The postmaster at Delhi GPO was a man named Morrison.
He had a limp from a hunting accident, a fondness for opium-laced cigarettes, and a mistress who thought he was an East India Company officer, not a postal clerk in a dying empire.
Vikram didn't need to know that.
But now he did.
All from a handshake at the public counter, as Morrison leaned to adjust a crooked paperweight.
Three seconds.
Thread connected.
Inside Morrison's memory space, things were cluttered. His thoughts were foggy, stretched thin. But the pattern was there: he had private channels. One of them was Room 17 — a sealed chamber meant for military-origin mail, routed through civilian departments.
British officers often wrote back home using it.
So did their Indian subordinates.
Some letters were romantic. Others were petty.
But all were unguarded.
No encryption. No code. Just assumptions of safety.
Vikram saw the chain.
From officer to clerk. Clerk to sorter. Sorter to Room 17. Then out on the slow boat.
He didn't want to stop the letters.
He wanted to read them.
He selected a sorter: a half-deaf Marathi man named Ghanshyam, who'd worked there for nine years. A simple man. Never complained. Always walked the same route. Always held letters too tightly, as if afraid they'd escape.
Vikram brushed past him outside the tiffin cart.
Three seconds.
Thread formed.
Inside Ghanshyam's mind was a clean map: the shelves, the sacks, the schedules. But more than that — a timing flaw. Between 6:10 and 6:35 each evening, Room 17 was unguarded. The night shift came late. The day officer left early. It was a forgotten overlap.
Vikram didn't go there.
But two of his Black Thread boys did.
They didn't touch anything.
Just entered, memorized layout, and left. Every shelf. Every bundle. Every routing mark. Vikram gave them Intermediate Mail Handling and Beginner Script Recognition. They didn't need to read every word.
Just enough to spot patterns.
Red wax seals. "Personal" marked envelopes. Letters to London, Manchester, Oxford.
Names of officers.
Mentions of trade, unrest, suspicion.
They noted senders.
Returned each letter exactly where it was.
Then reported the names to Vikram.
Using the threads connected through Magicnet, Vikram located every Indian name mentioned in those letters — often local merchants, traders, informants, sympathizers.
Some were rats.
Some were victims.
One man — a cloth merchant in Sadar Bazaar — had been writing to a British officer about local "suspicious gatherings" near old temples. Every Friday. He described faces. Provided names.
Vikram didn't confront him.
He just walked into his shop two days later, wearing simple cotton.
Brushed his hand against the counter.
Three seconds.
Thread connected.
Inside: evidence of two bribes. Letters passed. Promises made. He remembered details only because he was proud of his penmanship. He thought his words carried power.
Vikram found the orb for Beginner British Writing and Elementary Trade Negotiation.
He copied the first. Deleted the second.
Then planted a quiet thought:
"A large order will arrive next week. Prepare for it. Don't leave town."
And left.
That night, two boys under Sattu's command opened the back of the shop, found the hidden ledger, and took it. Nothing else.
The next morning, Vikram deposited an envelope at the GPO.
Addressed to London. In the merchant's exact handwriting.
Inside: nothing but fake names and made-up meetings.
Two days later, Morrison logged it into the registry, unaware that the sender had never written it.
A new pattern had begun.
Ghost correspondence.
Fake letters. False trails. Manufactured rumors.
From within the system itself.
Vikram didn't intercept everything. Only what mattered.
He used this pipeline to:
Identify which British officials were involved in regional intelligence
Find out who funded radical religious groups quietly
Learn the names of contractors bidding for railway and mining routes
Map British anxieties about local unrest
Each letter read was a thread added to Magicnet.
Each thread pulled led to five more.
The Empire prided itself on communication.
Vikram turned that pride into a mirror.
They wrote.
He read.
They planned.
He moved first.
And Delhi — blind and loyal — kept licking British boots, unaware one of its own now held the pen and the post.