New York City – June 10, 2025
Thousands of miles from Hyderabad, in a modest apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Anushree Rao sat frozen. Her television flickered with images of chaos—sirens screaming, smoke curling into a bruised sky, fragments of metal scattered like bones in a field. The breaking news banner was relentless, looping the same devastating message over and over: "Flight AS-279 has crashed. Over 500 presumed dead."
Anushree didn't blink. She didn't move.
To anyone who knew her professionally, she was the picture of control—an elite intelligence analyst with the U.S. State Department, trained to interpret geopolitical shocks with a cool head and an unshakable demeanor. She was fluent in five languages, capable of analyzing satellite data in her sleep, and had advised on everything from nuclear disarmament to covert cyberwarfare.
But now, she was just a sister.
And the woman potentially lost in that wreckage—the one name she hadn't heard aloud in five years, yet had never stopped thinking about—was Rathnadevi, the Home Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Her sister.
Their last conversation had been a storm of blame and bitterness. Harsh words exchanged across continents. Wounds reopened. The final call had ended with silence—a silence that stretched for a decade, sustained by pride and pain in equal measure.
Now that silence might be permanent.
Anushree's hand trembled as she reached for the remote and replayed the footage again. The crash site blazed on-screen, chaotic and merciless. Somewhere in that inferno, her sister might have taken her last breath.
She couldn't let herself feel—not yet. She locked her emotions behind years of professional conditioning, pressing them down like files in a classified cabinet.
She grabbed her encrypted phone and dialed a secure line.
"This is Anushree Rao. I need confirmation—was Minister Rathnadevi on board AS-279? Check the diplomatic clearance logs. I want access to the alternate manifests, including any alias profiles cleared under political immunity protocols."
Her voice was steady. Crisp. Almost robotic.
But beneath that tone—beneath the mask—was a woman unraveling.
Inside, she was crumbling.