The room above the fabric shop, one week later.
The Polaroid was now pinned to their map over Bhulpur, a "RESOLVED" sticker across it. The grey-market artifacts were stored in a shielded lockbox. They had money now, siphoned from the accounts of a few "collectors" Palvi had identified under Kiran's gentle, empathetic pressure.
They were building. A secure server, routed through a dozen anonymizing layers. A list of potential contacts—a disillusioned former I.O. data clerk, a retired army major who'd seen something he couldn't explain in Siachen, a folklorist with too-accurate stories.
Dan was coding a basic threat-assessment algorithm when the air in the room changed.
It wasn't the psychic shift of the supernatural. It was the professional, cold sweat sensation of a perfectly executed tactical breach.
The power didn't cut. The door didn't explode. The single, hanging bulb simply flickered, and when the light steadied, there were three people in the room with them.
Two were operators—a man and a woman—flanking the door. They wore civilian clothes, but their posture screamed I.O. Their eyes were sharp, clear, and held no trace of the Custodian's hollowing. These were the real thing, the uncompromised core.
The third person stood between them. He was in his fifties, with close-cropped grey hair and a face that looked like it had been worn smooth by years of impossible decisions. He wore a simple, expensive waistcoat over a kurta.
"Officer Dan Singh," the man said, his voice a dry, calm baritone. "And the vessel, Kiran. My name is Rajat Malhotra. Director, Internal Review and Continuity, Intelligence Organization."
Dan was on his feet, his body coiled between Kiran and the newcomers. He had no weapon that could match theirs. His only advantage was that they were talking, not shooting.
"Continuity," Dan echoed. "You're here to tie up loose ends."
"To assess them," Malhotra corrected. His gaze swept the room—the map, the server, the lockbox. "Commander Vyas's final action, her self-termination code, triggered a Category-A cleansing protocol. It also sent a final, buried data-packet. Her last report. It detailed the Custodian's breach, her compromise, and your… unique role in its neutralization. It also contained a recommendation. For you."
Dan said nothing. Kiran stood slowly, her psychic senses reaching out. She felt no immediate malice from Malhotra, only a profound, weary calculation. From the operators, she felt focused readiness, but not hunger.
"The I.O. is wounded," Malhotra continued. "A significant branch was severed at Site Gurdwara. We are purging, rebuilding. Vyas believed the old model—containment at all costs, absolute secrecy—is flawed. It creates blind spots where things like the Custodian can grow. She believed a new approach was needed. A decentralized one. She called it the 'Archivist Protocol.'"
Dan's heart hammered against his ribs. He looked at Kiran, saw the same stunned comprehension in her eyes.
"You've been busy," Malhotra said, gesturing to their map. "Bhulpur. A neat, if unorthodox, resolution. No collateral damage. A restored community. That is… not standard procedure. It is, however, precisely the kind of result the hypothetical Archivist Protocol was meant to achieve."
"So what?" Dan said, his voice tight. "You're here to recruit us back? After you quarantined me? After you hunted us?"
"We were containing a perceived psychic contagion," Malhotra said bluntly. "It was the correct protocol. You proved it was the wrong tool for the problem. Now we are adapting. I am not here to recruit you into the old I.O. The I.O., as you knew it, is being… retired."
He took a step forward, ignoring Dan's defensive shift. "We are forming a new branch. Covert, off-the-books, with autonomous cells. Its mandate: to identify, analyze, and resolve anomalous threats using unorthodox methods, with an emphasis on minimal psychic fallout and community preservation. To learn from assets who have… gone native." He looked pointedly at Dan and Kiran. "Vyas nominated you to lead its first independent cell."
The offer hung in the air, colossal and terrifying. It wasn't absolution. It was a weaponization of their exile.
"Why would we trust you?" Kiran asked, her voice clear and cold.
"You shouldn't," Malhotra said. "Trust the structure. The new branch has no central headquarters. You report to me, and only me, through encrypted dead-drops. Your funding is deniable. Your mandate is the one you've already written for yourselves." He nodded at their map. "You continue your work. You just do it with the backing of what remains of the largest repository of paranormal intelligence on the subcontinent. And, occasionally, you share your findings. So we can all learn."
He placed a slim, encrypted tablet on the table. "This contains a non-traceable line to me, initial funding, and your first official brief—a series of 'Grey Market' acquisitions that have our old, compromised division very interested. We believe another architect is building something. Something that uses joy instead of pain."
He turned to leave. The operators fell in behind him. At the door, he paused. "You are not soldiers of the old war anymore. Vyas saw that. You are something new. The I.O. remembers its mistakes. Now it wants to remember a new way. The choice, of course, is yours."
Then they were gone, as silently as they had arrived.
Dan and Kiran stood in the sudden quiet of their room. The map on the wall seemed bigger now, the stakes higher. The fantasy of being rogue operators was over. They had been offered a place in a new, shadowy drama.
Kiran walked to the tablet. She didn't open it. She looked at Dan. "It's a cage. A gilded one."
"It's also a toolkit," Dan said, the analyst weighing the variables. "And a shield. And intel we could never get on our own."
"Do we believe him? About Vyas's recommendation?"
Dan thought of Vyas's human eye, blazing with trapped will, in that final second on the roof. He thought of the plea in it. "Yes. I do."
He picked up the tablet. It was light, but its weight was immense. It was recognition. It was a return, not to the old life, but to a purpose larger than their two rooms.
"We keep our own archive," Kiran said, a condition. "Our own rules. We take their resources, but we solve the problems our way. The Bhulpur way."
"Agreed," Dan said.
He powered on the tablet. The screen glowed, requesting a biometric signature. He placed his thumb on the sensor.
WELCOME, CELL ALPHA. ARCHIVIST PROTOCOL ACTIVE.
The screen filled with data. The first brief. Images of laughing children whose laughter caused plants to wither. A carnival that never ended, its attendees slowly dying of exhaustion and bliss.
A new case. A new kind of horror. A new architecture to dismantle.
Dan Singh, 21, former officer, former fugitive, looked at Kiran and saw his partner. They were no longer just survivors. They were the first archivists of a forgotten world, now with a license, however dubious, to remember it back to health.
The action would continue. The romance was in the partnership. The fantasy was the work itself. And the supernatural was waiting, in a file full of smiling, deadly faces.