Money didn't move in daylight.
Not in Delhi.
Not for the real things.
While merchants haggled in Chandni Chowk and factory owners tracked British tariffs, the city's second market hummed under the surface — a quiet network of smugglers, hoarders, and port whisperers who moved opium, salt, cloth, silver, timber, and stolen rail stock.
No license.
No books.
No tax.
Just hands. Words. Secrets.
And trust — the kind paid in silence, not paper.
Vikram needed that trust.
He didn't want to destroy the black market.
He wanted to own it.
The first name came from a butcher near Ballimaran.
A routine handshake. A favor for a free cut of meat. The man's memory was dull, but one thing stood out — a hidden ledger with ten names scrawled across it. Not prices. Not deliveries.
Just initials, amounts, and one word repeated: "Neta."
Leader.
Code for the bagman behind several northern smuggling lanes.
No address.
But one location — Shalimar Garden, at dusk.
Vikram sent Leelu and Sattu with two boys.
No approach. No confrontation.
Just observe.
Three men came and went from the garden shed that evening.
One wore a Parsi-style cap. One had Punjabi tattoos hidden under his collar. The third limped and wore thick, dark glasses.
Sattu brushed against the tattooed one in a crowded alley the next morning.
Three seconds.
Thread formed.
Memory opened.
Bingo.
The man's name was Abdul Khalid, known in circles as "K." He handled illicit imports from Karachi. Opium. Fabrics. Ink. Tools. He didn't deal with street-level brokers — only regional nodes.
Vikram had no intention of being a node.
He wanted to replace the board.
The next step was subtle.
He had Leelu "accidentally" approach Abdul's supply runner — a brash teen with a sharp tongue and an opium addiction.
The boy was gifted a false tip: British police were planning a raid on a warehouse Khalid used near Sadar Bazaar.
The runner panicked.
Told Khalid.
Khalid shifted the entire cargo that night — straight into a trap Vikram had prepared.
Not to seize it.
To save it.
Vikram's boys intercepted the shipment first. Moved it to a locked storage unit under one of their press buildings. Repackaged it. Protected it.
Two nights later, Vikram returned it — untouched.
No cost. No question.
Just a note:
"We don't want your goods. We want your trust."
Signed: V.P.
Khalid didn't respond.
But two weeks later, a parcel arrived wrapped in cloth. Inside: ₹3,000 in silver bars and a scribbled line.
"You're smarter than the rest. Let's talk."
The meeting was quiet.
A guesthouse in Old Delhi. Two men. One lantern. No guards.
Khalid didn't waste time.
"You're not police. Not British. Not a gang."
"No."
"Then what are you?"
Vikram smiled faintly.
"I'm just tired of watching my people get robbed by two kinds of thieves — one in a red coat and one pretending to resist him."
Khalid stared.
"Talk clever all you want. Why me?"
"Because you move more in a week than most traders do in a month."
"And?"
"I don't want your shipments. I want your routes."
Khalid's silence was heavy.
Vikram leaned in.
"I can guarantee three things. First, your cargo won't be touched. Second, your men will never be arrested. Third, for every five rupees you earn, you'll send me one — and I'll make sure the British never learn how you earned the rest."
That deal became the first of twenty.
Each struck over months.
Each arranged through subtle moves.
Each built through Magicnet.
Because Vikram didn't stop at Khalid.
He connected to:
A grain hoarder near Ajmeri Gate with links to illegal ration resellers
A salt runner operating from the Ghaziabad canals
A bootlegger supplying cheap liquor to British officers under a fake Christian license
A warehouse head at the Delhi railway yard who "lost" shipments officially and resold them privately
A customs clerk who flagged "missing records" for packages that had never entered any book
Every one of them, touched and connected.
And Vikram didn't destroy their operations.
He streamlined them.
Gave them back-end synchronization via the Magicnet.
They didn't even know what was happening.
But their shipments faced fewer delays.
Their returns improved.
Their risks lowered.
And in return?
1 out of every 4 rupees flowed to Vikram's growing underground treasury.
The funds didn't sit idle.
He used them to:
Build a secondary printing press — underground, unregistered, guarded by two trusted Magicnet-connected families
Fund weapon shipments from Rajasthan, routed through fake textile crates
Buy out two corrupt British guards who now reported directly to Sattu
Establish a quiet supply network for sugar and salt factories, bypassing taxed routes entirely
Offer silent scholarships to young Hindu boys entering schools still dominated by British-friendly principals
Every rupee had a purpose.
Every note passed hand to hand — never written, never counted.
But Vikram knew the totals exactly.
Because the memory of every coin sat inside the heads of his collectors — men too scared to lie, too dazed to question why they remembered every detail so clearly.
Magicnet ensured it.
At night, the network looked like glowing veins in a vast dark lung.
Money didn't just move.
It flowed.
And Vikram wasn't swimming in it.
He channeled it — into factories, weapons, education, bribes, paper, and future fire.
No one in Delhi knew.
Not even the Mahasabha.
Not even Abhinav Bharat.
They saw pamphlets. Influence. Growth.
But not the engine behind it.
Not the shadow market now humming under Vikramaditya's command.