becoming a cop”. The butler stays silent for awhile before saying “thrilling… what I meant was… Don’t act smag.. because straight answers are anyways not something you’ll get today”. Neil steps forward and says “doesn’t sound like someone eager to find his daughter”. Neil walks past the butler into the house and Ram follows him. As they enter the bungalow, they see the extra ordinary interior and long corridors. As they walk along the long corridor, they see a room bit ahead on the left. They enter the room and see the missing girl parents sitting on a couch in the middle of the hall. As the parents see Neil and Ram, the father gets up and says “Detective. Please come in”. As Neil and Ram enter the room, the father says “I just asked for the Detective”. Ram is a bit pushed back. Neil looks at Ram and then looks back at Ashok (missing girls father). Neil continues walking saying “Jeet sir’s order actually. He’s working on the case as well… now, by the looks of it you are clearly stressed… so why don’t we make this as quick as possible. Unless you don’t want us to be quick with this, you can continue to throw your childish tantrums… like making us wait outside your house when we are you here to find your daughter”. Neil takes a seat on one of the couches, bearly able to fit in the single seater couch because of his size. Ashok stands there silent, his face red, filled with anger. Neil notices and says “you know what Sir. I’ll make this easy for you. Can you tell where your daughter’s room is ?” Ashok doesn’t answer. Neil turns to the mother and says “ma’am ?” The mother who’s almost in tears nods and says “first floor 2nd room on the right” Neil looks at Ram and gusthurs him to check out the room. As soon as Ashok sees this, he turns and shouts at the mother “SENNA!” Everyone is shocked , Ram stops as well, before anyone could even register what happened the Senna (girl’s mother) gets up and shouts “YOU MIGHT NOT CARE BUT I CARE ABOUT HER!” After hearing that Ashok fuiurisely walks towards Senna. Neil quickly gets up but before he could do anything, the butler shouts “Sir!” Ashok stops. The butler continues “You can stay here and answer the detectives questions, I and ma’am will go and guild the officer to Nupur’s room”. All of a sudden the room’s atmosphere has transitioned into pin drop silence. Ashok fixes his posture and nods at the butler in agreement. Ashok looks to Seema, her face already covered with tears. She wipes her face, gets up and leaves with the butler and Ram. As their footsteps fade into the corridor, Ashok finally turns to Neil, who sits back down on the couch. Neil sighs and says “Wow. Well now that we are done with that. At what time did she leave the house ?” Ashok takes a seat as well and and says “3” Neil looks at him for a second before asking “has this happened before ?” Ashok turns to pick up his box of cigarettes and says “yes 4 years ago… she ran away to look for her missing dog”. Ashok puts the cigarette in his mouth and lights it. Neil looks around and asks the next question “did anyone see her leave ?” Ashok breaths in a long puff from his cigarette, he nods no as he let’s the smoke out. Neil without wasting anytime jumps to the next question “did she take anything ?” Ashok pauses for a moment, he turns to Neil and says “as a matter of fact. She did.” He moves and sits closer to Neil. Ashok continues “asking the real question now I would say. Apart from my very expressive car. She took the goddamn launch money for the fucking pills!” Neil thinks for a second and then asks him “Heart-connect pills ?” To which Ashok nods yes. Neil leans back on his chair as he is thinking about something, he gets off the couch and says “okay. Last question did she have any… relationship per say. Like someone she could run away with ?” Ashok looks at him, he slowly get up as well and says “no” Neil nods, turns to the corridor and starts walking. Once Neil is at the corridor, he looks to left , at the stairs, he can hear Ram and the others head back down.Near the bottom step, on the side wall. Neil notices a small dent, like someone tired punch a wooden wall. Soon Ram walks down the stairs, with the butler and Senna. Neil looks at Ram. As Ram is climbing down stairs he notices Neil looking at him and gives him a small nod. Neil instantly turns around to Ashok who’s still standing in the middle of the hall and says “well. Thank you for your time. We hope to find your launch money…I mean daughter as soon as possible”. Neil turns to Senna, smiles and says “we’ll get your daughter back”. Neil and Ram leave the house shortly after, they sit in their Jeep and slowly drive out of the bungalow compound. As they cross the gate, Neil looks out at the camera on the gate. He notices it only covers some area in front of the gate. As soon as they drive out of the neighborhood, Ram turns to Neil and asks “So… upstairs in her room I found something very Interesting” Ram slides his hand to the back seat and pulls back an envelope. It’s a pink envelope, with Heart-connect printed on top of it. Ram continues “it’s a greating card… she had signed up for the beta program… I found this in the trash can” Neil takes the envelope and opens it. As Neil is checking the card he says “There is a lot more going on here…” Neil place his finger near the bottom of the card and says “well… off to the dream factory then” slightly above his finger it’s written “Dr.vinod” the founder of Heart-Connect.

Neil and Ram are driving back to the town, to the Heart-connect building. It’s hard to avoid that building from anywhere in the city, it’s one of the tallest buildings in town with it’s large banner on top of the tower. Ram parks the Jeep near the building. Ram looks out through the car window at the Heart-connect tower, he looks at the tower for a moment before asking “how fucking tall is this building?” Neil collects his things from the dashboard and says “too fucking tall… you know two years ago this pill shit would be considered science fiction”. Ram and Neil both hop out of the car. Ram points near the entrance and says “pretty sure they still think it’s science fiction”. A small group of peaceful protesters are standing beside the building entrance. Neil looks at them and they both start walking towards the building. Once near the entrance of the building, someone catches Neil’s eyes. A fair woman with long black hair, a bit skinny but tall, holding a sign which says “I do drugs but this is too much”. Reading the sign makes Neil smile, as he looks back at her face he realized she has been looking right at him. Neil is caught a bit off guard, in his awkward panic, his smirk disappears and he finally walks into the building. 

The Heart-connect building from the inside looks nothing less then a building right out of a science fiction movie. Walls white with a very light shade of pink, LED screens playing the Heart-connect ad. As Neil and Ram are walking down the corridor, Neil looks at one of the screens and says “good thing they don’t have speakers around here. Otherwise I would be breaking every one of those if I ever heard that ad again”. Neil and Ram soon reach the reception. In front of the reception there is a large waiting room, with some people sitting there. As they are looking at the waiting room, someone from behind them says “Sir !”. Neil and Ram turn around to see the girl on the reception, with a very warm smile on her face she continues “Good afternoon. How may I help you ?” As Neil is about to say something Ram interrupts him and asks “what’s that vending machine for ?” The receptionist looks to her right, at the vending machine. She turns back to Neil and says “Ah yes, we just set this up yesterday. Well you see when people sign up for the beta, it’s takes us 2 weeks to get the 50 pills ready. Which we understand is quite a long time. So we have this vending machine, just put your finger there for the DNA sample, wait for 2 minutes and there! Your own Heart-connect pill within minutes” Ram is fascinated by all this. He walks close to the machine as the receptionist says “you can sign up for the beta tests as well if you like.” The receptionist turns to Neil as Neil politely smiles and denies the offer. All of a sudden he hears Neil hears a guy shout his name from the corridor on his right. As Neil turns he sees a doctor at the end of the corridor. Neil turns back to the receptionist who says “oh! You guys know eachother ?” Neil doesn’t reply as Dr.Vinod walks to the reception. He stops right in front of Neil, the doctor was tall and skinny. Neil and Dr.vinod shake hands as dr.vinod says “I’ll be honest it’s pretty exciting to have a detective in our building” Neil chuckles and says “I assume you’ve got the news” Dr.vinod replies “yeah, it’s quite worrying. I can’t imagine what Ashok and the rest of the family is going through” Neil smirks and says “well you are half right. Can we talk somewhere more private?” Dr.vinod gladly replies “yeah sure. This way” as Neil heads towards the doctors office Ram walks up to him and says “hey can you give me a minute I’ll be there in a second” Neil turn to look at ram and sees him with a pen in his hand. Neil nods in agreement and starts following the doctor. They enter Dr.vinod’s office, the office is not fully built yet, the walls and the flooring were incomplete but it had a sitting arrangement in the middle of the room. As the are walking up to the table Dr.vinod says “sorry for mess, I gave the workers an off today. Considering we have some more days to lunch now.” They finally stop at the table. Dr.vinod turns to Neil and says “so what did you want to know?” Neil hand Dr.vinod the greeting card ram found in Nupur’s room and says “she had signed up for your pills. So I guess you have some information on her.” Dr.vinod looks at the card for a moment, after awhile he sighs and says “yeah… she is… infact she was here yesterday to collect her jar” Neil quickly asks “yesterday ? She was here yesterday ?” Dr.vinod replies “yeah, at around 1pm. I met her and tired talking the her but as usual she was in an hurry” Neil catches on to something, he think for a moment and then asks “as usual ? How often was she here ?” Dr.vinod says “well she has had a couple of visits actually. It’s hard to just get through her and know her type of I am being honest. She is by far the hardest challenge I’ve had regarding the pills… she also happens to be our longest running beta tester… what she collected yesterday was her 2nd jar of pills.. people are hardly able to go beyond the first pill” Neil turns to another direction, thinking about something but he can’t get his thoughts straight. Something occures to him. Neil turns to Dr.vinod and asks “always in a hurry? Why was she always in a hurry” Dr.vinod leans on his table and says “yeah… her father’s side of the family are the kind of people some consider narrow minded… even though he has funded my company…he’s just a good business man… her parents didn’t know she had signed up for the pills…she was always stressed that her father or her grandmother would find out” Neil pauses for a moment, something doesn’t feel right to him. Neil turns to Dr.vinod and says “thanks you’ve been a great help doc. I’ll take a leave” Dr.vind instently replies “oh no no, I am glad I could help” As Neil turns to leave the room Dr.vinod says “one thing though I had to ask” Neil stops and turns around. Dr.vinod continues “if you’re don’t mind… I wanted to know you though on my product… like the idea behind” Neil asks “you mean the pill ? No offense but I am not interested in seeing some made up wet dreams doctor” Dr.vinod chuckles and says ” don’t worry none taken…but people dream about love regardless…with or with my pills… In the end you are the only one who can turn them into reality. I just give you the fastest way to do so… my science but still your choice.” 

Neil and Dr.vinod walk out of the office. Ram is sitting in the waiting area, still filling his form. As they reach the reception Dr.vinod pats Neil on his back and tells the reception lady “make sure you takes a sigle pill from the vending machine” before Neil could say anything he turns to Neil and says “listen as I said… it’s your choice… plus one pills not gonna hurt anyone” before Neil to process what the doctor said Dr.vinod turns and starts walking towards his office again. As Neil turns around he sees the receptionist already standing near the vending machine with a smile, Neil lets out a sigh and walks to the vending machine. The receptionist gestures Neil to place his index finger on slot in the vending machine. Above the slot a screen activates and asks Neil three questions, his sex, his age and his preference. As soon as Neil answers those questions the screen on the vending machine reads “creating” after a few seconds a baby pink colored envelope slides out of the vending machine. Neil grabs the envelope, he can feel the pill inside it. The whole process felt a bit strange to Neil. Ram finally walks to the reception and says “all done”. The receptionist walks to the reception and takes his form and says “your jar will be ready by a week or so” as she gives Ram a slip. Neil puts the small envolpe in his coat’s pocket, not sure what he’s gonna do with it.

It’s dusk, the sky has turned bright orange as Neil and Ram walk out of the Heart-connect building and the protesters are packing their stuff up. As Neil and Ram are walking to their car a girl from the back shouts “Hey!” Ram stops near the car and Neil a few steps behind him. Neil turns around to see the same girl from earlier walking up to him. As she reaches closer, she sees the slip in Ram’s hand, after that she turns back to Neil and asks “No slip for you ?” Neil had zoned out a bit, he snaps back in and says “no, no slip for me. Not really into that” The girl nods in agreement as she is trying to hold her smile in, after a moment she asks “so… what are you into?” After a moment of silence Ram starts laughing and gets back in the car. After which even the girl starts giggling. Neil has frozen, he is out of words with a lot of emotions going through his head. The girl sees that and tries control her laughter. Once she is done laughing, she puts her hand forward and says “Hi, I am Kashish” Neil puts his hand forward shaking her hand as he replies “I am detective Neil” Kashish smiles as she slides her hair behind her ear. As soon as they are done shaking hands, Neil notices there is a small note in his hand, he looks back up but before he can say anything Kashish had already started walking back to her group. Neil opens the note she left in his hand. It has her number written on it. Neil turns to his Jeep to see Ram sitting and laughing. Neil smiles, keeps the note in his pocket and starts walking to back to his Jeep. 

It’s almost night as Neil and Ram arrive back at the police station to report back to inspector Jeet. Neil gets off the car, still thinking about something, something didn’t fit in to him at the bungalow. Father’s unwillingness to talk and the mother’s constant efforts to tell something. Neil had started wondering if this case should be treated as lightly as the inspector said. Neil and Ram enter the police station, it’s almost empty and some officers are packing up. Inspector Jeet is still in his office, he slams his telephone down sound of which was heard even outside his cabin. Ram knocks on the inspector’s door, Jeet pushes his hair back and gestures them to come inside. Ram puches the door and they walk inside, as soon as the walk in Jeet shouts “what the fuck is going on officers? Are there and leads on the girl ? And what the actual fuck happened at the house ?” Neil sits on the chair creating a loud squeaking sound, he says “something’s wrong with that house and that family” Jeet gets even more confused and says “what? Did you find the goddamn missing girl or not Neil”. Neil leans forward and says “but what if she’s not missing… what if she didn’t run away from her house ?” Jeet looks at ram with the same confusion and says “what is going on here ?” Jeet looks back at Neil,he bangs his hand on the table and shouts “YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME! I send you to find one ranway girl and why you do is come back and suggest that her father, her mother and her goddamn granny kidnapped her ? WHAT?! And now Ashok his not answering his phone” Something strickes to Ram, he places his hand on Jeet’s shoulder and asks “umm… sir? Where does her granny live ?” Jeet turns to Ram and says “you didn’t come across her today when you visited the bungalow? Well she must be be busy somewhere else in that goddamn castle.” Neil and Ram look at eachother as inspector Jeet is still talking in the back. Neil remembers those dents near the bottom stairs in the house. Neil gets off the he chair and rushes out the of the office as inspector Jeet was talking. Ram looks at Neil rushes out, he looks back at Jeet, apologises and rushes after Neil. By the time Ram runs out of the station Neil has already reached the Jeep. Ram runs over and gets in the passenger seat as Neil starts the car. 

As Neil is resklessly speeding his way back to the bungalow, Ram says ” what are you hoping to find there sir ?” Neil still laser focused on the road says “I am fucking idiot, I should’ve treated this as lightly as I did. Ashok’s unwillingness to share, him not letting you go upstairs alone”. Neil punches the steering wheel and shouts “FUCK!” Neil takes a moment to settles down and says “and now he’s not answering the call” It’s 10:00 pm the sky is black, the neighborhood quite, empty streets as Neil zooms by the houses. They finally reach Nupur’s bungalow, Neil and Ram freez for a second. The lights are out. The gates are shut and there is no one in the bungalow. Neil gets off the jeep, slams the door and furiously walks to the panel beside the gate. The is turned off and so is the camera above it. Neil turns to Ram who’s standing beside the Jeep and shouts “REPORT TO JEET. CALL FOR BACK UP” Neil turn back to the gate and see if it’s possible to climb it. There are spikes on top of it but if they are careful enough it possible to get over it. Neil turns back to Ram and sees he is texting on his phone. Neil walks a few step forward and shouts “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING” Ram looks up at Neil, back down on his phone and says “reporting” Neil gets even more furious and shouts “ON THE FUCKING RODIO YOU IDIOT!” Ram keep his phone in the pocket and picks up the radio from the jeep, as Ram is doing that Neil turns back to the gate starts climbing it. Ram calls in for back and follow Neil. They both climb over the gate and make their way through the front yard. As they reach the front door, Neil notices the door is locked. Ram runs up the windows on the side and tries to get a peek inside the house. Neil examines the door, he removes his gun and point it where he thinks the door knob might be. He shots and the bullet goes right through the wooden door, wooden scraps fly around everywhere. Neil clamely puts his revolver down and kicks the door open. Neil enters the house and Ram follows right after him. The house is dark, the only light source is the moonlight coming through the door Neil just broke in through and the windows. Neil walks down the lobby and stops right in front of the stairs. Neil looks at the two dent again, one is on the side of that wall and other one right on the floor where the stairs end. Ram slowly makes his way to Neil as Neil says “assuming they didn’t the time to fix this” Ram still senses fertration in his voice and choose to stay silent as Neil makes his way up the stairs. As Neil reaches the first floor, he looks around and asks Ram “where is Nupur’s room ?” Ram reaches upstairs as well and says “2nd room to the right” Neil looks around again and notices the stairs to the left. Neil starts walking to the left and ram shortly after him. The atmosphere shifts a bit, as Neil and Ram start climbing the stairs to head upstairs. As they reach the top floor, Neil looks around. This floor isn’t used much, the furniture is covered with dust and so is the floor. Neil tells Ram “check the rooms on the right” as he himself makes his way to the room on left. Neil walks up to one of the  doors and slowly slides the door open. The room had some clothes hanging in the middle of it and mattresses in the ground. Neil whispers to himself “servent’s room” the clothes still there, their stuff still laying around the room, they left in a hurry or were kicked out. Neil shuts the door and rushes to the other door. Neil pushes the door open to see it’s a storage room, with a bunch of junk like old tables and ladders. Ram walks up to Neil and says “it’s servent’s room” Neil sighs and says “well… I guess we che-” Neil freezes as he sees the dust covered ladder in the storage has some hand prints on it, like it was carried somewhere. Neil quickly looks around the lobby’s ceiling. On his left where the lobby ends, he sees a hatch for an attic. Neil grabs the table as fast as possible and places it under the hatch. Ram rushes to Neil as he is opening the hatch. Neil opens the hatch and a rampid smell hit both Neil and Ram. Neil quickly covers half of his face and pulls himself up in the attic. Dust flying around every and some light coming through a circular window at the end of the attic in front him.  Kind of creating a spot light and under the spotlight there is a bead body with only legs visible under the light. Neil slowly starts walking to the body, the wooden floor cracking with every step he takes. As Neil reaches the body he finally looks at it’s face to see who it is. It’s an old woman’s body, the body has turned gray-ish and has started smelling. Ram is still standing under the hatch looking out of the window in front of him. Neil finally drops comes back down, Ram helps Neil lower himself back down on the table. Neil uncovers his face and sits down on the table he was standing on. Neil looks out the window as well for a moment, the dark green forest and the city after it. In the city the Heart-connect building standing out of the rest because of it’s huge banner on top of it’s already large tower. Neil wipes his face and says “it’s the granny” Ram takes awhile to process this information and then asks “what do you think happened ?” Neil stays silent for a while still looking out at the Heart-connect banner, he finally break out of it and says ” the girl was leaving the house that night with her father’s cash when in the middle of the night, she ran into her granny… I guess to avoid a larger confrontion Nuper pushed her down the stairs and granny dies… and Ashok hides it because because he wanted her daughter to be found as soon as possible and get the cash back so he can  finally do the launch”. Neil and Ram notice the police cars arrive at the front gate. Ram turns back to Neil and asks ” and… what about Nupur or the family” Neil gets off the table and walks up to the window and says “well… that’s for us to find”.

Love story 2050

It’s almost Dawn as Karan and Sana are driving down the express way, enjoying their afternoon drive under the orange sky. “There are a lot of things wrong with this” says Sana with visible stress on her face. Karan being laser focused on the road just lets out a “huh?”. Sana gets more annoyed and says“ Your speed, the speed limit on this road and this DIY car” Sana looks at Karan and shouts “ Can you just slow down! Oh my god!”. Karan gets startled by Sana’s shouting and slows down a bit. “You know there were more chances of an accident happening because of that then the speeding” says Karan, followed by a sight smile. “ Well that happened because of your speeding so, if a accident takes place I would still blame your irresponsible ass for it” says Sana as she lets out a small chuckle. Hearing her laugh Karan takes his eyes off the road to look at her, as he turns his head to the passenger seat, he freezes as he sees Sana looking at with a broken skull and cover in blood dripping from her face. As Karan is unable to move or speak, Sana says “what happened? Can’t keep your eyes off me Karan ?” hearing this Karan starts to breathe heavily and their car crashes which causes him to wake up.

7th March 2025

Karan wakes up gasping for air, unable to breathe, he fall off the bed, the room is dark, dirty and filled with half built machines. Karan gets up and starts walk towards the washroom. After talking his bath, he stands in front of the mirror looking at the scar on his face, right across his left eye, he picks up a small bottle of eye drop and puts it in his left eye.

In the Basement an old man keeps a chicken on a platform connected to a larger machines and steps away from it. Behind him Karan walks down with two coffee mugs in his hands, the old man presses a button on his remote and the with a dark red flash the chicken disappears. Karan steps forward and says “go ahead Doc….. bring it back”, hearing Karan behind him startles him a bit and with a shaky voice the Doc replies “yeah”. The Doc presses the button and with the same bright flash lump of frozen meat lands on the platform. Looking at that Doc under his breath whispers “fuck”. Before the Doc can say anything a mug of coffee goes flying across the room, hitting the wall and shattering into pieces. “ god fucking damnit!” shouts Karan and starts walking furiously towards Dr.khanna. Doc turns around to Karan. As Karan reaches closer, Dr.khanna puts his hand on Karan’s shoulder stopping him and says “ Karan we are close. you know that, we just to find the right time keeping in mind the Earth’s rotation”. Karan pushes Doc’s hand off his shoulder, holds Doc by his collar “ if it’s so easy then it shouldn’t take you a fucking year to figure it out.” Karan pushes him away “ i need to do..” before Karan could finish what he was saying Dr.khanna says “ I am not doing for you Karan…I’ve told you this…I don’t do this because you can’t move on I do this for science” Karan looks right into the Docs eyes “ science ?” Karan let’s out a chuckle before continuing “you do this for yourself, you do this because YOU want to prove that you weren’t wrong” Karan walks closers towering over Dr.khanna “ so let’s not go around questioning our motives huh ? Because I am your best bet right now for you to finish this… for science of course”. Karan turns around and let’s out a “sigh” and starts making his ways back upstairs. He stops at the first step and says “your tea is on the table”. Dr.khanna looks that cup on the table before turning to the splash on the wall where Karan throw his cup “thanks ” says dr.khanna. “ill go get you more chickens“ says Karan before starting to walk up the stairs.

Moments pass and dr.khanna is done swiping the pile of meat from the platform. He steps back from the platform, takes a seat near the desk with his mug on it. Dr.khanna looks around the room and there is a moment of silence.
Karan enters his house with a box. Karan’s house is a Villa. From the outside the villa looked bandoned, inside everything apart from the basement room and Karan’s room was covered with multiple layers of dust. Karan makes his way downstairs where he finds Dr.khanna sleeping with his head on the desk, Karan places the box in a corner and walks towards the platform where the doctor has kept the waste from the last trial. Karan picks up the garbage bag and starts walking. As Karan is going to throw the trash out, he stops, he places the bag down and turns around. Karan walks closer to the platform and he notices a white feather laying near it, he rushes to the bag again, opening it to find out that there is no feathers in that pile of meat. Karan’s face turns red with anger, he pushes the bag aside and turns around to find that the doctor is already up. Karan lift the feather up “what are you hiding Khanna?” asks Karan, his eyes perusing through Dr.khanna. “its just a feath..” before dr.khanna could finish talking Karan interrupts “press the button” says Karan with anger flowing through his voice. Dr.khanna looks at the remote, looks back at Karan and says “fine..” before pushing the button. Karan looks back at the platform because of the dark red flash and he is left speechless. The chicken was back “it works..” says Karan still unable to believe what happened. “you sure about that Karan ?” asks Dr.khanna standing behind him. Karan turns around and Dr.khanna continues “I can’t track where I send it….” Karan interrupts “but it’s alive ! If a chicken can survive it..I am pretty sure I can and we can just figure it out from there”. Dr.khanna furiously walks twords Karan and says “what if it survive because it’s chicken? There is difference between a tiny, 3kg chicken and a 6ft, 70kg human….. don’t be blinded by…..” dr.khanna stops mid sentence as he is distracted by the chicken who has now walked up near his leg and is peaking the ground. Dr.khanna picks up the chicken and sees that there is a small metal tag on it’s foot which has the word “evidence” imprinted on it. Dr.khanna looks at Karan and says “it interacted with people” Karan walks closers to the doc and says “it’s English…..doctor we need to go ahead with this. These are all good signs”. Dr.khanna still a bit confused walks to a cage and places the chicken in it,he turns back to Karan and let’s out a “sigh” followed by “ I’ll get the suits ready”

They both stand in front of the time machine, wearing black suits which almost look like scuba diving suit. Karan looks at dr.khanna who is looking at the time machine platform, his eye focused. Karan puts his hand on Dr.khanna’s shoulder and says “I might have never said this up front but what better time then this……thank you doctor I re…”. Dr.khanna interrupts Karan “don’t thank me Karan……” Dr looks at Karan and says with a humble smile “ we all have our motives” after which dr.khanna gives him a nod and they start walking towards the platform. As they stand on the platform, visibly confused and scared not knowing what’s going to be on the other end or how the transportation is going to feel on their body. Dr.khanna let’s out a “sigh” looks at the remote and presses the switch. With a dark red lighting flash the room is empty.

7th March 2050

Another dark red lighting occurs in a small dark alley and with it dr.khanna and Karan fall to the ground. Unable to move a lot and just breathing rapidly cause of the pain, Karan sits up against a black metal container, after finding his sitting against the container he says “doc…I can’t see…what the fuck!”. Dr.khanna leanings his back against a wall and says “give it 5 it will all come back to you”. Dr.khanna removes his glasses, cleans them, puts them back on and looks around as he is still able to see a bit. The alley is dark with some pink- ish light leaking in from the right end of the alley and the left end of the alley just had a door. Dr.khanna tries to look at what is emitting the pink light from the right end of the alley but his vision is still blurry, Karan holds the edge of the container and barely manages to get back on his feet. Dr.khanna looks at Karan and asks “are you able to see yet ?” . Karan still breathing heavily and rubbing his eyes nods no. Soon dr.khanna hears something from the other side of the door, Dr looks at the door where the voice is getting louder. “footsteps” says Dr.khanna, he looks back at Karan, walks up to him, opens the container behind him, pushes him inside and says “shut the fuck up and do not get caught. I’ll find you”. Before Karan can say anything Doc’s attention goes back to the footsteps and he closes the container.

The door on the left end of the alley bursts open 4 people dressed in full black and vests, holding unrecognizable objects resembling guns. They gather around Dr.khanna, who is on the ground pretending as if he is still not able to breathe. He looks at all of the four guards surrounding him but none of them saying anything, from the open door dr.khanna hears one more pare of footsteps, they are slow, echoing though lobby, they get closer and suddenly the footsteps stop. There is a moment of spine chilling silence as the doctor could hear someone breath right at the door but can’t see him anything beyond the door, suddenly a thin green light flashes through the lobby and scan the doctor head to toe, the light dims down and now a thin green horizontal light is visible in the dark corridor. Suddenly someone steps out, a tall figure wearing a black cap, covered in a long black overall covering his entire body till his calves and a device instead of his eyes with a thin horizontal lines in the middle emitting that green light. Dr.khanna gets on his feet, the tall guy with a very smoky voice says “hmm…interesting….I am CRANK. I rather go by C and you were expected”. He steps aside and raises his hand from under his overall point the door. Dr.khanna sees that his hand just like his eye is bio-mechanical. The guards gather behind Dr.khanna and start walking towards the door, Dr.khanna’s eyes are locked on C, as dr.khanna reaches the door with C standing right beside him, towering over Dr.khanna, C looks down at Dr.khanna and asks “are you here alone ?” Dr.khanna freezes for a moment, before he is able to reply, C pulls up his right hand and Dr.khanna starts panicking as unlike C’s other arm this one just has a long blade instead. C asks Dr.khanna “I need a blood sample before we take you in”. One of the guards grabs Dr.khanna’s arm up as C slowly presses his blade down on Dr.khanna’s palm. C pulls his hand back as there is a tiny drop of blood on his blade. C scans the blood, as he is done, he wipe his blade and commands the guards “take him”. Three of the guards take dr.khanna away as one of them stands there with C. The guard looks up at C who is looking at the alley way before turning to the guard and saying “it’s a 80% match with dr.deep’s DNA”. The guard says “well that’s Deep’s problem now” before finally leaving. As the guard leaves, C still stands there looking at the dark alley, his attention goes to the bright pink light at the end of at alley, he looks at for a moment before turning leaving as well. After waiting for sometime to make sure everyone has left, Karan opens the dumpster and gets out, with his vision back but zero idea what happened and where he is. Karan started heading towards bright light at the right end of the alley, the light keeps getting brighter, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light, as he gets closer to the end of the alley he starts hearing people, like a crowded place. Karan starts walking faster as suddenly Karan feels a sharp pain through his right leg and drops to the ground. Karan turns around to see a blade stabbed in his thigh and a chin connected to the blade leading to the other end of the alley. Where C is stand near the door and the chain reeling back into his right arm. The chain tightens pulling Karan to him, Karan screams because the pain and yanks his leg leading the blade out of his leg and the blade reconnecting to C’s arm again cover in Karan’s blood. Karan start crawling towards the light while still trying to get up, he manages to get off the ground and starts limping to the end of the alley. He reaches the end of the alley and looks back to see if C is following but the alley is empty. He finally steps out of the alley to see a market area filled with people, wearing outfits he had never seen, the whole area lit up by a giant hologram of a girl singing and dancing, the building like structures so large where your sight may end but not the walls towering over the market. Karan rips out the sleeve from his suit and ties it to his leg. No one really notices him as his black suit kind of matches the other outfits that the locals are wearing. Karan stumbles and makes his way to a small log in the corner to sit down and register what’s going on. He sits down and let’s out a “sigh” in relief. The market is filled with people, some of them with their robots walking with them, some people with robotic advancements to their bodies and small stalls hovering around the place like a vegetable carts. “Wow….I am in the future…fucking great !” shouts Karan with visible anger on his face but before he could say anything else suddenly Karan is distracted by the giant hologram singing and dancing in the middle of the market. It’s a girl with no advancements in her body and the pink hair flying around. Karan is not able to take his eyes of her, as the hologram finally turns around and Karan is able to see her face. He freezes, it’s Sana and before he could give it more thought. A sharp pain rushes through his head and he falls unconscious. As he is unconscious he sees things, like memories from when he was a kid with his family but they aren’t really his memory.

Meanwhile Dr.khanna is being transported to the military base. Dr.khanna is looking down at the city as the vehicle flies over the city between the skyscrapers. From this hight the whole city is visible till the very edge of the city. Dr.khanna shifts his attention in the vehicle, he looks at C who is sitting in the corner with his face hidden in the dark. Dr.khanna asks C “bio-mechanics right ?” C looks at dr.khanna as he continues “both of your arms and eyes”. C stay silent for a moment before saying “you should know”. Dr.khanna chuckles and says “yeah I should……what is his name tho ? The one who made you” C says ” you ask too many questions”. Dr.khanna smiles and very tauntingly says “only if you had a controller by which I could make you answer all of them”. All the guards start awkwardly looking at eachother in shock. C’s eyes turn red. Dr.khanna looks at his eyes and in the same taunting manner says “sorry if I touched a n- ” C interrupts and says “dr.deep…be careful tho…he might like you a lot”. Dr.khanna smiles, he looks back outside the vehicle at the city and says “I bet…you know for mostly just nuts and bolts…you sure had a lot angry when you said his name”. C quickly replies to Dr.khanna ” for a human, who definitely would not survive a fall from this height…you sure do talk a lot”. Dr.khanna looks back at C, he does say anything, he just looks at him for a moment before turning back to look outside again. Dr.khanna looks down at the city as he is thinking something. Soon their van approaches a huge structure. The government base, largest structure in the city. One single structure, definitely not the tallest but covering ground beyond imagination.

Dr.khanna is place in the middle of a entirely white room with no objects in it other then the chair he is sitting on. Soon a door slides up and a small rectangle shaped Droid rolls inside and the door slides down behind him. The Droid stops a few steps away from Dr.khanna and in a robotic voice says “you will have to answer these 5 primary questions before you are allowed to meet any officials”. Dr.khanna looks around, chuckles, looks at the Droid again and in a taunting manner says “you definitely sound more human than that C dude. Do you also have a red light in your eye?”. The Droid goes ahead with his first question “are you Dr.Deep ?”. Dr.khanna leans back on his chair and says “No”. The Droid goes ahead with his second question “What is your name?”. Dr.khanna answers “Dr.khanna”. The Droid asks his the third question “ Are you here to cause harm to our great city? “ Dr.khanna laughs says “quite the opposite actually. Didn’t you guys get my note” The Droid after a small pause asks his last question “did you send a chicken 7 hours ago with a note attached to it’s foot ?”. Dr.khanna smirks, he leans forward and says “yes”. The Droid just looks at dr.khanna for awhile and after a small “thank you” rolls out of the room. As dr.khanna is waiting in the room looking around, a hologram of a man appears in the room wearing a similar black over all C was wearing but it has more badges, he was considerably shorter, fatter and the hologram’s face was just static to hide the face, before the hologram is able to say anything dr.khanna asks “so..are you the cheff if security?”. The hologram after a moment of silence says “I am not”. “Yeah I got that” says dr.khanna as he gets up, gets closer to the hologram and tires to poke the hologram’s belly and says “ this kinda gave it away”. Dr.khanna walks through the hologram and starts looking around the room. The hologram truns around and says “I’ll get straight to the point then. 7 hours ago a chicken appeared in the middle of main hall with a note on it’s foot saying “I can save all of you – love Dr.khanna” and some coordinates below it…so tell me….save us from what Dr.khanna” Dr.khanna smirks and asks “when was the last time you saw a chicken ? I mean other than the one sent. Or a cow ? A fish? Or a..” before De.khanna could finish talking the guy in the hologram interrupts ” Yeah I lost interest. He is just one of the tricks from the rebels. Dump him out” as soon as the hologram says this a laser grid form in one end of the room and slow starts making its way to Dr.khanna. All the smugness from dr.khanna’s face flies off ” hey! hey! no.. am actually here to help” shouts dr.khanna as he sticks his back to the wall. The laser grid is already half way through the room and it phases through the hologram. Dr.khanna looks at hologram and very determinedly says ” you are Dr.deep a bio-mechanical engineer, 28th January 2005 you helped this world become what it is right now”. The laser stops a few feets away from Dr.khanna and disappears. Dr.khanna slowly starts walking to the the hologram again as he is saying “on that day you submitted your first fully functional animal testing. Half animal and rest machine that you controlled, it was perfect, because you controlled their emotions and in return them…like C”.

The static on the holograms face disappears revealing Dr.deep. who looks exactly like a older Dr.khanna but with trimmed and grayer hair. Dr.deep’s hologram leans forward and says “Tell me who you are before I change his emotions towards you”. Dr.khanna, clearly a bit pushed back says ” I am Dr.khanna…basically you. On 28th January 2005 I submitted my first animal testing for bio-mechanical soldiers” Dr.khanna removes his wallet, pulls out a old peice of paper, it’s a newspaper cutout and it’s headline reads “8 police officers brutally murdered by a Robo Chimp made by Dr.khanna”. Dr.khanna looks up from the pice of paper, making direct eye contact with dr.deep and says ” first of all it wasn’t a “robo” And you being me. you should know I wouldn’t just give up there…I spent 15 years in hiding…. finding a way to fix things like….time travel and soon found out I can’t change anything that happened in the past…but what I stumbled upon was so much greater… multi-universes, a world just like mine but different…in some universe maybe I am a astronaut or a F1 driver or in some universe I am already dead”. The room is silent, the only thing audible is dr.khanna’s breathing after the rant. Dr.khanna looks back down at the paper “or maybe a universe where I passed the test” dr.khanna looks back up at Dr.deep “I’ll be honest with you considering you are me and visa versa… I am here to ask for your help and in return I can help you….as simply as I can put it is……I give you resources from a fertile planet…..and you help me rule it” after a long moment of silence dr.deep says ” thrilling offer… but I’ll need proof” dr.khanna chuckles and says “I would’ve been disappointed if you didn’t…I’ve come here with another guy….with him is a remote and with just a press of a button it can send whoever’s hold it back to my universe”. Dr.deep keeps looking at Dr.khanna for awhile without saying anything. Dr.khanna with calmed down voice says ” you know…in those 15 years….I wondered if it had all gone right…… would I have really helped the world? Well I suppose I found out”. Dr.deep’s face gets visibly angry before his hologram disappears from the room.

Dr.deep’s hologram appears in the room beside the intoregation room where a bunch of officials are observing Dr.khanna in the intoregation room. Dr.deep asks one of the soldier in the room “Did C have any report of another man when he bought Khanna in?” The soldier opens the report and says “no sir. no mention”. Dr.deep starts thinking, wondering where to start finding, before he could come up with anything a very heavy voice from the corner of the room says “you have to agree though… It’s a great plan you’ve got….. having a whole fertile planet under us just for resources.” The person talking gets up from his chair “too bad it’s a smarter you from another dimension…..well better send all of your toys to find the guy he is talking about”. Dr.deep salutes and replies with a very underwhelming “yes sir” before the chief leaves the room. Dr.deep turns back to the soldier and asks ” where is C now?” The soldier replies “sir he left the base as soon as he bought Dr.khanna in”. Dr.deep’s face gets a bit stressed, he thinks for a moment before telling the guard “notify C about this and order him to come back to base”.

C opens the door and walks out on the roof top of one of skyscrapers. Standing on the edge of the roof. The wind is strong at this height, C’s black overall pushed back by the wind, revealing his uniform under it and his left robotic hand. C scans the whole city in a matter of seconds and pin points the location where he caught Dr.khanna. he looks straight down and starts calculating a route. With his blade he opens up a panel on his left shoulder filled with wires and artificial veins. C starts digging in with his blade, pulls out a black wire, he cuts off the black wire which turns his tracker off. C looks at the city, his eyes turn green and he jumps off the edge of the roof. Diving straight down, as he keeps falling other buildings around him catch up to the height, as he gets somewhat closer to the ground he finally looks up, puts his left arm up launching his robotic hand which is also connected to a chain. His hand grabs one of the piped near by, which he uses to slingshot himself way off into the city. As C is in mid-air his chain retracts and his rodotic hand reconnects to his arm again within seconds. As he is losing his momentum, he sees in front of him, a cargo vehicle fly in the same direction, he launches his hand to it, grabbing on to the the vehicle and covers the rest of the distance to the market.

Karan wakes up, breathing heavily flashes of those childhood memories still running in his head, slowly they fade away and he gets his breathing under control. Karan looks around and notices he’s in a room, it could barely be called a room, the walls falling apart, it seemed more like a hall than a room. Karan looks at the wound on his leg which now covered up with a proper band aid, before he could put more thought into it, he starts hears footsteps from the end of the hall way and lays back down on the bed, pretending to be unconscious. The footsteps eco through the hallway as they get closer to the bed, the footsteps stop right next to him, Karan opens his eye just enough to barely see something and all he can see is a girl turned the other way. Karan quickly gets up, holds the girls arm behind her back and wraps his arm around her neck put her in a lock. “Who are you? and what you want?” asks Karan as he tightens his grip and says “Now”. The girl doesn’t reply, Karan gets more agitated and tightens his grip but he stops as he feels cold metal on his arm which he has put around her neck. Karan’s grip loosens as he gets somewhat distracted, in that moment the girl hits Karan with the back of her head and gets out of the hold. Karan looses his footing and falls back on the bed. Karan grabs his nose and looks up at the girl, finally getting a clear look at her. She is a short girl with dark brown hair, wearing cargo pants, tank top and a brown scarf covering the lower half of her face. Karan could hear a static sound coming from under her scarf. The static is soon followed by a girls voice but it sounded like it was coming from a speaker saying ” the band-aid on your leg should be a good enough hint that I am not here to hurt you”. Karan looks at his leg and then around hall. There is a window to his right behind his bed where he could still see the gaint hologram from the market. “As for your question I am Milly…..now who are you ?” Says the girl, Karan looks back at her, let’s out a sigh and says “Karan….”. Milly nods in agreement and says “good good..now your turn.. considering you are as confused as I am if not more”. Karan looks back the window and after a long pause asks “What year…is this ?” Milly looks at Karan with shock and says “wow…. clearly more….it’s 2050”. Karan stands up straight and starts limp walking towards the window, he looks outside and notices he can still see that gaint hologram. As he is looking at the hologram he whispers to himself “2050…..I was right it’s the future…..but then… How are you alive Sana” Karan turns back to Milly, who is getting a injection ready, Karan freezes for a second. Milly looks up at Karan, she notices the look on his face and says “Don’t worry… that’s not for you… It’s for me… It’s my dinner” says Milly followed by a awkward chuckle. Karan visibly relieved turns back to the window and asks her ” who is she ?”. Milly looks at the hologram outside the window and looks back at Karan with visible curiosity on her face. “That’s Zenna she is a singer… quite a good one ac….” Milly stops mid sentence and starts looking around. Karan turns back to say something but she gestures him to keep quiet, she gets ride of the scarf on her face revealing the lower half of her face, the lower half of her face being replaced by some kind of mechanical parts ranging from her ear to her mouth. Milly look straight back at Karan and tells him ” it’s C….we need to go”.

C is walking down a poorly lit alley, C’s eyes scan the whole alley within a second, people laying on the side of the alley, bearly alive, their body giving up and some body parts not functioning. All of a sudden C hears a window break from the door beside him, without wasting any time he breaks open the door and starts walking towards the broken window at the end of the hall. C reaches the middle of the room and suddenly stops. He starts hearing footsteps running towards him from behind, before he could properly turn around Milly jumps towards him, planting both of her feet on the side of C’s head sending flying through a wall, Milly starts running towards C again and says “miss your eyes ? You blind bitch”. C sees Milly charge towards him and launches his blade towards her. Milly swiftly dodges the blade, grabs the chain attached to his blade, with a strong pull she leaps towards C, who because of the pull falls forward and before he could look up and react. Milly is inches away from him and she lets out a sonic scream so loud and strong that it sends C thought a wall and straight out in the market. Milly flys back to the door C entered from because of the scream, she quickly gets back on her feet and heads out the door. Karan is already outside the door, standing in the alley covering his ears, Milly gestures him to follow her and they both start running to the end of the alley where Milly has parked her vehicle. The vehicle somewhat resembles a bike, they get in it and take off with wasting any time. C eyes light up red, everyone standing around him moves away and C gets back on his feet. A guy looking at the broken wall C came flying from turns to C and says “a higher up coming to a area like this alone and supposedly getting his ass beat.” The guy puts his hand behind his back. “If you point that gun at me I’ll have to kill you” says C, the guys chuckles and says “hmm…still some human in you….still not enough”. The guys pulls out his gun and point it towards C. Before he could pull the trigger C lunches his blade, which goes right through the gun and his palm. Before the guy could even properly scream C pulls the guy to himself and lunches his other hand up grabbing on to a ledge and taking off with the guy. On the roof of this building C pin the guy to the wall with his blade going through the guys shoulder, the guys let’s out a loud scream in pain as C pushes the blade further through his shoulder. “Want to stop this ? Your base now.” Says C, the guy breathing heavily try to swing his leg to kick C, but C moves his shoulder and catches it with ease. C moves closer to his face and says “let’s make you a 100 percent human huh”. C tightens his grip on the guys leg, almost crushing it and lunches his hand ripping the leg from the guys body revealing it was a bio-mechanical leg. As the artificial vanes dipped blood all over the floor and the guy bearly able breathe in this pain C says “the parts might be fake but the blood flowing through them and the pain…..I know thats real…..so the base…now.”

Karan sits on the bike holding the handles on the side as tight as possible he looks down and realizes that they are at such a hight where they can’t even see the ground properly. The skyscrapers tearing through the low hanging smog making the city look like some neo cloud city. Karan is distracted by one of the screen playing an ad for something that looks like a Xbox but the theme color is red Instead of green and at the end the ad reads “GameCube”. Before Karan could give anymore thought the next ad starts playing which is of Zenna’s music video. Karan touches his pocketand the remote making sure its still there. Karan turns to Milly and says “hey…listen I don’t know what I am getting caught up in…but the thing is I am not here for all this…I wasn’t even supposed to be here…. anyways ..now that I am here….I need you to take me to that singer”. Milly with confusion on her face doesn’t reply and speeds up her bike. Karan tightens his grip and loudly asks her “are you even listen me?” Milly doesn’t reply to him again. Karan shouts “HEY!!” before he can say anything else he is distracted by a bright flash of light, he looks forward and he sees a huge skyscraper lit up like a huge party. A 360 holographic video of Zenna’s video playing around the whole skyscraper, bright lights on one of the floors of the skyscrapers filled with people, shouting her name, suddenly all the lights go off and the crowd goes quite. After some moments of silence a hologram half as big as the skyscrapers of Zenna appears, this time with long while hair and a very tacky outfit. The hologram starts singing as it walks around and within the audience. Milly phases right through the hologram heading to the building, she goes to the back of the building and starts heading up vertically on her bike. Karan at this point is holding her instead of the bike, hanging on for dear life. The music starts fading out as they go higher, finally they stop at huge balcony, where Milly parks her bike. It’s cold and darker here, the room this balcony is attached to barely has any light. Milly turns to Karan and says “stand there”. Milly walks into the poorly lit room, Karan turns around to see the view from this balcony. The balcony is so high up that Karan could see the edge of the city from there, Karan walks ahead to the edge of the balcony and sees that beyond the edge of the city its just a black abiss. Karan squeents his eyes as he sees something beyond the black abiss, it’s like another city inside a bubble. Karan steps down from the edge, a voice from behind him says “that’s why I chose this view, people living in this city may forget because they can’t see it from the Inside but….I can.. i choose to remember it….we live in a bubble” a soft chuckle is heard after that but Karan doesn’t respond, he is in shock as the voice he just heard sounded like Sana’s voice. Karan slowly starts turning around, once he is fully face to face with Zenna, they both freeze in shock and Zenna without wasting any time pulls out her gun and points it to Karan. Karan is still in shock as Zenna looks exactly like Sana but older, as Zenna is in her 50s. “What kind of a fucking trick is this ?” Says Zenna as she loads her gun. Karan tries to speak but can’t get a single word out of his mouth. A sharp pain rushes through Karan’s brain again and falls to the ground on his knees. Milly runs up to Zenna lowering her gun and saying “hey hey calme, he is the thing those soldiers were there to collect in the alleyway”. Zenna pushes Milly aside and says “he is trick!”. Zenna turns back to Karan who is on the ground breathing heavily. Zenna walks in closer with the gun pointed at Karan’s head ” why did you tell Milly to get you here ?….. What do you want?”. Karan looks up at Zenna with his eys eyes red and barely manages to say “I was here to save Sana…the girl I loved……the girl that….died because of me……you”. Zenna throws her gun away and picks Karan’s head up by his hair and strikes her knee straight to the side of his face as she shouts “You dare mock my past!? You dare use this face!”. Karan hits floor . Milly runs up to Zenna and holds her back. “You don’t get it…C was hunting him!” Milly shouts at Zenna. Zenna pushes her away and shouts “what if they sent him ?!….you don’t understand….this proves they know who’s leading the rebels!”. Milly goes speechless, she enters a bit of a shock, she turn to Karan as he finally lifts his up from the ground. Milly turns back to Zenna and says “but I saw C attacking him and him running away from C…..”. Zeena stands down for awhile and looks at Karan, she notices his woned on his leg and asks “did C Do that ?” Karan gets on his feet looks at Zenna and nods yes. Zenna turns back to Milly and says “He got his blood”. Milly also nods yes, Zenna thinks for a second. As there is moment of silence Karan says “5 years….. Trying and dreaming to stop yo…….to stop her from getting in that car with me….. Save you…….from me” Zenna’s is pushed back a bit, her eyes slow water up a bit as she tries to keeps a straight face. Karan shragges his shoulders and says “time travel huh?” Karan looks down and awkwardly chuckles. He looks back at Zenna and asks “Can I ask you something ? What happened to me here? Did we have somethi-” Zenna cuts off Karan and says “you died in that car that day”. Karan chuckles looking down at the ground, he looks up at Zenna and says “I am guessing you weren’t interested in doing all the time travel shit.” Karan chuckles again as his eyes start watering up. Zenna turns to the side and let’s out a “sigh”. She starts walk towards the room and says “I need a fucking drink”.

Karan steps in the room, where the only light source was the bar. Zenna is sitting on a stool at the counter, she looks at Karan and waves the glass. Karan starts walking towards the bar and Zenna makes him a drink. She slides the glass across the counter to Karan, as she slides the glass she asks him “so what made you so sure that we had a thing here too ?”. Karan catches the glass, takes a big sip and says “since I got here. twice, I got these flash of memories. My memories but….. It’s not really mine..but now all I remember is this world…all my childhood in my world…gone……… I just met you in them….the world resembles your world more than it does mine.” Zenna looks down at her drink, she picks it up and says “it’s Arjun’s memories.” As she sips down the entire drink. Zenna slams the glass down on the table and says “well you already a lot like him…. Irresponsible and emotional”. Karan looks at here and says “ouch…..wow……well you are nothing like Sana”. Zenna chuckles and gets off the stoll. Zenna walk closer to Karan and with a smile on her face says “you’ll be surprised how much people change when they see the love of their life get impaled and then look at them while they bleed to Death….I mean you should know right ? You look young for someone to go through the death phase and build a fucking time machine to get her”. She get closer and place her thumb on the wonde as she maintains the smile on her face. Karan very spontaneously grabs her hand and pulls it away from his leg “I didn’t built it….I had found a guy who was trying to make one for 15 years before u had even met him” says Karan as he gets up from the stool, chugs down his drink and says “we all have thing we can’t give up on.” Zenna turns away from Karan, she chuckles and says “all it took was two stuck ups to make time travel possible…..suits”. Karan let’s out a laughs, Zenna looks back at him and her smile goes away, watching Karan laugh and hearing him laugh again. “Well once if us had to do it right ?” Says Karan as he is getting his laughter under control. Zenna looks back ahead and says ” 35 years…and you enter my life again…” Zenna stands there socking in the situation. Karan walks up to her, hands her a refilled glass and says “you know meeting you here….it may not be my memory but…….it’s beautiful.” Karan taps his glass to her’s and takes a sip as he walks back to the bar. Zenna looks at the glass, looks back at Karan, sees him for awhile and takes a sip from her glass. There is a moment of complete silence but the moments light with smooth jazz play in a very low volume at the bar. Zenna looks down at her cup down at the glass in her hand, smiling. Zenna puts some of her behind her ear and she looks up in the other room. In the other room she sees a small red alert light going off. Zenna’s pulled out of the moment and heads to the table. She clicks on the alert light going off and it shows a notification saying “intruder in the Sector 26 base”. Milly runs in saying ” they found Redi’s body ripped and thrown off a roof… By C”. Karan walks in. Zenna looks at him than straight to his leg. She look back at Milly and says “he’s hunting alone…hmm….he’s hunting him”. Milly gets confused and asks ” why the fuck him? What do the Green Siren want from him?” Karan points his finger to Milly and says “exactly! They already got the smarter dude.. huh.. now they want me.” Zenna looks at Karan and says “I don’t think the officials know it yet.” Zenna turns back to the alarm light and says “it’s just him.”

There is a huge dark hall, resembling the same one from earlier only much bigger than that one, falling walls and bunch of tables in the middle with 19 people walking around the room and around the table. The room is filled with chatting and walking sounds surrounding the room. Slowly everyone in the room goes quite, till there is only one sound heard, which is of a chain slowing being dragged on the floor. The sound gets louder by the second, it’s stops right on the other side of the door, everyone in the room is looking at the door and has their hands in their guns. A voice from the other side says “I have my weapon lowerd. Don’t point your gun at me or I’ll have to kill you.” The door slowly swings open revealing C standing on the other side with is blade dropped on the ground, everyone in the room is now holding their gun ready to shoot, as one of the guys in room says “you hand is still loaded.” C doesn’t reply and after after second says ” my work is done…this was useless.” A guy in sweating out and looking like he is gonna have a panic attack loads his gun and shouts “don’t you see it! He scanned our faces! He know who we are!” The guy pull out his gun and with in a second C’s knife is pulled back to his hand. C points his hand to the guy as he points his gun at C. The guy pulls the trigger and C lunches his knife. Under a second, a bullet sliced into two pieces fall on the ground then the gun from the guys hand. C pulls his blade back to his wrist and the guy’s body falls to the ground with a hole in the middle of his head. The other people in room freeze their bodies shivering. As C turns to leave, a com at the end of the hall rings, one of the guys standing near the com reads the contact. C stops and turns back to the room and scans it again. By the com’s network he tracks the call coming from Zenna’s room. C’s eye goes red. The guy near the com points his gun at C and shouts “kill him”. With a second there is a shower of bullets in C, he falls back from the door to the dark lobby. There is a moment of silence as the loud gun shot’s sound settle down. There is still smoke coming from the bullet holes on the door and from the dark lobby. C’s hand flies right through some of the guys and grabs the head of a guy in the center of the room. He pulls himself to his and this time which holding a guy’s head. C already has his blade hanging from his wrist, he crushes the head of the person just by his hand and starts waving his blade around the room like a whip. With his other hand he kept crushing their bones or tossing them in the air so he can slice them in mid-air, blocking or sometimes deflecting the bullets. By the time C is done all the walls are covered in blood and the room if filled his dismembered body parts. C gets back on his feet fixes his uniform which mostly ripped apart by the gun shots and sets his location to Zenna’s tower.

Dr.khanna is walking around the headquarters and he notices a dark room. He starts walking towards it and as soon as he gets close to the door Dr.deep’s hologram appears in front of him and says “you are curious about what your dream life would be huh ?” Dr.khanna chuckles and says “well things seem disappointing so far…so….it’s more caution than curiosity”. Dr.khanna walks through the hologram and enters the room. The room has basically no lights other than a din blue light clipping from right. He carefully starts walking towards the blue light in the dark, as he reaches there he sees a small panel. Dr.khanna walks up to its and it lights up a small tube shaped container behind the panel. Dr.khanna is eyes light up as he sees that there is a brain in the container hooked to some wires. Dr.Deep’s hologram appears some distance behind Dr.khanna. “I thought so..” says dr.khanna as he turns back to the hologram. He walks closer to the hologram and says “you look too young to be 85….. Living this fancy life, having all this luxury and yet not coming to terms with death huh?” The hologram walks the rest of the distance, closer to dr.khanna and says “I had lost appreciation for our physical bodies when they introduced digital media…….so long writing and taking note huh………my body stopped functioning and I saved the most important thing in it…….it’s me talking to you right now not just any A.I… I flowing through this entire structure watching everything..all knowing..” Dr.khanna silently looks off in the distance, he eventually turns and says “all knowing other then multiverse travel”. They both chuckle. Dr.khanna looks back at the tube and says ” but that we can agree on…. writing is a amazing thing.” Dr.Deep puts his hand on dr.khanna’s shoulder as if he is able to hold it and says “lucky you can still hold a pen.” Dr.khanna chuckles as dr.deep all of a sudden stops laughing and calls a guard inside. He opens a notification in front of him, as the guard reaches there Dr.deep says “I thought I had ordered C to come back to the base”. The guard says “he has dropped off grid sir”. Dr.deep analysis something and says “send out the Z unit….he is heading to Zenna’s apartment” as Dr.deep pulls up the information for Zenna. Dr.khanna turns and looks at the hologrphic notification and it has a pic of Zenna in it. Dr.khanna turns to Dr.deep and asks “is that Zenna ?” Dr.khanna looks at dr.deep how is nodding in agreement. “Karan is there…the guy with the remote” Says dr.khanna. Dr.deep looks at dr.khanna confused and asks “why her house?”. Dr.khanna looks back at the pic and says “she is the reason he is here or quite possibly why I am here……how does she still the same in 2050?” Dr.deep closes the notification and starts walking forward. “Holograms….she is a singer….being young and hot helps.” Says Dr.deep. Dr.khanna stays silent for awhile before he chuckles and asks “is she also just a brain in a jar?” Dr.deep also chuckles and says “no… She is still considered alive by some people”. Dr.khanna replies “yeah but you are still here talking to me… How much difference can a body make right”. Dr.khanna turns around and starts walking to the door as Dr.deep silently keeps looking at his brain in the tank and says “A lot”.

Zenna is preparing the whole house for a fight, she suits up, with a vest and a knife belt around her waist. Zenna walks up to Milly with a suit. Milly is standing near a shelf of long stick type weapons, trying to select a weapon but her mind is thinking about something else. As she realizes Zenna is coming to her, she asks Zenna “you should leave.” Zenna stops walking, she looks concerned. Milly turns around to Zenna and says “you have been leading us since 20 years.” Zenna finally breaks out it, makes eye contact with Milly and says “2 decades and I don’t plan to leave or die….I just planned to fuck up C” Zenna hands the suit to Milly and says “so stop talking to me like I am already dead.” Milly raises one of her eyebrows up and sercasticly says “if I had a mouth I would be smirking right now” Zenna smirks turns around and says ” the 4th one would help you a lot today.” Milly turns back to the shelf and sees that the 4th one is a long rod with a hook blade at the end if it. As Zenna is just about to step out of the room, she stops and says “plus this is personal. I have to be here.” Zenna turns her head sees Milly taking out the weapon and learning to wield it. Zenna smiles and jokingly shouts “not lettng me die is your job by the way.” As Zenna walks out of the room smiling, her smile disappears as she walks away from the room. Zenna walks into the hall, where Karan is looking out the balcony again and not even trying to prep for C. Zenna picks up a rifle type gun and walks up to Karan to give it to him. Karan is standing with the remote in his hand and looking at the city in the different doom. Zenna sees that he has the remote in his hand and asks him “is that how you go back ?” Karan nods yes and shows her the remote. Zenna shrugs and says “wow…. That’s very compact for multiverse and heavy shit like that.” Zenna also looks at the far of city and says “so you could’ve left anytime you wanted ?” Karan nods yes. Zenna chuckles and says “young, emotional and dumb.” Her chuckle turns into a smile, she puts her hand on Karan’s shoulder and says “your world isn’t bio-mechanical right? Maybe you should… Resume your Marin work again….and when you are a hot, buff 50 year old…. visit maybe.” Karan laughs, there there is a moment of their laughs turning into smiles as they both look off at the city far away. Karan looks back down at the remote and says “you know I could think of better places for a 50 or so woman to live.” Zenna instently looks at Karan, stay silent for a while and then starts laughing. Zenna calms herself down and asks Karan “so tell me where have you reached in a trip down my memory lane ?” Karan holds his head “my head goes for a spin when I try to remember but we were arguing about city security you didn’t want me to approve on the bio-mechanical police and law enforcement.” Zenna’s goes speechless for awhile, she tucks her hand in her jacket and whispers “you are close.” Karan turns to her and asks “Huh?” Zenna looking at the city again says “that’s a very… special night…. We had just fought and you were sleeping on the couch…..and some time later you came in to calm things down because…” Karan interrupts her and says ” because I knew you were right.” Zenna chuckles a little and continues “you came in with the only way you knew on how to calm things down” Zenna takes one of her hand out of her pocket, she opens her palm and slides it towards Karan. Karan looks at her palm and sees a pink metallic lighter. He picks it up and looks up at Zenna who already have a joint in her mouth. Karan laughs as Zenna says “yeah, I think need a bit of calming right now” Karan walks closer to light the joint, as Zenna blows the smoke out of her mouth everything goes dark the whole city’s light is gone. A red light starts flashing from inside the house and Milly runs out to the hall. Zenna looks up at the sky and whispers “hmm.. good time for a light show”. Karan keeps the lighter in his pocket and also starts looking up at the sky outside the Dom. Karan is struggling to see anything so he asks “should we be preparing for a fight instead of looking at nothing”. As Karan says and turns to leave a flash lights everything up for a second followed by a sound of the sky ripping apart. Karan turns back and looks up at the sky which lightening lighting up the entire sky, like it’s alive, a big light stricks the ground in the middle of this city and the distant one, vibrations of which were felt till the building they were standing in. The flashes and the sound of the ripping apart, stricks so big that it made them look like a bunch of ants in a jar. Zenna gives the joint to Karan and says “I am gonna get in the suit ” but as Zenna turns to go in, with a flash C appears in the other end of the balcony. Zenna says “fuck”. Milly and Karan turn to C how is standing with his ripped uniform. Milly steps forward, she slides out the knife from the clip on her thigh. C drops his knife on the ground saying “I just want to talk” he point his other hand at Karan and says “I just want to talk to him”. Milly takes her fighting stance and says ” you killed everyone you came across…..our people”. C puts his hand down and says “they pointed a gun at me after that…..it’s just protocols….I do make sure to warn then tho……you are pointing a knife at me….. Making a lot of Gary area for you here…so put it down”. Milly tightens her grip on the knife and says “your talk can be done form there”. C starts takeing steps forward, as Milly is about to charge from inside Zenna shouts ” Karan you need to leave, you don’t have much time. C is just a curious cat who is about to leave.” C looks to his right, inside the house, where he can see a figure standing in front of the red flashing light almost. Zenna says “don’t worry not pointing any guns at you…..yet”. C looks at the figure and scans it. “You have been in this city since you were born and yet I’ve never scanned you before. Weird isn’t it Zenna”. Zenna laughs and says ” nah what’s weird is that i am gonna point this gun at you and….if you follow the protocol and attack me…you will die…..but if you don’t i tell you… who you are”. C doesn’t respond. Zenna points her gun directly to C’s head. C slowly tries to take a step forward and a knife directly lands in front of his foot. Missing C foot by an inch. C looks down, then he looks at Milly and says “the guns not loaded”. Milly replies with a “hmm” and C looks back at Zenna. Zenna lowers her gun and says “well….how does it feel using your brain again C”. Karan starts walking forward them but a if a sudden the same pain runs through his head and he drops to the ground. C turns around and looks at him on the ground but before he could turn back to Zenna his head gets short circuited and also drops to the ground. Milly runs to Karan who is not completely knocked out. Zenna take a few steps forward as Milly looks up at her and asks “how much time do we have before his memories of his world are completely gone ?” Zenna is staring outside the balcony, Milly turns back and through the flashes of lightning they see a military bus flying in the distance towards them. Zenna loads her gun and says “not much”. She looks at Milly and Karan. “Both of you take him and hide” says Zenna as she turns and starts walking towards her room. Karan gets on his feet and with disbelief his voice says “how ?” Zenna stops walking and after sometime says “we don’t have time….take him and hide”. Karan looks at Zenna, he finds his footing and starts walking towards her saying ” you knew.. you knew why he was following me…for 30 years…” Before he could finish Zenna turns to him and says “30 years I’ve survived…in this bubble trapped with Arjun’s dead body flying around the city and after you press the button on your remote and just vanish to your world and I’ll be here in this bubble now with the military up my ass…. stop telling me what the situation is because I’ve been in it for 30 years. So shut the fuck up, take him and hide before it’s late and all you remember is taking innocent lifes”. Zenna turns and starts walking towards her room. Milly slowly walks upto Karan who is standing there speechless, they both look at Zenna as she leaves the hall. Milly puts his hand on Karan’s shoulder and says “don’t worry she’ll apologize later. She is just stressed”. Karan stays silent for awhile before chuckling, turn around and says “nah, I don’t think she apologises”. Karan head to C who is still on the ground. Milly also chuckles, also turns around to C and says “sure she does, she just has her own way saying it”. They both pick up C and head to a room at tge end of the corridor. Zenna puts a fancy rug over her outfit and walks of her room. The bus reaches closer to the huge balcony, one of it’s door opens and a lean, tall guy wearing a black short collered shirt with his military badges on it, jumps out of the bus and very effortlessly lands on the balcony. He stands up straight and starts walking to the hall but stops at the edge of the hall when he hears Zenna say “you know I have a door”. Zenna is leaned up against the bar, the guy at the balcony with a very uncanny robotic voices”sorry about that…I was sent here to handle an emergency situation”. Zenna lefts herself off the bar and starts walking to the table in the center of the hall, as she is walking to she says “Ouu..exiting…I would’ve to listen but a lady loves her private time so… please get off my balcony”. They guy at the balcony stays silent for awhile and then again with his fake robotic voice says “ma’am I can’t leave you alone, it’s an order….let’s start with introductions”. Zenna takes a seat near the table as the guy asks “do you who I am ?” Zenna falls back in her couch and says “no idea… Tell me”. The guy at the balcony says ” CRANK units recently had an byproduct/upgrade, which is me. The Z unit, we were supposed to petrol together today”. Zenna chuckles and says “you are an upgrade ? Wow when did our military got a thing for minimalism?” Z stays quiet for awhile after that he says “the main difference between me and C would be that I analyse my situations, i start learn from the moment I land feet”. There is a moment of silence before Z asks “you wanna know what my analysis says about this situation ?” Zenna doesn’t say anything, she keeps her hand in a position where it’s easier to reach the gun, she slides her leg under the table and with a more serious voice says “enlighten me”. Z with the same uncanny robotic voice says ” it says”. Z takes a long pause, a moment of silence. Z finally makes eyes contact with Zenna, his pupils glowing red and a smirk on his face, he looks down near his feet where there is a mark on the ground, which was made by Milly’s knife and with a more human and deeper voice says “my analysis is saying cut the celebrity bullshit”. Z steps inside the house and says “30 minutes ago we saw C heading to your house after he went off gird and later we are informed that Sergeant Arjun from a different universe might also be found here” Z stops walking, jokingly laughs and says “I mean wow considering the knowledge we have….that must be a stressful day for you…but yet here you are trying to act in front a robot…so before things get…. intense and I have to search your house I’ll give them a chance to walk out”. Z puts his palms around his mouth and shouts “Karan! We have been informed that you have the remote! And we don’t want to take it from you! Dr.khanna is heading here right now just simple take him and leave!” Karan is in the room with Milly and C still knocked out. Karan grabs the remote him his jacket, unable to make a decision. Milly puts her hand on his shoulder and says “hey”. Before Milly could say and Karan says ” We need to do something!” Milly tightens her grip on his shoulder and says “shhh! Don’t worry I won’t let here get hurt”. Milly starts crawling towards the door, closes her eyes and listens. In a hall Z doesn’t get a reply, so he puts his hands back down and says “huh shame” Z turns to Zenna and says “I’ll have to hurt you now to get him out”. Z pulls out a blade but before he could throw it at her. Zenna flips the table to it’s side with her foot and gets behind it. Z charges towards the table and kicks it so hard that it slide to the end if the hall but Zenna wasn’t behind it. Z looks at the ground for a vent but before he could think anything Milly kicks him across the face directly sending into a wall. Milly gets back in her feet and gets her knife ready, she takes her stance and says “I would recommend getting that punk eyes your Senior has”.

Z steps out of the rubble, he stretches he’s back, takes his fighting stance, smirks and says ” and I would recommend real jaw….I’ll help you get rid of this one”. Milly shouts and charges towards him with her knife upfront, she is quick with her swings and very well trained about how to handle a knife. She throws in a few good swings, kicks and punches but none if them land. Z plays defense the whole time, as he sees Milly is getting slower, he finds a opening, dodges her knife, holds her arm, spins and throws her to the wall. Z turns around and says ” this is a waste of my time”. Before he could take a step forwad, Z leans a bit to the left and catches the knife Milly just threw at him. Before he turns back Milly swiftly rushes towards him, she steps on the wall and delivers a kick to his face as he turn back. Z falls to the ground dropping the knife. Milly lands on her feet and grabs her knife. Z kicks back up and says “aah fuck it”. He charges towards Milly as mill does the same but before she could react. Z swiftly lowers down and plants a punch right in her stomach so strong that it picks Milly off the ground and sends her straight back to the end of the corridor. Milly hits the wall and drops straight to the ground. As Milly is unable to move and struggling to breathe. Z stands up straight, rubs his fist. He looks at Milly and tauntingly asks “you gonna throw up?” Z starts walking towards Milly, as he is walking, he stops near a door and turn towards it. It’s a old classic door unlike the other sliding once in the house and this door is slightly open. Z smile and slightly nughes the door as he is says “you seem to a fan of simpler times Zenna ma’am”. Before he is even half way through opening the door he hears something fire, he try to dodge the shot by trying to close the door but he fails as it was mini luncher. The shot clipped the door, hit Z and created a blast that blew the door and sent Z flying in flames to the middle of the hall.

In the room C finally wakes up, he looks at Karan how is sitting in a chair with his gun pointed at the door. C looks down at his blade and retracts it back to his wrist. As soon as he does that he hears a guns reloading sound and looks at Karan who has his gun pointed to C. “This one is loaded” says Karan as he is starting him down. C affected much by it says “I saw some flashes, memories…but all fuzzy…yours or mine..I have no idea”. Karan lowers his gun, takes a deep breath and says “they are yours… Trust me….you maybe not see it clearly but right now most off what I remember is……your life, your memories….. As why would keeps getting fuzzier”. Karan looks at C and says “it hardly matters to her tho”. Karan chuckles and says “Still fighting for us”.

Outside in the hall Z gets up, most of his skin on the right side of his skin burnt, his uniform still on fire. As soon as he gets up Zenna starts shooting her gun at him. Z quickly rolls behind the same table Zenna was hiding behind. Z touches his burnt skin, breathing heavily Z from behind the table says “I have to says…. As much as I bragged…I didn’t read this situation properly”. Z gets his breathing under control and says “but now I think I am getting a hang of it”. Z quickly turns around, grabs the table and throws it straight towards Zenna. She ducks and bearly dodges the table. Zenna turns back to Z but before she knows it Z is standing right in front of her. Z knocks the gun out if her hand, he grabs her wrist with one hand, with the other he grabs her by the throat. Z effortless rises his hand up lifting Zenna off the ground. Zenna by the support of Z’s hand and delivers a strong kick to Z’s face. Z looks back down at her, unfazed. Z picks her up higher and smashes her on the ground. Z still holding her wrist, leans closer to Zenna and whispers “let’s see which one of em humps out first after this”. Z hold hand up and before she is able to react Z bends her arm in the opposite direction completely shattering her elbow. Zenna let’s out a very painfull scream, before she is even finish screaming, she pulls out a knife and tries to stabe Z right in the face. Z again very effortlessly blocks her swing, as he is about the say something, he senses something. Z dodges and sees a chain right beside his face. The chain stops moving and Z looks where it came from. At the end of the corridor Z sees C’s eyes lit up red. Z smirks, he suddenly hears the sound of a chain again, his smirk disappears and lowers himself as C’s blade flies back to his wrist. Z looks at Zenna and says “I really hoped it was the other one”. Z looka back at C, he puts his hand in Zenna’s neck and says “hey couch…..man this is honestly so disappointing..I wanted all 4 of us to have so many ro-bro-mance stories.” C tries to charge in but stops as he sees placing his hand right at Zenna neck. “Careful….this will be easier than the arm”. As soon as Z looks down at Zenna, she pushes his hand aside, before Z is able to react. Milly puts her arm around his neck putting him in a hold from the back. Milly whispers “I think I am gonna throw up” and as Z’s head is inches away from Milly, she let’s out a sonic scream which makes his ears bleed. Z struggles and tries to hit her with his elbow. Milly see it’s not enough, so she holds his neck tighter and screams so load that it pushes then back and possibly explode Z’s brain as his eyes go blood red. Milly releases her hold and Z’s body drops to the ground. Zenna manages to get back on her feet. Karan finally comes out of the room, he walks across C, as he sees Zenna broken arm be walks up to her and says “I can’t sit inside anymore… You said we had this under control”. C walks out if the corridor. Zenna looks up at C’s face and goes silent for awhile. C also falls silent before breaking out if it, he looks at Z’s body and says “fuck…..we shouldn’t killed him”. Zenna looks at C and asks “excuse me”. C takes his eyes off the dead body, he looks at Zenna and says “Z is a triplet program.. because of which his protocol is divided into 3 stages….. I’ve trained all 3 of them”. C points at the body on the ground and says ” and he was put best bet out of this”

At the balcony the military vehicle’s starts flashing it’s emergency lights. The sirens starts going off in the vehicle and within a lightning flash under the vehicle. There is Z standing, he looks at the body on the ground in the hall, he removes his hat, his hair and facial hair are different. ” Killed First day huh ? Haha…you should’ve shuck with him, at least he wouldn’t have slaughtered you all”. C grunts Zenna manages to pick her rifle with her one hand and asks C “what’s going on?” C says ” there are 3 of them, like brothers. The one we just killed is not made to kill..he wasn’t even trying..but the rest two… brothers are”. Zenna loads her gun and interrupts C by saying “I got it’. Z looks at C, smiles and says “thanks for the introduction couch”. Z takes his fighting stance and says “this is rather exiting first day”. C takes his stance and softly says “there is a military vehicle approaching in 7 minutes filled with Dr.deep’s guards and.. Dr.khanna…..at the first chance you get you leave”. Karan gets a bit tensed, in a very serious voice Karan tells C “I am not-“. C cuts him off and says “I don’t care take Zen to the safe room”. Zenna looks at C as he called her Zen, she freezes as C tells Milly “try not to kill him this time….try to dodge this time”. C releases the blade from his wrist, he charges straight towards Z and Milly follows his lead. C starts using his blade like a whip again as he runs towards him. Z’s dodges all the attacks by his blade, he he didn’t jump around as mush as the last one, his dodges looked effortless and slow, as the was stepping aside or ducking. As C gets closer to Z, they are trading blows and start a brawl. C’s strength only marginally over powering Z but he is faster then C. Milly runs up behind C and leaps over him. She delivers and scream right over Z’s head. Z is pushed down to the floor but he manages to stay on his feet. C takes the opportunity,he grabs his head and lunches his fist which sends Z flying to the balcony. C tires to pull his hand back but before he properly pull it back. Z manges to take C’s hand off his face, he quickly gets his knife out and shoves it in the floor through C’s hand. Milly charges at Z with her knife, she makes a couple of swings but again He dodges them with the same effortlessness, at the back Z sees that C is also now heading towards him. Z grabs Milly’s wrist with one hand, with the other hand he grabs her chin and picks her up, she tries to use the scream but before she execute it. Z crunches her bio-mechanical chin with his bare hands . C gets frustrated lunches his blade at Z. Z quickly takes Milly’s knife and tosses her to the side. Z dodges the blade and throws knife at C which hits him right on his feet. C trips over. Before C could even hit the ground, Z plants his knee right under C’s chin. The was strick so strong that cracks C’s bio-mechanical eye. C drops to the ground. At the corner of his eye he sees Milly crowing away to her bike, leaving a trail of blood behind which is dripping from her crushed jaw. Z starts walking towards Milly, as he reaches closer Milly tries to get up. Milly turns and tries to punch him. Z catches her fist with easy as she doesn’t have enough strength left in her. Z pulls Milly up a bit, he eyes directly in her eyes as she barely manages to keep them open. Z says ” I can tell by your eyes that you looked beautiful before all this”. Hearing his pisses Milly off and she tried to swing with her other hand. Z catches her other hand as well and just pulls Milly to her feet. Z wipes some blood of the blood dripping from her jaw and says “sorry about this…….but..I can fix it…like before all this” Milly is push back a bit by the idea of have her real face again, she realizes her fists from him hands and starts getting angry. As Z is about to say something C grabs his head by his fist and starts pulling him back slowly as he is swinging and smashing him around the whole room. C pulls him back completely, he smashes Z on the ground. C stabs his blade Z’s one arm and keeps his foot on the other pinning Z down to the floor. Before Z could do something about the situation, C starts pummeling Z’s face with his fist. C looks at Milly and says “leave right now..I’ll handle this”. Milly somehow manages to reach her bike, she gets on and flys off the balcony. C watches Milly leave, he stops punching Z, grabs his head and throws him out of the hall into the balcony. C walks up to the balcony. Z tries to get up, as his face is covered with bruses and blood. Z pushes himself off the ground and manages to get on his knee. Z looks at Milly flying off into the distance but something else catches his attention. A military vehicle flying towards them. Z smirks and says “it’s good you sent her away…..Dr.frankenstein himself is heading here”. Z looks at C and asks “how much time ?” C releases his blade and says “enough”. Z gets on his feet, wipes some blood off his face and says “well then let’s see which of his monster survives”. They both charge towards eachother but Z slides under and dodges him. Z leaps towards the knife inside in the hall. Z grabs his knife and instently runs back towards C. They both start brawling, punching eachother, cutting eachother.

In the safe room. Zenna counts till 3 as Karan clips on a device which looks like a elbow pad on her broken arm. Zenna keeps her scream in and instead she just slowly breathes it out. Karan looks at Zenna who is trying to move her hand again, he sit down. And says “pretty sure I was here to help you but …” Zenna interrupts him and says ” to help Sana… You were here to help Sana”. Karan looks at Zenna, chuckles and says “sorry everything just so blurry now”. Zenna, who is a bit pissed by the pain in her hand and the whole situation. She grabs her gun and walks to where Karan is sitting. Zenna crouches down and says “you must have forgotten the accident but I bet you still remember the feeling….you keep blaming yourself…and now you are here ruining my life….I want your to remember that once you get back”. Karan is left speechless after hearing that. Zenna gets up loads her gun and looks at Karan. Zenna thinking that she sent too hard on him says ” hey…maybe next time drink your guilt away rather than building a time machine huh?” Karan looks up at her and slightly chuckles. Zenna smiles. Karan leans back in his seat and says “I think I can stay content with that maybe in some universe I didn’t end up killing you…or myself”. Zenna stay silent for awhile, she lets out a small chuckle and says “try not to stop by them when you go back”. Karan laughs and says “I’ll try my best”. They both share a laugh. Soon Zenna gets up and says “let’s go…it’s almost time”. Zenna starts walking towards the door, she unlocks the door and the door slides open. Karan gets up, he looks at Zenna near the door and tries to say something but can’t get the words out. Karan walks a bit towards Zenna and says ” I am sorry”. Zenna stops as she was walking out the door. Karan tries to continue but before he could say anything else Zenna walks away. Karan let’s out a sigh and starts following her lead. As they slowly walk out of the corridor, they start feeling the thuds and vibrations from the punches Z and C are throwing at eachother. Zenna peaks her head from the corridor to see what going on. In the hall she sees that C has gotten worn out, he isn’t able to land a single punch on Z, as Z is constantly delivering strong punches and knees to his head. Z starts getting more vicious, he delivers a strong punch on the side of C’s head sending him to the floor. Z pulls C’s right arm up and places his foot on C’s head on the ground. Z stabs his knife right in C’s shoulder and twists it. As he is doing that, he lets out a strong scream and pulls C’s whole arm out of his shoulder. Looking at what just happened Zenna comes out of the corridor and starts drilling him with bullets. Z throws C’s whole arm at her. C takes the opportunity and gets his head up, which causes Z to lose his balance. C uses his left arm, stabs Z in his stomach and lunches his blade which send Z back to the balcony. C struggles at first but manages to get on his feet, blood pouring down from where his arm should’ve been. Zenna and Karan run up to him. C turn to them and shouts ” Zen I told you fucking leave….that’s why u sent you to the dame safe room”. Zenna says “and let you die twice…hmm”. C goes silent and calms down a bit. Arjun looks down on the ground and says “you don’t get th-“. Z laying on the balcony, with his whole body covered in blood says “they have his remote..they control us you know…he was saving you.. just like he saved that pretty radio of yours”. C tells Zenna “you should’ve left” as soon as he says that an buzzer starts ringing and a ramp drops down on the edge of the balcony. Zenna puts her gun up. Z with the help of a wall manages to get up. One of the guards walks out with a gun pointed to dr.khanna’s head. Dr.khanna looks beat up, bruses on his face and a band aid around his head. The guard to the middle of the balcony and shouts ” Drop your weapons or he gets shot….so just lower them take him and leave….what’s so fucking hard to understand in that ? Or have you changed your mind about leaving ?” The guard turns to Z and says “arrest C and put him in the van”. Z, who is able to stand by the support of the wall, looks at the guard and then looks at C. Z turns back to his vehicle and says “do it yourself”. Z jumps on the balcony reeling and then on to his vehicle. The guard shouts at Z “listen your fucking remote control bot…do what you are asked to”. Z stops on the ramp if his vehicle, he turns and says “careful…you are no doc with a remote…. wouldn’t want a bot to ripe your head off”. The ramp to the vehicle closes and the vehicle takes off. The guard gets visible pissed. He turns to C, sighs and says “what a fucking mess…..C get in the van if you wants his to end peaceful”. C doesn’t react for a moment, then he looks at Zenna and says “I apologise….for everything”. Zenna looks up at him. C continues “I wouldn’t want to cause you further…issues”. Zenna is speechless. C looks at her for a moment before he starts walking towards the van. As he crosses the guard and dr.khanna. the guard tells him “stand there”. The guard let’s go of Dr.khanna’s coller. Dr.khanna slowly starts walking towards Karan. Karan looks at Zenna and slowly says “I can’t leave you like this”. Zenna doesn’t respond for awhile. Dr.khanna is almost there and is saying “get the remote out… Right now” Karan is still looking at Zenna who still isn’t responding. Dr.khanna finally shouts “GET THE FUCKING REMOTE OUT!”. Karan looks at Dr.khanna and gets the remote out. Zenna finally calls out to him and shouts “Karan!”. Karan looks at Zenna as she says “it’s fine”. Dr.khanna finally reaches there and grabs Karan’s hand in which he is holding the remote. Karan is still looking at Zenna. All of a sudden Karan looks down and realize Dr.khanna pressed the button as the remote was in his hands. Karan looks back up at Zenna and she is able to give him a smile before the same dark red lighting appears and they both are gone.

Zenna is still looking at the spot where they teleported from, before she could turn back the guard days “so now….about you”. Zenna turns to the guard and see that he is pointing his gun to her now. There are 3 more guards getting off the van. C looks around, he looks at the guard pointing the gun at Zenna, leans towards him and says “no..y-” before the guard interrupts him and says “stop moving big boy”. C looks at the rest of the guards, he scans and realizes one of them has the remote to him and he freezes. C quickly looks back at the guard with the gun and swings his blade cutting his hand. The guards hand falls in the floor with the gun. C turns to attack the guy with the remote but rest to step in the middle. C cuts through them easily. The guard with his arm chopped off shouts “RESET HIM NOW!” The guard with his control starts panicking and presses a button on the controller. C freezes, like he was malfunctioning then all of a sudden his eye light goes off and C drops to the ground. The guard without an arm at first nervously chuckles, slowly gets more confident and he says ” HA! All gone…all his memory including this litt-” before he could finish, a bullet flies through his head, blowing his brains out. The hole in his head was huge enough that the guard with the controller could see Zenna pointing her rifle at him through the hole in the guard’s head. As the body drops to the ground, the guard starts panicking again, he looks at the controller and whispers to himself “how the fuck do I turn him o-” before Zenna drills his head with a bullet as well. The guard’s body drops to the gorud and so does the controller to C. Zenna slowly starts walking towards the bodies in the balcony. Zenna stops near the remote, she picks up the remote and looks at it for awhile. Zenna looks at Arjun’s body on the ground, she starts walking to the edge of the balcony and chucks the remote off the balcony. Zenna watches the remote drop down from the skyscrapers till it’s not visible. Zenna pulls out a joint, she turns around and sits in the balcony as she also sparks the joint. Zenna takes a deep long puff.

7th March 2025

In the empty basement. The same dark red lighting appears and suddenly Dr.khanna and Karan are back on the platform. As soon as the appears Dr.khanna drops to his knees, holding his head and shouting in pain. Karan also suffers some amount of head pain, he goes to help Dr.khanna and sees that the band aid around his head is socked in blood. Karan tries to help him but Dr.khanna pushes him away and gets back on his feet. At this point the blood is slowly dripping down dr.khanna’s face, regardless he turns around and starts heading towards the stair. Karan looks at him leave the room, he lets out a sigh and realizes he is still holding the remote. Karan looks at the remote for a moment before slamming it in the ground and stomping on it. Karan finally heading upstairs, he looks around to find Dr.khanna, finally he walks by the hall and see Dr.khanna looking outside the gallery at the trees. Dr.khanna tries open but fails to figure out how to open a simple gallery. Karan looks at him struggle and says ” the chips on the right”. Dr.khanna is a bit startled as he didn’t know Karan was standing behind him. Dr.khanna finally open the gallery, walks out and knees down to see the plants. Dr.khanna touches one of the leafs as there is blood still dripping from his head. Look at that sight, something stricks to Karan. Karan slowly starts walking towards the gallery. As Karan reaches the gallery he asks Dr.khanna “how long they kept you in for ?” Dr.khanna without shifting his attention from the plant says “plenty”. Karan stays silent for a while before saying “sorry about that….you came across dr.deep there ?” Dr.khanna freezes and with a bit of a stutter he says “no I didn’t”. Karan sighs, he grabs Dr.khanna by his collar and pushes him to the ground. Karan pins him down and takes off Dr.khanna’s band aid on his head. Under the band-aid there is a stitch mark, going across his whole head. Karan is a bit pushed back at first, he snaps out of it. Karan grabs Dr.khanna’s neck and asks “couldn’t stay in a jar huh ?” Dr.deep, who struggling a bit to breathe starts chuckling and says “oh..you have all of their memories…. your’s…..C’s..and Arjun’s”. Karan, after listening to that loosens his grip on Dr.deep’s neck. Karan let’s out a sigh, he looks down at Dr.deep who still has his face covers in blood and is still chuckling. Karan gathers enough courage, tightens his grip again and starts landing strong punches on Dr.deep. Soon Dr.deep’s head is nothing but a puddle of blood and Karan is sitting on his couch with ice on his fist.

The End