Chapter 5
The World Had a Department for This
Arun didn't feel hunted.
That was the problem.
After the fourth death, after mercy had been removed, the city stopped pressing against him. The noise felt distant. The crowd felt thin. Even danger felt… manageable.
That absence of pressure made him reckless.
And recklessness attracted attention.
He sensed it the next morning—not through fear, not through instinct, but through pattern disruption. The street below his apartment was quieter than usual. Too clean. No loiterers. No vendors arguing over territory.
Someone had prepared the area.
Arun left anyway.
He made it three blocks before the first sign appeared.
A black sedan parked where there shouldn't have been parking. Engine running. Windows tinted just enough to hide faces.
He walked past it.
The car didn't move.
Good.
He turned the corner.
A man stepped into his path.
No sudden movements. No threatening posture. Just a presence inserted at the exact point Arun would have reached.
"Arun," the man said.
That stopped him.
Not emotionally.
Logistically.
Arun hadn't given his name to anyone.
The man raised both hands slowly. "I'm not here to fight."
Arun studied him.
Early forties. Clean-shaven. Clothes too neat for the street, too casual for authority. Eyes alert but not hostile.
"What do you want?" Arun asked.
The man smiled faintly. "To make sure you don't die in the wrong place."
Arun tilted his head. "That sounds like a threat."
"It's a warning," the man corrected. "There's a difference."
Arun stepped sideways.
Three more people revealed themselves without haste. One behind him. Two across the street. All positioned perfectly.
Containment.
Not an ambush.
A net.
"You've died four times," the man said calmly. "Two of them in public-adjacent spaces. That's sloppy."
Arun didn't react.
Inside, calculations aligned.
Distance.
Timing.
Lethality.
He could kill at least two before going down.
Maybe three.
The man watched his eyes flicker.
"You're thinking about whether you can take us," he said. "That's new for you. Last week, you wouldn't have considered it."
Arun's jaw tightened.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
The man reached into his pocket slowly and pulled out a badge.
No insignia.
Just a symbol etched into dark metal—an incomplete circle, broken in three places.
"We don't call ourselves heroes," the man said. "We don't call ourselves police. We're closer to sanitation."
Arun stared at the symbol.
It stirred nothing.
Mercy was gone.
If this had been yesterday, he might have asked why.
Now he asked something else.
"How many like me?" he said.
The man hesitated.
That hesitation told Arun everything.
"Enough," the man said finally. "Too many, if you ask me."
They took him to a building that didn't exist on any map.
From the outside, it looked like an abandoned records office—cracked concrete, broken windows, a faded government seal peeling from the wall.
Inside, it was clean.
Too clean.
White corridors. Soft lighting. Sound-dampened floors.
Containment again.
They didn't restrain him.
That worried him more than cuffs would have.
A woman met them in a glass-walled room.
She didn't smile.
She didn't frown.
She looked at Arun like he was a malfunctioning device someone had placed on her desk.
"Four confirmed deaths," she said without greeting. "One unconfirmed."
Arun's eyes sharpened.
The woman noticed.
"That alley," she said. "Two men. One survived. One didn't."
No reaction rose in him.
Only confirmation.
"Guilt's gone," she murmured. "And mercy."
She glanced at the man who'd brought him in. "Sequence is accelerating."
Arun leaned back in the chair. "You keep talking like I'm a project."
The woman met his gaze. "You are."
The words didn't sting.
That absence scared her.
She masked it quickly.
"We monitor anomalies," she continued. "People who die and don't stay that way. People who come back wrong."
Arun smiled faintly.
"Wrong according to who?"
"According to everyone else," she replied. "Including you. Eventually."
She tapped a tablet.
Images appeared on the glass wall.
Security footage.
Different cities. Different countries.
People dying.
Coming back.
Not all of them intact.
Some screamed.
Some laughed.
Some went quiet forever.
"You're early-stage," the woman said. "Which means you still think you have choices."
Arun studied the images.
No connection.
No empathy.
Just data.
"What happens to them?" he asked.
The woman hesitated.
The man who'd brought him in answered instead.
"Best case? They stabilize. Worst case?"
He gestured at one of the screens.
A man stood in the middle of a burning street, unmoving as flames curled around him. His face was blank.
"He forgot why stopping mattered," the man said.
Silence filled the room.
Arun leaned forward.
"What do you want from me?"
The woman didn't answer immediately.
Then:
"Control," she said. "Before you lose the parts that let you accept it."
Something stirred at the edge of Arun's mind.
Not resistance.
Assessment.
"If I say no?" he asked.
The woman smiled thinly. "Then you'll die again. And again. And eventually, you won't care who you hurt."
She paused.
"And then we'll put you down somewhere no one will ever find."
Arun considered that.
Not emotionally.
Strategically.
"I'll work with you," he said. "For now."
The man exhaled slowly.
The woman nodded. "Good."
She stood.
"Because something else is watching you now," she added. "And unlike us… it won't try to negotiate."
Arun felt it then.
A pressure.
Distant.
Ancient.
Not the system.
Something that had noticed the gaps he left behind.
"Tell me one thing," Arun said quietly.
The woman stopped.
"Do any of them ever stop dying?"
The woman looked away.
"That's not the right question," she said.
Then she left.
Alone in the glass room, Arun stared at his reflection.
He didn't recognize the calm expression staring back.
And for the first time—
He wondered whether the system was removing parts of him…
Or making space for something else to move in.