Siddharth gritted his teeth as he drove through the dim, empty streets, his left hand gripping the steering wheel while the other pressed against the bloodied fabric of his arm. The wound burned with every movement, the bullet having grazed him just deep enough to sting like hell.

By the time he reached his apartment, the adrenaline was fading and the pain was setting in.

Tejas was already pacing in the living room, barefoot and clutching a first aid kit like a panicked intern on his first day at trauma duty.

“God, Sid! What the hell happened?” Tejas rushed forward, eyes wide as he took in the blood.

“No time. Just patch it up,” Siddharth muttered, pulling off his jacket and wincing as the movement tugged at the torn flesh.

Tejas helped him sit, his hands fumbling with the antiseptic. “You said you were just going to check things out. You didn’t mention the part where you’d walk into a death trap like some budget action hero.”

Siddharth didn’t respond. He watched the blood swirl with the disinfectant on his skin, his thoughts elsewhere, back in the warehouse, the chaos, the smoke, the sound of bodies collapsing. The slashed throats. The fresh trishul marks still burning on cold foreheads.

He exhaled, slow and shaky. Ghost had been right. Not just about the trap but about everything. The speed, the precision, the silent brutality. Siddharth had barely survived. Ghost hadn’t just neutralized the threat; he’d dismantled it before Siddharth could even raise his weapon.

Siddharth had always been proud of his instincts. His training. His calm under pressure. But tonight, for the first time in years, he felt… slow. Mortal. Weak. He blinked, forcing the thought away. But it lingered. Was he really the right man for this mission?

Because Ghost didn’t doubt. Ghost didn’t miss. Ghost didn’t bleed.

And for the first time in a long while, Siddharth wasn’t sure if he could keep up. Tejas tightened the last strip of gauze around Siddharth’s arm, still grumbling under his breath about bullet wounds and job descriptions when a sudden knock echoed from the apartment door.

They both stilled. Siddharth reached instinctively for the side drawer where he kept a gun, while Tejas tiptoed toward the door, his brows furrowed. He opened it cautiously.

Nothing.

Just a small brown package on the floor. No note, no address, no fingerprints. Except for one thing. A trishul symbol, drawn faintly in black ink across the top.

Tejas bent, picked it up gingerly, and recoiled the moment he saw the faint symbol etched across the top. A trishul.

“Okay, nope. Nope nope nope. This is cursed. I’ve watched enough horror movies to know you do not open this.”

He carried it back like it was a snake ready to strike and placed it before Siddharth. The Major studied it with a blank expression, then tore the seal open in one swift motion. Inside was a sleek black pendrive. The same model he’d seen Irfan pocket in the office footage.

Siddharth’s jaw clenched. Ghost didn’t just kill. He cleaned up too. His eyes remained locked on the pendrive, the trishul burning in his mind like a brand. Ghost hadn’t just outpaced him. He’d mocked him.

Siddharth’s jaw flexed. “Ghost.”

“This is the data Irfan stole,” he muttered, staring at it like it might reveal more than files.

“Great,” Tejas said, throwing his arms up. “Not only does our friendly neighborhood serial slasher kill bad guys, now he’s Amazon Prime delivering pendrives to your door. Should I leave him a five-star review?”

Siddharth ignored him. “Check the building CCTV. Now.”

For once, Tejas didn’t argue. He scrambled to the cabinet where their private monitor was set up, fingers flying across the keyboard. The glow of the screens lit his face in shifting blues and greys.

When he was sure Siddharth wasn’t watching, Tejas’s easy grin slipped away. His jaw tightened, the faintest shadow of discipline settling over his features. With a few practiced keystrokes, he pulled up a frame frozen in grainy clarity—a schoolboy in uniform, no older than fourteen, slipping into the apartment corridor. The boy’s head was bowed, but in his small hands rested the brown package. Tejas’s eyes narrowed as he traced the faint outline of a trishul scrawled across the envelope.

His lips curved, not in amusement but in recognition. Gone was the bumbling clown who annoyed Siddharth at work; for the briefest moment, Tejas looked like what he truly was—someone trained, sharp, dangerous. A man used to secrets.

Then, with a quick command, the footage dissolved into static, erased like it had never existed. By the time he turned back toward the living room, the wide-eyed, playful Tejas had returned, mask firmly in place.

When he re-entered, his face was pale. “All feeds… corrupted. Every single camera in the building. It’s like tonight never happened.”

Siddharth didn’t answer. He just stared at the pendrive, the trishul mark still etched in his mind. As if the night's humiliation hadn’t cut deep enough, the pendrive in his hand felt like Ghost’s silent taunt, a cruel reminder of just how far behind he truly was.

Siddharth plugged the pendrive into his laptop, the familiar hum of the fan kicking in as the files loaded. He leaned in, expecting confidential blueprints or data leaks, something explosive. But what greeted him was… mundane.

Marketing slides. A PowerPoint presentation. Photoshopped mockups of colourful road stalls. The Zaventra sales team had planned to set up cool drink kiosks along the Ganesh Chaturthi procession routes—prime visibility for a new fizzy product line.

Siddharth blinked at the screen, brows furrowed. This? Irfan had risked so much to steal this? There had to be more to it. Before he could dig deeper, his phone buzzed on the desk.

"Basement. Government school. 11 PM."
—The message was unsigned. But the moment he spotted the Trishul symbol in the corner, he knew.

Ghost. He grabbed his jacket, checked his sidearm, and slipped out.

Tejas called after him, “Wait—at least let me come along! What if it’s a date? You’ll need a wingman.”

But Siddharth was already gone.

Thirty-five minutes later, Siddharth found himself standing before a towering government school building—faded paint, cracked steps, the occasional flicker of a dying tube light above the entrance. A teaching hub for bright-eyed students by day… and, evidently, one of Ghost’s many shadows by night.

He stepped into the basement, senses alert.

The air was cold and smelled faintly of dust and chalk—the kind of stale silence only abandoned places carried. The dim yellow light flickered above, casting a long shadow of Siddharth’s figure onto the cracked concrete floor.

The room was bare. Just a single wooden table and an old metal chair stood at the centre. On the table sat a lone laptop, lid already open. The screen glowed eerily in the low light, displaying nothing but a black background and a glowing white Trishul symbol pulsing slowly, like a heartbeat.

Siddharth approached cautiously and sat down. As if sensing his presence, the symbol faded, and a voice emerged through the speakers—distorted, synthetic, genderless. Calm, yet razor sharp.

“You were told to abort.”

Siddharth tensed. “I had him. I was right there. You didn’t trust me.”

“You were foolish,” the voice snapped. “You compromised the mission and forced my hand. Irfan wasn’t supposed to die tonight.”

Siddharth’s eyes narrowed. “You speak of trust, but you’re the one hiding in shadows. Why help me at all if you don’t trust me either? Show your face.”

There was a pause. When the voice returned, it was laced with cold steel.

“This isn’t about trust. It’s about mission. And your reckless choices just dismantled months of surveillance. Irfan was our only link to the others. Now that link is dead, because of you.”

Siddharth leaned forward, jaw tight. “Then why save me? Why keep helping?”

The screen flickered briefly. The voice returned, colder.

“You think this is about you? It’s bigger than your pride, Falcon. You bled tonight because you underestimated the enemy. You bled tonight because you doubted my warning. You will not survive the next mistake.”

Static crackled before the voice continued, lower and more clipped.

“Your cover is blown, Falcon. Somebody from your circle has betrayed you. This was never supposed to happen.”

Siddharth’s eyes darkened at the implication. And as the Trishul symbol returned to pulsing on the screen, Ghost’s silence felt louder than any scream.

Siddharth’s fingers curled into fists on the table, his voice low but edged with frustration.

“Only two people knew about my plan tonight, Tejas and Sanjay Bhatia.”
He leaned closer to the laptop screen, glaring at the flickering Trishul.
“Who betrayed me?”

There was silence for a moment. Then the synthetic voice of Ghost returned, clipped and calm.

“Not Tejas.”

Siddharth froze. “You’re sure?”

“If it were him,” the voice said, icy, “you would already be dead.”

Silence thickened, heavy as chains. Siddharth’s pulse hammered in his ears.

Then the voice continued, lower, steady, almost too calm.

“You think you move unseen? That your cover at Zaventra is intact? Every step you take, I see it. The office, your apartment, even the moments you think are private. You are on my surveillance, Falcon. Every conversation. Every mistake. Even now, sitting here in this chair, you are only in the field because I allow it. You’re not hunting the enemy—you’re being measured.”

Siddharth’s stomach clenched. A chill ran down his spine, colder than the concrete walls. He felt naked under the weight of invisible eyes, as though the basement itself was listening.

He leaned closer, voice rough. “So I’m just your pawn?”

“No. You are a soldier being trained in a new war. You’ve fought with rifles and tactics. Now you will fight in shadows and I am the one sharpening you. Follow my guidance, Falcon, and you’ll survive battles you can’t even see coming. Disobey me again, and you won’t last the week.”

The symbol pulsed once more, like a heart that belonged to someone else.

A heavy silence settled between them. The implications of those words weren’t lost on Siddharth. He took a slow breath, trying to calm the storm brewing in his head.

“Then it’s Bhatia.”

Ghost didn’t confirm.
“Wait. Observe. Don’t confront yet.”
The voice lowered like a quiet warning.
“You’ll get your answers. But only if you follow my instructions exactly this time.”

The Trishul on the screen pulsed once, sharper, brighter before fading to black.

Siddharth’s hand hovered over the laptop, fingers twitching with the temptation to slam it shut and carry it with him. To crack it open. To finally unmask the phantom orchestrating this entire game.

He wanted to know.

He needed to know.

But just then, his phone buzzed sharply in his pocket. One glance at the screen stopped him cold.

"The laptop is stolen. Walk out with it, and I’ll have the cops at your door in ten minutes. Don’t be stupid, Falcon."

A fresh wave of frustration surged through him. He clenched his jaw, staring at the screen that had gone dark again, now nothing more than a blank threat in the shadows.

Ghost was always a step ahead.

And Siddharth hated it.