The memory always began with the smell. Not of blood or rust, but of ozone and burning sandalwood.
Varanasi. Three years ago.
The laboratory was a blasphemy of architecture—a sterile, glass-walled cube hidden inside the crumbling stone shell of an abandoned temple. Wires snaked across ancient Sanskrit carvings like black vines, feeding power into the heart of the sanctum. Servers hummed in a low, vibrating harmony with the distant temple bells ringing along the Ganges.
"The texts are not metaphors, Aryan," his father's voice echoed, vibrating with a manic, terrifying excitement. Dr. Vikram stood over the central containment unit, his lab coat stained with turmeric and engine grease. "When Lord Shiva granted a Vardaan—a boon—he did not wave a magic wand. He rewrote the recipient's genetic code. He altered the fundamental frequency of their matter."
Aryan, sixteen then, stood by the monitors. The screens were bleeding red data, warning lights pulsing against his face. "Papa, the energy spikes are too high. The containment field is destabilizing. We have to shut it down."
"It is the Shraap and the Vardaan," his father whispered, ignoring the alarms, his eyes fixed on the swirling golden light. "The Curse and the Blessing. Two sides of the same biological coin. To survive the impossible, the body must become impossible."
He threw the switch.
The air inside the room didn't just heat up; it screamed. A blinding, golden light erupted from the core—a particle accelerator trying to replicate the divine energy of a celestial grant.
The explosion wasn't a bang. It was a silence that shattered the world.
Aryan felt the shockwave hit him before the fire did. It threw him across the room, his back slamming into the stone idols. He slid to the floor, gasping, watching paralyzed as the ceiling collapsed.
Through the haze of heat and dust, he saw his father. Dr. Vikram was on his knees, engulfed by the expanding wave of white fire. He didn't run. He looked across the room, locking eyes with his son.
"Papa!" Aryan screamed, the sound tearing at his throat. He tried to push himself up, to crawl toward the man, to drag him away from the inferno. His fingers clawed at the stone floor, nails breaking, ignoring the heat searing his face. I have to reach him. I have to pull him out.
But the fire was faster. It washed over Dr. Vikram, erasing him in a flash of blinding white.
"NO!"
The shockwave slammed Aryan back down. The debris crushed his legs. The ceiling gave way.
The golden particles from the shattered machine—the synthesized essence of the Vardaan—didn't dissipate. They rushed outward, seeking a vessel. They invaded Aryan's pores, his bloodstream, his marrow.
Subject requires thermal resistance. Subject requires structural density.
The voice wasn't his. It was the cold logic of the energy itself.
The pain was infinite. It wasn't death; it was rewriting. His skin boiled, then knit itself back together, harder, greyer. His crushed bones snapped into place, fusing into something denser than titanium. Aryan reached out one last time toward where his father had been, his hand trembling, before the fire washed over him.
For the first time in the history of his short life, the fire felt... cold.
He lay in the ashes of the temple, the sole survivor, breathing in the smoke that could no longer choke him. Tears streamed down his face, sizzling against his hardened skin.
"Wake up."
The memory shattered. The smell of sandalwood vanished, replaced by the stench of brine, ammonia, and dried blood.
Aryan gasped, his eyes flying open. He was no longer in the temple. He was hanging by his wrists from heavy industrial chains, fifty feet beneath the waterline of the Karachi port.
The damp concrete sub-chamber was freezing, but Aryan was sweating.
A heavy, rusted door creaked open. Razaq walked in.
The smuggler was a mountain of a man, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. He was followed by three subordinates and a man in a pristine white suit—the Buyer.
"This is him?" the Buyer asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the dungeon.
"The Miracle of Varanasi," Razaq grinned, his teeth yellow and jagged. "We found him drifting in the Ganges, half-starved. Shoot him, he becomes bulletproof. Drown him, he grows gills. Burn him..." Razaq picked up a red-hot iron rod from a brazier in the corner. "Well, watch."
Aryan didn't beg. He didn't have the strength left to speak. He just hung there, his chest heaving, his mind a quiet void of exhaustion.
Razaq thrust the glowing iron into Aryan's ribs.
The sound of searing meat filled the small room. Aryan screamed—a raw, guttural sound that echoed off the wet walls. But even as the scream left his throat, the biology took over.
The cells around the wound vibrated violently. The skin rippled, turning a dull, metallic grey. The burn blistered, then flattened, then hardened into a callous scale that pushed the iron rod away.
Razaq pulled the rod back, laughing. "See? Nature's perfect soldier. He resets."
"Impressive," the Buyer murmured, stepping closer to inspect the healing wound. "Does he break?"
"Everything breaks," Razaq spat. "Hit him with the voltage."
One of the guards stepped forward with a high-voltage cattle prod. The electricity crackled blue and angry.
Aryan closed his eyes. He didn't think of survival. He thought of the silence in the temple. He braced himself, accepting the pain because there was no other choice.
Above them, on a rusted catwalk hidden in the deepest shadows of the ventilation shafts, a figure watched.
The Masked Man checked his wristwatch. 23:14:00.
He had been motionless for forty minutes, his heart rate artificially lowered to forty-five beats per minute. He looked at Aryan with recognition. Subject 17. Adaptive physiology. Volatile—but alive.
The Masked Man reached into his belt and retrieved a small, spherical device. He didn't throw it. He rolled it gently down the decline of the ventilation shaft.
Gravity did the work. The sphere rolled off the lip of the vent and fell into the center of the room.
It didn't explode. It emitted a high-frequency sonic pulse—inaudible to the men, but devastating to the sensitive electronics of the antique fuse box mounted on the far wall.
Click.
Sparks showered down. The heavy hydraulic blast doors at the south end of the room triggered their emergency release, slamming open with a hiss.
"What the—" Razaq spun around. "Who opened the breach? Check it! Now!"
The guards rushed the door, weapons raised.
The Masked Man didn't use the door. He dropped from the ceiling.
He landed silently behind the Buyer and the remaining guard. Before his boots touched the concrete, his gun was drawn.
Phut. Phut.
Two suppressed shots. The guard dropped. The Buyer collapsed, a clean hole through his shoulder, screaming as he clutched the expensive fabric of his suit.
Razaq whipped around. "Behind us!"
The Masked Man was already moving. He flowed through the gaps in their vision, a phantom in black denim. As a guard fired a burst from an AK-47, the Masked Man stepped to the left. The bullets chewed up the wall exactly where he had been a fraction of a second prior.
He didn't scramble. He raised his pistol. One shot into the shooter's wrist. One shot into the knee. He spun, grabbing the falling man and shoving him into Razaq, knocking the giant to the ground.
With the room in chaos, the Masked Man holstered his weapon and reached the control console for the chains. He typed an override code he had extracted days ago.
Clank.
Aryan fell to the floor, gasping. His skin was still grey, his eyes wild with the trauma of the torture. He saw the Masked Man standing over him.
Instinct took over. The biological imperative.
Aryan roared, his muscles swelling, turning rock-hard. He lunged at the Masked Man, a fist swinging with enough force to shatter concrete. It wasn't malice; it was a frightened animal cornered in the dark.
The Masked Man didn't block. Blocking would result in a fracture. Instead, he stepped into the guard. He hooked his foot behind Aryan's ankle and placed a palm flat against the boy's shoulder blade.
A gentle push. Physics did the rest.
Aryan, heavy with armored skin, tripped over the leverage point and slammed face-first into the metal console.
CLANG.
"Stay down," the Masked Man said, his voice void of emotion. "I am not your enemy. But I will neutralize you if you disrupt the timeline."
From the open south doors, footsteps echoed.
Silas walked in. He was holding a takeaway coffee cup in one hand and his phone in the other, looking at the screen as if checking directions. He stepped casually over the body of the guard the Masked Man had just eliminated.
"You know," Silas said, his raspy voice cutting through the tension, "you sent me the coordinates in binary code. Very dramatic. I almost went to a Pizza Hut in Lahore by mistake."
Razaq, bleeding from a scalp wound, scrambled for his fallen pistol. "Kill them! Kill them all!"
He raised the gun at Silas.
Silas didn't look up from his phone. "Down."
The shadows beneath Razaq didn't just darken; they became viscous. Inky tendrils whipped up from the floor, wrapping around Razaq's wrist and snapping it with a wet crunch. The gun clattered away. Razaq screamed, but the shadows expanded, covering his mouth, dragging him into the darkness of the corner like a spider claiming a fly.
Silas finally looked up, his pale, fractured eyes landing on the boy on the floor.
"Well, well," Silas murmured, walking closer. "This isn't an artifact. This is a battery."
Aryan pushed himself up, his skin shifting back to a normal brown tone as the immediate threat level decreased. He looked between the two men—the terrifying soldier in the mask and the man in the coat who commanded darkness.
"Who are you?" Aryan rasped, wiping blood from his lip.
"Logistics," the Masked Man said. He reloaded his pistol—not because it was empty, but because he preferred a full magazine for extraction. "We are leaving. Local authorities will arrive in six minutes. The ventilation shaft is compromised. We take the cargo elevator."
"He's heavy," Silas noted, nodding at the boy. "And volatile. If he adapts to my shadows, I can't hold him."
"He won't need holding," the Masked Man said. He looked at Aryan. "You have two choices. Stay here and become a weapon for these butchers. Or walk with us, and learn to control the weapon you are."
Aryan hesitated. He looked at the unconscious guards, then at the open door. He felt the phantom heat of the fire from three years ago.
"Why?" Aryan asked.
"Because," the Masked Man turned, walking toward the elevator with perfect, rhythmic strides, "chaos is inefficient. And you are pure chaos."
Silas chuckled, patting the bewildered boy on the shoulder. "That means he likes you, kid. Come on. He hates waiting."
They stepped into the massive freight elevator. The Masked Man pressed the button for the surface level. He stood in the center, eyes scanning the gap between the doors.
"Silas," the Masked Man said.
"Yeah?"
"You're standing on the pressure plate. Move three inches to the left. The counterweight is rusted."
Silas sighed, shuffling his feet. "You're no fun at parties, are you?"
"I don't go to parties," the Masked Man replied. "I plan them."
The elevator groaned and began