Half an hour passed before she noticed someone at the edge of her vision. Shivam.
He didn't sit, just leaned against the shelf beside her table. "Geology now? Didn't take you for the rock-collecting type."
"Everyone needs a hobby," she replied, eyes still on the page.
"You've been at this since the briefing," he said. "Looking for something?"
She closed the book halfway, meeting his gaze. "Just… patterns. Trying to understand why my head feels like it's been plugged into a power socket since yesterday."
His expression shifted. "You're still dizzy?"
"Sometimes. And the dreams are getting… stranger." She hesitated before adding, "They don't feel like dreams."
For a moment, his guarded look faltered. "Maybe don't overthink it," he said.
That made her laugh, short and quiet. "Funny. Coming from you."
He smirked faintly but didn't answer. For a few seconds, they just looked at each other, neither ready to push further, both knowing the other was holding something back.
Finally, he stepped away from the shelf. "Just… don't get lost in this stuff. Library books won't tell you what's real."
She watched him leave, the swing of the library door cutting off the hallway noise again. Her fingers tapped absently against the open page before she turned back to it.
The diagrams waited, quiet and factual, but she couldn't stop thinking about the way the air had hummed in that forest, and how, for the briefest second, she'd felt like she was standing between two worlds.
Shivam didn't see Bhumika again that afternoon. He lingered in the courtyard after his own lecture ended, waiting for lecture in class to finish, when a pair of voices drifted over from behind the science block.
"…Phase Beta has been pushed back," one of them was saying , male, low voice, deliberate.
"Because of the Ridge incident?" a woman replied, clipped, almost irritated.
"No. Because SynerTech's readings were off. They don't want to risk another spike like that. Kairav was clear."
Shivam froze mid-step, his eyes narrowing. They weren't speaking loudly, but the words carried just enough for him to catch fragments. He shifted behind a column, pretending to check his phone.
"Look," the man said again, "we just make sure our part stays clean. If someone starts asking,"
A door slammed somewhere in the corridor. Both voices stopped. A moment later, one of the professors, Dr. Mehta from physics, stepped out, scanning the area. Her gaze skimmed over the courtyard, then landed on him.
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
Then Shivam forced a casual nod, like he'd just been passing through. "Ma'am," he said politely, slipping his phone into his pocket.
She didn't nod back. Just turned and walked the other way.
By the time it's time to leave, his thoughts had already shifted. This wasn't just an NGO stunt gone wrong. The university knew something. And SynerTech wasn't just a random sponsor.
Night fell cold and quiet. Shivam's desk lamp was the only light in his room, throwing shadows against the wall. He'd eaten dinner with the family, exchanged the usual small talk, but the moment he could, he shut the door and pulled his notebook closer.
The van plate sketch sat in the corner of a page, beside hastily written details: Drone scan → blue shimmer in veins. Missing: S. Bhardwaj, K. Malik, two others. SynerTech. NGO fit but not NGO.
He started typing on his laptop, opening one tab after another.
SynerTech Industries – official site all corporate gloss: renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, "social impact" projects.
News search – a different picture: billion-rupee defense contracts, pilot programs for "non-lethal crowd control systems," a new patent for something called Resonance Field Manipulation. The articles were scattered, couched in PR language, but a pattern emerged if you read between the lines, this company was everywhere.
He thought about the Ridge. About that hum in the air, and how it had felt like standing on the edge of a moving train.
And then, unbidden, the Metro memory returned, the one he couldn't explain to anyone. The day they'd stepped off the train and into… somewhere else. And when they came back? The world hadn't changed. The same date on the calendar. Same headlines. The people who should have been dead were alive, walking home like nothing had happened.
He still remembered the station staff giving him a confused look when he asked about the "incident." "What incident?"
The same unreality clung to the Ridge trip. Officially, it was nothing. But the gaps were piling up.
His phone buzzed on the desk, a group chat notification. Naina:Are you ok? A few laughing emojis on memes from Aman and Dikshant followed.
He typed back quickly: Need your skills for something. Possible job. I'll explain later. Then switched to a private message to Naina. Serious stuff. Not on calls. Meet soon.
She replied after a pause: You're still behind that Ridge accident. Fine. But don't drag me into a mess without proof.
Shivam closed the chat and went back to his notes. The facts he had were thin, but they were enough to make him certain this wasn't just a coincidence.
He had just opened another article on SynerTech's "humanitarian initiatives" when his inbox pinged. No sender name, no address he recognized. Just a subject line, stark against the white screen:
We saw you at the Ridge.
Shivam stared at it for a long second. His cursor hovered over the mousepad, the hum of his laptop fan suddenly loud in the still room.
He glanced at the door. His parents' voices drifted faintly from the living room. Dikshant was laughing at something on his phone in the next room.
He clicked the message.
Inside was a single line of text, no signature, no attachments:
You shouldn't be looking.