Morning came to Lahore like a reluctant confession — pale, humid light slipping between curtains, traffic already murmuring awake, vendors shouting over the clatter of metal shutters rising. The city did not mourn what it did not yet understand.
Inside a modest two-story house tucked in a quiet neighborhood, laughter floated down the staircase — soft, bright, completely at odds with the brutality discovered only hours earlier.
Anaya sat cross-legged on the living room rug, a half-folded pile of laundry beside her and a tiny gray cat batting furiously at the edge of her dupatta. Sunlight caught in her hair, turning the dark strands warm at the edges. She laughed again — that light, bell-like sound that made people turn without meaning to.
"JD, she's cheating," she protested playfully. "She hides the ball under her paw."
Her younger brother snorted from the couch, not looking up from his phone. "She's a cat, not a criminal mastermind."
The cat launched itself at Anaya's hand. She gasped dramatically, falling backward onto the rug as if mortally wounded.
"Betrayed," she whispered, pressing the back of her wrist to her forehead. "In my own home."
From the kitchen, their mother called, half amused, half exasperated. "Stop teaching the animal bad manners and come eat."
Anaya sat up instantly, gathering the cat into her arms and kissing its tiny head. The scent of jasmine and cocoa butter lingered faintly around her — warm, sweet, familiar. The kind of scent that made rooms feel softer.
"See?" she murmured to the cat. "You've ruined my reputation."
If anyone had walked in at that moment, they would have seen only this:
A beautiful, slightly childish girl with dimples deep enough to look carved, eyes wide and luminous, movements quick and expressive.
On the television behind her, muted footage rolled — flashing lights, police tape, a crowd gathered outside shuttered shops.
JD glanced up. "Another murder," he said casually.
Anaya turned her head.
The sound came back on.
"…body discovered late last night in liberty. Authorities are withholding details but sources confirm the injuries were severe—"
Her smile faded.
Not theatrically. Not dramatically.
Just… gone.
"That's horrible," she said softly.
Her fingers tightened slightly in the cat's fur before she realized and loosened them immediately, smoothing the animal's back in apology.
"People are sick," JD muttered.
Anaya didn't respond. She kept watching the screen, eyes wide, lips parted as if trying to process something too large to hold.
Then she reached for the remote and lowered the volume.
"Let's not watch this while eating," she said gently. "It makes everything feel… heavy."
Her mother agreed at once.
The television went silent.
Outside, a motorcycle roared past. Somewhere, a vendor shouted about fresh naan. Life resumed its normal rhythm — indifferent, relentless.
Zarar
Zarar Hussain had not slept.
He stood in his apartment kitchen at 5:12 a.m., sleeves rolled up, staring at a printed photograph spread across his counter. The body. The hollow sockets. The lifted skin.
His coffee had gone cold.
He didn't drink it.
He redrew the outline of the incisions in his notebook — not because he needed to, but because something about them bothered him. The cuts weren't random. They weren't exploratory.
Case files lay spread across his desk like pieces of a puzzle that refused to assemble. Photographs. Preliminary reports. Forensic notes scribbled in margins.
They were structured.
Measured.
He flipped to another page and drew them again, this time connecting the arcs.
A shape emerged.
Not a symbol. Not exactly.
But symmetrical. Intentional.
His jaw flexed.
"This wasn't rage," he murmured to the quiet room.
"This was selection."
His phone buzzed.
Forensics.
He answered without greeting. "Yes."
"Hair analysis came back," the voice said. "The strand found at the scene — female. Natural silver. No dye. Healthy. Likely mid-twenties."
Zarar's fingers stilled on the paper.
"DNA?"
"Partial. No direct match in the database yet."
"Run private hospital staff," he said immediately. "Medical interns. Surgical residents. Anyone with recent complaints or disciplinary notes."
A pause. "You think it's a doctor?"
"I think whoever did this knew exactly how deep to cut without killing him too soon."
He ended the call.
Behind him, the kettle clicked uselessly on the stove.
He didn't notice.
At the precinct, Officer Tariq was already waiting.
His thick mustache twitched as he scanned through files. "Sir," he said carefully, "if this turns out to be a medical professional, I would just like to formally say I do not like hospitals anymore."
Zarar walked past him without slowing. "You didn't like them before."
"That was different. Before, they only stole my money. Now they might steal my eyes."
Zarar almost smiled.
Almost.
They stood before the evidence board.
Victim: Male. 29. Freelance IT consultant. No criminal record. No known enemies.
Eyes removed post-mortem. Clean incisions. Sedative administered before skin separation.
Zarar leaned closer to the photograph of the victim's face.
The eyelids.
They had been cleaned.
Not wiped frantically. Not smeared.
Cleaned.
As if the killer didn't want blood obscuring the view.
He stepped back slowly.
"They wanted the eyes intact," he said quietly.
Tariq frowned. "Sir?"
"The sockets were clean. No tearing. No crushing of the orbital bone. Whoever removed them knew how to preserve them."
"You think it's organ trafficking?"
"No." Zarar's gaze darkened. "Organ traffickers don't arrange bodies like art installations."
Silence settled between them.
"Run a list of patients who had rare eye pigmentation," Zarar continued.
"Heterochromia. Unusual shades. Cosmetic implants."
Tariq blinked. "Sir, with respect… that's very specific."
"So is this."
He studied the victim's face again — intact, almost serene, as if death had been negotiated rather than inflicted.
His pen tapped once against the desk.
Twice.
Then stopped.
Something about the arrangement bothered him more than the violence itself.
Killers usually tried to hide chaos.
This one had created order.
A knock sounded at his office door.
He looked up, already tense.
Zarar's gaze drifted to the window, to the city stretching beyond it — millions of lives stacked together, each one unknowingly passing strangers who might never return home.
....
Back at the house, Anaya was helping her mother clear the table when her phone buzzed across the counter.
Sara.
Her face lit instantly.
"Can I take this?" she asked, already answering.
"Of course," her mother said, smiling. "Tell her to visit. It's been weeks."
"Already told her yesterday "
Anaya said as she stepped toward the window, voice dropping into that softer register reserved for people she loved most.
"Sara? Good morning."
On the other end, silence — then a slow exhale.
"Did you see the news?"
Anaya's smile dimmed.
"Yes… it's awful."
Another pause.
"You should be careful," Sora said quietly. "Don't go out alone for a while."
Anaya leaned her forehead lightly against the glass, watching sunlight spill across the street.
"You worry too much."
"I don't worry enough," Sara replied.
Something in her tone made Anaya's fingers tighten around the phone.
"Well," Anaya said lightly, forcing brightness back into her voice, "if anything happens, you'll come rescue me, right?"
A faint, humorless sound came through the speaker. Not quite a laugh.
"Always."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Anaya smiled again — wide, warm, utterly disarming.
"I have class today," she said. "I'll text you when I get there."
"Text me when you leave too."
"You sound like my mother."
"Good. Someone should."
The call ended.
Anaya remained by the window a few seconds longer than necessary, expression unreadable — not fearful, not sad, not calm.
Just… still.
Then she turned, brightness snapping back into place as if a switch had been flipped.
"Ammi, I'm going to get ready!"
---
Anaya
At Punjab University, the campus buzzed louder than usual.
Everyone had seen the headline.
Anaya sat in the science block lab, staring at her open notebook but not seeing the equations.
"Are you okay?" Hina asked, nudging her.
Anaya nodded slowly. "It's just… strange."
"What is?"
"The article," she said. "The report said the victim was sedated before the skin was separated."
Hina grimaced. "Can we not?"
"I'm serious," Anaya insisted softly. "If the sedative dosage was too high, he would've died before blood loss became a factor. Which means whoever did it calculated the exact amount."
Hina stared at her.
"You're overthinking this.".
"Maybe."
But she wasn't.
Something about it lingered.
The precision.
The calm.
She chewed lightly on the end of her pen, unaware of the faint pink flush rising to her cheeks as she thought. When she focused, the world faded. Conversations blurred. Even the sun felt distant.
Across the courtyard, behind the same tree as yesterday, someone watched her again.
Still.
Silent.
Their tinted glasses hid their eyes completely.
Anaya laughed suddenly at something Hina said, her dimples appearing like they always did.
The watcher's fingers tightened around their phone.
Later that afternoon, Anaya walked alone toward the bus stop.
The street was busier than usual — vendors shouting, motorcycles weaving recklessly. The city felt normal.
Outside, across the street, a car engine idled.
Inside it, a figure sat motionless behind dark glass.
Watching.
Not moving.
Not blinking.
Just watching the house as Anaya passed briefly through the doorway upstairs, sunlight catching her silhouette.
From this distance, she looked fragile.
Unprotected.
Perfect prey.
A shadow shifted slightly in the driver's seat — a subtle adjustment, almost involuntary, as if proximity alone caused discomfort.
Then the engine cut.
Silence swallowed the sound.
And the car remained where it was.
Waiting.
As Anaya stepped into her house her phone buzzed.
Turned out to be a message from Unknown Number.
She frowned..... it wasn't unusual she usually gets messages from Unknown numbers because of being a senior in university also because of her extroverted personality.
"You have beautiful eyes" this was the message that was usual
Her steps slowed.
Her breath caught — not in fear exactly, but confusion.
She glanced around.
No one seemed to be looking at her.
Probably a wrong number, she told herself.
Still… her fingers hovered over the screen.
She didn't reply.
Instead, she blocked it.
Then immediately felt silly for doing so.
"Overdramatic," she muttered.
But that night, when she stood in front of her mirror to braid her hair and getting ready while wearing a white Anarkali and with same color dupata having delicate Pearly boarder lass as she was applying Kajal in her eyes after wearing jhumka she found herself staring at her reflection longer than usual.
Her eyes.
Warm brown. Soft.
Normal.
Right?
---
Sara
At Jinnah Hospital, Sara Khan finished another surgery without trembling once.
Her hands never trembled.
Even now, in the quiet of the scrub room, as the news played faintly on someone's phone outside.
"… police suspect the possibility of a serial offender—"
She didn't look up.
"Doctor Khan," a junior resident said hesitantly, "did you hear about the Liberty Market case?"
"Yes."
Her tone was neutral.
"Is it true the eyes were removed surgically?"
Sara dried her hands slowly.
"If the report says surgical, then it was surgical."
"But—"
She turned.
Her gaze was steady. Too steady.
"Precision isn't rare," she said calmly. "People overestimate how difficult anatomy is."
The resident swallowed and nodded quickly.
Sara stepped into the corridor.
Her phone buzzed.
Bunny 💗: You coming tonight?
She stared at the name longer than necessary.
Sora: I'll be late.
Bunny 💗: Don't disappear on me.
A flicker passed through her expression.
Disappear.
She typed back:
Sora: I won't.
But her eyes drifted toward the muted television mounted on the wall.
The headline repeated.
Eyes removed.
She tilted her head slightly.
They'd cleaned the eyelids, she noted internally.
Good.
But they'd left a hair behind.
Careless..
Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
She hated being careless.
Zarar — Evening
Zarar stood once again in the storage room at Liberty Market.
Alone.
He crouched where the body had been found, studying the concrete.
The killer hadn't rushed.
They had time.
Which meant confidence.
Or familiarity.
He stood abruptly when his phone rang again..
"Sir," Tariq's voice crackled, "we enhanced the CCTV footage."
"And?"
"There's a reflection in the hooded figure's glasses when they pass under the streetlight."
Zarar's pulse sharpened.
"What kind of reflection?"
"It's brief. But it was unclear that either it's a male or a female ."
Silence stretched.
"then do find about it"almost sounding as if controlling his anger
Tariq swallowed audibly.
"their height is way average then females and body built also but their way of walking almost looks like a female so we are confused."
Zarar closed his eyes briefly.
" Then so get me a clear answer we can't go for confusion and it is not necessary that if it doesn't match the male or female it can't be one these ... everything can be mimicked
A male mimicking to be a female or
A female mimicking to be a male " he murmured while looking at the blur image of the person who was doing this horrific things that he just got from IT team.
People are living dying, laughing
And somewhere among them, someone had stood in a forgotten store and removed a man's eyes with surgical grace.
He opened his eyes again.
Cold. Focused.
"Get me a list of medical students, doctor and intern that must include retired and those that match the height and other details of the killer" he said.
Then, quieter:
"Start with the ones who don't like being touched."