The phone cable coiled like a fine snake around Lakshmi's arm as she struggled not to rip it off the wall while explaining to her mother, Priya, what had happened with Anantha.
"Well, his father walked right past him as if he weren't even his son, and the poor thing fell, and turned blue. So we ran straight to the infirmary."
"Blue? What do you mean blue?" her mother asked, curious over the line.
"Blue. Blue-blue. Bright blue."
"But is he alright?"
"Well, that's another thing. The idiot doctor says he's perfectly fine," Lakshmi said, outraged.
"And is he still blue?"
"No, no. It was just for a moment. But I can't believe that's normal."
"Oh, it's a blessing! Blessed child! What a joy, my grandson!"
"But Mom, what are you saying?"
She turned around as she heard Satya open the door, carrying a sleeping Anantha in his arms. He laid the boy gently on the bed and approached her, eyes fixed on the floor. Lakshmi, still holding the phone with her mother joyfully rambling on about Anantha's color changes, looked at Satya's defeated-warrior stance, and her anger melted into compassion. She stroked his mustache and held out the phone, from which her mother's unstoppable cheerfulness still poured out.
"Attayya, namaskaram. How is your health?" Satya said half-heartedly to the phone.
The voice on the other end continued at full speed, nearly unintelligible. Lakshmi smiled and shook her head from side to side, then began moving her hand to match her mother's rapid rhythm.
"Tell her we have to go," she whispered with an awkward grimace.
She wanted to lie down with Anantha, and once her mother got excited, stopping her required a voice of real authority. Satya lifted his tired eyes and sighed.
"Attaya ji," he said in a deep voice, "we're very glad you're strong like a neem tree, but we really have to go."
Lakshmi hung up, even though her mother was still talking as if no one had interrupted.
"I really have to go now," Satya said. "I only came to bring Anantha."
"Oh, Satya. What a day you're putting me through. Anantha needs his father, and I need my husband," Lakshmi said, anguished.
"I was ordered not to contact anyone."
"Ordered by who?"
"RAW."
"What does RAW want from you?"
Satya lifted his mustache with a half-smile, squinting, and lay down next to Anantha.
"I hate secrets," Lakshmi grumbled. "Are we in danger?"
"I couldn't say."
Lakshmi sat on the bed and stroked his hair. He reeked of sweat and tobacco, and she remembered passing by a very hairy man in a yellow shirt smoking near the infirmary.
"That hairy guy with the yellow shirt, is it him?"
"Mhmm," Satya confirmed.
"He gives me the creeps. Are you going to see him now?"
"Mhmm."
Satya's lips were tight and his brow furrowed with concern. Lakshmi knew that look well. She wanted to ask about it, but she knew that if he could tell her, he already would have. Anantha slept peacefully, his little fingers twitching as if dreaming of grasping something. Lakshmi sighed.
"We need to take him to a different doctor. That man couldn't diagnose a dead dog," she said with a hint of mockery. "And speaking of dead dogs—when you come back, take a shower and give me those clothes. I'm not sure if I should wash them or burn them."
Satya sat up heavily.
"You're going to get sick of doctors. I think they're going to send a few."
"Oh, really?" Lakshmi jolted.
"I'll confirm it after the interview."
Worried by the pessimistic tone, Lakshmi had a feeling Satya was hiding something about what happened to Anantha.
"And please, don't leave the house until I return."
Lakshmi jumped to her feet. Her blood boiled again. She got up close to Satya, stared him down, and jabbed her index finger hard into his chest.
"I understand you have your little RAW secrets at work, but if these things affect this family directly, I need to be informed. Don't you think so?"
"I really can't..." Satya said, stepping back.
The fear of the unknown filled Lakshmi's eyes with tears, and as usual, she masked that fear in a cloak of rage. Satya turned his back and headed for the door. Lakshmi let out a cry of frustration, grabbed an alarm clock, and hurled it, smashing it against the doorframe. Satya stopped for a moment but didn't turn around. He opened the door and left without saying goodbye. Anantha woke up and cried loudly.
For Lakshmi, the conversation wasn't over. Not by a long shot. It was bad enough being almost trapped on base without now having to face house arrest too. She ran after him to the door, but when she opened it to go outside, two armed men stood in her way and kindly invited her to stay inside. She closed her teary eyes, breathing fast. Anantha's crying added to the call to return.
She lay on the bed, held Anantha tightly, and whispered everything she needed to hear to calm down.
* * *
The room was far too narrow and windowless.
It barely fit the two chairs and the small table. From the ceiling hung a coiled lamp, casting an orange glow over a tray of assorted fruit that nearly covered the entire surface. Vinay wrestled with the walls, trying to relieve an itch on his rear, when Satya arrived.
"Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable," he said, chuckling.
Satya closed the door and sat down with some effort. They had similarly broad shoulders.
"Have you had a chance to eat something, Commodore?"
Vinay gestured at the fruit. Satya ignored the gesture and stared at him intently.
"With all due respect, Vinay ji..."
Vinay's hairy fingers found a pomegranate.
"Yeah, yeah. Get to the point, right?"
Satya nodded. Without breaking eye contact, Vinay bit into the unpeeled fruit and chewed noisily. He sank his teeth into the other half and sucked until it was hollow. Juice dribbled down his beard, staining his shirt. He left the pomegranate shell on the table, wiped his lips with the hair on his forearm, and lit a cigarette.
"What's happening with your son is clearly connected to the incident."
He took a long drag, moistening the cigarette with juice, and flicked the ash into the empty peel.
"Your son doesn't normally speak Russian, does he? I assume, given his age, he doesn't really speak at all yet. Do you know what he said in the infirmary?"
Satya shook his head.
"He was crying out for help. Desperately."
"And what do you want from my son? To crack open his skull and see if there's a Russian scientist inside?"
"No, Commodore. Of course not. But it's obvious there's a connection. It may seem strange, but in my years of service to this country, I've seen far more... peculiar things."
Satya's fists were clenched, and his mustache quivered with each breath.
"It's a complicated case, Commodore. What can I say to put your mind at ease? This confinement isn't what you think. The guards I stationed at your house are bilingual—one speaks Russian, the other Chinese. In case anyone else tries to manifest through your son, they'll be able to take notes. We're not going to dissect little Anantha. I'm not deploying a battalion in lab coats to study him. There's not a single expert who could help with something this unique."
"How long are we expected to live like this? My wife is extremely upset. I can't go back home without giving her something."
"Then let's resolve this as soon as we can. What other 'little details' have you noticed over the past year?"
Satya's eyes drifted up and to the left as he tilted his head.
"The rift."
"Rift?" Vinay repeated, inspecting a fig from the tray.
"It appeared this morning in the west wing."
"It appeared this morning..."
Vinay sniffed the fig and swallowed it whole when he noticed Satya's unsettled gaze.
"It's too large to have gone unnoticed. And from inside, there's a darkness that... chills the soul," Satya said, lowering his voice.
"Oh. Mmm. I see. Well, actually no, I don't. But it's certainly an interesting piece of information," Vinay replied, cleaning between his teeth with a fingernail. "I'll stop by and have a look."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No need. We all have our jobs, don't we? Investigating a soul-chilling rift sounds very much within the scope of mine..."
As he spoke, the lamp's light grew redder. Vinay squinted at the shifting color.
"I sincerely appreciate," Vinay continued, "both your cooperation in such a sensitive matter and your understanding. And I do sympathize with your wife. Tomorrow morning I'll visit your home and try, as best I can, to offer some explanations—updates on the investigation, how this affects or doesn't affect you."
Satya nodded without much relief. He didn't seem to notice the change in light, which now held all of Vinay's attention.
"The best thing you can do now is go home to your family and rest," Vinay concluded.
By nightfall, Vinay was still staring at the lamp. Its light had deepened into a blood red that soaked the room's narrow walls. He sniffed at the spots where the glow concentrated, alternating between expressions of curiosity and disgust.
He crawled out of the room and halfway down the corridor. A droplet of red light rose, floating, and slipped behind a fluorescent tube. He removed his shoes, freeing his hairy feet, and with a burst of motion, leapt up and clung to the ceiling.
He caught the scent of the red light again—here it had grown thick, viscous, darker. He tracked its direction and bolted forward, running upside down along the ceiling, following the trail that led straight to the west wing.
Crouched overhead, he found an enormous rift gaping before him, sucking in light and a thin stream of matter that had turned completely black.
The Commodore had been wrong. That darkness didn't want to escape—it wanted to devour. It didn't chill the soul; it fed on it. Deep within the rift, two red points stared back at him. Every hair on his body stood on end, turning into needles that shredded his clothes. He opened his mouth, revealing enormous fangs, and leapt into the rift laughing—accepting the challenge.
* * *
The guards straightened up when they saw the Commodore approaching, hiding their sleepiness as best they could.
Inside, Lakshmi and Anantha snored sweetly out of sync. Satya went to the kitchen and made tea for three. He stepped outside with the tray and sat on the concrete steps.
"They're asleep," Satya said. "Have some tea with me. I doubt you'll be hearing any Russian or Chinese tonight."
The guards gratefully accepted.
"Did you know any of the missing operatives?"
The younger-looking guard raised his eyebrows and tilted his head side to side in quick succession. The other placed a hand on his shoulder, worried he might say something inappropriate.
"Don't worry. Vinay told me everything."
"Ah," said the younger one. "My older brother was... is one of them."
"Bhai! Keep talking and you'll see Vinay strangle you with his feet."
"Is he really that tough on you?" Satya asked.
"For Vinay, duty is everything," the older one said. "No excuses. No half-done jobs. No breaks."
"They say he has a monkey's tail..."
"Bhai!"
Satya laughed. He said goodnight to the guards and lay on the sofa so as not to wake Lakshmi. The weight of exhaustion quickly took over, and he drifted off imagining Vinay hanging from a branch by a monkey's tail, stuffing himself with figs and pomegranates under a night sky that stretched endlessly within him.
Reduced to a mere observer of his own existence, Satya's memories compressed into a tangle of threads that twisted between incomprehensible dimensions—until they found a casing of flesh.
In late September of 1971, a young Satya Sudarshan pushed a cart full of fish along the coast of Visakhapatnam, just as he did every weekend. The sea had been furious for days, the sky blackened, and the golden light typical of that hour had turned to purple and copper.
Small groups of people gathered across the beach around corpses the waves had regurgitated. Satya had heard about the great storm in the Bay of Bengal, which had hit further north with devastating force. He had never imagined the ocean's hand could drag someone this far south.
A man in one of the groups raised his hand and called to him. He asked if he could borrow the cart to collect the bodies. Satya refused. He had to deliver the fish to his uncle's stall—his uncle had long arms and no patience for excuses or delays. The man shoved him hard, knocking him on his backside, dumped the fish on top of him, and took the cart. Satya followed him, crying—more wounded by the beating his uncle would give him than by the fall itself.
"Sir, please," he sobbed, his face covered in tears and snot. "My uncle... please give me the cart back. Please..."
He followed the cart's tracks, dragging his feet through the sand, until he reached the group where three bodies had been piled onto the cart. The last one, bloated and purple like the sky, hung headfirst over the edge, eyes wide open—as if staring at Satya in surprise.
"Looks like this one knows you, abbai," one of the men said.
The corpse opened its mouth and began to make a hissing sound, like a deflating tire. The pitch shifted with tiny spasms of its massive tongue. Satya had the impression the dead man was trying to speak. He leaned in and focused on the sound, staring deep into the darkness inside that mouth, until he clearly heard:
"Anantha is ours."
He woke from the dream, gasping for air, as if he had been drowning in thick liquid. He touched his sweat-soaked body, checking that he was, in fact, an adult. That dream had scrambled his brain. But it wasn't a dream—it was a real memory, something that had happened in his childhood and resurfaced. As real as the pain he now felt tugging at his mustache.
"Anantha is ours," echoed in his head with a sense of danger and urgency he still didn't understand.
He had to talk to Vinay. He ran off, knocking over the empty tea glasses on the stairs with a clatter, waking the guards, who, without knowing what was going on, ran after him. Dawn hadn't broken yet, and he had no idea where Vinay was—so he headed for the breach.
When he arrived, the breach was pulsing with a disturbing red glow that left Satya and the guards frozen in place.
Something was moving inside the breach. Something trying to come out. Satya couldn't blink. He wanted to swallow, but his throat was dry. The breach sucked the air from the hallway, pulling everyone toward it, and then, suddenly, it spat out a figure covered in a black substance. The guards raised their weapons, trembling, panting, aiming at the writhing mass.
"Don't shoot!" shouted the dark mass in a familiar voice.
"Vinay ji?"
The thick matter began sliding off the figure, revealing the features of his face. He shook himself like a dog, spraying the floor, walls, and ceiling.
"Commodore, boys, please—someone give me a cigarette. I haven't had a smoke in months."
* * *
After a long, steamy shower, Vinay found a pair of leather shoes shining like new, a neatly folded blue shirt on top of some black trousers, and the cherry on top: a pack of cigarettes and some matches. Next to it, a plate with a couple of halved pomegranates.
"This commodore is a saint."
All the clothes were ridiculously oversized, but they smelled of sweet mint. He tucked the pant legs into the shoes and stepped out to face the commodore.
"You could've taken the chance to tidy up your beard," Satya said, trying for sarcasm.
"Useless," Vinay replied with a smile. "It grows back as I cut it."
They walked in silence until they reached Satya's office. Vinay lit a cigarette and looked at the commodore, who was barely managing to hold a whirlwind of questions above his head.
"Let me warn you: I don't have all the answers. And the ones I do have may not be satisfactory."
"My son, Anantha. I had a dream—it was a memory. A corpse told me he belonged to them. Plural."
"I suppose I survived thanks to my superhuman skill and immense willpower. Thanks for asking, Commodore."
"This isn't the time for jokes, Vinay ji. From what I've seen, it's clear you're not just a regular RAW agent, and that you're familiar with things far beyond my understanding."
"Truly impressive, Commodore," Vinay chuckled. "My respects."
"What I want to know is what I can do to protect my son."
"Perfectly understandable," Vinay nodded. "You and your family are now officially under my protection. Pack your things. Tonight, you'll be leaving for a secret base in Nagaland."
"Tonight?"
"It's an underground facility, rather unusual, but I'll try to provide you with some comforts. It's located beneath an abandoned temple—perfect if you enjoy meditating—and close to a lake with revitalizing waters. Some say it's magical, but I think it's just that if you bathe there and a tiger jumps in with you, you'll run out of the water like you're twenty years younger."
"It's incredible you still have that sense of humor after coming back from hell."
"Oh, dear Commodore. While the beings there did resemble demons, that wasn't hell. It was a place—if it can even be called that—where time and space don't walk hand in hand. It's not even another world. It's the fabric between worlds. The Betweenworlds," he said, thoughtful. "Heaven or hell, in truth, we make them ourselves with our actions and thoughts. Just wait till you tell your wife you're moving tonight..."
"Lakshmi..."
* * *
The aroma of spices filled the house. Anantha's eyes followed the clouds of steam that floated up the walls, danced on the ceiling, and rained down on Lakshmi's long black hair. It was late; Satya should be home any minute, and dinner still wasn't done. Anantha had woken up and kept repeating "da, da, da" in a sweet, playful tone.
The radio speaker crackled with distortion as a Caribbean-flavored Kishore Kumar song played. Lakshmi danced while tasting the raita sauce when she heard the door. She twirled toward the entrance, wooden spoon in hand, following the rhythm of her choreography. Satya walked in with tired eyes and a droopy mustache. She gave him a playful smile, raising her eyebrows to the beat of the music, and offered him the spoon without missing a step. Satya sighed, closing his eyes, but just as he was about to taste the raita, Lakshmi pulled the spoon away, spun in place, blew on the spoon while whistling the melody, then brought it back to his lips, this time wetting them, bouncing her shoulders, and running back to the kitchen.
"Hold on, I need to tell you something serious," Satya said, turning off the radio.
"Can't it wait until after dinner?"
"We're moving to another base. Tomorrow, first thing."
"What?" Lakshmi shouted.
"We have to pack now."
"But why? Which base? Oh, Satya, please..."
Anantha looked at them, still saying "da, da, da."
Satya lifted him in his arms with a smile, but his eyes were somber.
"We're not safe here."
Lakshmi looked at him, scared. She had never seen him so serious, so worried.
"I don't know yet which base. But it's what's best for Anantha. Please, be understanding. I need your help."
Lakshmi held her breath and nodded. Then she turned off the stove.