Rudra woke to pain.
His head pounded. His lungs burned. Every muscle ached.
He was lying on cold metal. The ventilation shaft. Dark. Cramped.
"Anvi?" he croaked.
"Here." Her voice came from ahead. Weak but steady.
"Bhairav?"
"Unconscious. But breathing."
Rudra forced himself up. The shaft was narrow. Barely wide enough to crawl through. But it was leading somewhere.
Ahead, faint light filtered through grates.
"Can you hear me?" The mystery voice came through speakers embedded in the shaft walls.
"Yeah," Rudra managed.
"Good. You need to keep moving. Malhotra's sealing sections. If you stop, you're trapped."
"Who are you?" Rudra asked.
"Later. Right now, crawl forward. Twenty meters. There's a junction. Take the left path."
Rudra didn't have the strength to argue. He crawled.
Anvi ahead of him, dragging Bhairav. Rudra pushing from behind.
Every meter felt like kilometers.
But they made it to the junction.
Left path. As instructed.
The shaft opened into a larger space. A maintenance room. Pipes. Circuit breakers. Old equipment.
And a ladder. Leading up.
"Climb," the voice said. "Three floors. Then you'll reach the mirror room."
"What's the mirror room?" Anvi asked.
"Your way out. But it's not going to be easy."
They climbed.
Bhairav was starting to come around. Groaning. Mumbling incoherently.
"Stay with us," Rudra urged. "Almost there."
Three floors. Exhausting. Painful.
But they made it.
The ladder ended at a hatch. Locked.
"Now what?" Rudra asked.
"Override code: 7-4-1-9," the voice said.
Rudra punched in the numbers. The hatch clicked open.
They climbed through.
Into a room that made Rudra's skin crawl.
Mirrors. Everywhere.
Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall. Hundreds of reflections. Infinite repetitions of themselves.
But not quite right.
Some reflections moved differently. Delayed. Or too fast.
Some showed them in different positions than they actually were.
And some showed things that weren't there.
Shadows. Figures. Watching from the edges.
"What is this place?" Anvi whispered.
"Perceptual testing chamber," the voice explained. "Designed to break down your sense of reality. Make you doubt what's real."
"How do we get through?" Rudra asked.
"There's an exit. But you have to find it. One of the mirrors isn't real. It's a projection. Hiding a door."
Rudra looked around. Dozens of mirrors. All identical.
"How do we know which one?"
"You don't. You have to test them. But be careful. Some are rigged with sensors. Touch the wrong one, and you'll trigger alarms."
"So it's a puzzle," Rudra said.
"It's a trap."
Rudra studied the mirrors carefully. Looking for patterns. Anomalies.
Then he noticed something. One mirror—in the far corner—had a reflection that was slightly off. The angle wrong. Like it was showing a different room.
"There," Rudra said, pointing.
"You sure?" Anvi asked.
"No. But it's the best guess we have."
They approached slowly. Bhairav between them, barely able to stand.
Rudra reached out. Touched the mirror.
His hand passed through.
Not glass. A projection.
"Got it," Rudra said.
They stepped through.
Into another corridor. But different. Cleaner. More modern.
"Where are we now?" Anvi asked.
"Administrative wing," the voice said. "You're above ground. Almost out."
Rudra felt a surge of hope. "How do we get to the exit?"
"Follow the corridor to the end. There's a service elevator. Take it to ground level. From there, you can reach the main compound."
"What about Sneha?" Rudra remembered. "We left her in the medical station."
"I'm monitoring her. She's stable. You can come back for her once you're safe."
"And you?" Rudra asked. "Are you coming with us?"
Silence.
Then, quietly: "I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not entirely... here. Not anymore."
Rudra frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means I died three years ago. In this facility. But before I did, I uploaded my consciousness into the network. I'm a ghost in the machine. Literally."
Anvi's eyes widened. "That's impossible."
"So is everything else that's happened tonight. But here we are."
Rudra processed this. A digitized consciousness. Living in the facility's computer systems.
"What's your name?" Rudra asked.
A pause. Then: "Karan. I was part of the 2022 field program. Malhotra selected me for Phase 5. Neural conditioning. But something went wrong. My body died. But my mind... uploaded."
"How?" Anvi asked.
"I don't fully understand it myself. Malhotra was experimenting with brain-computer interfaces. Direct neural uploads. He wanted to create perfect soldiers. Perfect spies. People who could survive anything because they weren't bound by physical bodies."
"That's insane," Bhairav mumbled, finally coherent enough to follow the conversation.
"It's the future," Karan said. "Or Malhotra's version of it. And I'm proof it works. Just not the way he intended."
"Why are you helping us?" Rudra asked.
"Because I don't want anyone else to end up like me. Trapped. Neither alive nor dead. Watching. Always watching. But never able to leave."
The corridor ahead split into two paths.
"Left," Karan instructed. "The elevator's close."
They followed his directions.
And there it was. A service elevator. Old. Industrial. But functional.
Rudra pressed the button.
The doors opened.
They stepped inside.
"Karan," Rudra said. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. Malhotra knows you're escaping. He's mobilizing security. When those doors open, you're going to have company."
"Can you help?"
"I'll do what I can. But my access is limited. Malhotra's locked me out of most systems."
The elevator began to rise.
Rudra turned to Anvi and Bhairav. "Get ready. When we hit ground level, we run. Don't stop. Don't look back."
"What about Sneha?" Anvi asked.
"We'll come back. With help. With police. With evidence. But first, we survive."
The elevator slowed.
Approaching ground level.
Rudra's heart pounded.
The doors opened.
And they came face to face with Dr. Malhotra.
Standing in the hallway. Calm. Composed. Flanked by two security guards.
"Going somewhere?" he asked, smiling coldly.