VVIP Hospital Suite
The room pulsed with a thick, suffocating tension, like the air itself had been drawn too tight—too heavy.
More than a dozen doctors stood frozen, their white coats clinging to their sweat-slicked skin. The presence of the Rathores alone had turned the room into something raw, something primal—unforgiving. Every second stretched like a blade at their throats.
Rana Rathore sat motionless in the only chair, his stillness more terrifying than any outburst of rage. His sharp gaze, hooded and calculating, bore into the doctors like a slow death. His fingers tapped against the chair's armrest, each beat a countdown, each echo reverberating through the air like the grim ticking of a time bomb.
Vikram, however, was a live wire.
Standing near the coffee table, his fingers trembled around a crystal paperweight, the weight of it shifting in his grip as if the fragile thing could somehow anchor him. His stance was deceptively relaxed—but it was the kind of calm you only saw in someone who could snap at any moment. The doctors knew better. That calm was a thin veil stretched over something dark and lethal.
The head doctor swallowed thickly, eyes darting nervously between the men. "Sir, we understand your concerns, but our diagnosis remains unchanged. Medically, Miss Rathore was—"
A single inhale from Rana.
The doctor faltered.
But he pushed on, voice shaking. "She was brain dead. No neural response. No activity. There was… no hope."
Vikram's fingers twitched.
A few junior doctors took unconscious steps back.
The head doctor stammered, continuing despite the overwhelming dread suffocating him. "We… we had no explanation for what happened. She shouldn't have woken up. It's medically impossible."
The room fell into suffocating silence.
Vikram's voice came—dangerously soft—cutting through the tension like a knife. "No hope?"
One of the junior doctors flinched under the weight of that question.
Then—
A nervous voice dared to cut in. "Sir, there was… another issue."
Vikram's gaze snapped to him, and the doctor's knees nearly buckled. He forced himself to continue, voice quivering. "A scar. A gunshot-like wound."
The air thickened, turning brutal.
Rana didn't move. He was still, terrifyingly still.
But Vikram? His grip tightened on the paperweight.
Shatter.
The glass exploded against the wall, shards flying like jagged teeth, tearing through the sterile air. A few splinters nicked the nearest doctors—blood blooming on their white coats like terrible, inevitable stains.
Not a single person dared breathe.
Vikram's voice broke through the silence again, eerily controlled. "So, let me get this straight."
His eyes burned with something darker than fury. Something colder.
"If we had listened to you..." His voice cracked like a whip. "If we had accepted your 'expertise'..." His lips curled into something venomous. "My sister would be dead."
No one could deny it.
"And now," Vikram's voice dropped even lower, icy fury seeping into every word, "you're telling me she magically grew a bullet wound?"
One nurse, barely holding onto composure, whispered, "It wasn't there before."
Vikram's laugh was devoid of humor. He shook his head, disbelief and raw anger flashing through his gaze. He moved suddenly—too fast—closing the gap between them like a predator zeroing in on its prey.
A fistful of collar. A strangled gasp.
A young doctor found himself slammed against the nearest wall, his back smashing into it with brutal force. Vikram's fingers were around his throat, not crushing, not yet—but enough to make him feel the cold, suffocating inevitability of what was coming.
"You know," Vikram's voice was eerily calm, like a man reciting the hours of the day, "it's fascinating how easily the human body can shut down. How quickly the brain can lose oxygen. How—"
The doctor's pulse hammered under Vikram's fingers, his terrified eyes wide with helplessness, struggling for breath, struggling to understand why he couldn't scream.
"How…" Vikram's voice turned venomous, quiet, smooth, "one wrong move—one lapse in judgment—can snuff out a life."
The doctor gasped for air, vision swimming. Vikram's grip tightened, his fingers pressing down just enough to remind him of the thin thread he was clinging to.
"You stood there," Vikram continued, the words dripping with disgust, "and told my family there was no hope. That she was gone. That we should let her go."
The room was so still you could feel the raw desperation and unspeakable terror hanging in the air.
Vikram's fingers flexed, pressing just a fraction more, making the doctor's breath come in shallow, choking gasps.
"What if I applied that same logic to you?" Vikram's voice was dangerously soft. "What if I decided you were beyond saving?"
The other doctors stood frozen, too afraid to intervene, too aware of the consequences of stepping in. They could all feel the lethal promise in the air.
"What if I told you…" Vikram leaned in, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper, "—that right now, your life is slipping through my fingers?"
The doctor's body shuddered beneath Vikram's grip, a broken, ragged breath escaping his chest.
"You want to talk about medical impossibilities?" Vikram's breath was hot against the man's clammy skin. "Then explain to me how a girl in a coma, who never suffered a gunshot wound, suddenly has one."
His grip tightened once more, the sound of fabric ripping faint in the stillness. The doctor's knees buckled beneath him.
Vikram's smile was razor-sharp, like the blade of a knife waiting to cut. "Oh? Struggling? That feeling in your chest? That slow, creeping burn?" He clicked his tongue, almost mockingly. "That's what it feels like to lose oxygen. Fascinating, isn't it?"
The doctor's vision blurred, his hands trembling at Vikram's wrist, unable to break free.
Then—
"Enough."
Rana's voice.
It was calm. Controlled.
Vikram immediately released the doctor, letting him slide down the wall like a broken ragdoll.
Rana stood now, his presence swallowing the room whole. The sheer weight of his being pulled every shred of defiance from the air, forcing every soul in the room to bend, to break.
His gaze flickered over the doctors like a predator assessing prey. Cold. Precise.
"You gave up on my daughter," he said, his voice a low, dangerous murmur, void of emotion but carrying an undercurrent of something much darker.
The head doctor stammered, trying to form words, but none came.
Rana stepped forward.
The doctor fell silent.
"My family does not tolerate incompetence," Rana said, each word a sharp, heavy strike. "If my daughter had died because of your 'expertise'…" His lips curled ever so slightly, a hint of something far more dangerous than anger. "I wouldn't be standing here having this conversation."
The doctors turned pale under the weight of his words.
Rana exhaled, the quiet sound reverberating through the room—more terrifying than anything he had said.
"You have twenty-four hours."
The head doctor's breath hitched. "F-For what?"
Rana's gaze stayed locked on him—unblinking, unyielding.
"To give me answers," he said quietly, like a sentence being passed.
The doctors exchanged frantic glances, but no one dared to speak.
"If, after that, you still have none…" Rana's expression didn't change. But there was something about his presence now—something far more suffocating. "Then you're of no use to me."
A cold shiver ran down the spine of every single person in the room.
The head doctor's throat felt tight, words strangled in his chest. "W-We will do everything we can, sir."
Rana took another slow step forward, and the man visibly flinched.
"You will do more than that," Rana corrected, his voice deceptively calm. "You will find out exactly what happened and why she bears a scar that never existed before."
The air felt still, impossibly thick. Every man in the room was suffocating.
A final glance between father and son—Vikram's fist still clenched at his sides, every muscle in his body taut with the same primal fury that burned in his blood.
"Remember," Rana said as he turned, his tone carrying an eerie finality, "we do not forgive failure."
The doctors stood frozen under Rana's piercing gaze, their spines rigid, their lungs tight, as if the very air had thickened under his silent judgment. His eyes burned—not with anger, but something far more dangerous.
Something desperate.
Vikram, standing a few feet away, looked like a man about to come undone. His jaw was locked so tight it trembled, his hands flexing at his sides—useless, utterly useless. He paced like a caged animal, the fury in his veins barely contained.
The head doctor swallowed thickly. "We will do everything we can, sir. But the fact remains—"
Beep.
A single, sharp sound.
Then—
The machines screamed.
A sound so piercing, so unnatural, it ripped through flesh and bone, leaving nothing but cold, paralyzing terror in its wake.
The world stopped.
For a second—**just a second—**no one breathed.
Then—
Chaos.
The doctors bolted first.
Rana and Vikram didn't even think.
They ran.
The door slammed open, the force shaking the walls—
And there she was.
Riya.
She wasn't awake. Not really.
But she was fighting.
God, she was fighting.
Her body convulsed violently, the sheets tangled around her limbs like shackles, her chest rising and falling in rapid, uneven gasps.
She couldn't breathe.
She was suffocating.
Her fingers clawed at the air, at the sheets, at the invisible forces pinning her down—
Her lips parted—a sound escaped—
A sound that—should never exist.
A sob—no, a shattered, broken, raw gasp of terror.
Then—
Her body jerked. Hard.
Too hard.
One of the doctors lunged forward, hands shaking, desperate to steady her—
But—
The moment he touched her—
She convulsed harder.
A guttural, heart-wrenching cry tore from her throat.
Her body arched away, her face contorted in sheer agony.
It was as if their touch was killing her.
"D-Don't touch her!" One of the doctors staggered back, voice breaking, his eyes wide with something frighteningly close to fear.
But—if they couldn't touch her, how the hell were they supposed to save her?
Vikram's breath hitched.
His vision blurred.
His mind screamed—DO SOMETHING!
But he couldn't.
He couldn't.
He was watching his sister die.
Again.
A silent sob ripped through him, burning his throat, choking him, strangling him.
His fingers curled into fists, nails digging so deep into his palms that his skin split—warm blood trickling, mixing with the cold sweat coating his hands.
Not again. Not again.
A sound shattered the air.
A broken, devastated cry.
Saratha.
She collapsed against Rana's chest, her hands clutching—grasping, clawing—at his shirt, as if he was the only thing keeping her standing.
"I—I can't—Rana!"
Her voice was raw, wrecked, lost.
Her sobs weren't soft.
They were unrestrained. Violent. Guttural.
The kind that came from the soul, from the deepest part of a mother who had already mourned her child once.
And now—now she was watching her slip away again.
Why?
Why was this happening?
Rana didn't speak. Didn't move.
His arms tightened around his wife, holding her together—as if by keeping her whole, he could keep their daughter whole, too.
But his face—
The great Rana Rathore, the man feared by the world, the man who never broke—
His eyes glistened.
His grip on Saratha was steady.
But his fingers—his fingers trembled.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
A silent prayer—
Take anything. Take everything.
Just don't take her.
Please.
A doctor's voice cut through the storm.
"Sedate her!"
The others snapped into motion.
A nurse rushed forward, injecting a mild sedative.
The effect wasn't instant.
Riya still gasped. Still trembled.
Still fought.
Vikram's heart pounded in his skull, in his ribs, in his throat—
Every second dragged, an eternity of pure, unfiltered terror.
The doctors worked, adjusting oxygen, monitoring vitals—speaking softly, though they knew she wasn't fully here.
Then—
The convulsing lessened.
The gasping softened.
The erratic, desperate beeping slowed.
Her fingers twitched.
Her body gave in.
She slumped against the sheets, exhausted, spent—but breathing.
The room exhaled.
Saratha still clung to Rana, silent sobs wrecking through her.
Rana pressed a firm hand to her back, his chest rising too fast, too unsteady.
Vikram staggered back.
A trembling hand dragged over his face, his other still clenched—still shaking.
The doctors exchanged wary, uneasy glances.
She was stable.
For now.
But—
That panic. That fight.
It hadn't come from nowhere.
And the way she had rejected them—
As if their touch burned.
As if their presence hurt.
As if something else—something unseen, something monstrous—
Still had its claws in her.
And this battle—
Whatever it was—
Wasn't over.
Not even close.