"What is the point you want to make?" Raghavan asked for a conclusion after litening to the whole analysis.
"Can we track the people who have been pictured in Mitra's social media posts?" Vishal earnestly suggested, his shoulders stiff as he leaned forward with his hands on Sandeep's table, his face visibly strained yet serious. "It can be one of them, or someone who has been viewing all her posts. Someone with a delusion that the posts are all a façade for Mitra."
Sandeep looked away, thinking it through. Raghav stroked his chin in contemplation. "Tracking everyone in the posts is complicated, like looking for a needle in a haystack. It would take time and lot of effort. What if it is someone not in the posts but has only witnessed them being taken? There are too many scenarios. We have already scanned her social media profiles for suspicious messages from others or misleading chats, and there were none," Raghavan was sure of what he said.
Vishal persisted, "Still, we can try. It would be same as catching everyone with the name we heard."
###
Mitra had been sick for two days, ever since the ordeal of her near-death with Sashi.
She hadn't been eating food properly, and whatever she did eat out of hunger, she had thrown up unapologetically. The anxiety, fear, lack of knowledge of what was happening outside the walls she was confined within were all killing her.
Sashi hadn't been much conversant with her; he seemed lost in his own thoughts. No matter how many times she asked, threatened and begged him to tell her what he had done with the video he shot and what was happening outside, he hadn't delved into any of the details.
She kept pacing around the room in her uneasiness till she felt drained and weak and slumped onto the bed. The emotional pressure and helplessness she felt knocked her out after a while.
She had no clue about the amount of time that had passed during her spell of unconsciousness. Up until the night she passed out, she had tried to keep a track of time based on the timing of Sashi's visits and the meals he brought in for her.
When her eyes opened intermittently through the daze of frailty, she couldn't grasp where she was or what had happened. A moment into regaining her memories, she tried to get up, but couldn't and collapsed onto the bed again.
The second night after the video's release, Mitra finally regained her consciousness. The room, dimly lit, was cold and silent. She lay there, trying to gain her wits to their full. As she lifted her right hand to wipe the sweat off her forehead, she felt something sticking to it.
She held her hand up to view it properly and found an IV needle stuck to it. A bag of fluids was hanging to a makeshift stand near the bed.
It sent Mitra into frenzy. Panic stricken, without any consideration to her punctured hand, she pulled out the needle as fast and less safely as she could. The pain didn't scare her, as much as the anonymity of the fluids that were administered to her did.
In a moment she sat up on the bed and felt herself for possible drug related harms; any unknown injuries on her body or anything else tying her down to the bed. There were none. She didn't feel weird. In fact, she didn't feel as weak as she had been the last time she was awake.
"You should have let the IV be," Sashi's low and deep voice sounded next to her.
Mitra jerked to her side in alarm to see Sashi sitting stoically in his chair with his legs crossed, leaning back, studying her with a warm gaze that was completely uncharacteristic of him.
"You need it to get some strength," he added.
"How...?" Mitra's voice cracked. She coughed once and cleared her throat to ask, "Did a doctor come by?"
Sashi shifted in his chair as he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, saying, "No. I can manage this much on my own."
"Are you into the medical profession?" she asked cautiously.
Sashi shrugged. "No. I picked this skill up during one of my past phases of self-development."
"Are you certified to do this?" she asked, her hoarse voice gaining its tenor slowly.
Sashi let out a small laugh. "Come on Mitra. You don't need to have a certification to do this unofficially."
"Illegally, you mean," she clarified to herself and him. "Is it really IV you plugged in to me?"
"Of course. I can be a professional nurse if needed. And why would I want to harm you now, especially after having had a clear chance of killing you in so many different occasions? Besides, I really care for you. Couldn't really stand seeing you getting sick and weak like that. You are the best when you fight back." The smile on his face could have been a taunt or sincerity, which nobody could have discerned.
"You psychopath! I doubt you would ever actually back off from your intentions of tormenting me by multitudes." Mitra spat the words at him as strongly as she could, as if the words could cut through him, despite their failure to register any impact on him.
He shrugged it off with a corner of his lip pulled up in dismissal.
There was a tense silence as Mitra thought of ways to enquire the happenings outside her confining room. All her previous attempts to gain some information had been futile, courtesy Sashi's mode of silence and disregard.
Multiple simulations of enquiring Sashi ran in her mind with almost all ending up with mockery from Sashi's end and no answers.
"You must still be curious about what happened with the video," Sashi offered to start the discussion on his own.
"And you must still be determined not to delve into the details," Mitra opined.
He puckered his lips wondering what to say next and finally admitted, "Not exactly. It doesn't matter now. It will be kind of boring if you slip into another spell of sickness." He shifted in his chair to a more comfortable position.
"People think you are dead," he informed her. "It was so chaotic, till today at least."
Mitra's heart sunk. If the whole world thought she was dead, it meant her parents thought the same too. Such an assumption meant a near-fatality for them; she knew they were weak hearted when it came to their daughter.
As she looked at him in agitation, he continued, "Your parents have been hospitalized. I believe they would take some time to recover. Maybe, if they know you are alive, they might feel better."
Through the implications of the information he shared, with the stabs of pain she felt thinking of her parents lying unconscious in a hospital, Mitra felt her anger exceed the limits she had framed for herself. A slur of swear words followed in the hoarse tone of Mitra's voice, broken occasionally by the helplessness she felt in using verbal offence instead of physical self-rescue.
A pause ensued after Mitra ran out of words.
Sashi gazed at her in sympathy, his eyebrows twitching. "Look, you can blame me how much ever you want. All I did was validate for myself if I was being watched by anyone. When no one came forward upon your apparent "death", I got my answer." He spoke as if what he had done was a really casual deed.