The eastern stairwell of Zaventra was the kind of place people forgot existed. Lunch hour made the cafeteria roar like a marketplace, but here it was different—no chatter, no phones, just cement walls breathing dust and the faint hum of electricity through exposed wiring.

Siddharth Iyer slipped in quietly, letting the heavy fire door thud shut behind him. The echo rang down the shaft and died. His shoes tapped against bare concrete, steady, unhurried. On the surface, he looked calm. Inside, instincts screamed.

He had spent years in places like this—stairwells in border towns, empty corridors in abandoned schools, mountain passes where silence carried danger like a whisper. His body recognized the pattern long before his mind caught up.

On the fourth landing, a plain brown file sat neatly on the concrete step. No name and markings. Just a single black paperclip holding its contents hostage.

Siddharth hesitated, instincts already prickling. He picked it up, flipped it open.

The first page hit like a punch to the ribs.

“RAHIM KHAN — ALIAS: AKASH GOWDA”

His fingers clenched the folder tighter as he scanned line after line—images of Akash at the freight yard, screenshots of logistics data, a time-stamped surveillance still of the crate swap. Every detail painstakingly documented. Every thread tied to Rahim.

His gut instincts were right. Akash wasn’t a PR lead. He wasn’t a man Siddharth had casually traded cafeteria jokes with. He wasn’t the harmless colleague with a knack for branding. The file trembled slightly in his hand before his discipline clamped down. His breath slowed. His face reset to stone.

Tucked between the pages, a small handwritten note fell out—on unmarked paper, in crisp, sharp penmanship.

“Your identity is compromised. Rahim knows who you are. So do his handlers. Tejas and Rafiq are on their radar too. Do not confront him. Act normal. Keep watching. Keep smiling. And when the time comes—switch the crates.”

No signature. But Siddharth didn’t need one.

It was Ghost. The air felt heavier suddenly. His pulse climbed, but not from fear. Ghost’s words weren’t advice, they were orders. And Siddharth trusted Ghost less than he trusted anyone alive, yet here he was, following the breadcrumbs of a phantom.

His mind reeled. How long had Akash known? How close had he been to calling backup? Poisoning a coffee?

He sighed and muttered under his breath, voice low and strained, “How the hell am I supposed to know which crates are rigged?”

As though the shadows themselves had heard, his phone buzzed once.

“The ones without a red sticker at the bottom. Don’t miss.”

Siddharth froze. His eyes darted to the corners of the stairwell. Pipes overhead. Darkness pooling under the steps. There was nothing out of ordinary. But the weight of presence pressed against him.

Ghost was here. Watching. Breathing the same air. Close enough to know his thoughts. Far enough to never be seen. As a soldier his job is to obey. But Siddharth felt agitated. Some part of him refused to obey an unknown face. A shadow everyone called Ghost.

Siddharth exhaled shakily, the file pressed to his chest. His mission had changed. The line between hunter and hunted had blurred.

And now he was walking it—alone, in plain sight, with a traitor sitting across the table and a phantom guiding him from the dark.

Siddharth stepped out of the stairwell and walked down the hallway like nothing had happened. Like the world hadn’t just shifted under his feet.

His pulse thudded in his ears, but his face was calm. Too calm. Years of training kicked in—shoulders relaxed, pace steady, eyes only mildly tired, as they always were.
“Blend in. Be forgettable. Stay invisible.”- He recalled what his mentor Aditya Mishra had said.

The open floor hummed with typical Zaventra chaos—emails flying, interns chasing print deadlines, someone yelling over a brand call in the distance. The marketing bullpen was alive with caffeine and curated chaos.

Siddharth slipped into his seat like any other Friday.

Akash—no, Rahim—was two cubicles over, animatedly chatting with someone from event coordination. Laughing. Planning.
Plotting.

Siddharth didn’t look. Didn’t flinch. He powered on his screen, pulled up campaign dashboards, and began typing notes he wasn’t really reading.

"Any updates on the Fizzolia booth designs?"
The voice came from behind. Siddharth turned in his chair, the very picture of efficiency. “Yes, ma’am. I just approved the final gradient corrections on the banner mockups. You’ll get a deck in twenty.”

Sneha looked tired. Her eyes rimmed with kajal, hair tied back neatly, but her presence was commanding.Too many meetings, not enough sleep but her gaze was razor-sharp. She scanned him like she always did: as a competent subordinate, reliable, boring.

“Good. Send it before my 3 PM with Fizzolia’s team lead. I don’t want them throwing another tantrum again.”

“Understood,” Siddharth replied, nodding. “Also—there’s a slight delay with the delivery manifest updates. Akash is handling it.”

Sneha’s brow twitched slightly. “He better be. That’s his division.”

Then, with a flick of her pen and a practiced turn on her heels, she walked away.

As she disappeared into the conference room, Siddharth turned back to his screen. Akash’s laughter rippled through the air again, friendly, unbothered.

Siddharth’s fingers hovered over his keyboard.
The man across the desk planned to kill thousands.
And now, it was his job to stop him, without letting a single soul know.

***

By 6:45 p.m., the office lights had dimmed. The once-buzzing bullpen now echoed with only the sound of a printer wheezing its last task and a janitor humming off-key.

Siddharth shut his laptop, stood up, and offered a casual wave to the receptionist on his way out.

"Night, Sid!"
“Night.”

His voice was calm. His heart wasn’t.

***

Back at the apartment, the energy was different.

Tejas had his sleeves rolled up, eyebrows furrowed as he typed something furiously into a shared doc on his screen. Rafiq stood by the window, scanning the street with paranoid eyes while pretending to water a dead succulent.

The moment Siddharth entered, both men turned.
Nothing needed to be said.

He locked the door. Double bolted it. Then dropped his bag and pulled out the file Ghost had left.

“It's confirmed. Akash Gowda is Rahim Khan. The crates going to Fizzolia kiosks 1, 2, 4, and 6 are loaded with RDX. Ghost says we’ve been compromised.”

Tejas let out a soft whistle. “And here I thought we were just making PowerPoints and suffering through brand decks.”

“No jokes tonight,” Rafiq muttered. “What’s the plan?”

Siddharth opened the note Ghost had left him and passed it to Rafiq. Tejas scrambled to peek over Rafiq’s shoulder.

“Your identity is compromised. Rahim knows who you are. So do his handlers. Tejas and Rafiq are on their radar too. Do not confront him. Act normal. Keep watching. Keep smiling. And when the time comes—switch the crates.”

Rafiq’s jaw tightened. “So we swap them back with real ones? From where?”

“I’ve already arranged it through an old asset at the logistics hub,” Siddharth said, voice steady. “Three clean crates loaded with actual Fizzolia cans. We switch the ones without a red sticker at the bottom. They'll be left outside the secondary gate at 3:15 a.m. Timing is everything. No heroics. Follow the plan.”

Tejas opened the city map and laid it flat on the table. “The delivery truck route goes through Peenya Yard, stops for twenty minutes at checkpoint 12 for vehicle scanning and manifest update. That's our window.”

Rafiq pointed. “We hit it there. Replace the crates, vanish, and let the kiosk team never know.”

Siddharth nodded. “We’ll look like PR crew doing an audit run. If questioned, we show the fake manifest Tejas is printing now.”

“And Akash?” Rafiq asked quietly.

Siddharth’s jaw clenched.

“Not yet. We don’t blow the cover until the procession’s safe.”

There was a brief silence.

Outside, Bangalore blinked under streetlight and the soft hum of vehicles below. Inside, three men stood in a triangle of trust forged not by time, but by duty. And tomorrow night, they'd fight to save it from being turned into a graveyard.