The telegraph building near Kashmere Gate stood like a stone cage — pale walls, iron grills, windows always half-shut. From inside came the soft, endless clicking of brass keys, like metal insects speaking a language only trained minds understood.
Messages from every part of India passed through here.
Most were boring. Some were dangerous.
Vikram didn't need all of them.
He only needed access.
The route in began with a chaiwala.
His name was Kallu. Thin, bent-backed, with thick spectacles and a stammer that kept him mostly ignored. He brought tea to the telegraph clerks three times a day. No one checked his papers. No one asked his name. He wasn't invisible — he was invisible enough.
Vikram touched his hand while returning a steel cup near Chandni Chowk.
Three seconds.
Connection formed.
Kallu's memories were simple, but detailed.
He knew who liked sugar. Who liked tea strong. Who stole biscuits. Who left keys hanging. He had watched and remembered without realizing. The building's internal layout unfolded inside his mind: operator benches, record drawers, locked shelves, rest rooms.
And one key name.
Mohanlal — a tired clerk with worn teeth and a habit of scribbling gossip in margins. Most didn't like him. He didn't care. He came at the same time daily. Left alone. Filed papers without attention.
Perfect.
Vikram followed him the next morning. Not to his desk. To the paan shop outside the Gurdwara.
A casual brush. Three seconds.
Thread formed.
Inside: lines of messages. Routes. Codes. Boredom. Years of routine. But also suspicion. Mohanlal had once been passed over for promotion — by a Christian convert from Madras. Since then, he resented the system. Didn't speak it aloud, but it lived in his chest.
Vikram planted a thought.
"That boy from the press… Vinod Pratap… he respects clerks. He listens. Maybe he's different."
When Mohanlal entered the office that afternoon, he felt nothing unusual.
But two days later, when Vikram appeared near the building with a stack of papers, Mohanlal didn't wave him away.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I have some invoices from the press. Our supplier told us to verify route fees."
Mohanlal sniffed. Took the paper. Looked it over.
"You work at Pandit Girdhari Lal's place?"
"Sometimes. But I'm more freelance now."
"Who sent you?"
"A chaiwala named Kallu said you're the one to ask. He said you don't waste time."
The clerk's eyes flicked up. Brief respect.
"Wait here."
He went inside.
Ten minutes later, Vikram had a copy of the shipping charge sheet — one usually available only to registered presses.
No one noticed.
Over the next week, Vikram returned. Small things. Harmless queries. Polite questions. In time, Mohanlal invited him to sit while he smoked during breaks.
Vikram touched his shoulder again.
This time he wasn't looking for layout.
He wanted language.
In Mohanlal's orb space, he saw:
Intermediate Telegraphy
Beginner Message Decryption
Intermediate British Bureau Filing
Elementary Routing Code Recognition
Vikram fused them into a single cluster: Advanced Telegraph Operations.
He copied it into himself. Then to Leelu. Then to one of the boys in The Black Threads.
And now, the network had something new.
A reader.
Within days, Vikram knew how to track message routes.
Within weeks, he could intercept internal messages — silently, without opening a drawer. Through touched minds alone, messages arrived to him as clearly as paper.
Most of it was meaningless: grain reports, colonial gossip, troop movements in the north.
But once… something more.
A code sent from Calcutta to Delhi:
"Special Officer en route to investigate press irregularities."
Mohanlal didn't read it twice.
But Vikram saw it glow in Magicnet.
He made no noise.
But that night, he moved three crates. Burned a false ledger. Shifted one worker to another name.
And when the officer came?
He found nothing.