In the hallways of a submarine, the cold metal of the platform beneath Rudra's foot. He walks toward a cabin, his heart steady but watchful. Now he arrives at the door and takes a moment or two to knock. From within, a voice — fragile, but quavering with anxiety — reaches out and permits him to enter.
When Rudra arrives, Kim is lying on a medical bed, and there are sensors attached to her body, monitoring her vitals. She was recovering, her wounds from the battlefield healing. Her eyes dart to Rudra, a bewildering blend of recognition and suspicion in her expression. "You fight just like your brother," she murmurs, her voice tinged with disbelief. "I saw you in the surveillance feeds from the last sub. The way that you dispossess your enemies — it's almost cruel. "Which book could someone kill with such ruthless precision?"
Rudra remains silent. Kim continues, her face growing darker. "My brother never had a word about you. But you must have known him very well. What was he like? How did he … end up where he ended up?"
Rudra's jaw tightens. "Your brother was a strong man. Strong. Resilient. But the story about how we met is soaked in blood."
The scene shifts to the past. Kim and her comrades were on such a high-stakes raid, blasting into an enemy stronghold. It was there amongst the chaos that she first met Ayush—not as a friend, but as a sworn enemy. It was a battle savage, brutal and merciless. Warrior Ayush struck down Kim like a fly smashing the pavement, even they lay together in the backseat. The blood ran from her mouth while she gasped for air, watching helplessly as he and his men faded into the night.
But the war wasn't over at all.
Days later, Kim was on an ambush while scouting enemy territory. She battled with brutal efficiency, dismembering all in her path. When she finally overpowered the final assailant, she ripped off his mask — only to discover the face of someone she once trusted. Her former trainee, the boy she once cared for, now stood opposite her — James.
"You've taken the side of the enemy … Why?" Making the words even more sinister was the tremor in Kim's voice as she spoke them, filled with rage.
James, gasping, his face battered and bruised and bloody, breathed, "They're not the enemy."
Fury ignited in Kim's veins. "Don't tell me that all this time I've been fighting for the wrong side. I refuse to believe it!" With that, she hit him and knocked him unconscious."
Kim navigated the war-torn landscape with James in tow. As she did so, she came across a scared little girl not older than six. Repression in the name of transformation is the dynamic to which both the oppressed and the oppressor succumb and which they produce as they cling to life. The girl flinched when Kim reached his hand out. But Kim had been instructed that her mission was to protect the lost and the forsaken.
Kim, taking the child with her, returned to her unit. But her captain showed no interest. "We don't have supplies enough to be another mouth to feed. Leave her."
Kim protested. The captain hesitated but eventually gave in, letting the girl stay.
For a time, life began to take shape. Kim absorbed missions, trained new soldiers and even glimpsed bits of peace. But then came the day that broke it all.
She was patrolling the city and came across a body in a gutter. The glassy wells of the child's eyes stared up at her. It was the same little girl she had battled to protect.
Kim's stomach twisted in pain. She demanded answers, clawing through records, bribing informants, delving further into the underbelly of the war. What she found shattered her.
The orphanage camps where we were "rescued" were slaughterhouses. The kids were tortured, starved and made to work. They continued to suffer until their bodies were no longer able to jibber. If they proved "useful," they were ground up into nutrient paste and fed to the starving hordes. Otherwise, they were cast as trash, left to be eaten by scavengers.
Kim heaved loudly, her body wracked with the implications of her deduction. The war wasn't about justice. It was about power. An argument over a serum — a tech breakthrough that may expand what it means to be human in ways we cannot envision. Countries had drenched the world in blood, all in a bid to reign over this scientific monstrosity.
The revelation destroyed her.
She crawled out of the world, disappeared from all documents, roamed battlefield to battlefield, freeing captives, demolishing false sanctuaries, and saving as many lost souls as she could. But there was no salvation. Nothing but a perpetual cycle of suffering and death.
Finally, she surrendered. Not to the enemy, nor to despair, but to the only truth remaining — she could not win this war alone.
Full of all the trust in the world, she got back together with Ayush and confided in him. And for the first time, someone heard me.
Ayush did not judge her. He did not label her a traitor, nor did he dismiss her pain. Instead, he gave her something she never thought she would have — acceptance.
Under his command, she was observed, analyzed and surveilled. But at last, she stood tall. Not just a soldier, but as a leader." And when the hour came, Ayush knew her not as an outsider, not as a liabi
Up to this point, he had always been referred to not as that, but as the Third Commander of his army.