Manish Murthy

“First of all, lemme confirm,” He said. “You’re Manish Murthy, the son of belated Amitabh Murthy, right? Your elder brother has recently died, and you didn’t even pay heeds because you two never had a good bond like brothers. Your elder sister, Kavita Makhija, is an investigator at Delhi Police. Her husband is dead, so you’re the only one whom she trusts, and vice-versa. Moreover, you study at Toronto University, Canada, and was responsible for the murder attempt of a certain student, right?”

“H-How do you…?”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you for several months. I know you had reasons of your own, and I’m not here to scold you for that too. We’re too old for that crap.” Then, he looked at me seriously and said, “Now, lemme tell you something about myself. I’m Shekhar Sharma, the Head of Nerve Section at TES and the leader of the newly formed ‘The Murdered Faction’. TES is a criminal organization that specializes in political murders, but we take other murder contracts too. We’ve killed many leaders for our clients, and one of them… was Amitabh Murthy.”

“What?!” I was shocked. “You killed my father?!”

He nodded and tilted his head down in guilt. “I was just following orders and giving orders, so yes, I played a part in his murder too, though not directly.”

My eyes were wide as I looked at him in shock. I thought, “T-The murderer of my family is standing just in front of me, confessing his crimes! W-What the hell am I supposed to do? Run away? Hide? Scold him? NO! W-What?!”

“But, that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about.” He tilted his back backward and said, “I’m just here to guide you of something.”

“B-But, what’s ‘TES’… ‘The Murdered Faction’ and all this stuff?”

He tilted his head on both the sides, and tilted his back forward towards the table. “TES is an organization of criminals, as I said. ‘The Murdered Faction’ is a faction, like a sub-division of people working in TES.” Then, he breathed hard and said, “See, people in TES are hired by two ways, by either the ‘Vulnerability Method’, or ‘Recommendation Method’. In the latter, the criminals are recommended on the basis of how well they can commit murders and use weapons. They are mostly a part of some militia or have taken military training. As for the former,” He gulped and said, “Th-The whole family of a person is first murdered, and then he’s given a contract to work with TES. They are, most of the time, kept as slaves in our base. You… you are one of them. You’ll be making contact with some person of The Eye of Suicide, or TES, soon. You just have to join ‘The Murdered Faction’, got it? The woman, who will probably be contacting you, is currently working at the faction.”

“B-But what if I don’t want to join?”

“Ya got no choice. You either do or die. And remember, The Eye of Suicide is perfect in murders; so perfect that the crime scenes sometimes look like suicides. Hence this name. So, don’t even dare to reject the proposal. And, don’t worry. The faction is made so that people like us can gain freedom. So, you’ll be out in a month or so.”

“Wa-Wait… It-It all is so… confusing…”

“I know,” He replied. “But there’s one thing that I see can help you.”

“What?”

“No one knows the whereabouts of the members of The Eye of Suicide, so I guess that it will help you gain protection from Canadian Police, until the matter is cooled down.”

I thought, “Oh yes, the Canadian Police is still behind my back! I completely had it out of my mind.”

“Moreover, I wanna ask you a certain question,” He said. “Do you want to avenge your parents’ death?”

“S-Sure I want to.”

“See, they did nothing wrong. They were not on drugs, they didn’t smuggle, kidnap, or even robbed someone. They were completely clean and transparent and were playing elections by the rules. Do you think they deserved a death like this?”

I tilted my head down and thought about it for a second. “No, they were good people.”

“They deserve justice, kiddo,” He said. “They need it. And it’s not just them; over a thousand people like them deserve that. If it all goes to court, it’d take over a hundred years to solve them all. That… That’s the number of crimes we’ve committed over the years.”

“I-I think I can understand the seriousness of the situation a little bit.”

“That’s it,” He suddenly said, “But I wanna tell you one last thing before you leave…”

Richa Chadha

“Prakash,” I called him. He stood in front of me. I asked him with uncertainty and suspiciousness, “Where’s Mr. Khandelwal, by the way?”

“Kartik? He’s with Radhika. The two are going to meet the Minister of External Affairs and the Prime Minister today.”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

I glared at the crying woman taking on the stick with fire at one end and walking towards the deathbed. “He said he wanted to get more resources and funds.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he was talking about getting more persons, access to spies and all, and some better facilities. In fact, we’re currently at the lowest funding program in the whole city.”

“That’s shameful,” I commented, “But it doesn’t matter until we’re getting full wages, does it?”

“It does,” He seriously replied. “We’ve already learned how big The Eye of Suicide is. Watching their figures, I don’t think just a bunch of four men can fight it off. We need a whole army to forge an attack on the enemy and stop it.”

I nodded at him, and tilted my head towards the woman who extended the stick towards the deathbed. The bed took on fire, and the corpse was burning. She sat on the ground and started crying again.