"Legends don't die. They become bait."— D-Class Agent Memoir, Burned Archive 09B
Bangalore – 6 Months Later
The rain had returned.
Not the gentle drizzle of nostalgia — this was the hard, metallic rain that felt like bullets against glass. The kind that blurred memories and buried truth under puddles and neon.
RED X was dead.
That's what every file said.What every photo showed.What every death report screamed.
And yet… the killings had returned.
But the signature was different. It wasn't chalk this time.
It was blood.
R-Grid Cybertech Tower – 38th Floor, East Bangalore – 3:47 PM
Arun Dev, Chairman of R-Grid, wiped sweat from his brow. The office was air-conditioned, but pressure had a way of raising the temperature.
A man in a grey suit stood in front of him. Unregistered. No ID. But the building's AI had let him pass.
"How did you—"
Before Arun could finish, the man stabbed a pen into his carotid artery.
He gurgled.
The man knelt, dipped his finger in the pooling blood, and walked to the glass board.
He drew a checkmark. Sharp. Clean. Final.
Then vanished before the security system even reset.
Kabir Sharma's Safehouse – 5:02 PM
Kabir sat in the same chair he had used to decrypt lies for a decade.Now, it was the only place where he could even pretend the truth still lived.
The envelope had no stamp.
Inside:A flash drive.Encrypted audio.And one photo — a black-and-white grainy image of Vihaan Mehra. Alive. Standing beside men in uniforms dated just three months ago.
Kabir plugged the drive in. Static hissed.
Then a voice:
"They erased a man. And left a ghost in his place. But ghosts return when empires burn."
Kabir stood.
He hadn't heard Zayen's voice in half a year.
But this?
This was someone else.
A Slum Clinic, West Bangalore – 9:00 PM
Zayen Mehra pulled the hood over his eyes and leaned against the cold concrete wall.
He looked older.Tired.Quieter.
But his eyes — his eyes were wide awake.
He watched the TV in the waiting room flicker to the breaking news:
"R-Grid Chairman Found Dead — Third Tech Exec in Two Weeks."
The newsreader didn't mention a checkmark.
But the red stain on the whiteboard had been leaked to the right forums.
And in the comments below the photo, one name returned:
RED X
Zayen closed his eyes.
Someone was stealing his legacy.
And doing it wrong.
Final Scene
Inside a glass vault two cities away, a redacted file decrypted automatically. A voice crackled through the speakers.
"The boy's awake. The agent's not dead. Terminate the past. Rebuild the lie."
On a touchscreen, the image of Zayen Mehra blinked.
Then Kabir Sharma.
Then a third face — unseen. Unnamed.
Only marked with a crown symbol.