Sleep never really came that night.
Arjun lay on the thin cotton mattress, eyes wide open in the dark, the ceiling fan creaking like an old man turning in his grave. Every time he shut his eyelids the vault rushed back: the endless racks, the glass boxes, the photographs, those calm, terrible eyes staring straight through fifty years of dust. His mind tried to bargain (maybe someone faked it, maybe it's an art project, maybe Gupta-ji is pranking me), but his heart knew better. Nothing about that place could be faked. Not the cold. Not the silence. Not the way the air tasted like a grave that had been waiting for him personally.
The dhaba boy had come at eight with dinner. Arjun took the steel carrier, thanked him, and set it aside untouched. The smell of dal made his stomach flip. Around eleven, when the highway outside finally went quiet, hunger and exhaustion won a small battle. He forced down three rotis and half the dal, tasting nothing, then lay back down.
Sleep still refused.
Every time his eyes closed, the vault was there.
Every time he opened them, the office cabin felt smaller, the glass door and glass walls turning the night into a fish-tank he couldn't escape.
At some point, exhaustion dragged him under.
In the dream he was back in the vault.
The amber lights were on, soft and steady.
Vikramaditya Shinde stood in the far corner, exactly as he looked in the photographs: tall, pathani kurta, kirpan at his waist, scar bright across the eyebrow. He didn't move, didn't speak. He only watched with eyes that glowed faintly, like coals under ash.
Then he was ten feet away.
Then three.
Then right in front of Arjun's face.
Arjun woke with a strangled gasp, heart jackhammering so hard the cot shook. Sweat soaked his T-shirt; the fan had stopped sometime in the night. For a few seconds he couldn't remember where he was. Then the peeling cream walls of the office cabin swam into focus and he almost laughed with relief.
He had barely closed his eyes again when the first knock came.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Soft, polite, deliberate. On the glass door.
He froze.
Through the glass he could see the empty ramp, the red Splendor parked where he'd left it, moonlight silver on broken concrete.
No one.
He told himself it was a branch, a night bird, anything.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Same rhythm. Same spot.
He cracked one eye open. Still nobody.
Arjun pulled the thin blanket over his head like a child and squeezed his eyes shut, counting heartbeats.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He waited, trembling, for the fourth knock.
It never came.
Somehow, in that terrified huddle, he fell asleep.
Morning arrived with thin, merciless light leaking through the glass walls. Arjun woke stiff and cold at exactly seven. The highway was alive again: school buses honking, vegetable carts, the distant call of a chaiwala. Normal life. Safe life.
He stumbled to the attached bathroom, brushed his teeth, splashed cold borewell water on his face, trying to wash the night away.
Tell Gupta-ji?
Tell a friend?
Pretend it never happened?
He opened the bathroom door.
A man was sitting in the office chair.
White shirt spotless, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Black trousers pressed sharp enough to cut. Black suspenders. Easily six-foot-five, shoulders filling the chair like it had been built for someone smaller. Muscular, but not gym-muscle; old, hard muscle earned carrying bodies and running through jungles. The face was strong, calm, familiar in a way that turned Arjun's blood to ice.
The stranger stood, towering, and extended one large hand. A friendly smile that didn't quite reach the eyes.
"Nice to meet you, friend," he said in a deep, quiet voice. "I am Vikramaditya Shinde."
Arjun's mouth went dry. The name didn't click at first; shock had made him slow.
Then the man tilted his head, amused.
"You came to my basement yesterday, didn't you? I'm the hunter who owns it."
And suddenly every photograph on that underground wall flashed across Arjun's mind, every calm, unsmiling face now standing in front of him in flesh and blood and daylight.
The kirpan was missing from the man's waist, but the scar across the left eyebrow was exactly the same.
Arjun took one stumbling step back, spine hitting the bathroom door.
The hunter's smile softened, almost kind.
"Don't be afraid, Arjun Jadhav," Vikramaditya Shinde said. "We have a lot to talk about… "