A Sew Through Time [Bandbudh And Budbak]

12: Footprints

It was a long way down the secret elevator. Ceiling bulbs dimmed with the descend. Shrouded tangled wires, loose and helical, were flickering under dust and rattling with the gentle hum of the floor filled with murky music.

Jolting to a stop, it chimed open.

The sound threw Harish off his trance. On both his sides were thick, riveted metal peeling off their nails and corroded green rust, the smell pinching the damp, stagnant air.

Walking through the thin lane, he heard his weary shoes pull and scrap the dust along.

A mild light casted across the floor.

The frail wrath in Harish's heart grew strong like a trumpet blast. Turning aside, he gazed as he walked, into the tangled shrubs of wires. There was a room with machines set up on the table and objects where lingered a shadow.

"Dr. Laxmi? Are you there?"

The rectangular screen casted on her dotty pupils. She moved through things like a frail visual that may vanish into thin air if provoked. Something poisonous had burnt the place.

Harish took a breath and said,
"Tomorrow morning, I'm catching him"

She raised a brow.

He pulled a stool from under the table and sat down. She offered him a cookie, he declined, she ate it up and smacked crumbs off her fingers flaggingly.

There was a delicate DVD player with a mini screen, glowing with magenta rings thar appeared from Harish's point of view. Lines were tangled on the screen, a coat smeared with invisible tree gum. Red light from the farthest corner blinked over Laxmi's face, making her look like a ship sinking in ominous waters.

"I have a plan with me" Harish conjectured, his hands fidgety till he grabbed them and squeezed them under, "But first, there is something I have to know"

Her hands spread over the desk.

He shoved the diary under her eyes seeping with red wires.

"You know I'm searching" Laxmi put on her broken glasses, "Not long"

He watched her turn the knobs and switches of the player. Soon she moved out of the room, leaving him restless yet patient.

She returned with a pile of sheets towering above her height. Before it landed on the player, Harish shared half the load and placed it on an empty spot.

"Sheesh" she grinned, "Empathy still lurks round the corner?"

"Menace"

Laxmi shifted towards the screen casting a glow on her glasses.

"What have you found doctor?"

"Yuvati's dimension is a mobile one" she knocked the spurring screen, "She can also access the other dimensions as far as she can"

Looking at the tangled lines of the timeline, Harish unable to differentiate which one was which.

"Her knowledge about the real world comes from the real world itself" Laxmi explained, "I need to terminate her core or disrupt her logic. But to do that, I need to get closer to proximity"

"That may not work"

She turned silent.

"We have little time left" Harish clasped his knuckles, "I cannot consider about the roaming Vijaywada anymore: we can't look out for both at the same time"

"There must be a link"

"A link?"

"An access route, " she wiped her face and crouched, "If I'm lucky enough to find that, I can destroy the link and sent her to a state of void" and worked on the player again, "Having no access to any forms of data, Yuvati would take time registering her consciousness. When she reaches that nullified state, I'll..."