Cid Vs The Eye

Chapter 4: The Breaking Point

The surveillance van sat parked in the shadow of a half-lit street, engine off, windows fogged faintly with the day's leftover heat. Outside, Mumbai's evening traffic rolled past in a steady, indifferent hum — horns, the rattle of a passing local train somewhere in the distance, a vendor's cart bell. Inside, four CID officers sat in a silence that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with things left unsaid. The case file lay closed on the dashboard, the day's work technically done, but nobody moved to leave.

Poorvi shifted in her seat, wincing as she stretched her leg.

Poorvi: "Sir, mere paer mein bahut dard ho raha hai. Aap drive kar sakte hain, please?"

Daya looked up from methodically checking his service weapon, his weathered hands moving with practised efficiency — the kind of motion that came from doing it a thousand times without needing to think. The streetlight outside cast a thin orange line across half his face as he nodded.

Daya: "Haan haan, kyun nahi. Tumhe pehle batana chahiye tha."

As they reorganised themselves around the vehicle, Poorvi's eyes caught Mayank in her peripheral vision. Something about how he angled himself — just slightly, just enough — toward the seat Shreya would take, made her stomach knot with a dread she'd been carrying for weeks now. She kept her voice light, but there was an edge underneath it.

Poorvi: "Mayank, tum aage aa jao. Main peeche baith jaati hun."

Mayank: (the refusal coming a beat too fast) "Nahi, main yahin theek hun."

Poorvi's fingers tightened around the door handle. Every instinct in her was screaming, but this wasn't the place, not yet.

Poorvi: "Please. Mujhe wahan baithna hai."

Daya: (settling it without even looking up) "Aa jao Mayank, wo keh rahi hai to."

The Drive...

The road to headquarters blurred past in silence so tight it felt like something that could snap. Poorvi kept catching Mayank's reflection in the rearview mirror — the way his eyes drifted, again and again, toward Shreya. The way his shoulder angled a fraction closer whenever the van hit a bump. Her hands curled into fists in her lap, nails cutting half-moons into her palms.

Beside her, Shreya sat rigid, staring out at the passing streetlights as if counting them, her face a mask stretched thin over something underneath. The officer who used to crack jokes at crime scenes, who used to make even the worst days lighter with her nonsense logic — she felt like a stranger folded into the same seat.

The bureau's underground parking lot swallowed the van in its usual concrete gloom, fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead, throwing a flat, sickly white over everything. As the team fell into the familiar rhythm of heading toward the lift, Poorvi's hand shot out and closed around Shreya's wrist.

Poorvi: "Sir, aap log chaliye. Shreya aur main washroom ho kar aate hain."

Abhijeet nodded, already mentally halfway into the paperwork waiting upstairs.

Abhijeet: "Theek hai."

The moment the steel doors swallowed the men, Shreya tried to pull toward the building, her voice pitched too bright, too fast.

Shreya: "Chalo na, sab wait kar rahe hain—"

Poorvi's grip tightened like a tourniquet.