Authors POV.
It had been a month.
Thirty days of stillness so loud it felt like the world was holding its breath.
Thirty nights where machines breathed for the ones who once chased danger for sport and fun.
The accident had carved Paris open.
Screams.
Twisted metal.
Ambulance.
Blood.
Police.
Glass scattered on the highway like shadows.
A jeep crushed under a truck's impossible shadow For a month, the hospital corridors learned their names.
Kabir Malhotra.
Riya Mehta..
Sona Roy
Three beds.
Three bodies.
Three pulses stubbornly fighting the dark.
IV drips dripped like steady rain.
Monitors pulsed green like weak heartbeats impersonating life.
The nurses whispered about them.
The doctors called it a miracle they'd even survived the crash.
But the room where they lay wasn't a miracle.
It was a battlefield that hadn't healed yet.
Sheets white as surrender.
Machines blinking quietly like exhausted guardians.
Air too clean, too sterile, too wrong for people who lived their lives flirting with chaos, and danger just for fun.
Then, somewhere in the middle of a still Paris morning…
A breath stuttered.
A hand twitched.
The first sign of rebellion against the coma.
Kabir's monitor beeped in a strange rhythm, like it was surprised.
His eyelids fluttered, heavy like they were made of stone. His lips parted, dry, cracked. For a horrifying second, he looked dead again.
Then he inhaled.
A violent, sharp, dragging breath that sounded like a man clawing his way out of a grave.
He ripped upward with a gasp, the IV lines pulling against his arm. The sudden movement sent monitors shrieking.
But Kabir didn't care.
He was awake.
Confused.
Barely conscious.
And already feral.
A nurse rushed in.
"Sir, please lie back—"
He shoved her hand away. It wasn't anger. It wasn't confusion. It was desperation distilled into muscle.
He ripped off oxygen mask first.
"Riya," he rasped. His voice sounded like broken gravel. "Where's Riya?"
"Sir, y-you need to—"
He ripped the IV out of his arm.
Blood beaded instantly.
The nurse gasped. "Sir!"
Kabir stumbled off the bed, almost collapsing as soon as his feet hit the cold floor. His legs trembled from a month without movement. His gown hung off him like loose paper. But he pushed forward.
"Riya," he forced out again, grabbing the wall to keep himself upright. "Where is she?"
The nurse followed him, pleading, trying to support him, but Kabir dragged himself down the hall anyway, half-limping, half-running.
He moved like a man being chased by his own nightmare.
He recognized the hallway.
He recognized the door.
The one he had been placed beside, always in the same shared ICU ward.
He pushed it open with a shaking hand.
Riya lay on the bed inside.
Still.
Small.
Pale.
Her hair spread over the pillow like undone ink.
A tube rested at her nose.
A heart monitor blinked soft, steady lines.
Not dying.
Not waking.
Suspended.
Kabir's breath broke.
He staggered to her bedside and nearly collapsed onto his knees. His hand hovered over her cheek but didn't touch. His fingers trembled too violently.
His eyes burned red.
"Riya…" he whispered. The word cracked in the middle.
She didn't move.
A tear slipped off his jaw.
The nurse tried again. "Sir, you can't be out of your bed, you just regained—"
Kabir didn't answer.
He was staring at Riya like the world might end if he blinked.
Another voice echoed down the hallway, weak but rising.
"Ar…jun…"
Kabir's head snapped toward the sound.
Sona.
Her door was half-open.
Her fingers were twitching weakly against the sheets, trying to reach for someone who wasn't there.
Her eyelids fluttered like a dying flame trying to revive itself.
Her voice came again, softer. "Arjun… please…"
Kabir swallowed hard, every emotion inside him scraping raw.
He walked toward her room, one hand gripping the wall for balance.
Sona lay there, tangled in tubes and wires, her forehead bandaged, a bruise darkening her cheekbone. Her breathing was shallow but real.
Her lips trembled like she was halfway through a nightmare.
Kabir stood in the doorway, chest rising too fast, as if the sight of her was both relief and another wound.
For a moment, he didn't move.
He didn't step in.
He didn't speak.
He just leaned back against the wall outside her room, head tilted upward, throat tight, grief and relief mixing like poison.
Two friends unconscious.
One barely awake.
One still unconscious
One missing.
Arjun.
The empty bed across the hall was a silent accusation. He didn't dared to question not yet.
Kabir exhaled shakily, running a trembling hand down his face. For the first time in his life, Kabir Malhotra looked small. Not the gun-wielding storm. Not the savage protector.
Just a boy who almost lost everyone he loved.
He closed his eyes.
Everything had gone south.
Everything had been ruined.
And he was the first one awake to witness the wreckage.
Kabir's breathing slowed just enough for the nurse to feel safe stepping closer, but the tremor in his hands hadn't stopped. His gaze flicked between the two rooms Riya unmoving in hers, Sona murmuring Arjun's name in hers and for a moment, he looked like he didn't know which direction his heart wanted to collapse in.
A doctor approached from the far end of the corridor. Clipped steps. Professional expression. A file tucked under his arm.
Kabir straightened too fast, gripping the wall to keep himself from swaying.
"Doctor," he rasped. "Arjun Kapoor. Which room… where is he?"
The doctor blinked, confused.
"Who?"
Kabir's chest tightened.
"Arjun Kapoor," he repeated, louder this time. "He was with us. In the crash. He was right there."
The doctor flipped through the chart.
"There were only three patients pulled from the accident site. Two females, one male."
Kabir stared like he hadn't heard right.
The doctor continued gently.
"I'm sorry. You're the only male admitted from that accident. The other man you're asking about wasn't brought here."
It felt like the floor vanished beneath Kabir's feet.
He grabbed the doctor's coat with trembling fingers.
"Check again."
His voice broke into something raw, something desperate.
"Check again. Arjun was with us. He was driving. He he shielded he he was right there."
The doctor placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.
"Sir. I checked. Three admissions. That's all."
Kabir's pulse spiked in his neck. He shook his head violently.
"No. That doesn't make sense. He'd never leave us. Never leave them."
His eyes darted toward Sona's door.
"He never leaves her."
The doctor took a slow breath, choosing his next words carefully.
"That impact was catastrophic. The truck crushed the front of the jeep. The rescuers said the driver's side was the most damaged. If your friend was there… he may not have—"
Kabir slammed his palm against the wall, stopping the sentence with sheer fury.
"Don't."
His voice was a tremor sharpened into a blade.
"Don't talk about him like he's dead."
The doctor exhaled softly. "Then there is another possibility."
Kabir looked up sharply.
"Sometimes," the doctor said, lowering his tone, "in chaos… people get misidentified. Or taken to different hospitals. Or—"
"Or what?" Kabir shouted.
The doctor hesitated.
"…or they're not found at all."
Kabir's knees gave out.
He slid down the wall, hitting the floor with a choked breath. His hands clutched at his hair as if trying to hold himself together by force. His lungs refused to work properly.
The nurse knelt beside him.
"Sir, you need to breathe—"
"How?" he managed, voice shredded.
"How do I breathe when I don't even know if he's alive?"
The corridor felt too bright. Too white. Too clean for this kind of horror. Kabir pressed his forehead to his knees. His shoulders trembled, no matter how hard he tried to stop them.
Three admitted.
Three surviving.
Three accounted for.
Which meant Arjun…
Where was he?
Dead on the highway?
Dragged away before help arrived?
Kidnapped?
Alive somewhere?
Bleeding?
Calling their names?
Kabir felt his stomach twist violently.
The doctor stepped back, giving him space. Nurses exchanged worried glances, but none of them dared to pull him up. Grief too sharp can wound anyone who touches it.
Kabir lifted his head slowly.
His eyes no longer looked dazed.
They looked haunted.
He stared straight ahead like something inside him had just broken and reassembled into a new shape — something harder, older, far more dangerous.
He whispered Arjun's name like a prayer and a promise fused together.
"I'll find you," he murmured.
"I swear on my life… I'll find you." My best friend.
A soft voice rasped weakly from the room beside him.
Kabir froze.
Sona.
Her fingers twitched.
Her breath hitched.
Her eyelids fluttered faster than before, like her body was fighting to rise through sludge and sedatives.
Kabir stumbled to his feet, grabbing the doorframe.
Inside, Sona's lashes trembled violently.
Her face scrunched in pain.
Her lips moved without sound.
Her body jerked as if trying to escape a nightmare.
Then—
A gasp.
Her eyes shot open.
Not dreamily.
Not slowly.
But like something yanked her back into the world with force.
Her chest heaved as oxygen burned its way in. Her gaze darted everywhere the ceiling, the wires, the light, the corridor, Kabir.
Her voice cracked through the dryness in her throat.
"Arjun…?"
Kabir closed his eyes.
He didn't know how to say it.
He didn't know how to breathe.
All he knew was that she was awake—
And Arjun wasn't there.
And she'd burn down the world if something happens to her man.