The indifference of John Corvini, the cold, final truth of his own insignificance and the crushing weight of Asuma's assigned debt had done nothing to temper Pranav's core delusion. If anything, it had amplified it. If they were to survive this servitude, they had to prove their worth was greater than the $110,000 in red ink Asuma had assigned them. They had to be more than just "tools."
Sam had given them their first assignment: a dead-simple pick-up and drop-off. A small package moved from a back alley informant to a drop site in the city's industrial park. No guns were necessary. No side missions. Just obedience and basic competence.
But the recruits walked into the staging area with tension sizzling through the seams. We were cracked, unstable, utterly unprepared for anything but our own internal explosion.
Pranav, humiliated by the financial verdict, threw himself into the planning with the fervor of a man launching a coup. He needed to find a solution, a sliver of leverage, a way to re-frame this servitude as a calculated risk. He needed to prove that his vision, his structure was still the path to power.
"Phase One: Approach," Pranav said, tracing lines on a crumpled takeout napkin that served as his map. "Arpika and Gautham take the South Route, visual confirmation on the asset before signal deployment. Sathwik, you're our deep anchor. Sanvi, you're the immediate extraction specialist. Convoluted nonsense. It was a five-minute errand, but Pranav spoke like a general addressing his command staff.
"We utilize the 'Delta-Six' communication cipher, simple taps, one for confirmation, two for danger, three for extraction initiation. We minimize exposure, maximize efficiency. We show Sam Corvini that our method is surgical, unlike the pathetic noise we made last time."
He spoke with the crisp authority of a leader, but the desperation was clear in his eyes, the frantic pleading of a kid begging to be taken seriously, to believe in his own narrative before everyone else abandoned it.
Arpika leaned against the wall, her expression neutral, slipping into her usual quiet manipulation. She wasn't challenging his plan, but she wasn't endorsing it either. She was simply ensuring the individual roles were clear, keeping the volatile elements aligned just enough to prevent the whole thing from fracturing before they left the room.
Gautham was nodding fast, feverishly memorizing the intricate details of the South Route, the cipher, and the extraction points he didn't believe in for a second. His terror demanded details; details meant control, even if the control was entirely theoretical.
Sathwik stood silent, head tilted, listening. He always listened. He absorbed the commands, the routes, and the ciphers, translating Pranav's convoluted nonsense into the simple language of action and execution.
Sanvi, predictably, broke the fragile truce. She was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, a sneer twisting her lips.
"Stop it, Pranav," she drawled, the mockery open and unrestrained. "Stop trying to play chess when the board is already on fire. This is a milk run. No one cares about your Delta-Six cipher. We walk in, we get the bag, and we walk out. You're trying to build a fortress around a single, cheap piece of paper."
"It's about showing competence!" Pranav shot back, the raw frustration finally cracking his facade. "It's about proving we are assets, not liabilities! We need structure to compensate for—"
"We need to stop pretending we're not going to stab the first person who looks at us wrong," she finished, the look in her eyes daring him to argue.
Their dynamic was a broken spring, every movement threatening to unwind into violence.
The fish market was a sensory explosion of chaos. Crowded stalls, shouting vendors competing in a dozen dialects, the squelch of wet floors, and the reeking, pervasive smell of brine, salt, and stale fish guts. It was a perfect hell of noise and distraction.
Pranav, clinging to his structure, entered the market and immediately began to over-direct.
"South Route is clear, Gautham, take point, keep visual contact, signal confirmation now!" he whispered urgently into his cheap, off-brand comms unit. He gestured dramatically, pointing Arpika toward a narrow aisle choked with overflowing crates.
It was a mess even before the real mess began. He was so focused on the plan that he missed the wider context, the subtle shift in the market's noise level, the way a few key vendors had suddenly stopped shouting.
They reached the designated informant, a middle-aged man standing nervously beside a mountain of crushed ice. He was just handing over a small, taped packet when the sound came.
A sharp, violent whistle that cut through the noise of the market. The signal.
Ambush.
It was sudden. Ugly. Loud.
A rival crew, not Corvini, but something smaller, something hungry, boiled out of the side aisles, knives flashing, faces masked by bandanas. They were on them instantly.
Chaos erupted. Bodies collided violently, sending stalls flying. Fish crates exploded on the wet, slippery ground, spraying ice and dead fish everywhere. The smell of blood instantly replaced the smell of salt.
Sathwik, true to his nature, transformed into a silent weapon. While everyone else was reacting to the surprise, he was already moving, carving a path through the initial attackers. He moved with terrifying efficiency, a blur of practiced violence, clearing the immediate threat without a sound.
Arpika and Gautham scrambled through the narrow aisles, desperate to stick to the pre-planned, useless South Route, slipping on fish guts. Arpika screamed a sudden, sharp warning as a knife flashed near Gautham's head.
Sanvi, forgetting all of Pranav's ciphers and structures, returned fire with pure, animal instinct and fury, tackling an attacker into a pyramid of empty buckets.
But Pranav?
He was caught in the middle of the melee, clutching the tiny, vulnerable comms unit, his mind still cycling through the rules he had meticulously laid out.
Phase Two: Counter-Ambush Protocol, Delta-Six, two taps for danger, deploy smoke screen now!
He clung to the plan, paralyzed by the collapse of his perfect structure. He barked orders into the comms unit that no one could hear over the screams and the violence, demanding compliance with a protocol that was useless.
He was focused on the cipher, not the blade arching toward his unprotected side, propelled by the sheer, unadulterated chaos he had refused to acknowledge.
And that delusion, that clinging to the fantasy of control was about to kill him.