The hearing took place in Judge Halloway's chambers—a room of dark mahogany, leather-bound books, and the suffocating smell of old law. It wasn't a public trial. It was an evidentiary hearing, the firewall Asrit had erected to prevent the case from ever seeing a jury.
Pranav sat in the back row of heavy wooden chairs, handcuffed to the armrest. Beside him, Arpika sat perfectly still, her chin high, still clinging to the delusion that her "announcement" had been a victory.
Asrit stood at the center of the room. He wasn't pacing. He wasn't performing for a gallery. He was standing behind a table stacked with neat, color-coded files, reviewing a document with the disinterest of a man reading a menu.
Across the aisle, Assistant District Attorney Weiss looked tired. He was a young man with ambition, but he was currently flipping through his own files with growing frantic energy. Detective Miller sat next to him, sweating through his cheap shirt.
"Mr. Corvini," Judge Halloway said, peering over his spectacles. "You filed a motion to suppress... everything?"
"Not everything, Your Honor," Asrit said. His voice was quiet, respectful, and utterly devoid of warmth. "Only the evidence obtained illegally. Which, unfortunately for the Commonwealth, appears to be the entirety of their case."
Asrit picked up the first file. It was blue.
"Let's begin with the timeline of entry," Asrit said. He didn't look at the judge; he looked at Detective Miller. "Detective, your report states that you breached the penthouse at the Apex Towers at 9:14 PM, responding to an anonymous tip regarding a gas leak."
Miller shifted in his chair. "That's correct. Exigent circumstances. Potential public safety hazard."
"Safety," Asrit repeated, testing the word. He slid a piece of paper across the table toward the judge. "This is the digital log from the Apex Towers' electronic keycard system. It shows a service override code—issued to the NYPD—being used to access the penthouse elevator at 9:08 PM."
Weiss stood up. "Objection. The time difference is negligible. Six minutes is—"
"Six minutes," Asrit interrupted, his voice sharpening, "is the difference between a legal entry and a felony break-in. But that's not the issue. The issue is that the warrant for the search—which you applied for after realizing it wasn't a gas leak but a crime scene—was signed by Judge Lasky at 9:25 PM."
Asrit paused, letting the numbers hang in the air.
"You entered a private residence seventeen minutes before you had a warrant, based on a 'gas leak' that the building's own sensors didn't register. There was no gas, Detective. There was no exigency. There was just you, eager to see what was inside."
Miller's face reddened. "We smelled it! My officers smelled gas!"
"Did they?" Asrit picked up a second file. "Officer Griggs, in his deposition taken this morning, stated he smelled 'cleaning supplies.' Officer Bane stated he smelled 'nothing.' And the Fire Department, who arrived at 9:30, found zero parts per million of natural gas in the air."
Asrit closed the blue file.
"The entry was illegal. The warrant was retroactive. Anything found inside that apartment—the bodies, the glasses, the supposed chemical residues—is fruit of the poisonous tree. It is inadmissible."
Weiss looked at the judge. Halloway was rubbing his temples. The law was boring, technical, and absolute.
"Mr. Weiss," Halloway sighed. "If they entered before the warrant without a verifiable exigency..."
"We have witnesses!" Weiss blurted out, desperate to pivot. "We have the building superintendent, Mr. Henderson. He placed the defendant, Arpika, in the lobby. He identified her positively."
"Ah. Mr. Henderson," Asrit said. He picked up a red file.
He didn't open it. He just held it, tapping his index finger against the cover.
"Mr. Henderson is a reliable witness," Asrit agreed. "A pillar of the community. Though, I do wonder if his testimony will be impacted by the ongoing IRS investigation into his personal finances."
Weiss froze. "What investigation?"
"The one that starts tomorrow," Asrit said coldly. "Unless, of course, the District Attorney's office wants to explain why their star witness has been subletting three rent-controlled units in the building for cash—unreported income totaling forty thousand dollars a year. That's tax fraud, Mr. Weiss. Federal."
Asrit looked at the red file again, then tossed it onto the table. It slid across the polished wood, stopping inches from Weiss's hand.
"I imagine Mr. Henderson might be... confused about who he saw in the lobby, once he realizes that testifying exposes him to five years in federal prison. I can have the audit papers filed by lunch."
It wasn't a threat of violence. It was a threat of ruin. Asrit was showing them that he didn't need to break legs; he could break lives using the very system Weiss was trying to uphold.
Weiss looked at the file. He didn't touch it. He knew what was inside. He knew his witness was gone.
"This is extortion," Miller hissed, gripping the table.
"This is discovery," Asrit corrected. "I am simply vetting the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. Unless you'd prefer I put Mr. Henderson on the stand and ask him about the cash under oath?"
The room went silent. The heavy ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner sounded like a countdown.
Pranav watched, mesmerized and horrified. This was the "surgical fury" John had spoken of. Asrit wasn't arguing that Arpika was innocent. He hadn't once claimed she didn't kill five men. He was arguing that the state didn't have the right to prove it. He was dismantling the reality of the murder by attacking the paperwork of the investigation.
Asrit wasn't done. He picked up the final file. Green.
"And finally," Asrit said, his voice dropping to a bored monotone, "the toxicology."
"The residue found on the glasses," Weiss said, finding a shred of ground to stand on. "It's a proprietary compound. We traced the chemical markers to a supply chain that links back to—"
"To a generic industrial cleaning agent," Asrit finished for him.
He pulled out a spectroscopy report.
"The lab tech who ran the sample—Technician Davis—failed his last two proficiency tests. He has a history of cross-contaminating samples. More importantly, the chain of custody log shows a forty-minute gap between the collection of the glasses and their arrival at the lab van."
Asrit looked at Arpika, then back to the judge.
"Forty minutes, Your Honor. In an unsecured hallway. Surrounded by police officers, first responders, and building staff. Anyone could have tampered with those glasses. Anyone could have spiked them. The sample is compromised. The science is junk."
Asrit closed the green file and stacked it neatly on top of the others.
"You have no legal entry," Asrit summarized, ticking the points off on his fingers. "You have no credible witness. You have contaminated forensic evidence. You have a theory, Mr. Weiss. You have a story. But you do not have a case."
He looked at the judge.
"I move for an immediate dismissal of all charges with prejudice."
Judge Halloway looked at Weiss. The Assistant DA was pale. He looked at Miller, who was staring at the floor, defeated. They knew it. They knew that if this went to trial, Asrit would embarrass them. He would destroy the super, get the evidence thrown out, and make the NYPD look incompetent.
"Mr. Weiss?" the judge asked. "Do you have anything that sticks?"
Weiss swallowed hard. He closed his folder. "The Commonwealth... requests a recess to review the motion."
"Dismissed," Halloway said, banging his gavel. "Get this mess out of my chambers."
The transition from the courtroom to the corridor was jarring. One moment, they were in the heavy silence of the law; the next, they were standing in the sterile, fluorescent hallway of the courthouse.
The handcuffs were removed. Pranav rubbed his wrists, the skin raw and red. He felt lightheaded. He was free. Technically.
Asrit stepped out of the chambers, latching his briefcase. He didn't look triumphant. He looked exhausted and annoyed, like a janitor who had just finished scrubbing a particularly filthy toilet.
He stopped in front of the recruits.
Arpika stepped forward. She looked relieved, her confidence returning now that the threat of prison had evaporated.
"Thank you, Asrit," she said, smoothing her dress. She tried to catch his eye, tried to re-establish some level of peerage. "I knew the timeline was tight, but I didn't think they'd fumble the warrant that badly. Good work."
Asrit stopped. He turned slowly to look at her.
The air in the hallway dropped ten degrees.
"Good work?" Asrit repeated. The words were soft, but they hit Arpika like a slap.
He stepped closer, backing her against the wall. The passersby—lawyers, clerks, bailiffs—gave them a wide berth, sensing the radiation coming off the man in the charcoal suit.
"Do not mistake my competence for your vindication," Asrit hissed. "I did not win because you were smart. I won because they were lazy."
He looked at Pranav, then Gautham, then Sanvi.
"You think this is a victory? You think because you walked out of that room, you are free?"
Asrit tapped the briefcase with a long, manicured finger.
"This case didn't disappear. It cost. It cost favors I have been banking for three years. It cost the exposure of a federal leverage point I was saving for a RICO indictment. I just spent a million dollars' worth of influence to save five dollars' worth of labor."
He leaned in close to Arpika, his face inches from hers. She shrank back, the "executioner" persona crumbling under the weight of his bureaucratic fury.
"The truth didn't save you, Arpika. I did. And I did it by destroying the process. By proving that the law doesn't matter."
He straightened up, adjusting his cuffs.
"But in our world? The law is the only thing that keeps the animals in the cage. You just forced me to break the lock."
He turned and began to walk down the hallway, his footsteps echoing on the marble.
"The car is waiting," he threw back over his shoulder. "Asuma has updated the ledger. Your debt just doubled."
Pranav watched him go. He looked at Arpika. She was pale, staring at the briefcase in Asrit's hand as if it contained her soul.
"He's right," Pranav whispered, the realization settling over him like a shroud. "We didn't beat the system. We just became more expensive to keep."