Monica laid on her bed, tired and depressed. The past few days haven’t been kind to her, and the days only seem to get worse. So much so, she lied to Mohan about needing rest and took the day off. She was back in her room in less than fifteen minutes and has been sulking on the bed for another fifteen minutes.

But the thing is, it wasn’t her own problems that depressed her, for she had none, but the helplessness she felt seeing the misery around her. Not too long ago, she was being hailed as the white knight. Though it didn’t last long, it did boost her ego enough to prick her heart every time she saw someone in trouble and couldn’t help. But what could she do now? Catch the CEO? It has been over two hours since he has been reported missing, he must have fled the city long ago.

‘No,’ Monica began to think, ‘there has to be something. I should at least try.’

She got back up on her feet and tiptoed over to the wardrobe. Inside it was a green suitcase with all her clothes. However, it also held a secret. Pushing aside the clothes in the main compartment, there was a hidden flap made of cloth beneath which had a zip. Opening it let her into a small yet spacey compartment from which she pulled out another small bag. It was dull grey but inside was a set of clothes, all of which were dyed black. It had been a month since she had use for it. Back then, she felt as though circumstance forced her don the cover, doing it out of obligation. But this time she wanted to do it of her own free will. All in an attempt to make an impact.

***

Chandra aka the CEO of Vihari, didn’t own just a house, he owned a mansion. It covered at least half a block with much of it being green space. The building itself sat at the center, with a modern aesthetic combined with some traditional influences. Monica sat high upon an office complex that stood far across the street. She observed the building for long. With her excellent vision, was able to make out that it was empty, with police covering the outside for any visitors. They did a routine patrol outside the building which was erratic but nothing she couldn’t manage.

She took a good look at the CEO’s photo on her phone. Finding his home was simple, his address was pretty much on front page on every news website. Monica wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do in there. She had planned to search his home for clues but wasn’t sure what she was looking for. The police had raided the building already and must have found some useful information, but there was a good chance Monica could find things the police couldn’t. She was capable of finding places hidden from regular eyes and ears. Most of the time it takes a bit of cleverness to find such places, but Monica didn’t have to rely on guess work like others.

The overcast provided enough darkness for her to slip between the cracks in the patrol’s routine. She had donned on her black burglar costume, a full black outfit paired with black gloves and a blindfold. It wasn’t subtle. No one would be able to walk on the streets with the outfit on and not attract attention. But it was enough to sneak in the shadows and into the isolated mansion.

She walked on the parapet over the edge which dropped into an alleyway between the office complex and an adjacent building. She looked down to see that it was devoid of humans. Putting her right leg out, she dropped like a falling rock but slammed onto the ground on her two feet, with a dull thud. Air around compressed, forming a soft cushion that broke her fall. Walking to the entry, she noticed a wide street cut her access to the outer wall of the mansion. It was wide enough for anyone in the vicinity to notice her running across. Instead, she hoped onto a pipe that ran up the wall. Climbing it she reached the second floor where she stopped. The pipe continued to flow higher, but she didn’t need to go any further. Taking in a deep breath, she prepared herself by steadying her foot on the wall. Pushing with just enough force, she leaped across onto the adjacent wall where she grabbed onto the edge. Without losing any momentum, she placed her left foot onto the edge of the wall and pushed against it. It sent flying across the street and into the green gardens of the mansion where she made a soft landing by rolling into the bushes.

She wasn’t entirely sure if anyone saw her perform acrobatics, so she remained silent while she hid in the bushes. She heightened her senses, able to hear a truck traveling on a street two blocks away. Her aim was to find any whispers of people who might have noticed her. To her relief, not one word was mentioned about her. The street itself wasn’t empty, but it seemed like her instincts guessed the right time, and her leap of faith was executed successfully.

She tiptoed across the garden. The day got darker, with signs of rain. The cold breeze blew across the lawn, and it sent a shiver down her spine. She stopped against the wall and knelt down, hiding behind opening for a giant window. She peered inside it and found a staircase leading to the top. All the lights inside were switched off and much of the place was enveloped in darkness. She ran along the wall, quiet as a mouse, before going around the corner into the backyard. This was much safer space as the view from outside was obstructed by large trees planted on the edge of the yard. She quickly began to scale the mansion walls. First jumping one store high before grabbing onto the parapet that lined the edge of the balcony. She hopped over the parapet to see the door that led inside in plain view. It was made of glass with a steel frame. She placed her hand on the handle and felt the locks inner mechanism. It took her a minute, but she was able to unlock it. She quietly slid the door open, looking for any alarm system, but after a minute had passed without any sign, she felt safe to walk in.

She closely observed the walls around the door to find the alarm sitting right on top of the door, however, its light was off. Looking at it more closely revealed that it had already been switched off. Her best guess was that it was police, but she wasn’t entirely sure why they left it switched off. She slid the door close and hopped into a corner where she could not be spotted unless they were looking for her. She proceeded to place her hands on the floor and shut her eyes. Blue aura emitted from her body, flowing like mist before bursting in all directions. The blue mist became thinner and thinner as it spread further and further, but it eventually covered the entire house. She could now sense the house and everything in it. It felt like it was a part of her. Every nook and cranny could be seen in a single instant, but it was too much information to take in at once. Thus, Monica always needed to hide when performing her super move, the Radiant Sonar. Depending on the size and what she is looking for, she becomes vulnerable and cannot move. If she were to lose focus, it would break her connection and would be forced to try again.

This time, she had very little idea of what she was looking for. There were plenty of safes in the house but all of them had been cracked open, either by traditional methods or brute force. People try to hide their stuff almost anywhere. At first it felt overwhelming thinking about all the possible places she might need to look. The size of the mansion did not help. It had seven rooms, nine bathrooms, two kitchens, three large halls, two terraces, and a large green space encompassing the house. It was going to take time, a lot of time.

However, the longer she looked, the more interesting this job began to feel. It felt like she had to search every inch of this house, but she knew it wouldn’t get her much, she instead began to think of this like a game. Trying to find obscure places where people try and hide their valuables. Some are traditionalists, hiding their belongings under their beds or in the jars in the kitchen. But clever once try and hide them in plain sight. Places like among books on the bookshelf, in toys and valueless showpieces, beneath the sofa are some places one might find secrets hiding in. Rich people, however, hide their stuff in vaults. These vaults can be anywhere and at times hard to find. The most common kind hide behind photos and paintings, but some of them can be even more hard to find. The easiest way to find these, for Monica at the very least, was to search the walls for openings. Hollowed out spaces in what should have been solid bricks. It took a while to careful look through them, and she found three. One hiding in a large room on the first floor. She guessed it was where mister CEO spent his nights in. The other was in a smaller room adjacent to the other one. It had bookshelves on every wall and an office set right in the middle. The last one was hidden underneath the floorboards of the kitchen in the second floor, or at least that is what she thought it was. The room was flooded with vessels of all shapes and size but lacked food of any kind. She quickly became suspicious of the room but decided to first look up the ones closest to her.

Two safes, one tucked away behind a barrage of books while the other was hidden inside the mirror of a dressing table. But both of them did not contain anything that lead her to his current whereabouts. However, many other interesting things showed up in the files she found hiding in the safes. Much of the content was illegal bookkeeping, which in and itself warranted being sent to the right person, but the other was an interesting letter. The contents of the letter were incomplete but it left a few clues as to what might be happening behind the scenes. For one the letter was the financial minister of the current cabinet. Two, it had a name she hadn’t heard in quite some time. ‘Irumani’ was a local crime syndicate, or so she thought, but looks like they weren’t really local had their fingers in plenty of places outside their home city.

Monica took all of them and slipped them into the bag and proceeded to the second floor where a kitchen was supposed to be. As she approached the room, her anxiety slowly cranked up. She wasn’t sure what to expected and as a result she expected to find something horrifying. The door to the room was locked but the lock itself had been cracked open. On touch, the door swung open with ease. Darkness enveloped the room as the doorway was its only source of light. Her eyes glowed blue, making it easier to look around the room. As expected, it looked like an ordinarily kitchen. All the vessels and container were in their place. Only most of the containers were empty. The vault she had detected sat in middle of the room. She took a moment to inspect the place. Once again, she came to the same conclusion. It looks and feels like a kitchen but wasn’t one. It was a cover up. Placing her hands on the floor, she flooded the room with blue aura, this time letting a powerful pulse of aura fill the void. As expected, she found the rooms secret. She retreated her hands before tightening her right hand into a fist. She drove her fist into the wooden floor, creating nice big hole in it. She began to rip out the bright orange floorboard to expose a layer of soft paper hiding underneath it. The layer consisted of thin wafers of paper stacked together forming bricks. She picked one of these bricks and starred into a note with the signature of central bank on it. What made this room special was the cold hard cash the lined the floor and the walls.

She tossed the money back into the hole, not showing an ounce of interest in it. She scurried towards the centre of the room where she began to break the floorboard. It took only one crack before the entire panel of the floorboard popped out, exposing the safe hidden underneath. Setting aside the board, she went about cracking the safe. Inside were more documents exposing more lies. She fell back onto the floor, feeling defeated. She found a lot of damning evidence, but it wasn’t much of use if they can’t find him, and she had no clue how to find him.

***

The day was coming a close, but his job had just begun. The station was near empty, all of them were out on the street helping the workers get the city back into working state. Jiiva had no desired to go into the city and put his back into any labour work. He instead volunteered to stay back at the station and take care of any citizen who arrived there for help. Yesterday, he managed to drive away a dozen of them. Most of them wanted to file a complaint for their missing ones who went missing during the floods, but a few others wanted to file a report on property damage to claim insurance. He found it be a nuisance that some banks were asking the police to do job of verifying instead of getting the job done themselves. When he heard about Chandra fleeing the city, he expected the place to be flooded with people wanting to file a complaint against the bank. But there were very few who arrived at this station.

He walked out to the main gate, past the yard where the vehicles had been parked. He wanted a cup of chai to keep him awake for the evening but was blocked by a suspicious grey bag lying at the centre of the open gate. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the bag. It sat there, silently, not making a move. People on the street in front of the gate went about their business, unaware of the bag, but Jiiva was very suspicious. ‘What if it is a bomb?’ he though. He tiptoed his way towards it, before probing it with his lathi. Nothing happened, but more importantly it felt soft and made a crunching sound. He picked up the bag and took a quick look at its content. Paper, lots and lots of paper, but being a learned man, it didn’t take him long to realize what he had found.

He ran back into the station, past the empty tables and jail cells and to the inspector’s table which was currently occupied by yet another lazy inspector. “Sir! Sir!” he called out to him, standing right before him.

“Yes Jiiva?”

“Look what I found!” he said and handed him the documents. The inspector took them and quickly inspected the content. He did not seem impressed, much to the constable’s surprise.

“Hmm… interesting… I will look into them,” he said and dropped them into his table drawer and closed it.

Monica’s blood began to boil on hearing the door being closed on her efforts.

‘Damn it! I sent it straight back to them!’ she cursed under her breath. She stood a few feet away from the police station but heard the conversation and the files being locked away very clearly. Her eyes flared blue as her gut churned at thought of Chandra getting away. She furious typed away on her mobile knowing very well she couldn’t do anything about it.

“Sir! Those documents…” Jiiva began.

“Are old news,” the inspector interrupted, “anyways. Send a message to our buys to look for a vehicle. A blue sedan. We got a message that Chandra might be still in the outskirts. Write down the register number…”

It had been quite some time since good news entered Monica’s ears. She couldn’t help but smile.