(Mahesh Desai POV)
The thing about secrets is they rot you slowly.
Not in a dramatic way no screaming, no nightmares, no guilt-soaked monologues.
Just a steady peeling away of whatever part of you was still worth saving.
I used to think I was a good man.
Now I smoke until my fingers stink, drink until my thoughts blur, lie until the truth feels like a foreign language.
Maybe that's why I took the bribe the first time.
Maybe that's why I kept taking them.
Or maybe I was born rotten.
Hard to say these days.
---
There are two kinds of officers in Cinder Division:
1. The ones who believe in "Contain. Control. Cleanse."
2. And the ones who believe in "Survive."
I belonged to the second group.
Not because I was brave but because bravery doesn't pay rent, feed family, calm an angry wife, or shut up a house full of relatives who treat you like an ATM with legs.
Every month my mother asked for money.
Every week my brother called for a loan.
Every evening my wife scolded me for not getting promoted.
Every night, I wondered which version of myself I hated the most.
---
Ten years ago, I made the worst mistake of my career.
Dhruv's melted metal.
Ishani's ash.
A hybrid child nobody expected to survive.
Cinder wanted the case shut fast.
Too fast.
Orders came from above:
> "Seal it."
"Civilian fire."
"No anomalies filed."
"Scrub the thermal logs."
So I did what I always did.
I followed orders.
And then I followed money.
A Transmutor liaison slipped an envelope into my hand.
"Just tell us who lived in that apartment," he said.
I shouldn't have answered.
I shouldn't have looked.
I shouldn't have taken the bribe.
But my mother needed surgery.
My brother had gambling debts.
My wife wanted a new fridge.
My salary wasn't enough.
So I handed the family names over.
The next month, they paid me again.
And the next.
And the next.
And every time Devraj came with bloodshot eyes demanding more information, I'd dig into the sealed records and scrape together whatever scraps I could carefully removing anything that would get me killed.
Or worse: noticed.
I thought this would end in a year.
It didn't.
Devraj never stopped.
---
By the fifth year, I hated him.
His intensity.
His quiet fury.
His cold, evaluating stare.
People like him didn't understand men like me.
They didn't understand that some of us didn't have the luxury of honor.
We just tried to survive our own lives.
Still, I kept feeding him crumbs.
Not because I cared but because the alternative was letting a Transmutor heir decide whether I lived or died.
I've seen what they do to people who disappoint them.
Burns don't scare them.
Electricity doesn't hurt them.
They can crush steel with their hands.
What chance did a man like me have?
None.
---
Then the marriage got worse.
The debts got bigger.
The drinking got heavier.
I tried quitting cigarettes once. Lasted three hours.
My wife told me I was weak.
My mother told me I was useless.
My brother told me I was selfish.
All I wanted was silence.
And then Cinder changed everything.
---
Three years ago, the new division chief pushed for a city-wide heat-mapper grid.
A secret one.
Hidden in sewer mains, government towers, even traffic signals.
"We will find every Ember and hybrid in the country," the chief said.
"And then we take them all in one night."
A purge disguised as progress.
I didn't question it.
I never questioned anything.
But the system was new messy, unfiltered, flooded with noise.
Thousands of useless heat logs.
Every tea stall.
Every bakery.
Every charcoal grill.
Cinder agents hated it.
I saw an opportunity.
Noise is easy to hide things inside.
Noise is easy to sell.
---
Last week, Devraj returned older, colder, more dangerous than ever.
He said nothing at first.
Just sat down in that same miserable café booth and stared at me.
"I need something real this time," he said.
I wanted to walk away.
But that envelope…
I needed it more than I needed pride.
So I gave him what he asked for:
A raw data dump.
Useless heat signatures.
Sludge from the bottom of the system.
I didn't even filter out the low-steady-low readings because why would I?
They were meaningless.
Background clutter.
No Ember would ever show a stable heat curve.
No hybrid either they all spike like wildfires.
I didn't think twice.
When I handed it to him, I said:
"It's nothing. Don't blame me for garbage data."
But the look on his face…
For the first time in ten years, something in Devraj's eyes shifted.
He wasn't confused.
He wasn't disappointed.
He was satisfied.
And that terrified me.
---
He left without a word.
I lit a cigarette with shaking fingers.
Had I given him something dangerous?
Did I accidentally expose a classified anomaly?
Was I about to be killed?
I couldn't ask.
And I couldn't warn Cinder without implicating myself.
I sat there in that smoky café, hands trembling, wondering which mistake would be the one that finally got me crushed into scrap and for the first time in years, I prayed Devraj never came back.
But men like him always come back.
Especially when they find what they've been searching for.
---