Manish Murthy

I was sitting on a chair at the left corner of the lawn of my house, which was filled with cries and sorrows. My sister was walking towards the two corpses of our mother and father with a bonfire in her hand. I suddenly remembered the words of Shekhar--“Send her off to somewhere far away from the city.” I thought, “Yes, I needa protect her, because she’s my sister, at last. She needs me at this time, and I’d need her too. But, where can I send her? And, how will I?” I stood up and moved both of my hands into my pockets. I took out a basic phone which had a keypad on it. I remembered his words again--“Here, I’m giving you this phone. It can’t be traced, taped or hacked, which would be good for us. You can call us at numbers zero-zero-one, or zero-six-nine. Use zero-zero-one for emergence, and the latter one for providing information about the latest happenings at TES. I won’t be able to talk directly, so just leave the message and keep it.” I nodded, when he suddenly added, “And one more thing, just give a message to the team that objective one was a total failure.”

“What… What’s objective one?”

“That’s for my men to tell. You just convey the message successfully. Got it?”

“Yeah, I hope I’ll remember it.”

“You have to remember it, Manish. At all cost!”

“Sure,” I nodded.

“So I have to save my sister, somehow enter this group and convey a very important message,” I thought. “But, the first part is to protect my sister.”

Kartik Khandelwal

“Still, it all can be a coincidence, right?” Mr. Khanna said. “I mean, who doesn’t experience coincidences?”

At this, I frowned. I was very angry. I said, “In the last election, the politician everyone was going to vote to suddenly died and no one knows how. His murder case is still pending and even knowing that he was murdered by someone, the case was never taken out. In fact, it was suppressed with all might. This is a coincidence too, right?”

At this, Mr. Arora, the PM, gulped. Mr. Khanna replied, “Man, that really was a coincidence! And if you know about the case, you should have even seen that the case is solved now and the criminal is in jail.”

“That criminal… Are you talking about that criminal who was somehow murdered in the jail?”

“Yes, that one who was murdered. There was a whole attack by some mobs and he was dead in the process.”

“And what about the mob, huh? They ain’t in jail, right? They’re running freely just to do other murders.” Then, I leaned forward towards Mr. Khanna and said, “Sir, I’ve followed every political murder. I have access to all of them, and I can use media pretty well.”

At me, Mr. Arora leaned forward on his desk too and said, “What are you trying to say, inspector?”

“What I’m trying to say is that I have a theory why you people are openly criticizing this case.”

“So you mean we’re with some murderers who don’t even exist?” He asked back.

“And for your information, inspector,” Mr. Khanna said. “We’ve had inspectors to solve the case of the ‘Black Day’. Moreover, we know nothing about what you’re talking about. Our political opposition’s leader’s demise was a coincidence, just like in your case. We’ve seen people where tons of investigators die, and no one ever comes in blaming us--”

“Because you at least provide basic facilities to them, sir, that’s why no one comes from such cases. My case is treated like some underrated, time-wasting and easy-peasy case, even though IT CAN BE PROVEN AS THE MOST FATAL CASE OF THE WHOLE INDIAN HISTORY!”

“We can understand your anger, inspector, but--truth to be told--it is an easy-peasy, underrated and time-wasting case.”

I glared at him shockingly and said, “So that’s what you think, right?”

He calmly nodded. “That’s the truth.”

“See, I didn’t want to say it but… I know you want to favor TES because they helped you win in elections, but there’s still time. Turn to us, turn to the good, and you’ll be saved by the court.”

The PM, Mr. Arora, took out his glasses, cleaned them with a handkerchief and said, “Well, even we didn’t want to say this, but…” He wore his glasses again and said, “You got no evidence, so it’s better to first get some evidence that the murders were done by The Suiciders. Then, I can surely help you.”

I tilted my head down, and said, “I will. I will. I FUCKING GIVE YOU EVIDENCE, but for the time being, I need some more resources! I need a whole band of over four to five dozen people to help me and over a hundred spies in the city to get to know more about The Eye of Suicide. Just for a month… Just for a month, I need the whole city under my control. Just don’t take this organization lightly, sir. Who knows when they’d join hands with some other party and you’ll be murdered. D-Don’t let that happen, sir!” I had my hands joined and begged them for this.

“I’m truly sorry for you, investigator,” Mr. Khanna said. “Even though the police work independently, you need to come to us.”

“I thought that you can help me. But, I never knew that…” I got up and said, “You two were nothing but corrupted scumbags.” I turned back towards the door and moved towards that direction.

“Hey, what did ya say, you--”

“Don’t, Mr. Khanna,” Mr. Arora said. “He won’t be able to do a thing anyways.”