The hospital sent three reminders before they stopped being polite.
After that, they just cut the supply.
Bharat stared at his phone—screen glowing like a small accusation in the alley's dim light. OXYGEN DELIVERY SUSPENDED — OUTSTANDING BALANCE. Below it, a line that made his stomach drop: Next dispensation review in thirty days.
Thirty days.
His mother didn't have thirty days. Her lungs wouldn't wait for bureaucracy to remember she was human.
He stood under a streetlamp that buzzed like a dying prayer, thumb hovering over the call button. Calling meant begging. Begging meant being recorded—voice filed away in some database where desperation became evidence of poor planning. Where needing help proved you didn't deserve it.
He didn't call.
The city didn't care if you drowned.
It just asked you to do it quietly.
Around him, the evening market was winding down—vendors packing stalls, the smell of fried bread and burnt sugar hanging in the air like a memory of something better. This part of Mumbai changed its face block by block. Upper Ward had marble fountains where even the air felt expensive. Mid Ward had clinics with soft-voiced kiosks, places that turned dying into a service plan.
And down here? Down here in the narrow alleys where the lights flickered and the walls leaned in too close, warmth was real.
And dangerous.
That's when the first man stepped out.
Then another.
Then the alley itself seemed to narrow.
Bharat stopped. Not because he wanted to—because the geometry left him nowhere else to go. Shadows leaning in, walls deciding they had no obligation to make room.
He didn't ask what they wanted. Debts were a language with one meaning, and these men spoke it fluently.
The first one smiled. Thick neck, cologne that smelled like cheap sanctity, eyes that had practiced this look in a mirror until it felt holy.
"Bharat Rao."
He pronounced it carefully. Savored the vowels like they were collateral he'd already collected.
"Your mother's account is… delicate."
The man behind Bharat cracked his knuckles with the rhythm of a hymn—purposeful, practiced, like violence could be devotional if you followed the right procedures.
"The machines don't like interruptions."
Bharat's mind flashed to his mother's breath hitching in the night, nurses switching to that bureaucratic pity that meant they'd already written you off.
"I can pay," Bharat said.
The lie came out smooth because truth had never saved anyone. His pockets held coins, not miracles.
The thick-necked man pulled out a printed notice—some Upper Ward emblem faintly embossed, as if authority had blessed this harassment with a signature.
"We're not unreasonable. Sign here. Acknowledgment of delay. Consent to interest adjustment."
Consent.
That trap word in the city—the one that meant you'd chosen your cage, locked it yourself, handed over the key with gratitude.
Bharat didn't take the paper.
The man's smile thinned.
"Or we notify the hospital you've refused cooperation. They can reassess her priority. Very humane. Very procedural."
Something in Bharat's chest buckled—anger and helplessness and a shame that tasted like metal. He'd fought worse things than fists. But paperwork? Paperwork was holy in this city. It had the power to erase you with a stamp.
He tried to back up.
Found the alley behind him now occupied.
Two more men. Faces blank as sleepwalkers. One held a small handbell—the kind used in clinics to "center anxious patients." He didn't ring it. Just turned it in his palm, slow and hypnotic, like reminding Bharat that panic could be administered.
"Don't make a scene. Scenes attract patrol."
Bharat imagined the patrol's soft hands. Their soothing directives. Their need to classify your suffering into approved categories so it could be filed under Resolved and forgotten.
The alley smelled of oil and damp stone and something faintly sweet—disinfectant mixed with cheap incense, like they'd tried to bless the violence in advance.
Then a voice drifted in from the mouth of the alley.
Not loud. Not timid.
Just… placed, like a candle set down in the dark.
"You're crowding him."
The men didn't turn at first. In alleys like this, people learned to pretend they hadn't heard—survival through selective deafness.
The voice repeated.
"Step back."
This time, the thick-necked man glanced over his shoulder.
A figure stood at the entrance—half in lamplight, half in shadow. Tall. Wrapped in a long coat that looked expensive but worn, like someone who'd stopped caring about appearances but hadn't forgotten how to wear power.
The face was hidden.
But the voice—calm, almost bored—carried weight.
The kind that came from being obeyed without question.
"This is an account matter," the thick-necked man said, but his smile had cracked at the edges.
The figure stepped forward.
"Accounts close when I say they do."
The man with the handbell finally rang it—a single, clear note that cut through the alley like a scalpel.
Bharat's heart skipped.
For a split second, everything felt synchronized: his breath, their blinking, the drip of water from a rusted pipe overhead.
The city leaned in, watching.
Then the figure in the coat pulled something from their pocket.
A card. Plain. Heavy stock. Gold edges that caught the light like a promise and a threat.
"Give this to him. Then leave."
The thick-necked man took the card. Looked at it.
His face went slack.
He nodded once.
"Apologies. We… we didn't know."
He gestured to the others. They melted back into shadow with practiced restraint, like actors who knew when their scene was over.
The thick-necked man paused at the alley mouth, looked back at Bharat.
"This isn't over. Your mother is still breathing on our credit."
Then he was gone.
Bharat stood there, pulse hammering, the smell of incense still clinging to the air like a bad memory.
The figure in the coat walked closer.
Stopped just outside arm's reach.
Up close, Bharat could see the face now—androgynous, sharp, with eyes that looked like they'd been calculating odds since birth. The coat was embroidered with symbols he didn't recognize. Temple script, maybe. Or something older.
"You're Bharat Rao."
Not a question.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who can solve your problem."
The figure held out the card again. This time, Bharat took it.
The paper was heavier than it should be, edges trimmed with a pattern that looked like temple fretwork and corporate branding married into one obscene luxury. On the front: an emblem. An ancient shrine silhouette crowned by a modern seal—old god, new money, both claiming the same territory.
Beneath it, in elegant script:
You are cordially invited to the Nuptial Rite of the Old Temple.
Below that, a date.
Tonight.
And at the bottom, a line that made Bharat's stomach drop:
"One night. One vow. A life remade."
He flipped the card over.
The back was blank except for one sentence, small and neat, written as if it were a blessing:
THE GROOM MAY STAND IN FOR DEATH.
Bharat looked up sharply.
"What is this?"
The figure smiled. It didn't reach their eyes.
"An opportunity. You attend the rite. You marry the bride. You walk away with enough to pay every debt your mother will ever have."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then your mother's oxygen gets cut tomorrow morning. Permanently."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Bharat's hands shook.
Not from fear.
From the sheer weight of knowing he was already caught.
"Why me?"
The figure tilted their head, considering.
"Because you're desperate. And desperation makes people… pliable."
They turned to leave, coat sweeping the ground like a curtain closing.
"Nine PM. The Old Temple, Lower Ward. Don't be late."
"And if I don't show?"
The figure paused.
"Then you'll spend the rest of your short life wondering what you could have saved."
They disappeared into the crowd.
Bharat stood there, the card burning in his hand like a small accusation.
He read the line again.
The groom may stand in for death.
He should have torn it up. Should have walked away. Should have called someone—anyone—who might tell him this was a trap.
But he didn't.
Because somewhere in a hospital bed across the city, his mother was breathing on borrowed time.
And Bharat had just been handed the bill.
His phone buzzed.
One message. Unknown number.
"Sign the card. Bring it with you."
"The bride is waiting."
Bharat stared at the blank space on the back of the card where a signature was supposed to go.
His hand moved before his brain could stop it.
He pulled out a pen. Pressed it to paper.
The ink bit instantly, sinking into the card as if the paper drank names the way the city drank lives.
He wrote: BHARAT RAO.
For a breath, nothing happened.
Then—
The air shifted.
Not wind. Not sound. Just a pressure, like the city's pulse had skipped a beat and dragged him down with it.
The card grew warm in his hand.
The emblem on the front—the shrine, the seal—seemed to move, just slightly, like something breathing beneath the surface.
Bharat's vision blurred at the edges.
He heard it then.
Faint. Distant.
A sound like bells ringing underwater.
And somewhere, in a place he couldn't see—
Someone laughed.