The days bled into one another, a monochrome cycle of exhaustion and pain. Harsh's body, once accustomed to the precise movements of soldering and the tense strategizing of deals, was now a canvas of bruises, cuts, and pulled muscles. He slept the dead sleep of the utterly spent, his dreams filled with the groan of cranes and the smell of diesel. He was fading, becoming just another nameless, faceless body in the empire's machine.
The ember of spite still glowed, but it was fainter now, buried under layers of bone-deep fatigue. His small acts of sabotage felt meaningless, drops of water against a mountain of steel and power.
The breaking point came not from the work, but from the silence. He had heard nothing of Deepak or Sanjay. Were they safe? Had they been punished for his sins? The not-knowing was a constant, gnawing anxiety. He was isolated, cut off from every thread of his old life.
He fell ill. A dockyard fever, the other loaders called it—a vicious cocktail of exhaustion, filth, and damp that settled in the lungs. One morning, he couldn't get up. His body burned, his chest rattled with a wet, hacking cough. He lay on the thin mattress, shivering in the damp chill of the chawl room.
The foreman marked him absent. No one came to check. He was a unit of labor, and today, the unit was malfunctioning. He was alone.
On the third day, drifting in and out of a feverish haze, he heard a soft knock on his door. It was so unexpected he thought it was a hallucination. The door creaked open.
A man stood there, silhouetted against the grimy light of the hallway. He was not the ghost. He was older, dressed in a simple but clean shirt and trousers, carrying a small, worn medical bag.
"Patel?" the man asked, his voice quiet and steady.
Harsh tried to speak, but it came out as a rasp. He nodded.
The man stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He didn't flinch at the squalor. He set his bag down, took out a stethoscope, and listened to Harsh's chest with a professional calm.
"You have a severe bronchial infection," the man said. "You need antibiotics. Rest. And better nutrition than you are getting." He prepared an injection with efficient movements.
"Who... are you?" Harsh managed to croak.
"My name is Dr. Desai," the man said, administering the shot with a practiced hand. "I look after the men here. When one of my patients doesn't show up for three days, I investigate."
He was the dockyard doctor. A kind man in a cruel world.
"Why?" Harsh asked, the question encompassing everything—the care, the visit, the existence of kindness in this place.
Dr. Desai gave a small, sad smile. "Because someone must. The company provides a clinic, but it is underfunded, and the doctor there is... less than motivated. I volunteer." He handed Harsh a strip of antibiotic pills. "Take these. Twice a day. And try to eat something."
He packed his bag to leave, then paused at the door. He looked back at Harsh, his expression unreadable.
"I knew your father," he said quietly. "Ramnik Patel. A good man. An honest clerk. He would be... surprised to see you here."
The words hit Harsh harder than any blow from a foreman. The shame was a physical weight, crushing him into the thin mattress.
Dr. Desai seemed to sense it. "This place breaks many men. But it does not have to break you. Your mind is your own. Even here." He tapped his own temple. "Remember that."
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
Harsh lay in the silence, the doctor's words echoing in his feverish mind. Your mind is your own. Even here.
The antibiotics fought the infection in his body, but the doctor's visit fought something else. It fought the despair. Someone had seen him. Not as a unit of labor, not as a failed lieutenant, but as a human being. And that someone had connected him to the memory of his father, to a world before the empire, a world of honesty and simple dignity.
The next day, weak but clear-headed, he forced himself to eat a piece of bread. He took the pills. He started to think again, not with the grand ambition of before, but with the desperate, focused clarity of a trapped animal.
He had to get a message out. He had to know if Deepak and Sanjay were safe. And he needed information. What was Swami's "new project"? What were those precision parts for?
He thought of the only connection he had left: Prakash Rao. The scrap dealer had eyes and ears everywhere, and he was outside of Swami's direct notice, too small to be a threat.
Getting to him was the problem. He was a prisoner on the docks. His movements were watched.
He waited for his next day off—a single, precious Sunday. He left the chawl and didn't head toward the city. He walked in the opposite direction, toward the sprawling slums that bordered the industrial area. He moved through a warren of makeshift huts and open sewers, a place of even deeper poverty than his chawl, a place where ghosts like him could get lost.
He found a street urchin, a sharp-eyed boy of about ten, playing with a ragged kite.
"Five rupees," Harsh said, holding up the coin—a significant sum for the boy. "Take a message to a man in Bhuleshwar. His name is Prakash Rao. The scrap dealer. Tell him the sailor from the old port needs to know about the weather. And he needs to know if the two young fishermen are still sailing. Can you remember that?"
The boy snatched the coin, nodding eagerly. "The sailor. Prakash Rao. Weather. Two fishermen. Easy."
"Tell no one else," Harsh said, his voice grave. "This is a secret game."
The boy grinned, thrilled by the intrigue, and dashed off.
Harsh returned to the chawl, his heart pounding. It was a risk. A huge one. But it was a action. A move on the board.
Two days later, the boy found him as he trudged back from the docks. The boy didn't speak. He just slipped a small, folded piece of paper into Harsh's hand and ran away.
In the privacy of his room, Harsh unfolded it. The writing was Rao's, cramped and hurried.
Weather is stormy. Big investment in new shipbuilding. The two fishermen are safe, working on a new boat far from the old waters. They ask about the sailor. The sailor must be careful. The ocean has many eyes.
The relief was so profound his knees buckled. Deepak and Sanjay were safe. They had been set up in some other venture, away from him. Swami had punished him, but he had not harmed them. It was a small mercy, but it felt immense.
And the other part: Big investment in new shipbuilding. The precision parts. It wasn't machinery. Swami was moving into shipbuilding? Or was it a metaphor? "Shipbuilding" could mean anything.
He burned the note, flushing the ashes down the communal toilet.
He had a purpose again. However small. He had a line to the outside world. And he had a mystery to solve.
He returned to the docks the next day, the pain in his body a little more distant. He wasn't just a loader anymore. He was a spy in the heart of the enemy's fortress.
The empire thought it had put him on the bleeding edge of oblivion. They didn't realize that from the edge, you could see everything.
(Chapter End)