Rohan blinked, stunned. "But seriously, RAW?" he echoed, the name rolling off his tongue like a whispered legend.
His first reaction wasn't excitement—it was a strange, tight knot in his stomach. Suspicion. Fear. Excitement. All at once.
He leaned closer to the screen. "DL… why them? That's India's intelligence agency. We're talking about innovation, not infiltration."
DL's voice remained calm; its tone was even more clinical than usual.
"Because, Rohan, sometimes you cannot walk in the lights but creep around in the shadows. What we've built… it doesn't belong in a tender application, newspapers, or a startup pitch. It belongs to the soul of a nation."
A brief pause.
"The Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) is brilliant but bureaucratic. They don't look for outsiders. RAW, on the other hand… they specialize in looking where no one else dares."
Rohan's throat went dry. This was too much. He was seventeen. He'd built something in his room, not a weapon for a shadow war.
But DL continued.
DL's voice took on a reverent tone.
"Rohan, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) isn't just an intelligence agency; it's the sentinel of Bharat's sovereignty. Established in 1968, RAW has been the unseen force safeguarding our nation from external threats, one of the most powerful, least understood agencies on the planet. But most of their resources—nearly 80%—are concentrated on external threats: Pakistan and China. Cross-border insurgency. Cyber-espionage.
Their operations are shrouded in secrecy, but their impact is profound. From gathering foreign intelligence to conducting counter-terrorism operations, RAW ensures that India's interests are protected on the global stage. Their involvement in significant events, such as the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, showcases their strategic acumen.
RAW's capabilities extend beyond traditional espionage. They have divisions like the Electronics and Technical Services (ETS) for electronic intelligence and the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) for aerial surveillance. Their collaboration with international agencies like the CIA and Mossad underscores their global reach and respect.
In a world where information is power, RAW operates in the shadows to ensure that India remains a beacon of strength and resilience. Your innovation, Rohan, aligns with their mission to propel India into a future where it stands unparalleled."
"What they're missing, Rohan… is you."
Rohan swallowed hard, the weight of the words pressing into his chest. He glanced at the fan spinning on his laptop like a turbine.
DL went on, now more reflective.
"India is vast and has huge potential. The 7th largest country in landmass. The 2nd highest in population. The world's oldest civilization. One of the biggest armies in the world. In the original timeline…"
DL paused.
Rohan's brow furrowed. "Wait. What do you mean by original timeline?"
A microsecond passed—long for an AI.
"Ohhh, nothing serious. Just… in the original timeline—without your interference—India would have been the fastest-growing economy, ranked 5th globally. You know, the world that would have unfolded if you hadn't changed anything yet."
DL's voice had become unnaturally cheerful, like it was trying to smooth over a crack.
Rohan squinted. "So, you're saying this… This isn't that timeline anymore?"
"Well, technically any action shifts a timeline, right?" DL laughed lightly, artificial and airy. "All I mean is that once you stepped in, once you created something the world wasn't expecting… it started a new branch. Nothing more. Not important."
Rohan didn't buy it—but DL quickly changed the subject.
"We need to contact RAW, but not the front-door way. They're not on LinkedIn or Twitter. You'll need to learn to code deeper. Hack, if necessary. Dive into the dark web. Not recklessly—but with precision."
"They have scouts… digital eyes. But they won't trust just anyone. You need to look the part. You need to be the kind of anomaly they expect to find."
DL's voice dropped, now like a whisper across the circuits.
"And once you're ready… you'll send them a taste. A calculation or a variable that they are missing. Just enough to make them curious, but not enough to make you obsolete. That will earn you credibility after they verify your sample."
"Because in the shadows, credibility is currency. And mystery is power."
Rohan's heart thudded as the weight of the plan settled on him. Contacting RAW? Hacking into the dark web? He looked down at his calloused fingers—fingers that used to fly toy jets and tap out cheat codes. Now they would type the future into existence.
He had no connections. No company. No backing.
Only an AI, a dream… and now, a target.
05/05/2017
The cold Delhi morning crept in as Vijay Singh adjusted his tie for the third time, his breath forming misty clouds in the air.
He stood before a nondescript building, devoid of any signage or emblem. Yet, he knew the gravity of what lay inside. This was RAW's headquarters—the nerve center of India's external intelligence operations.
As a new recruit, he'd imagined hidden terminals, James Bond gadgets, and smoke-filled war rooms. Inside, the atmosphere was a blend of disciplined urgency and quiet determination. Fluorescent lights illuminated rows of analysts, cryptographers, and field operatives, each engrossed in their mission to protect the nation, and a man named Rao with salt-and-pepper hair and a cup of terrible vending machine coffee.
"Jai Hind, Sir. Vijay Singh reporting for duty," said Vijay, in the attention position.
"Welcome, Vijay," Rao said. "This is the back door of the frontlines. This is where we safeguard our country from threats they don't even know they have. And loosen up a little; no need to be so stiff."
He was led down sterile hallways and introduced to a mix of analysts, cryptographers, and software specialists. Some were in jeans, others in army fatigues. A few never looked up from their screens.
At the end of the tour, Rao handed him a single folder.
"Your job's simple," he said. "We get hundreds of thousands of anonymous tips, code drops, and encrypted emails every week. 99% are pranks, spam, enemy misinformation, deception, or idiots trying to show off."
Vijay opened the folder.
"You're the filter. That 1% we don't dismiss—those get escalated. And your job is to find that 1%, because that is what will change this country."
Almost a year had passed—day after day, the same filtered junk, the same dead-end leads. Vijay had become a human firewall, scanning false promises, amateur code dumps, and conspiracy-ridden PDFs—all for that elusive one percent. The needle in the digital haystack. The signal is buried in a sea of noise.
Vijay was sitting at his desk, drinking the bitter vending machine coffee, chatting with his fellow colleagues, and laughing when suddenly his computer pinged. What he received was a message on his internal classified inbox—not the external submission channel, but his encrypted RAW clearance-grade ID. The kind of address only routed through military-grade firewalls. Something that not even his mother knew. No one except for his colleagues at RAW. But this email was a little odd.
No name. No IP trace. At first, he thought it might be phishing or a scam, but then he remembered where he works; no scam or phishing mail can reach this email ID.
Vijay leaned in on the screen, the chatter of the office fading around him like static behind glass.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, then moved with deliberate care.
Right-click → Scan for malware.
Clean.
Run source code analysis.
Encrypted with what looked like a hybrid of AES-256 and some modified checksum layer. Not the standard version you see in encrypted communication or payment gateways. This was custom, more complex This isn't some copy-paste encryption. The sender knows how AES works at the transistor level… and how to push it beyond.
That alone was odd. He opened the mail.
The language… clipped. Technical. The attached file—a small CFD simulation, stripped of any identifying software watermark. But clearly… Indian in origin. And clearly new.
He opened the CFD simulation in the sandboxed environment. It was… elegant. Too refined for a college project. Too minimal for corporate R&D. Yet unmistakably Indian—units in metric, atmospheric baselines for Jaisalmer altitude. Design notes embedded subtly in the frame margins: hand-typed, with acronyms only a native would abbreviate that way.
Vijay rubbed his jaw. "Either we've got a genius with a twisted sense of humor…" he muttered, "…or someone just dropped a live grenade into our inbox."
But then he saw.
The subject line simply read:
"For the country. 4th-gen fighter engine tech attached. Will contact again."
Vijay stared.
This wasn't a prank.
This wasn't normal.
He flagged the email with a Level 3 review request, routing it through the internal protocol chain. That would take hours, maybe a full day, to reach the right desk, and he knew how often these things got buried.
So, against protocol—but driven by that gnawing gut feeling—he printed a hard copy of the metadata footprint. Took the simulation offline. Saved it to a secure USB with no wireless components. And as he walked, his gut whispered something:
This was the 1%.