Vikram stared at Mr. Desai, slowly lowering him back to the ground. "Your partner?"
Desai sank against the damp stone wall, his head in his hands. "Twenty years ago, three of us discovered Tenebrous Resonance. Devendra Malhotra, your father Amar Rathod, and me."
Rohan looked up, his tears stopping as he stared at the old man.
"We founded the Vow," Desai said, his voice breaking. "We wanted to use dark matter to free Mumbai from corporate corruption, to build a city that couldn't be controlled by outside forces. But Devendra... he became obsessed. He wanted to build the Core."
"What is the Core?" Vikram asked.
"A stable dark-matter reactor that can draw unlimited energy from the Rahu-Ketu alignment," Desai explained. "But it is highly unstable. To control it, you need a biological stabilizer—a specific genetic marker in the blood that can conduct both Prana and Chaya without burning out."
Desai looked up at Vikram, his eyes filled with sorrow.
"Your father, Amar, had that marker," Desai whispered. "He realized Devendra was going to use him to power the Core, so he stole the activation cipher and fled. Devendra hunted him down and killed him. But Amar didn't have the cipher on him. He had given it to you."
Vikram looked at his hands, realizing the truth.
"And now," Desai said, "Devendra knows that you have the same blood. He doesn't just want to kill you, Vikram. He needs you to complete the Core."