The cursor blinked accusingly on Siddharth’s laptop screen, a solitary pulse in the half-dark apartment. He sat rigid in the chair, broad shoulders hunched, jaw set, as lines of decrypted text crawled down the monitor. The night had been merciless. Hours spent tracing Irfan Qureshi’s phone activity—odd numbers routed through foreign servers, short bursts of coded words that vanished almost as quickly as they appeared. Siddharth’s bloodshot eyes scanned the latest thread one last time, piecing the fragments together.

Friday evening. Old warehouse on the outskirts of Bangalore. The word pendrive repeated more than once. A drop, then. An exchange. His instincts hardened. Something was moving, and fast.