## PROLOGUE — THE VIEW FROM THE ROOF
*Hyderabad. 2031.*
The city looked different from this height.
From the forty-second floor of the RAM Tower — his tower, the one with his name in brushed steel letters
visible from three kilometers away — Hyderabad spread out like a circuit board come alive. A thousand lights.
A million stories. A city that had tried to swallow him whole approximately forty-seven times and had failed
every single one of them.
Ram Krishnamurthy stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, hands in his pockets, tie loosened, a cup of filter
coffee cooling on the glass table behind him. He was thirty-two years old. His company was worth one
thousand and twelve crores. His parents were asleep in the house he had built for them in Jubilee Hills,
probably arguing about what to watch on television.
Priya was somewhere behind him in the office, probably also working at eleven PM because she always
worked at eleven PM and he had long since stopped telling her to rest.
He looked at the city.
He thought about a seven-year-old boy who had stood on the roof of a one-room house in Moosapet and
looked at this same city — smaller then, less lit, but still blazing — and made a silent, furious, unwitnessed
promise.
*I will win.*
He had not known, that night, what winning would cost.
He had not known the names of the forty-nine people who would try to stop him.
He had not known about Priya, or about Bunty's ridiculous loyalty, or about his father's secret.
He had known only one thing with absolute certainty:
*The system is rigged. Rigged games can be hacked.*
He smiled at the window.
"Raa," Priya said from behind him, using the Telugu shortening of his name the way she always did when she
wanted his attention without demanding it. "Your coffee is getting cold."
"I know."
"You're doing the brooding-at-the-window thing again."
"I'm reflecting. It's different.
"It looks identical."
He turned around. She was at her desk, laptop open, reading glasses on, looking at him over the frames with
the particular expression she reserved for when he was being dramatic. Twenty-nine years old, sharper than
anyone he had ever met, the co-founder and COO of RAM Tech, and still the only person in the world who
could stop him mid-sentence with a single raised eyebrow.
"I was thinking about the beginning," he said.
She took off her glasses. Her expression shifted — softer, more careful.
"Moosapet?" she asked.
"Moosapet," he confirmed.
She nodded slowly. "Tell me."
So he did.
This is that story.
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# PART ONE: ROOTS
## *Chapters 1 — 15*
### *Moosapet, Hyderabad. 2006. Ram is 7 years old.*