A girl in Delhi has a brilliant mind and secrets darker than the nights that won't let her eyes close.
She lives in the Labyrinth, a place that always seems dim, even in the middle of the day. There, customers flock in their dozens, and there, th...
When Ucchal heard the gunshots she bolted for her and Detective Ahuja's squad car. Crowds dispersed and dashed in a grid of intersecting arcs, a few pedestrians knocked to the ground and trampled. After the first patter of bullets a second echoed from the opposite end of the neighborhood. Tat-tutut-tat. A more sophisticated weapon, by the sound of it. Automatic. Belonging to police.
Ucchal was bumped from behind.
Her jaws clacked shut as she tumbled to the pavement. She struggled to lift herself. A cat flitted by her in a black streak. The animal yowled, puffing its fur, moving sleekly among the rocks. She hunkered over the ground, her chin gashed raw, and as soon as the wind came back into her lungs she continued scrambling. The gunfire continued too, but it fell distant. And now she trembled. There had been nothing to fear before. Behind her desk she could work in relative safety, but here in the slums, one shot to the head or chest, and away she'd slip, into the warm blackness of a cold eternity, and what about her kids and what about her husband and what about all the life ahead of her, even at fifty-four years old? Death did not bring the trembling. Life did.
The alleys gave her a maze to trip and stumble through. She was unhealthy, she realized, used to perching droopily for hours over paperwork and getting short of breath after ascending a single flight of stairs at a moderate pace. She now felt every pound she'd gained since college, felt it all flopping on her and pulling her down, like cargo welded to a ship bound for the bottom of the sea.
Two blocks she sprinted, her knees popping. When she managed to find her way to the car, adrenaline fled her veins and left her to wobble over, to curve the mass of herself toward the ground and wheeze and fight back vomit, long viscous cords dangling from her lips.
Detective Ahuja already occupied the driver's seat and muttered frantically into her walkie-talkie.
As the women drove off, an officer on the other line reported that he and his partner were taking two shooters into custody. When asked if any innocents had fallen in the crossfire, he replied, garbled by static: "We clipped one of the suspects in the leg. Apart from that, no injuries. I do suggest you visit the station though, Detective. We found something that may interest you and your friend from the Anti-Trafficking Unit."
Ucchal beamed then, and she beams now, fidgeting with a paperweight at her desk.
The Labyrinth. They found the Labyrinth.
Is she satisfied? No, not until the leaders of the brothel spit and curse at her and demand legal representation, as police close in on them with cuffs and truncheons.
Not until then.
She leans over her desk for the office phone that has been ringing for a while without her noticing.
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Behind Vaibhav's flat, Prithviraj hoses the blood off his hands. His pocket vibrates and he removes his cell phone and growls at it like it's gum he's found on his shoe.
