I should have called the police.
I should have called Kavya. I should have called anyone other than the person who'd been sending me cryptic messages from an unknown number.
But I didn't.
Because somewhere deep inside me—somewhere reckless and desperate and tired of being careful—I wanted to know the truth more than I wanted to be safe.
So I went.
The warehouse was on the outskirts of the city, in a part of town I'd never been to. Abandoned factories. Empty lots. Graffiti on every surface. The kind of place where bad things happened in movies, where protagonists made stupid decisions that got them killed.
I was making a stupid decision.
I knew it.
I didn't care.
The rain had stopped, but the air was still heavy, thick with the smell of wet concrete and something else—something chemical, something industrial, something that made my nose burn.
The warehouse door was unlocked.
I pushed it open.
Inside was dark—darker than I expected, darker than I was prepared for. I fumbled for my phone, turned on the flashlight. The beam cut through the shadows, revealing rusted machinery, broken pallets, and—
Him.
Aarav.
Standing in the middle of the warehouse, his back to me, his hands at his sides.
"Aarav?"
He turned.
His face was pale. His eyes were red. His expression was... I don't know how to describe it. Empty. Hollow. Like someone had reached inside him and scooped out everything that made him human.
"You shouldn't have come," he said.
"You left me a note."
"I left you a note telling you not to come."
"I don't listen very well."
He laughed—a broken, bitter sound. "No. You don't."
I walked toward him. The warehouse felt huge around us, cavernous, echoing with every step I took. My flashlight beam danced across the walls, catching glimpses of things I didn't want to see.
"Aarav, what's going on? Why did you bring me here?"
He didn't answer. Just stood there, watching me approach, his expression unreadable.
"The evidence," I said. "The files. You're not going to destroy them, are you?"
"No."
"Then what—"
"The warehouse." His voice was quiet. Too quiet. "This is where they stored the drugs. The ones from the trial. Before they were destroyed."
I stopped walking. "What?"
"Your mother's medication. It came from here. Stored in these conditions—damp, cold, contaminated. They knew it wasn't safe. They knew it would fail. But they shipped it anyway."
"Why?"
"Because the real trial wasn't about saving lives." He looked at me. His eyes were wet. "It was about testing how much the body could take before it broke."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
I staggered. Caught myself on a pillar. My flashlight clattered to the ground, spinning, casting wild shadows across the walls.
"You're lying," I whispered.
"I wish I was."
"You're lying to protect your family."
"I'm telling you the truth to destroy them." He took a step toward me. "The warehouse—there's a room in the back. That's where they kept the records. The real records. The ones that weren't in the files I had."
"And you want me to see them?"
"I want you to know." He stopped in front of me. Reached out. Brushed his fingers against my cheek. "I want you to know everything. And then—if you still want to—we take them down together."
I looked at him. This man who had lied to me. This man who had watched my mother die. This man who made my heart race and my stomach twist and my head spin in ways I didn't understand.
"Okay," I said. "Show me."
The room in the back was small.
Cramped. Windowless. Filled with boxes that looked exactly like the ones in Aarav's apartment—except older, dustier, untouched for years.
"This is it," Aarav said. "Everything my father tried to hide."
I walked to the nearest box. Pulled off the lid.
Inside were files. Hundreds of files. Organized by date, by patient number, by drug name. I pulled one out at random.
Subject 7. Arjun Mehta. Age 54. Date of death: March 12.
I pulled out another.
Subject 12. Sunita Rao. Age 61. Date of death: April 3.
Another.
Subject 14. Meera Sharma. Age 48. Date of death: May 19.
My mother.
I opened the file.
Inside was everything. Every medical report. Every doctor's note. Every email between the hospital and Ahuja Industries, discussing dosages and side effects and how to handle the families when things went wrong.
And there, at the bottom of the pile—
A photograph.
Of my mother.
Not in the hospital. Not sick. Not dying.
Healthy. Happy. Laughing.
With my father.
Standing next to Aarav's father.
All three of them, smiling at the camera, like they were old friends.
Like they'd known each other for years.
"What is this?" I whispered.
Aarav looked at the photograph. His face went pale.
"I don't know," he said. "I've never seen this before."
"My mother knew your father. My father knew your father. They all knew each other."
"It looks that way."
"But that means—" I stopped. My mind was racing, putting pieces together, forming a picture I didn't want to see. "That means the clinical trial wasn't random. My mother wasn't a random patient. She was chosen."
"Yes."
"But why? Why would they choose her?"
Aarav took the photograph from my hands. Stared at it. His expression was strange—confused, frightened, like he was seeing something he couldn't understand.
"I don't know," he said. "But I'm going to find out."
CLIFFHANGER:
The lights went out.
Not just the flashlight—everything. The whole warehouse plunged into darkness.
"Aarav?"
No answer.
"Aarav!"
Something moved in the darkness. Footsteps. Breathing.
And then—
A voice. Not Aarav's. Older. Colder. Familiar in a way that made my blood run cold.
"Hello, Maya."
I knew that voice.
I'd heard it a thousand times. On birthday cards. On notes left on my pillow. On the margins of my school notebooks, scribbled during classes I couldn't focus on.
"It's been a long time," the voice said.
"Hello, baby."