THE LAST BREATH OF GLASS: Mumbai. Dreams. Betrayal. Death. (by Gitangshu Adhikary; Plot by Sourodipto)

 

THE LAST BREATH OF GLASS

Mumbai. Dreams. Betrayal. Death.

Author: Gitangshu Adhikary
Plot: Sourodipto

Part I — The Night the Mirrors Changed

---

At 11:47 p.m., the woman on the nineteenth floor called the police.

She never got to finish the sentence.

The emergency operator heard only three things.

Rapid breathing.

Glass breaking.

And a terrified whisper.

"She's still inside..."

The line went dead.

By the time officers forced open the apartment door twelve minutes later, every mirror inside had been smashed.

Blood streaked the hallway.

Furniture lay overturned.

The balcony door swung open in the humid Mumbai night.

The woman who had made the call was gone.

The CCTV cameras showed no one entering.

No one leaving.

The investigation would remain unsolved.

But that wasn't where the story began.

It began six months earlier.

With a promotion.

And a smile that hid something far darker than hatred.

---

Thirty-four-year-old Ananya Sen had built her life the difficult way.

No family wealth.

No influential relatives.

No shortcuts.

She rented a modest apartment in Powai, endured Mumbai's impossible traffic every morning, and worked twelve-hour days at a multinational financial consulting firm in Lower Parel.

She was respected.

Reliable.

Quiet.

The sort of employee managers trusted with crises.

The sort of employee ambitious colleagues quietly resented.

Among them was Rhea Malhotra.

Elegant.

Confident.

Popular.

Everyone liked her.

She remembered birthdays.

Organized office parties.

Brought homemade desserts every Friday.

She also knew exactly how to make someone feel alone in a room full of people.

No one ever noticed.

Not until it was far too late.

---

The promotion should have belonged to Rhea.

Everyone assumed it would.

Instead, it went to Ananya.

The congratulatory applause lasted less than a minute.

The silence afterward lasted months.

Small things changed.

Meetings began without informing her.

Important emails disappeared.

Rumors spread quietly through the office.

Someone claimed she manipulated performance reports.

Someone else suggested she was receiving "special treatment."

Nobody said these things directly.

They simply appeared.

Like stains.

Impossible to wash away.

Ananya told herself it was office politics.

Nothing more.

She had survived worse.

She believed work ended when she left the building.

She was wrong.

---

Three weeks later, Ananya missed her usual train.

The platform overflowed with exhausted commuters.

Monsoon rain hammered the station roof.

She barely noticed the woman standing beside her.

Barefoot.

Soaked.

Dressed in an old sari that looked decades out of date.

The woman leaned close enough for Ananya to smell damp earth.

Without looking at her, she whispered,

"Don't let her give you anything."

Ananya frowned.

"I'm sorry?"

The woman had vanished.

No footsteps.

No crowd pushing between them.

Simply...

Gone.

The arriving train screamed into the station.

A hand rested gently on Ananya's shoulder.

"Hey!"

Rhea smiled brightly.

"There you are."

She held out a steaming paper cup.

"You've been looking exhausted."

Ananya stared at it.

"What?"

"Coffee."

She hesitated.

Then remembered the strange warning.

She laughed nervously.

"I'm fine."

"Oh, come on."

Rhea's smile never faltered.

"You barely sleep anymore."

That stopped her.

"I never said I wasn't sleeping."

For the briefest instant—

Something unreadable crossed Rhea's face.

Gone almost immediately.

"You have those eyes."

She laughed.

"Trust me."

Against every instinct...

Ananya accepted the coffee.

---

Sleep abandoned her.

Not entirely.

Only when she needed it.

She began waking every night at exactly 3:09 a.m.

Always for the same reason.

Someone was walking through her apartment.

Not sneaking.

Walking.

Slow.

Measured.

Wood creaked outside her bedroom.

One footstep.

Another.

Another.

She lay frozen beneath the blanket.

Listening.

The footsteps stopped outside her door.

Silence.

Then...

Three soft knocks.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Ananya forced herself out of bed.

She opened the door.

Nothing.

The apartment stood empty.

The hallway lights remained on.

The front door was locked from the inside.

She searched every room.

Nobody.

When she returned to the bedroom—

Wet footprints crossed her floor.

Bare human footprints.

Beginning beneath her window.

Ending beside her bed.

There were no prints leading away.

---

Morning erased her certainty.

She blamed exhaustion.

Work stress.

Lack of sleep.

She scrubbed the floor before leaving for the office.

By lunchtime, she had almost convinced herself she'd imagined everything.

Then Rhea smiled across the conference table.

"You look terrible."

"I didn't sleep."

"I know."

Ananya looked up sharply.

"What?"

Rhea stirred her tea.

"You said you haven't been sleeping."

"I never told you that."

For a heartbeat, the office seemed unnaturally quiet.

The air-conditioning hummed.

Computer keyboards clicked.

No one else appeared to notice.

Rhea simply smiled.

"I must have guessed."

---

The panic attacks started a week later.

Without warning.

Her heart would race.

Her hands trembled uncontrollably.

The walls seemed to lean inward.

Every reflective surface looked...

Wrong.

Not haunted.

Delayed.

As though her reflection reacted a fraction of a second after she moved.

Doctors prescribed medication for anxiety.

Therapy was recommended.

She attended two sessions.

Neither helped.

One evening, after another twelve-hour shift, she broke down in the office washroom.

She couldn't stop crying.

She couldn't explain why.

Rhea found her there.

"You don't have to keep suffering."

Ananya wiped her eyes.

"I can't do this anymore."

"I know someone."

"Who?"

"A friend."

Rhea's voice remained calm.

"He helps people switch off."

"I don't want drugs."

"I didn't say drugs."

"You didn't have to."

Rhea placed a small amber bottle beside the sink.

"No pressure."

She walked away.

Leaving the bottle behind.

Ananya stared at it for nearly five minutes.

Then she threw it into the trash.

She felt relieved.

Until she reached home.

The same bottle sat on her dining table.

Still sealed.

Waiting.

She was certain she had never brought it home.

Outside...

Something knocked softly against the apartment window.

Three times.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

She turned toward the glass.

A woman stood on the balcony.

Barefoot.

Drenched in rain.

The same woman from Platform Three.

She raised one trembling finger.

Pointed—

Not at Ananya.

At the bottle.

Then slowly shook her head.

The lights went out.

When they returned two seconds later...

The balcony was empty.

Only the bottle remained.

And from somewhere inside the apartment—

A familiar voice whispered gently,

"Take it."

End of Part I

 

Part II — The Hollow Hour

The whisper came again.

"Take it."

It wasn't louder.

It was closer.

As though someone stood just behind her shoulder, breathing into the space between her ear and her neck.

Ananya spun around.

The apartment was empty.

The rain continued hammering the balcony rail.

Traffic murmured twenty floors below.

Nothing else.

Her pulse refused to slow.

She grabbed the amber bottle with trembling fingers.

No label.

No manufacturer's name.

No expiry date.

Only a thin black line painted around the glass.

She unscrewed the cap.

The contents smelled faintly sweet.

Like burnt sugar.

Then—

Her phone rang.

She nearly dropped it.

RHEA CALLING

Ananya stared at the screen until the ringing stopped.

A message appeared immediately afterward.

Don't stay alone tonight. It's worse when you're alone.

Ananya didn't remember telling anyone she was afraid.

---

The following morning, she threw the bottle into a roadside garbage bin on her way to work.

She watched it disappear beneath broken cardboard and food wrappers.

Only then did she breathe.

At lunchtime, she opened her desk drawer to retrieve a notebook.

The bottle lay inside.

Perfectly clean.

The black ring around its neck gleamed beneath the fluorescent lights.

She slammed the drawer shut.

Her chair scraped backward.

Nearby colleagues looked up briefly.

No one asked what was wrong.

Rhea did.

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

Ananya forced a smile.

"I'm just tired."

Rhea tilted her head.

"You don't have to fight everything by yourself."

There was genuine warmth in her voice.

Or something that sounded exactly like it.

---

The attacks grew worse.

Her heartbeat would suddenly race so violently she thought her ribs might crack.

Her vision blurred without warning.

Sometimes entire minutes disappeared.

She would find herself standing in the office archive, unable to remember walking there.

Or sitting in her parked car with the engine running.

Or staring into the mirror in the women's washroom while everyone else had already gone home.

Every lost moment left behind the same thing.

Three wet footprints.

Always leading away from wherever she had been standing.

Never toward it.

---

One Friday evening, she stayed late to finish a client presentation.

The office emptied floor by floor until only the cleaning staff remained.

The glass walls reflected endless rows of vacant workstations.

At 11:18 p.m., the lights flickered.

Her computer shut down.

She cursed under her breath.

Then she heard footsteps.

Measured.

Unhurried.

Moving through the dark office.

She stood.

"Who's there?"

No answer.

The footsteps continued.

Between cubicles.

Around meeting rooms.

Closer.

She reached for the emergency torch kept in her drawer.

The beam cut through the darkness.

Empty desks.

Empty corridors.

Then—

A reflection moved across the glass wall of the conference room.

Not in front of it.

Inside it.

A woman walked calmly through the reflection.

Barefoot.

Her soaked sari left black water on the mirrored floor.

She never looked at Ananya.

She walked past.

Disappeared behind a reflected wall that didn't exist.

The footsteps stopped.

A hand rested gently on Ananya's shoulder.

She screamed.

Rhea quickly pulled her hand away.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to frighten you."

The office lights came back on.

Everything looked ordinary again.

"You shouldn't work this late," Rhea said softly.

"I heard you crying."

"I wasn't crying."

Rhea's smile lingered a fraction too long.

"Weren't you?"

---

That weekend, Ananya visited her parents' old apartment in Dadar.

It had stood empty since her mother's death.

Dust coated the furniture.

The familiar scent of sandalwood still lingered in the curtains.

She searched for something—anything—that might explain why she felt as though her own mind was slipping away.

Instead, she found an old cassette recorder.

She pressed play.

Static.

Then her mother's voice.

"If you're listening to this, it's because I never told you enough."

Ananya sat down slowly.

"When you were nine," her mother continued, "you disappeared for almost an hour during the Ganesh immersion procession. We found you sitting outside an abandoned chapel. You kept saying a woman had brought you there because she wanted to show you 'the broken mirrors.'"

Ananya frowned.

She remembered the festival.

She didn't remember getting lost.

"The doctor said it was shock," the recording continued. "But you drew the same woman for weeks afterward."

The tape clicked.

Silence.

Her hands shook as she searched an old cupboard.

Beneath a stack of schoolbooks lay a faded sketchbook.

She opened it.

Every page contained the same drawing.

A barefoot woman with rain-soaked hair.

Standing before a cracked mirror.

On the final page, written in a child's uneven handwriting, were five words.

She follows people who listen.

Ananya stared at the sentence until the letters blurred.

A chill spread through her.

She had forgotten all of it.

Every drawing.

Every nightmare.

Every conversation.

Not faded.

Erased.

---

Monday arrived with another crisis.

The firm's largest client accused the company of leaking confidential financial data.

Senior management demanded answers.

Internal audits began immediately.

Ananya's login credentials appeared throughout the compromised files.

She knew she hadn't done it.

Someone had.

Every trail pointed toward her.

She worked frantically to prove it.

Every document she opened had already been altered.

Every timestamp contradicted her memory.

Every backup was missing.

The walls were closing in.

Late that evening, Rhea found her alone in the records room.

"You can't win."

Ananya looked up.

"I didn't do this."

"I know."

"Then help me."

Rhea stepped closer.

"So I can watch them destroy me too?"

For the first time, something cold surfaced beneath her polished composure.

Gone an instant later.

She reached into her handbag.

Produced another amber bottle.

"This is stronger."

"I told you—"

"It helps you stop hearing footsteps."

Ananya froze.

"I never told you about the footsteps."

Rhea didn't answer.

She simply placed the bottle on the shelf and walked away.

---

That night, Ananya didn't throw it away.

She sat in darkness for nearly an hour, staring at the glass vial.

The apartment felt impossibly silent.

No footsteps.

No knocking.

No whispers.

Only the rain.

Then, exactly at 3:09 a.m., every mirror in the apartment clouded over at once.

Words slowly appeared across the fogged glass.

Not written.

Forming.

As though traced by invisible fingers.

DON'T LET HER MAKE YOU FORGET AGAIN.

Ananya stumbled backward.

Before she could move—

A violent pounding shook the front door.

Not one fist.

Many.

Rapid.

Desperate.

She rushed toward the peephole.

The corridor outside was empty.

The pounding stopped instantly.

When she turned back—

The message had vanished.

So had the bottle.

Only a faint, sweet smell lingered in the room.

Burnt sugar.

And somewhere inside the apartment—

Someone exhaled.

Very slowly.

End of Part II

 

Part III — The Woman Behind the Glass

The breath did not belong to her.

Ananya stood perfectly still.

Every instinct urged her to run, yet her legs refused to obey. The apartment seemed to contract around her. The walls leaned inward. The ceiling appeared lower than it had moments ago.

Then—

The lights returned.

Nothing had changed.

The mirrors reflected exactly what they should.

Her living room stood empty.

She laughed once.

A dry, exhausted sound.

"I'm losing my mind."

The sentence felt comforting.

Madness was easier to accept than whatever else was happening.

---

The following morning she awoke on the bathroom floor.

Her head throbbed.

Blood had dried along one side of her forehead.

She couldn't remember falling asleep.

She couldn't remember entering the bathroom.

She looked toward the mirror.

Someone had written a sentence across it with a fingertip.

Not in blood.

In condensation.

Though the mirror was perfectly dry.

HOW MANY NIGHTS HAVE YOU LOST?

She blinked.

The words disappeared.

She checked her phone.

Twenty-three missed calls.

Thirty-one unread messages.

Her manager.

Human Resources.

Friends.

Her father.

The dates made no sense.

It was Thursday.

She was certain she had gone to bed on Monday.

Three entire days had vanished.

---

At work, people stopped talking when she entered.

Conversations broke apart.

Eyes followed her through the office.

The receptionist avoided looking directly at her.

Her manager called her into a conference room.

"We've been trying to reach you."

"I..."

"You disappeared."

"I was sick."

"You didn't answer anyone."

He slid several printed documents across the table.

Expense approvals.

Client emails.

Financial transfers.

Every one of them carried her digital signature.

She stared at the pages.

"I've never seen these."

"You approved all of them."

"I didn't."

Her manager looked genuinely saddened.

"Ananya... you also resigned."

She looked up.

"What?"

He handed her another page.

A resignation letter.

Professional.

Grateful.

Signed in her own handwriting.

She felt her stomach turn.

"I never wrote this."

"You submitted it yesterday."

"I wasn't here yesterday."

The manager remained silent.

His expression told her he no longer believed her.

Neither, she realized, did she.

---

She left the office carrying a cardboard box that contained ten years of her career.

Outside, Mumbai rushed forward exactly as it always had.

Local trains thundered overhead.

Street vendors shouted.

Rainwater flowed through clogged drains.

Millions of lives continued uninterrupted.

Only hers had stopped.

She crossed the road without looking.

A motorcycle screeched to a halt inches from her.

The rider shouted angrily.

She barely heard him.

Across the street...

The barefoot woman stood beneath a broken streetlight.

For the first time, the woman looked directly into her eyes.

Then she slowly shook her head.

Behind Ananya, someone spoke warmly.

"You shouldn't cross alone."

Rhea.

Umbrella in one hand.

Coffee in the other.

She smiled as though nothing in the world had changed.

"I heard."

Ananya said nothing.

"They're making you the scapegoat."

Still silence.

"You need something stronger now."

Rhea held out the coffee.

Ananya stared at the paper cup.

A faint scent drifted upward.

Burnt sugar.

---

"I know."

The words escaped before Ananya realized she had spoken.

Rhea's smile faltered.

"Know what?"

"The bottles."

The rain intensified.

People hurried past them without slowing.

No one seemed to notice the two women standing motionless on the pavement.

"I threw them away."

Ananya's voice shook.

"They always came back."

Rhea's expression softened.

"You're under enormous stress."

"You knew about the footsteps."

"You told me."

"I never did."

"You don't remember."

A silence stretched between them.

Then Rhea laughed quietly.

"It's remarkable how memory works."

Ananya's pulse quickened.

"You've been doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Making everyone think I'm insane."

Rhea took a slow sip of coffee.

"I never forced you to swallow anything."

The sentence landed like a stone.

Not a denial.

Not an admission.

Just enough truth to become poisonous.

---

That evening Ananya drove to the office parking garage.

She no longer worked there.

She no longer possessed an access card.

Still, the security barrier stood open.

No guard questioned her.

The basement was almost empty.

Concrete pillars disappeared into shadow.

She remembered something.

Weeks earlier—

She had followed Rhea one night after work.

Not intentionally.

She had forgotten it until now.

Rhea hadn't gone toward the exit.

She had descended into the oldest level of the building.

A level no employee ever used.

The memory ended there.

Another gap.

Another missing piece.

Ananya switched on her phone's flashlight.

She found the old service staircase.

The lowest floor smelled of damp concrete and rust.

Half the fluorescent lights had failed.

Every sound echoed unnaturally.

Then she saw it.

A locked storage room.

Its door stood slightly open.

Inside...

Shelves.

Boxes.

Discarded office furniture.

And dozens of empty amber bottles.

Hundreds.

Stacked carefully in cardboard cartons.

Every bottle identical to the ones that had appeared in her apartment.

Ananya's heartbeat hammered against her ribs.

She picked one up.

Every bottle carried a tiny inventory sticker.

Not pharmaceutical.

Office supply.

Issued years earlier.

Footsteps echoed behind her.

She spun.

No one.

Only darkness between the shelves.

Then—

A metallic click.

The storage room door closed by itself.

The lock turned.

She rushed toward it.

It wouldn't open.

Her breathing accelerated.

She pounded on the steel.

"Help!"

Silence.

A voice answered from the other side.

Calm.

Almost affectionate.

"You always stay late."

Rhea.

"I thought we'd finally have time to talk."

Ananya threw herself against the door.

It didn't move.

"What do you want?"

No answer.

Instead, something slid beneath the gap at the bottom of the door.

Another amber bottle.

Full.

Freshly sealed.

A folded note was wrapped around its neck.

Her trembling fingers unfolded it.

Only one sentence had been written in neat blue ink.

No one believes frightened women. They only believe evidence.

The lights went out.

Complete darkness swallowed the room.

Glass shattered somewhere behind her.

Then another.

Then another.

Hundreds of bottles burst at once.

The sweet smell of burnt sugar flooded the air.

Ananya covered her mouth and stumbled backward.

Her vision blurred almost immediately.

Shapes moved between the shelves.

Not one.

Many.

Bare feet scraped across concrete.

Women whispered.

Someone began crying.

Someone laughed.

Then all the voices merged into one.

A single sentence repeated over and over.

"Don't forget."

Ananya forced herself toward the opposite wall.

Her hand struck something metallic.

A fire axe.

She tore it free from its bracket.

The whispers stopped.

The room became utterly silent.

Then, in the darkness, a single match flared.

Its tiny flame illuminated Rhea's face from below.

She stood barely three metres away.

Smiling.

Behind her, every shattered bottle reflected the flickering light like hundreds of tiny mirrors.

"You should have accepted the promotion," Rhea said softly.

"It would have been so much easier."

She blew out the match.

Darkness rushed back.

Something charged through the room.

Ananya swung the axe with every ounce of strength she had.

The blade struck...

Glass.

Not flesh.

An explosion of shards erupted around her.

And every shard reflected a different version of Rhea—

Each one smiling.

End of Part III

 

Part IV — The Shards That Remembered

Glass rained through the darkness.

Thousands of razor-edged fragments spun through the storage room, clattering across concrete like a swarm of insects.

Ananya threw up her arms.

A shard sliced across her cheek.

Another buried itself in her forearm.

Pain flared.

Warm blood ran down her fingers.

She barely noticed.

Every reflection around her showed Rhea.

Not one stood in the same position.

One smiled.

Another watched silently.

A third slowly applauded.

A fourth stood with her back turned.

The real woman was nowhere.

Or everywhere.

Ananya tightened her grip on the fire axe.

Her breathing became short, ragged bursts.

"Come out!"

Her own voice bounced through the room.

Then returned.

"...come out..."

Not as an echo.

As another voice.

Her voice.

Speaking from somewhere behind her.

She spun.

Nothing.

Only darkness.

Then footsteps.

Measured.

Closing in.

---

The first blow came from the side.

Not a fist.

A metal shelf crashed into her shoulder.

She slammed into stacked cartons.

Amber bottles toppled around her.

Some shattered.

Others rolled across the floor.

The sweet smell thickened until it coated the inside of her mouth.

Her vision blurred again.

The room seemed to stretch.

The walls drifted farther away.

The rows of shelves became impossibly long.

She blinked.

For a heartbeat she was no longer in an office basement.

She stood inside another building.

Long corridors.

Peeling paint.

A flickering fluorescent tube.

A sign hanging crookedly above a doorway.

WARD C

Someone screamed somewhere beyond the corridor.

A woman's scream.

Then silence.

The vision vanished.

She was back inside the storage room.

Her pulse hammered painfully.

"What..."

Her memory lurched.

She knew that corridor.

Not from a dream.

From childhood.

---

Something moved behind the shelves.

She raised the axe.

"Rhea!"

A figure stepped into view.

Not Rhea.

The barefoot woman.

Rainwater dripped steadily from her faded sari.

Her face looked exhausted.

Not frightening.

Heartbroken.

She lifted one finger.

Not toward Ananya.

Toward the bottles scattered across the floor.

Then she slowly closed her own eyes.

Ananya stared.

The woman mouthed two silent words.

Don't drink.

The lights exploded.

Every fluorescent tube burst at once.

Darkness swallowed the room.

The barefoot woman disappeared.

A hand seized Ananya's wrist.

Human.

Strong.

She swung the axe instinctively.

A cry of pain answered.

Real pain.

Not imagined.

The grip released.

Someone staggered backward.

For the first time all night...

She heard Rhea lose her composure.

"You stupid—"

The sentence broke into a gasp.

Ananya had hit her.

Not fatally.

But enough.

Enough to draw blood.

---

Emergency lights flickered on.

A dull red glow filled the basement.

Rhea stood ten metres away.

One sleeve hung in ribbons.

Blood soaked her left shoulder.

Her pleasant smile had vanished.

She looked smaller somehow.

Older.

Exhausted.

Yet her eyes burned with something far colder than anger.

"You were never supposed to remember."

Ananya backed toward the open aisle.

"You framed me."

"You framed yourself."

"I never touched those files."

"You signed every one."

"I don't remember!"

"I know."

Rhea laughed softly.

"That's why it worked."

Another memory struck Ananya.

Weeks earlier.

Coffee.

A meeting room.

A splitting headache.

Darkness.

She remembered waking in her apartment with no recollection of how she'd gotten home.

Another night.

Another bottle.

Another gap.

Then another.

Her missing days.

Her resignation.

The altered documents.

Someone had been feeding her intoxicants while exploiting the periods when she couldn't think clearly.

The horror wasn't supernatural.

Not entirely.

Someone had systematically dismantled her life.

One forgotten day at a time.

---

Rhea slowly reached into her handbag.

Ananya tensed.

Instead of a weapon...

She removed a small voice recorder.

She pressed Play.

The basement filled with Ananya's voice.

Clear.

Calm.

"I resigned voluntarily."

Click.

Another recording.

"I approved the transfers."

Click.

Another.

"I've been unstable."

Click.

"I don't trust my own memory anymore."

Ananya felt sick.

The recordings were real.

She had spoken those words.

But not willingly.

Not knowingly.

Rhea slipped the recorder back into her bag.

"No jury trusts a witness who doubts herself."

She took one careful step forward.

"You were exceptional."

Another step.

"Everyone admired you."

Another.

"They never noticed me."

Her voice remained unnervingly quiet.

"I couldn't compete with perfection."

She smiled again.

"So I only had to convince you that you were broken."

The emergency lights dimmed.

The basement seemed to breathe.

---

Without warning, the building's fire alarm erupted.

A deafening siren echoed through the parking levels.

Red strobes flashed.

Sprinklers burst overhead.

Water cascaded through the storage room.

Within seconds the concrete floor became slick.

Rhea's eyes widened.

She hadn't expected it.

Somewhere above them, frightened employees shouted.

Security doors began unlocking automatically.

Ananya ran.

Rhea lunged after her.

They collided with a shelving unit.

Metal buckled.

Dozens of heavy boxes crashed down between them.

Ananya scrambled over the debris.

Behind her, Rhea was already climbing through it.

Faster than she should have been.

The siren drowned out every other sound.

Except one.

Footsteps.

Slow.

Measured.

Somewhere behind both of them.

Neither woman stopped to look.

---

Ananya burst into the main parking level.

Cars stood abandoned beneath flashing emergency lights.

Water streamed across the concrete.

She sprinted toward the security office.

The door hung open.

Empty.

Computer monitors flickered.

Every CCTV screen displayed the same image.

The basement storage room.

Not live.

A recording.

On every monitor, the barefoot woman stood alone among rows of shelves.

She slowly turned toward the cameras.

Then pointed directly behind the viewer.

Every screen went black.

A cold breath touched the back of Ananya's neck.

She spun.

No one.

Then she heard Rhea scream.

Not in rage.

In terror.

It was the first genuine fear Ananya had ever heard in her voice.

The scream ended abruptly.

As though someone had covered her mouth.

Or pulled her somewhere no sound could escape.

Ananya ran toward it.

She reached the storage room entrance.

The door stood wide open.

Inside...

The shelves were upright.

The shattered bottles were gone.

The blood had disappeared.

The room was immaculate.

Rhea was nowhere to be seen.

Only her handbag lay on the floor.

Inside it were dozens of amber bottles.

And beneath them...

A faded photograph.

It showed two little girls standing outside a government orphanage in the rain.

One was unmistakably Rhea.

The other—

Ananya.

She stared at the photograph, unable to breathe.

She had no memory of ever meeting Rhea before joining the company.

On the back, written in a child's uneven handwriting, were six words:

One of us was always forgotten.

End of Part IV

 

Part V — The Forgotten Child

The photograph slipped from Ananya's fingers.

It landed face-up in the shallow water spreading across the parking floor.

The two little girls smiled at the camera.

One held a ragged stuffed rabbit.

The other clutched a cracked hand mirror.

Rain blurred the edges of the faded image.

Ananya stared.

The orphanage.

She remembered nothing.

Not the building.

Not the photograph.

Not the other girl.

Yet something deep inside her recoiled with the unmistakable pain of recognition.

A forgotten life had begun pushing through the cracks.

---

The fire alarm died.

Silence flooded the basement.

Too complete.

Even the sprinklers stopped.

Water dripped from overhead pipes in slow, lonely intervals.

Somewhere in the distance an elevator bell chimed.

Then another.

The building had returned to normal.

Only Ananya hadn't.

She picked up the photograph again.

On the reverse, beneath the childish sentence, another line slowly appeared as water soaked the paper.

Not ink.

Indentations.

Words pressed so hard they had scarred the card.

She never forgave the one they chose.

A memory struck without warning.

---

She was eight.

A government children's home on the outskirts of Mumbai.

Monsoon season.

The roof leaked.

Children slept four to a bed.

A little girl sat alone beside a broken window.

She never smiled.

The caretakers called her Rhea.

Ananya remembered offering her half a piece of jaggery during a festival.

Rhea refused.

Later that week...

A couple visited the orphanage.

They wanted to adopt one child.

They chose Ananya.

She remembered looking back from the gate.

Rhea stood beneath the same broken window.

Watching.

Not crying.

Not waving.

Just watching.

As the car carried Ananya away forever.

The memory ended.

Ananya doubled over.

For years she had believed she had been adopted as an infant.

That had been the story.

The only story.

Someone had erased everything that came before.

---

A slow clap echoed through the basement.

Ananya looked up.

Rhea stood at the far end of the parking level.

Her clothes were soaked.

Blood still darkened one sleeve.

She looked exhausted.

Almost transparent beneath the flickering emergency lights.

"You remembered."

Her voice was quiet.

"I wondered if you ever would."

"You knew me."

"I knew everything about you."

Rhea took another step.

"They gave you a family."

Another.

"A birthday."

Another.

"A future."

Ananya felt tears mixing with the rainwater on her face.

"I didn't know."

"I know."

Rhea smiled sadly.

"That's what made it unbearable."

---

The lights flickered.

Every parked car reflected the two women a fraction of a second too late.

In one windshield, Rhea stood much closer than she really was.

In another, Ananya's reflection covered its own ears.

The mirrors had become wrong again.

The barefoot woman appeared behind one concrete pillar.

Only for an instant.

She shook her head.

Then vanished.

Rhea never looked toward her.

Perhaps she couldn't.

Perhaps she had never seen her at all.

---

"You think this was about the promotion?" Rhea asked.

"It wasn't."

Her laugh sounded hollow.

"The promotion was just... convenient."

She looked around the empty basement.

"They forgot me long before your company did."

She opened her handbag.

Removed the small recorder.

Then a lighter.

She held both loosely in one hand.

"I only wanted one thing."

"What?"

"For someone else..."

She looked directly into Ananya's eyes.

"...to know what it feels like to disappear while everyone is still looking at you."

She dropped the recorder.

Crushed it beneath her heel.

Plastic shattered.

The stored voices died with it.

Then she flicked the lighter.

A tiny flame danced above her thumb.

The air already reeked of chemicals from dozens of shattered bottles.

Ananya's eyes widened.

"Rhea..."

"Too late."

The flame fell.

---

The explosion slammed through the basement like a collapsing building.

Fire rolled across the floor in a blinding orange wave.

Heat punched the breath from Ananya's lungs.

Car alarms erupted together.

Concrete shook.

Glass burst from parked vehicles.

She threw herself behind a support pillar as burning liquid raced through the storage area.

The ceiling groaned.

A concrete beam cracked.

Smoke swallowed everything.

Through the flames she saw Rhea walking calmly deeper into the fire.

Not running.

Not screaming.

Walking.

The inferno closed around her.

She never emerged.

---

Ananya staggered toward the exit.

Smoke clawed at her throat.

Every breath burned.

The emergency staircase lay only a few metres away.

Then she heard it.

Three soft knocks.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Against glass.

She turned.

One surviving office window overlooked the parking level.

Beyond it stood the barefoot woman.

Unburned.

Rain still dripped from her hair.

She placed one hand against the glass.

For the first time...

She smiled.

Not triumph.

Not relief.

Gratitude.

Then she slowly faded into her own reflection until both disappeared.

The glass cracked from top to bottom.

Without breaking.

---

The official investigation concluded that a volatile chemical fire had started in an improperly ventilated storage room.

Rhea Malhotra's body was never recovered.

The company denied any knowledge of unauthorized substances on the premises.

The scandal dominated headlines for a week.

Then another story replaced it.

Ananya survived.

Physically.

She testified.

Submitted evidence.

Explained everything she remembered.

Some believed her.

Many didn't.

The criminal inquiry remained incomplete.

Too many documents had vanished.

Too many recordings had been destroyed.

Too many missing days could never be reconstructed.

She resigned from the city.

Sold her apartment.

Left Mumbai without telling anyone where she was going.

---

Nearly a year later, a redevelopment company demolished the abandoned government orphanage where Ananya and Rhea had spent part of their childhood.

Workers uncovered a sealed metal trunk beneath the foundation of the old dormitory.

Inside were admission registers, faded photographs, and children's drawings.

Every child in the records could be identified.

Except one.

The space where a girl's name should have been had been scraped away so violently that the paper itself had torn.

Only a single note remained beside the empty line.

Do not separate them again.

The trunk was catalogued and sent to storage.

Three nights later it disappeared.

No locks were broken.

No security camera captured anyone entering the archive.

The only thing left behind was a small shard of mirror.

Anyone who looked into it reported the same impossible detail.

There were always two people staring back.

Even when they stood alone.