~ Doubt cuts deeper than bullets ~
By midnight, Kabir Sharma no longer existed in the system.
His ID badge had been revoked. His biometric access logs were sealed. His bank accounts showed zero. Even his birth record had been flagged for "manual verification."
He was being erased.Professionally. Efficiently.
That level of erasure only came from inside.
He sat alone in a maintenance closet beneath the Vidhana Soudha metro interchange, the soft hum of distant trains above. He hadn't slept in 38 hours. In his hand, he held the burner drive with Zayen's footage. On the ground, maps and floor plans were scattered like puzzle pieces.
Kabir had one objective now: stay ahead of whoever believed he was RED X.
Problem was — he was starting to believe it himself.
So far, all the deaths had one thing in common:Victims tied to corruption.
And all the victims had names Kabir had investigated years ago.Names he had written in his private logs.Logs that had never been connected to any case.
"They're pulling from my own records," he whispered. "Using my past to build the profile."
That meant one thing.
Someone had gotten into his head — or his files — long before this started.
Meanwhile, in an old apartment near Shivajinagar...
Zayen sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through torn pages of an old school register. Names. Grades. Staff annotations. He paused at one:Mr. M. Ghosh – Mathematics, Class IX.He drew a thin red X across it.No checkmark. Just a clean X.
He then picked up a printed article:"Fraud case involving NGO schools quietly shut down."
Zayen didn't cry. Didn't blink.He simply stood, walked to the window, and looked at the flickering city skyline.
Kabir's name wasn't on his new list.
Not yet.
Back below the city...
Kabir hacked into a stolen comms line — an old field frequency once used by counter-intel squads. Just static now.
Until 3:13 AM.
A voice, distorted, filtered:
"Why did you do it, Kabir?"
Kabir froze. "Who is this?"
"You knew them. You studied them. And now they're dead."
"What do you want from me?"
Silence.
Then a beep.A single image came through.
Kabir's apartment.The whiteboard.A new red checkmark drawn across a photo of him.
Live.
Two hours later, Kabir arrived at his flat.
Empty. Lights off. No sign of forced entry.
He stepped in, every muscle tight.
Then he saw it.
On his wall mirror, written in red chalk:
"The hunter bleeds next."
He backed up, eyes darting.
Then — a soft sound.
From the kitchen.
Footsteps?
He turned. Drew his pistol.
Nothing.
Just… silence.
And a final note written under the mirror:
"I see your guilt before you feel it."
Zayen, miles away, marked a fresh check.
Then he crossed it out.
For now.