The humid air of Benz Circle, Vijayawada, was thick with the smell of copper and salt. High above the street, suspended like a gruesome marionette, was the body.
The forensics team stood in stunned silence. The victim's torso had been methodically dismantled—parts removed, bone smashed—yet her face remained eerily untouched, frozen in a mask of peace. The lead investigator used a pair of tweezers to extract a small object embedded directly into the crown of her skull: a silver pendrive.
When they plugged it into a rugged laptop at the scene, the speakers didn't play data. They played a scream. A woman's voice, jagged and raw, echoed across the crime scene:
"All the devils are out. They stand before you now. Soon, the whole world will speak of nothing else."
The prophecy was immediate. Before the sun had set in India, news broke from across the Atlantic. A body had been found in America, processed with the same surgical brutality. The global panic had begun.
Enter Mukesh
The scene shifted from the chaos of the streets to the suffocating silence of a high-rise apartment. Mukesh stood in the center of a dimly lit room, his shadow stretching long across the floorboards.
In the corner, a young boy cowered, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Mukesh didn't look angry; he looked bored. He stepped toward the boy, his voice a low, steady hum.
"I'm going to give you two options," Mukesh said, tilting his head. "One: you run toward that door and try your luck. Two: I stay right here and make you even more scared than you already are."
The boy didn't wait for a third choice. He lunged for the door, tearing it open and sprinting into the darkness of the hallway. He didn't see the ledge. He didn't see the 50-foot drop into the concrete courtyard below.
As the boy plummeted, Mukesh walked calmly to the edge of the threshold. He peered down at the falling shadow and whispered:
"Happy journey." My friend