The smell hit him first. Not the rot of the river or the copper taste of fear.
Sandalwood. Burning wire.
Varanasi. Three years ago.
The lab didn't belong in the temple. It felt like a violation—glass partition walls drilled straight into ancient sandstone, black cables choking the stone necks of dancing gods. A low hum vibrated in the roots of Aryan's teeth. Outside, the Ganges was a dark, churning bruise. Inside, the air tasted like a battery terminal.
"It's not a metaphor, Aryan."
Dr. Vikram was bent over the containment unit. His coat was a map of old coffee and grease, fluttering as the cooling fans kicked into overdrive.
"When Shiva rewrote the world," Vikram said, his voice tight, stripped of all fatherly warmth, "he didn't wave a hand. … He changed the frequency of matter."
Aryan's fingers went white on the console edge. A red light washed over his knuckles.
"Core is destabilizing," Aryan said. The words felt foreign in his mouth. "Papa, kill the power. The field is collapsing."
"Curse and Blessing." Vikram wasn't listening. His hand hovered over the switch. He wasn't shaking with fear. He was shaking with a terrifying, manic joy. "To survive the impossible, the body has to become impossible."
He pulled the lever.
The room didn't get hot. It just screamed.
No sound. Just a sudden, violent vacuum. The air, the noise, the gravity—ripped away.
The shockwave threw Aryan back. His spine hit granite. Something cracked. He slid down, gasping for air that wasn't there, watching the ceiling dissolve into a rain of fire.
Through the white haze, his father was on his knees. He didn't run. He looked right through the curtain of plasma.
Papa.
Aryan tried to move. His legs were dead. Heavy, useless meat.
The fire moved fast. It stripped Vikram down, peeling him away untill there was nothing left but light.
Then the particles turned.
They didn't burn. They swarmed. A golden dust, hunting for a container. They punched through Aryan's pores, flooded his blood, tore into the marrow.
Subject requires thermal resistance.
The voice in his head wasn't human. It was math. Cold, hard calculus.
His skin boiled. Then it stopped. It knit back together, grey and hard. His crushed shins snapped, fusing into something that wasn't bone anymore. He reached a hand out to where his father had been.
The fire washed over him.
It felt cold.
"Wake up."
The sandalwood was gone. The air was brine and piss.
Aryan gasped, eyes snapping open.
He was hanging. Fifty feet down, wrists in iron cuffs, toes barely scraping the slick concrete. Condensation dripped down the walls.
The door groaned. Razaq.
He was a massive, sweating slab of a man who smelled like diesel. Behind him, three goons and a man in a white suit who looked like he didn't want to touch anything. The Buyer.
"This is him?" The Buyer pinched his nose.
"Miracle of Varanasi," Razaq said. He grinned, yellow teeth flashing. "Fished him out of the Ganges. Shoot him, skin spits the bullet. Drown him, he stops breathing. Burn him…"
Razaq grabbed an iron rod from a brazier. The tip was white-hot.
"Watch."
Aryan didn't have the spit left to beg. He just hung there, a side of beef.
Razaq jammed the iron into Aryan's ribs.
Hiss.
The smell of cooking pork filled the damp room. Aryan clamped his jaw shut, the scream vibrating in his throat, trapped behind his teeth.
Then, the shift.
It wasn't magic. It was panic. His cells screaming, reorganizing. The skin around the burn rippled, turning the flat grey of a battleship. It didn't just heal; it armored up. A callous erupted, shoving the iron away with a metallic clink.
Razaq pulled back, laughing. "See? Nature's perfect soldier. He resets."
"Does he break?" the Buyer asked. Clinical. Bored.
"Everything breaks," Razaq spat. "Get the voltage."
A guard stepped up with a cattle prod. Blue sparks snapped in the gloom.
Aryan closed his eyes. He tried to find the silence in the temple. The cold fire.
Up in the dark, in the vent shaft, a shadow moved.
The Masked Man checked his watch. 23:14.
Pulse: forty-five. Flat.
He pulled a small sphere from his belt and let it roll. It tumbled out of the vent, falling through the dark, and hit the floor of the kill room.
No boom. Just a high-pitched whine that human ears couldn't hear.
Click.
The fuse box sparked and died. The hydraulic locks on the blast doors hissed open.
"What—" Razaq spun around. "Who opened the breach?"
Guards swung rifles toward the door.
The Masked Man didn't use the door. He dropped from the ceiling.
He hit the floor behind the Buyer. Before his boots settled, the pistol was up.
Thud. Thud.
Two suppressed shots. The nearest guard dropped like a puppet with cut strings. The Buyer folded, clutching a shattered shoulder, white suit turning red.
"Behind us!" Razaq roared.
Too late. The Masked Man was moving. Not fast, just efficient. As the second guard sprayed the wall with AK fire, the Masked Man stepped inside the arc.
One shot to the wrist. One to the knee.
He pivoted, shoving the falling guard into Razaq. The giant stumbled, boots slipping on the wet floor.
The Masked Man holstered the gun. Typed three keys on the chain control console.
Clank.
Gravity took Aryan back. He hit the floor hard, knees buckling, air rushing into his lungs. He was grey, mottled, eyes wild with adrenaline. He saw the figure in black.
Instinct flared. Survive.
Aryan roared. His muscles swelled, gorge rising, turning rock-hard. He swung—a wild, desperate haymaker that could have cracked a engine block.
The Masked Man didn't block. You don't block a freight train.
He stepped in. Hooked a foot behind Aryan's ankle. Palm to the chest.
A gentle push.
Physics did the rest.
Aryan tripped over his own momentum and slammed face-first into the metal console. CLANG.
"Stay down," the Masked Man said. Voice like a dial tone. "I'm not the enemy. But I will put you down if you screw up the timeline."
Footsteps from the south door. Slow. Dragging.
Silas walked in. Coffee cup in one hand, phone in the other. He stepped over the twitching guard without looking down.
"Binary coordinates?" Silas asked, voice scratching like sandpaper. "Dramatic. I almost went to a Pizza Hut in Lahore."
Razaq, blood in his eyes, scrambled for his gun. "Kill them!"
He raised the weapon at Silas.
Silas didn't look up from his screen. "Down."
The shadows under Razaq didn't just get darker. They got thick. Like tar, they whipped up, wrapping around Razaq's wrist.
Snap.
The bone gave way. The gun skittered across the floor. Razaq opened his mouth to scream, but the dark surged up, filling his throat, dragging him into the corner. The darkness ate him.
Silence.
Silas looked up. His eyes were fractured glass. He looked at Aryan.
"Well," Silas murmured. "Not an artifact. A battery."
Aryan pushed himself up. The grey armor faded, leaving bruised brown skin. He looked at the soldier who moved like a machine, and the man in the coat who commanded the dark.
"Who are you?" Aryan rasped, wiping blood from his lip.
"Logistics," the Masked Man said. He checked his magazine. "We're leaving. Local cops in six minutes. Vent is blown. We take the cargo lift."
"He's heavy," Silas said, nodding at the boy. "And volatile."
"He won't need holding," the Masked Man said. He turned to Aryan. "Two choices. Stay here, become a weapon for butchers. Or walk with us, and learn to drive the car."
Aryan hesitated. … The blood on the floor. The open door. The phantom heat of Varanasi prickling his neck.
"Why?" Aryan asked. "Why help me?"
"Because," the Masked Man said, already walking toward the elevator, "chaos is inefficient. And you are pure chaos."
Silas chuckled. He patted Aryan's shoulder. It felt like ice water. "That means he likes you, kid. Come on."
They stepped into the freight elevator. The Masked Man hit the button. He stood dead center, watching the doors close.
"Silas."
"Yeah?"
"You're on the pressure plate. Three inches left. Counterweight is rusted."
Silas sighed, shuffling his feet. "You're no fun at parties."
The elevator groaned, a metal beast waking up, and started the long climb into the night.