***TRIGGER WARNING: The following content may contain unpleasant description of imagery, as well as depressive and suicidal thought provoking contents. Anyone dealing with mental health issues are advised to proceed with caution. Please understand that the Author understands and takes all of these seriously but doesn't support suicide, self harm or unhealthy coping mechanism in anyway. This is a work of fiction with necessary content for plot mechanism. Please proceed at your own discretion.***
It had almost been more than two hours since Sharmishtha last blacked out. She was tied to a wooden chair with duct tape on her mouth. She had injuries all over her body. She was still all bloody and was in dire need of medical attention. When she came to her senses, she woke up in the same cabin where she had been kept for the past two days. All this time, they occasionally showed up to torture her physically. Her only relief was that no one had tried to sexually assault her yet. Apparently, she had been kept like that for a particular someone. After that person does as he pleases, they could do what they would want to do with her. These people were just toying with her and in exchange for that, she wasn't even getting any information. What a pain! She was getting a traumatizing experience for nothing at all! But is any trauma worth anything in this world? Should anyone ever have to go through traumas to learn anything? Was that fair? Well, it was not time for these foolish philosophical questions! These thoughts weren't worth a penny. If only philosophy could solve anything. She was a little too calm for a person who was constantly in agony. Agony, right, this pain, this agony, it was like she was just used to it. Her calmness could have scared a 'normal' person. Pain, suffering were her only loyal partners, they had stood by her all her life even when she was with Rey. Oh, yes, Rey! What would he do if he saw her like this? He would probably scream. But it seemed like she had given up on this one too. It seemed like she had given up on this case, Rey, this life, basically everything. She was ready to embrace death at any point!
"What am I thinking? What about the girls? What about Roy, Arjun, Rohan and Sengupta? No, I have to live. I have to dismantle this network. I am the only one who can do this. I must do this," her conscience had finally hit her. Maybe it was time for her to turn on the send out the signal. After all, they had been tied her up like this in this cabin for so long. It didn't seem like they were going to shift anywhere else. She slowly brought the little switch in her mouth forward with her tongue near her teeth and bit it carefully not hurting her tongue. Actually, the duct tape had played to her advantage keeping her mouth sealed. Suddenly she overheard people speaking. She couldn't hear all of it but she did manage to hear three words, "Roy", "arrived" and "ordered". She couldn't understand whether they were talking about Abhimanyu or not! Why would he order them! Which Roy were they talking about. All of a sudden, a slight subconscious memory hit her. Right, she heard "Roy" very often during their chat when they were carrying her here. She couldn't make anything of it as she was heavily drugged at the time. Well, right at the moment, she couldn't do anything about it. She had sent the signal. Now all she had to do was to stay alive throughout the next sessions of torture while Sengupta comes to the rescue.
_________________________
Rey's anxiousness was killing him. What happened? Was she really so mad that turned off her phone and did not answer for over four days? No, that wasn't it. She must be in trouble. Even Ruby wasn't responding! But what could he do to know about this beforehand? Well, guess, he would now have to use his old tactics to get information about his own wife. He called a number and ordered, "Get me everything on my wife, Sharmishtha!"
He then dialled up another number, "That woman whom I wanted...where is she?"
"She is here Sir. We are tending to her as you have asked us to," a man replied.
"Alright. Run a background check on her," he ordered and disconnected the call. He didn't even wait for the man to reply.
Something wasn't sitting right. He had taken up many assignments without knowing the target beforehand but this time, he somehow felt eager to know about her. She seemed interesting. And regarding his wife, he would surely know where she was within twenty-four hours. No worries, after he arrived in Kolkata, he would deal with all of this himself. He was just praying that Sharmishtha wasn't aware of his shady activities lately. At least this was the insurance he was promised for his assignments that his past would never be revealed to his wife. But who was he praying to? Can the devil pray to God?
_________________________
Rohan was on his way to the hospital to see what information Sengupta had retrieved from Arjun when suddenly he got a pop-up notification, "The eye camera is now operational". Camera? What camera? He couldn't think of anything. He then tried to reminisce whether any more cameras remained non-operational. Right, there were two cameras from which he didn't get any footage. But then who turned them on? Did it mean that she was safe? His mind was boggling with all kinds of possibilities pouring in. Without wasting another moment, he asked the driver to turn around and went straight to the headquarters where Saraswati was working on retrieving the location.
As it turned out even she got a notification like that only it was regarding a location finder that indicated that Sharmishtha was in Sonapur. Rohan had already sent a text to Sengupta. Finally, they had a lead and Sengupta was on full gear. He ordered his teams to set out to Sonapur and leave no stones unturned in their quest to find the girls and Sharmishtha. With her location tracker, it was even easier. They left for Kolkata, as Saraswati and Rohan got busy with the footage and tracker meanwhile Roy was helping in mediating between Sengupta and some local support from Kolkata. With a case this complicated, it wasn't always easy to find out good cops who wouldn't alert the criminals. They needed to catch them red-handed. That was where Roy came in. He had a good level of intel on local officers. He also suggested who could help and whom they should not bother to reach.
As a journalist, Roy needed to know who to trust. A little mistake could have cost him his life.
__________________________
After five hours, Rey finally received some data on Sharmishtha. According to the informer, she was last seen in Siliguri four days ago and had gone missing ever since. There was also some speculations regarding a full-scale search operation going on in the state. Apparently, she was investigating some haunted places around Siliguri as a journalist for a new series. The news of his wife being missing for four days had left him glued to the ground. He was completely silent. Did they already get to her? But they had promised that they wouldn't lay a finger on her if he was to comply with their requests. The whole thing regarding Siliguri and "haunted place" was giving him a weirdly familiar yet uncomforting feeling. Like he already knew something. But what was it?
Journalist, haunted place, Siliguri, The Sight, Kolkata, his wife missing all of this had sparked an eerie feeling. The more he thought about the fact that his wife had been missing for four days without a trace, the more panic was infesting him. Even his men couldn't find a trace of where she could have been! Was she really dead? Tears filled his eyes, his knees were losing strength, he fell on the ground and started crying. All of this, was it related to his crimes? Suddenly these heavy feelings of inescapable sorrow, misery and regret vapoured into the air as a fiery rage engulfed him! The desire to burn everything down around him, within him! He knocked everything around off the table as his lighter fell and broke, the fuel spread around the wooden floor and sparked a fire with the touch of the half-burned cigarette.