The train screeched to a halt at the silent, sun-kissed station of Kupam. Dust hung thick in the warm air, and a few cattle dozed lazily beside the tracks. Students poured out of the compartments like ants from a cracked nest—chatting, laughing, bumping into each other with wide-eyed excitement.
But one figure stepped out without a word.
He adjusted his brown-tinted, aluminum-rimmed navigator spectacles, slung his modest black duffel over one shoulder, and scanned the surroundings. No smile. No comment. Just a quiet awareness.
His name was Rudra.
To most of his classmates, Rudra was a filler in the background—a polite, slightly awkward boy who said just enough to be ignored. Not a nerd, not a rebel, not a class clown. Just… there. He didn't try to shine, and people forgot him before they remembered him.
But what they didn't know: Rudra was anything but ordinary.
His shirt hid lean muscle built through years of secret training. His silence veiled a mind honed in chess, hacking, circuitry, languages, combat tactics—and more. While others crammed for tests and snapped selfies, Rudra spent nights building drones, cracking security systems, and pushing his body past the limits most adults never reached.
But he never told a soul. And he never needed to.
First Day at Kupam
The field trip to Kupam was supposed to be for scientific observation—geology, weathering patterns, soil studies. To Rudra, it was something else entirely: a battlefield in disguise.
Within five minutes of arriving, the teachers were already scrambling with last-minute coordination, arguing over room allocations, and trying to control the overexcited batch. Rudra, unnoticed, had already memorized the campus layout, noted two exits, a half-collapsed wall near the boys' dorm, and which teacher looked like they could be manipulated if needed.
He moved silently, calculating.
When a classmate tripped over a broken step, he caught him mid-fall without blinking, nodded, and vanished before a "thank you" could form.
In the mess hall, he sat at the edge. Not lonely—strategic. He watched, listened. Already, alliances were forming, cliques tightening, secret romances whispering behind water bottles. Rudra catalogued it all.
He knew better than to get involved.
Until something forced him to.
It started small. One of the students lost his phone. Another claimed it was stolen. Accusations flew, a teacher threatened suspension. No one noticed Rudra watching quietly from his table, eyes hidden behind tinted lenses, reading lips, gestures, inconsistencies.
By nightfall, the phone was returned anonymously—placed perfectly beneath a loose floor tile, exactly where Rudra knew the actual thief had stashed it. No credit was given. No suspect identified. Just relief, confusion, and a lesson learned.
And Rudra? He simply finished tightening a small homemade antenna on the dorm roof, rerouting weak Wi-Fi signals to triple the speed.
No one knew who did it.
That's how he preferred it.
But the silence wouldn't last forever. Because Kupam had secrets—ones far beyond science, and Rudra could sense the undercurrent.
A storm was coming.
And he would face it alone.