by Samit Basu
“Oh my god,” says Namrata’s voice on TV.
The DNNTV camera returns to Namrata. She’s looking across the crowd, a hand shading her eyes. At a signal from her producers, she turns to face the camera, and when she looks into the screen it is clear that she has been struck dumb with fear; her face is white. She opens her mouth to give her audience some comfortable platitude about the underlying harmony in Indian society. But she doesn’t make it. Her jaw drops. Her microphone falls to the ground. She runs.
The cameraman, not knowing what to shoot, follows her as she streaks across the Ram Lila ground, soon disappearing amongst the chaotic sea of people running around, pursued by stick-wielding policemen trying in vain to re-establish some sort of order. The Kalki Party leaders are still on stage, surrounded by gun-toting commandoes in Kevlar vests.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Uzma wails.
A blue light pulses across the ground. For one second, there’s a blue dome spreading over the crowd; the next, it’s vanished.
The screen goes blank.
Cursing, Aman snatches the remote and starts flipping through news channels. Every channel that was broadcasting from the Ram Lila ground is now showing static. Some have started running ads.
“Get through to her phone,” Tia says.
“I’m tracking all calls from her studio,” Aman says. “Let me just cross-check her number — yes, got it. Her phone’s off.”
They sit in tense silence for two whole minutes watching Aman change channels. Then one of the news channels flickers back to life. The camera is fixed on the stage, where a dozen bodies lie in a mangled heap. Some are black-clad commandoes. Some are Kalki Party leaders. All are dead, brutally clobbered. Policemen hover over them like flies.
The baby is gone.
All the news channels have the same visual, each with a reporter jabbering away furiously in front of it, building stories out of nothing. The facts are simple: Baby Kalki is dead or missing; the Kalki Party’s short-lived run of glory is done; several people are injured. No one has any footage.
The crowd has been cleared. Delhi has faced too many terrorist attacks, too many random bombings in public places, for people to hang around uselessly at times like this. The Ram Lila ground is littered with the bodies of the dead and the wounded.
Reporters scour the ground looking for witnesses, but in all the confusion of the riot, no one seems to have noticed what happened on stage. Conflicting reports emerge: one man says he saw a demon leap up from the crowd, soar over the heads of the police line, snatch the baby and vanish. Another says he saw a magician standing in the crowd spreading blue fire. Another saw a man dancing on stage, bodies falling around him with every move. A sobbing policeman tells a reporter he saw gods appear to reclaim their own. His report is rendered less credible when he claims that he, too, is a god.
Whatever really happened to the Kalki Party happened in a flash, and no one in the immediate vicinity of the kidnapping is alive to tell the tale. The airwaves are awash with rumours, semi-crazed religious mumbling and outright lies.
Aman turns off the TV, eyes unfocused, breathing rapidly. “The studio people just got through to our girl,” he says.
“I want to listen,” Tia says. “Route it through the laptop?”
Aman nods.
“You mean we’re just going to sit here and listen to you tap her phone?” Uzma asks. “Anyone else think this is wrong?”
No one else thinks this is wrong. They gather round Aman’s laptop, from which comes the sound of a ringing phone.
After several rings, Namrata picks it up.
“Where the hell are you?” barks Namrata’s boss. “Get back in there!”
“He’s going to kill me,” she whispers.
“What?”
“I’ve got to get out of here. He was here. I saw him. He was looking straight at me, then he jumped into the crowd.”
“Who? You saw his face? You can identify him?”
“I don’t know! It was like he vanished! He’s taken the baby, I know it’s him. Maybe he got the parents too.”
“Nam, baby, you’re freaking out. Who is this guy?”
“I told you before. The same man I saw at the hospital. Watching me. He wants to kill me, I know he does. I saw it in his eyes.” Namrata starts sobbing.
“Okay, come back to the studio. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this. Story of the year, and you run out on it. Do you know what I had to do to get you this?”
“He’s going to kill me, you idiot!” Namrata cries. “I can’t do this any more! I want to move to Features!”
“If you still have a job by the end of today, I’ll be amazed and you’ll owe me big time. Now stop wailing and get your ass back to the office.”
The line goes dead.
Uzma looks at her flatmates.
“Are you going to call her over?” she asks. “There is that empty room on my floor.”
“Maybe,” Aman says. “They’re obviously on her trail, though, so meeting her would be very dangerous. We’ve got to find a way to save her.”
“How did the kid’s parents die?” Tia asks.
“Someone hit their car really hard.”
“So we’re dealing with super-strength, maybe speed, the ability to shut down electronics — and what else?”
“She said he vanished,” Aman says. “Invisibility? Teleportation? Who the hell knows? And the crowd — we might be looking at a mass hypnotist. A mind controller.” Aman throws his hands up in the air and stares angrily at the TV, where a cheerful man in a suit is now discussing hot tips in stocks. “Rare dolphin found dead in missing swimmer’s house” floats across the Breaking News band at the bottom of the screen. A picture flashes across the screen. Aman shakes his head. Another fellow passenger dead.
“Are we sure it’s not Vir?” Tia asks.
“If it were Vir, you and I would be dead by now as well. No, this is another one of the thugs from the base, like the guy with the tongue the other day. One of this Jai Mathur’s henchmen. Unless it’s Jai himself.”
“It could be more than one person,” Sundar points out. “One man to shut down the cameras, another to abduct the baby. Perhaps another to stir up the crowd and create a distraction. But to do this in broad daylight at a public gathering — so many things could have gone wrong!”
“Maybe they don’t care about that any more,” Aman says. “Maybe they want to send a message to people like us.”
“We need to talk to this girl, Namrata,” Tia says. “If she can really sense in advance where big news stories are going to happen, she’ll know where they’ll strike next. She needs protection. Someone like Vir needs to be with her, to sort out his people when they arrive.”
“I can’t believe you’re talking about using this girl as bait,” Uzma snaps. “Call her and tell her to quit her job. Or at least to stay away from any place she thinks might be dangerous.”
“Until one day she senses the news is going to be wherever she is, turns round and finds Jai’s boys?” Aman says. “No, hiding won’t help her. Neither will sending Vir in for some sort of superpower showdown. This is ridiculous! These people are all adults, and all they can do with their abilities is act like B-movie villains!”
“Do you really think Vir can change their minds?” Tia asks.
“No, not after this,” Aman replies. “But maybe Uzma can. Maybe they’ll like her. Listen to her.”
“You’re not sending Uzma anywhere near those maniacs,” Tia says firmly.
“Uzma has no intention of being a part of any of this,” Uzma says. “I have work to do. I have films to make. I have a life. This is crazy.”
“You can’t go out there,” Tia says. “At least hide until this is over.”
“No.”
“We’ll get you fake ID then. Change your name,” Tia says.
“To what? Some safe, popular Hindu name? I won’t do it.”
Another Tia emerges and stands up a
nd paces around the room.
“How do we protect ourselves?” she asks after a while. “What can we do? What happens when they find us?”
Aman shuts his laptop with a snap and leaves the room without a word.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Seventeen kilometres directly to the east of Udhampur’s IAF airbase and its friendly MiG-21s and Jaguars, tucked away in a secret valley in the shadows of the Himalayan foothills, there is a building, a new building covered in shabbily applied white paint. Around the building is a high electric fence, crackling with power stolen from the nearby Baglihar Hydroelectric Power Project, that harnesses the churning waters of the Chenab river.
The building is not visible from or connected to the nearest road. It’s only two storeys high on the outside, but there’s a lot more to it, most of it underground. A mere month ago, it did not even exist. Had its architects and builders not had strange powers, it would never have.
Inside this building, several floors underground, is an office. Outside the door of this office stand several uniformed men. One of these men is Flight Lieutenant Vir Singh. He can fly, but he is choosing, at this moment, to knock.
“Come in,” says a deep voice.
As Vir enters the office, its sole occupant, a strapping, muscular young man in uniform seated behind a desk, jumps up and springs to attention, dashing off a quivering salute. Squadron Leader Jai Mathur is the Air Force man of every Indian woman’s dreams; the kind of man you’d imagine sacrificing his life for the nation in a thrilling Bollywood movie, leaving behind a beautiful, dignified wife and a sobbing, impossibly cute daughter.
“Hello, Jai,” Vir says.
Jai ignores Vir, looking instead at the hawk-like, vaguely Eastwood-esque gentleman beside him.
“Wing Commander!” he says. “I wish you had given me some notice of your arrival, sir. I would have had the base shining. But, no excuses — I should have known you’d prefer a surprise inspection.”
The Wing Commander grunts. “Enough of this nonsense,” he says. Five Air Force men step into the room and stand behind the Commander and Vir. “Come with us, Jai,” the Commander says.
“I don’t think I shall,” Jai says with a polite smile. “Vir, you should have spoken to me first.”
“I don’t know you any more,” Vir says. “You lied to me about everything — I asked around.”
Jai smirks, and his shoulders shake slightly. He sits on his desk, swinging his legs over the edge, and gestures melodramatically as he speaks, a pantomime villain cornered by the detective in the drawing-room.
“And you unravelled my complex web of deceit. You discovered, slowly, ploddingly, how I arm-twisted the Air Vice- Marshall into getting his brother-in-law, the Inspector General of Police, to work for me. Perhaps you also heard of my secret alliances with the Mumbai underworld? No? Ah. Well done, anyway. How betrayed you must feel.”
“I trusted you. How could you? How could you kidnap the Vice-Marshalls’s daughter?” Vir says.
Jai hops down lightly from his desk.
“It’s a three-step process. First, I walked into his house…”
“But — why?”
“I thought he needed additional motivation. Merely making him wet his pants might not have been enough.”
“Enough!” snaps the Commander. “And to think we almost didn’t believe you, Vir. Men, take away this traitor!”
“Tariq!” Jai calls.
A gunshot rings out.
One of the Air Force men pitches forward, shot in the back of the head. Behind him in the corridor stands a skinny boy with a straggly beard and a pistol in his hand.
“Fire!” yells the Commander.
But before his men can raise their rifles, Tariq vanishes, reappearing inside Jai’s office. He fires, another man dies, and Tariq disappears.
Seven seconds later, all five are dead. The Commander stands with horrified eyes and a smoking gun in his hand, pointed at Jai.
Jai delicately extracts a bullet from his forehead and tosses it aside.
Vir charges, but before his punch can land Jai has moved with superhuman speed to the other side of the table. Tariq appears, shoots Vir, and vanishes before the bullet has had time to bounce off Vir and into the wall. Jai speeds towards Vir and lands an uppercut that knocks him off his feet and sends him crashing into the wall, shattering a framed photograph of Jai’s family.
Tariq appears again, his gun trained on the Commander. Vir scrambles to his feet, but the Commander raises a warning hand and Vir stays where he is.
“This is Tariq,” Jai says. “He likes to travel. Sit down, Commander.”
Armed guards run into the office and start removing bodies. The Wing Commander barks an order at them and is ignored. He turns, seething, to Jai.
“What the hell is going on here?” he thunders.
“I assume Vir told you and so the question is rhetorical,” Jai counters smoothly. “But let’s not allow matters to escalate further, sir. I was always rather fond of you. Please do sit down, may I offer you a drink?”
“No you bloody well may not. An air strike has been authorised on this building. The Prime Minister has heard about your little gang, and he’s not happy. Unless you have an explanation — and a damned good one — you’re finished.”
“When I started this whole thing, my plan was to hand the best fighting force in the world — an unstoppable Indian elite squadron — to you on a platter,” Jai says. “I am now in a position to do so. And more. Would you like to see what I have to offer?”
“This has moved far higher than me, you arrogant young fool,” the Commander responds. “Come with us. The Air Marshall will deal with you.”
Vir coughs discreetly.
“Perhaps we should hear him out, sir.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Jai says. “I can think of two advantages to this. First, you wouldn’t be placing the Air Marshall’s life in danger. Second, I wouldn’t have to call your bluff about the air strike.”
“That was no bluff.”
“In that case, why sacrifice a Wing Commander? It doesn’t make sense. You’re here to negotiate, sir. If we can cease this childish banter, I will reveal my plan to you. Everything I have done so far — every crime you accuse me of — has been merely to eliminate bureaucracy, politicians, experts, committees, meetings, leaks — all of which I have heard you complain about endlessly. I don’t have to teach you about the problems our military faces, and I’m sure you don’t really mind my stepping out of line. I assume Vir has already shown you he can fly. There are others here who have powers even more extraordinary. If you would like a proper demonstration, I can promise to bring down the entire Pakistani military within the next two weeks. They keep sending people over the border. I could show them how it’s done.”
“Why should I believe a word you say? You’ve been running around the country murdering people. You just murdered my own men in front of me.”
“Those men were killed by a commanding officer who sent them into battle against an infinitely superior force. You seem to have forgotten what we do for a living. Murder is our business. And I was eliminating military threats, not going on some kind of mad spree. You don’t have to believe me, sir. It doesn’t really matter. The thing is, there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
Jai extracts a bottle of single malt from a cabinet and pours himself a drink. The Commander and Vir stand ashen-faced as he takes a swig, sighs in appreciation, and sets the glass down.
“If I had been a real danger to you, or to the Indian nation; if I had wanted to raze our armies to the ground, set the Taj Mahal on fire and laugh in the face of the world, I would have done it by now,” Jai continues. “Instead, I offer you the chance to break free from the old men you are forced to obey, and accept that the world as you knew it has ended. Thanks to this strange incident, there are powers that exist now that can make India — and only India — the mightiest nation in the world. You know people have been saying India is des
tined to be the next global superpower? Thanks to me and my actions, this is now literally true.”
“So you killed all the non-Indians on the plane,” Vir says.
“Not all. Only the ones I could find. It’s simple, really — I am going to kill every powered individual I cannot use. I do this not for myself, but for my country. Now, Commander, we can sit here and discuss this all night. Or I could kill the two of you, move this base to a quieter location and carry on.
“There is a third alternative I present for your consideration: meet my team. See for yourself how we can put an end to all our military troubles — Pakistan, China, even America one day, who knows? And then take me to meet the Air Marshall. I’d go now, but I’m afraid I’d end up killing superior officers.”
Vir starts to speak, but is silenced by a warning glance.
The Commander sits down.
“Show me what you’ve got,” he says.
Outside the building, a guard emerges from a little booth near the only gate to the compound. Floodlights come on, revealing a man slumped face down in front of the gate, and a short, attractive woman standing over him. Brandishing his gun by way of greeting, the guard stalks up to the gate.
“Eh?” he says.
Tia smiles gently at him and rolls the man over with a slender foot. The guard swears as he recognises a very battered Mukesh.
“I need to speak to Jai,” Tia says. “My friend here would speak for me, but as you can see…”
The guard stares at her. “I’ll make a call,” he growls, and heads back towards his cabin.
“Sorry, but could you let me use your toilet?” she calls. “I’ve been dragging him for a long time, and I really have to go.”
The guard opens the gate. He frisks Tia, taking longer than he should, and confiscates her phone and wallet.
“In the cabin,” he growls, and she heads off.
A startled, horrified gasp a minute later tells the guard she has entered the hell-hole that is his toilet. He picks Mukesh up and drags him towards his cabin.