Chapter 3: Scraps and Schemes

The first thing Arjun did after reading Arclight's reply—after the initial panic wore off—was sit down on the floor, back against the bed, staring at the ceiling like it might cough up divine guidance.

It didn't.

"What's the plan, fearless leader?" Bete's voice chimed in from the laptop, where Arjun had left his inbox open. "I assume we're not just going to pray the HelioCore into existence."

Arjun's foot nudged aside a pile of half-disassembled gadgets. The floor of his flat was a historical site in itself, layers of tech debris from every harebrained project he'd ever started. "We need parts."

"And since your bank balance is allergic to money?"

"We get creative." Arjun rubbed his face. "I'll call… people."

"Oh good." Bete's tone was pure mischief. "Mumbai's finest lunatics, summoned once again."

Arjun couldn't deny it. Over the years, his obsession with ancient tech—and his habit of building things no sane engineer would touch—meant he'd built a very specific kind of social network. Academics wanted to disown him. Engineers thought he was insane. But the people who lived off scrap, salvage, and forgotten hardware? They understood him perfectly.

He didn't need official suppliers. He needed the pirate economy.

Arjun flipped open his battered notebook, the one where every useful contact was scrawled in pencil alongside notes like owes me beer, don't trust with money, and definitely stabbed someone once. His fingers hovered over the first number.

He dialed.

The line crackled, then: "If you're a cop, I'm a florist."

Arjun grinned. "Relax, Liang. It's me."

There was a pause, followed by a raspy chuckle. "Arjun Beta. Still chasing ghosts?"

"More like building them. You in the yard?"

"Where else?"

"Need capacitors. Industrial ones. Big boys."

Liang made a thoughtful noise, halfway between curiosity and a smoker's cough. "That'll cost you. And you're not exactly Ambani."

"I've got funding," Arjun said, with all the confidence of a man whose 'funding' was half a scam. "I need them today."

"Then come fast. Before someone melts them down."

Crawford Market after dark was a different animal. The official shops shut early, but the real business—the kind that didn't ask for receipts—woke up at night. Arjun slipped through a maze of alleys behind the main bazaar, dodging stray dogs and stepping over mystery puddles that probably violated multiple laws of physics.

At the very end, under a flickering bulb, stood Liang's Scrap Heaven. Technically it was just a shack made of corrugated metal, but inside was a kingdom—a chaotic paradise of salvaged ATMs, dismantled medical scanners, and enough illegal wiring to power a small riot.

Liang stood at the entrance, cigarette in one hand, wrench in the other. He was broad-shouldered, permanently oil-streaked, and had a smile like a loan shark who liked you just enough to kill you last.

"Beta!" Liang spread his arms. "What weird science are you cooking now?"

"Let's just say ancient tech meets modern panic." Arjun followed him inside. "I need high-voltage capacitors. Industrial grade."

Liang's eyebrows lifted. "Capacitors? Not your usual drone parts."

"This is for something bigger."

Liang rummaged through a shelf labeled 'TOO DANGEROUS FOR CIVILIANS', eventually hauling down a box of cylindrical capacitors that looked like they'd been pulled out of an aging power station.

"These will work," Liang said. "Unless you're afraid of explosions."

"Price?"

"Six grand."

"Four."

"Five. Final."

"Done."

Arjun counted out the cash, watching as Liang packed the capacitors in old newspaper—carefully, like wrapping grenades. As they walked back toward the alley, Liang gave him a sidelong look. "You're building something serious, aren't you?"

Arjun's smile was all teeth. "You have no idea."

Back at the flat, Arjun dropped the capacitors onto the floor with a satisfying thunk. Bete whistled through the speaker.

"Look at you. Scavenger king."

"Don't celebrate yet," Arjun said. "We're only getting started."

Next up was the crystal mount—a piece so delicate and specific, it wasn't something Arjun could fake with scrap. It had to be hand-cut quartz, perfectly tuned to channel resonant frequencies. In modern terms, it was like building a fiber optic router out of gemstones.

There was only one person he trusted for that.

Tiwari & Sons Watchmakers didn't believe in change. The shop, wedged between a vape store and a shop selling secondhand saris, had existed since British times. The signboard still said "Horologists and Timekeepers – Estd. 1901", and inside, it smelled of brass polish, camphor, and old men's disapproval.

Mr. Tiwari sat behind the counter, magnifying lens balanced precariously on his nose, tweaking the guts of a grandfather clock with the intensity of a brain surgeon.

"Arre Arjun," Tiwari said without looking up. "Another broken relic?"

"Sort of." Arjun placed a rough sketch on the counter—a crystal resonance mount, dimensions precise to the millimeter.

Tiwari frowned. "This isn't a watch part."

"No, but you're the only one who can cut quartz this precise."

Tiwari sniffed, which was the closest he came to pride. "Expensive."

"Three pieces."

"Two thousand each."

Arjun's smile tightened. "You know I'm broke."

"And yet here you are."

"Give me a student discount."

Tiwari squinted. "You haven't been a student since Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister."

"Consider me a lifelong learner."

Tiwari sighed but pulled out his special box—polished quartz plates, hand-cut and perfectly balanced. Arjun could see the care in each piece, the attention to frequency tolerance only a true craftsman would bother with.

"Six thousand," Tiwari said. "No haggling."

Arjun counted the notes, throat tight.

At this rate, he'd have to eat air for a week.

Back home, the floor was officially a sacred disaster zone—capacitors stacked like landmines, quartz mounts balanced between biscuit wrappers, and Arjun sitting cross-legged in the middle, spreadsheet open, wallet empty.

"Still short one thing," Bete said. "Frequency modulator."

That was the tricky part. Arjun could build one, but not in three days. What he needed was someone who already worked with weird frequencies—the kind of guy who built ghost detectors out of microwave doors.

Luckily, he knew exactly where to go.

Ramesh lived in a partially collapsed building near the railway tracks, where the rats were unionized and the roof leaked optimism. He specialized in "paranormal electronics"—a fancy term for janky hardware built to detect everything from djinns to haunted washing machines.

Ramesh himself looked like someone who had survived multiple electrocutions and enjoyed every second. His hair stood up like a dandelion on fire.

"Arjun!" Ramesh beamed. "Back for ghost stuff?"

"Frequency modulator."

"Custom build?"

"Fast."

Ramesh rummaged through a pile of boxes, eventually unearthing something held together by duct tape, two mismatched circuit boards, and a VHS remote glued to the side.

"This baby scanned for ghosts in Ahmedabad," Ramesh said proudly. "It picked up six spirits and one cable channel."

"Price?"

"Four thousand."

"Three."

"Done."

Arjun handed over the cash, wondering if this was the purchase that would finally get him electrocuted.

By the time he got home, it was nearly dawn. Arjun stood in the middle of his chaotic flat—surrounded by capacitors, crystals, and haunted frequency boxes.

Bete's voice was almost fond. "You've outdone yourself."

"Not yet," Arjun said softly. "First, we build."

Because somewhere deep down, Arjun knew—this wasn't just about proving a theory or tricking Arclight.

It was about proving to himself that history hadn't lied.

Arjun stood in the middle of his one-room battlefield, hands on hips, mentally piecing together his next steps. The parts were here—well, most of them. His capacitors from Liang, his quartz mounts from Tiwari, and Ramesh's haunted frequency modulator sat on the desk blinking at irregular intervals like it was either possessed or mildly offended.

"This is going to be fun," Arjun muttered.

"Fun is watching a cricket match," Bete said from the laptop. "This is more like building a fusion reactor in a kitchen sink."

Arjun grabbed his notebook, flipping to the HelioCore Resonance Inducer sketch. It wasn't pretty—half ancient schematic, half modern engineering scribbles—but the principle was simple enough, if you stretched the definition of simple. The HelioCore's first layer worked like a tuning fork for the earth itself—locking onto planetary ley lines and converting their natural frequency oscillations into usable power.

Modern power systems work like brute force engines—shoving electrons through wires until lightbulbs turn on. HelioCore? It was a whisper, not a punch. It didn't force power to flow; it sang the right note and let nature do the rest.

Except no one had built one in 5,000 years.

And Arjun's experience with ancient technology was, generously, "theoretical."

He sat down, skimming his notes, adjusting the design one more time before committing. "Alright. Capacitors first."

The industrial beasts from Liang were heavy, scarred with age, but they held charge. That was all that mattered. Arjun arranged them in a triangular formation—one leg grounded to his building's water pipe (a choice Bete immediately called 'certified suicide') and the other tied into the frequency modulator.

Next came the quartz mount.

The quartz had to sit perfectly at the system's heart. Too tight, and it wouldn't vibrate correctly. Too loose, and it might shatter the first time power flowed through it. Arjun balanced it on a hand-cut copper frame, adjusting the angle by millimeters.

He worked in silence, tongue between his teeth, the kind of focus that only came when failure meant bodily harm. Outside, Mumbai kept roaring—autos, street hawkers, temple bells—but inside this room, history was trying to breathe again.

"Care to explain what you're actually doing for the people at home?" Bete asked.

Arjun took a deep breath. "Alright. Imagine the earth's energy grid is a violin string. Every civilization that knew about it—Egypt, India, Mesopotamia—they didn't 'generate' power like we do. They tuned into that string and played the right note."

"So this device…"

"This is the bow." Arjun tapped the quartz mount. "The resonator vibrates at the exact frequency needed to 'wake up' the ley line under Mumbai. If I'm right, the ley line will sync with the system, and power flows in naturally."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Either nothing happens, or I accidentally fry my kidneys."

"Cool. Science."

Arjun connected the final wire, stepped back, and exhaled slowly. "Moment of truth."

He flipped the switch.

The capacitors hummed, low and predatory. The frequency modulator whined like a mosquito with performance anxiety. The quartz mount glowed faintly, light dancing along microscopic fractures.

For exactly four seconds, it worked.

Then something screamed.

It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure in the air, a low-frequency tremor that rattled the windows and knocked Arjun flat on his back. Sparks leapt from the capacitors, crawling across the floor in jagged arcs.

"Shut it down!" Bete yelled.

Arjun scrambled to the switch, flipping it off. The room plunged into silence, broken only by his ragged breathing.

"What the hell was that?" Arjun whispered.

Bete's voice was unusually serious. "I ran diagnostics. That wasn't just electricity. Whatever you tapped into—it answered."

Arjun sat back against the wall, heart pounding. "It worked. It worked."

"Worked is a strong word," Bete said. "It coughed up a ghost and nearly set your pants on fire."

But Arjun wasn't listening. His mind was racing, replaying every ancient text, every half-decoded fragment. This wasn't just a power system. This was a signal chain. The ancient civilizations hadn't just powered machines—they'd communicated with the planet itself.

"This changes everything," Arjun whispered. "If we can stabilize the frequency, we're not just generating power—we're unlocking the earth's memory."

"Okay, historian Gandalf," Bete said. "Maybe save the breakthrough speech for after we survive the demo."

Arjun's stomach clenched. The demo—the one Arclight expected in seventy-two hours. The prototype wasn't ready. It was close, but close didn't count when you were pitching to a foundation run by a man who wanted you dead.

"Alright," Arjun said. "We need better insulation. More stable power delivery. And a frequency map of the ley line network under Mumbai."

"And how exactly do you plan to get that?" Bete asked.

"Good question." Arjun rubbed his face. "Bad answers incoming."

Six Kilometers Away – Arclight Observation Post

The two men sitting in a black SUV across from Arjun's building weren't from the police. They weren't from any department that officially existed. They sat quietly, drinking cutting chai from a stall, their dashboard filled with equipment more suited to spy satellites than surveillance vans.

A small screen showed Arjun's flat in grainy night vision, complete with audio feed from a hacked phone nearby.

"Did you catch all that?" the older man asked.

His partner nodded, scribbling notes. "Prototype works. Unstable, but functional."

"Upload the data to central."

The younger man hesitated. "Sir, why are we letting him build it? Wouldn't it be easier to just grab him now?"

The older man's smile was thin. "Because if we take him now, we get one device. If we let him keep working, we get the process. We need to know how he thinks—how he solves problems. That's the real asset."

"And if he figures out we're watching?"

"Then Mr. Thorn will deal with him personally."

The younger man swallowed hard.

Back at the Flat

Arjun lay awake, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling fan spinning lazily above him. His whole body ached from the failed test run, but his mind was sharper than ever.

"Bete," he said softly.

"Yeah?"

"Why would ancient civilizations bury this technology? Why not pass it down?"

Bete was quiet for a moment. "Maybe they knew something you don't."

"Like what?"

"Like what happens when you wake something up that's been sleeping too long."

A shiver ran down Arjun's spine.

He turned on his side, staring at the HelioCore parts scattered around the room—crystals still faintly glowing, capacitors still warm to the touch. It wasn't just technology. It was a conversation waiting to resume.

And Arjun had just said the first word.