The corridors of HQ were buzzing after the meeting — whispers of Reyaan Malhotra, the phantom criminal, echoing in every corner. But Kiaan had no time for whispers. He stormed down the hallway with the others in tow, his mind racing, voice clipped.
"I'm calling that number," Kiaan muttered, pulling his phone from his coat pocket — the very same number that had sent chills down his spine during the call yesterday.
He tapped redial.
Silence.
Then…
"The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service."
His brows knitted. He immediately turned to Tara, eyes intense. "Trace it. Fast. Before the trail goes cold."
Tara was already pulling out her tablet, her fingers flying over the touchscreen. "If the number was burned, we've got maybe thirty seconds of pulse left to triangulate its last ping."
"Do it!" Kiaan snapped, his tone more urgent than usual.
Across the room, Dev and Rehaan were hunched over an array of old case files — yellowed papers, torn folders, coffee-stained notes left behind by the agents who came before them. Names of safehouses, fake passports, whispers of Reyaan's aliases — but no face. Not one image. It was like chasing a ghost with no shadow.
Dev threw a folder across the table in frustration. "This is madness. How the hell do you arrest someone who doesn't even have a face?"
Rehaan looked over, voice low. "How do you hunt a man who can see you, but you can't even picture him?"
Kiaan returned, eyes sharp. "We don't have the luxury of quitting. No face, no photo, no address? Doesn't matter. We dig into the dust until it bleeds answers. It's our job."
Tara looked up, breath short. "I got a partial ping. Last signal was routed through Stratford East Tower, but it bounced off five relay stations in 15 seconds. Someone's using high-end call masking tech. Military-grade."
"Military?" Dev blinked. "He's running private ops with war-level encryption?"
"Rex is playing god," Rehaan muttered. "And we're just trying to read the rules."
Kiaan didn't respond. Instead, he pulled his phone back out and handed it to Dev. "Throw this away. SIM too. Burn it if you can."
Dev blinked. "Why? It's not hacked. We sweep them—"
"He called me directly," Kiaan said quietly, but with weight. "Not to threaten. To test. He's watching. Listening. Probably laughing. I won't let him do it again."
Dev took the phone, nodded, and walked off.
Rehaan leaned in. "You think he knows more about you than we think?"
Kiaan looked out the window, voice flat. "I think he already knows everything."
Silence settled like dust for a second.
Then Tara stood, tossing her tablet down. "I'll start cross-referencing past relay locations. If this number was used before, we'll find the pattern."
Rehaan snapped his fingers. "I'll check transport logs. If Stratford East had a phone ping around that time, maybe someone left a digital footprint nearby — metro, traffic cams, street Wi-Fi, anything."
Dev returned with a new burner phone and SIM, dropping it into Kiaan's palm. "New number. Clean. No digital footprint yet. Use it wisely."
Kiaan nodded. "We're not chasing a criminal anymore," he said, his voice a deadly whisper. "We're hunting a myth. And it's time we start acting like the monsters he thinks we're not."
They all stood there, a moment of unspoken unity between them. In the shadows of England's darkest war, a small team of officers was rising — not just to serve justice, but to face the very thing that even justice feared.
The ghost had whispered.
Now they were whispering back.