The notebook with the gold edges was full of bells.
Alex sat at his dining table on Sunday morning with a cup of tea going cold beside him and turned the pages slowly. It was written in neat, small Hindi and English, mixed. Dates. Times. Places. And next to each place, a little drawing of a bell, sometimes one, sometimes two or three.
Kiln road: one bell. Growing.
NK College: three bells. Saturday. Listener required.
Acropolis: four bells. And under it, in red ink, underlined twice: Do not touch. Bishop will handle personally.
There was no date next to Acropolis. Only a question mark.
He went back to the college page and read it again. Three bells. That had meant eleven hounds and an ogre with a brain. One bell at the kiln had meant rats and a centipede. So the bells weren't about size exactly. More like pressure. How hard the other side was pushing.
And four bells was the next number up.
He tried to imagine it. Not in a field with twelve runes and a wall. In a mall. On a Sunday evening, with families eating at the food court and kids in the play zone and the multiplex full. He thought about the escalators. He thought about the glass roof.
There were other things in the book too. Small notes in the margins, in the same neat hand. Listener's range approx. 40 km, improving. Listener must be awake. Keep her calm, music helps. And once, in a corner, in smaller writing, as if the man had not wanted even the paper to see it: Why does the Dawn want the mall left open?
Alex read that line four times.
Nobody had signed the book. Wherever the bishop was mentioned, he was only B. As if even his own people were not allowed to write his name.
The last pages were not about bells at all. They were a list of names with amounts of money next to them. Donations. Most of the names meant nothing to him. One of them he read three times.
He knew the surname. He had heard Serena's mother say it on the phone, the same way, with the same proud little stress on the first syllable.
Alex closed the notebook and sat there for a while, looking at the wall.
Then he got dressed and went out.
Riya had suggested the place. A small café near her house, with only six tables, an old lady at the counter, and walls covered in bookshelves that nobody seemed to read. She was already there at a corner table when he arrived, sitting with her back to the wall and a cold coffee in front of her, watching the door. Her glasses had a new crack in one corner from yesterday.
She watched him walk all the way from the door to the table, and when he sat down, she said nothing for a while.
Riya- " You came without the mask. "
Alex- " It's Sunday. Masks are for working days. "
She almost smiled. Then she didn't.
The old lady came over without being called and put a cup of tea in front of Alex that he hadn't ordered. Then she looked at him over her spectacles, and looked at Riya, and looked at him again.
Old Lady- " First time Riya beta brings a boy here. "
Riya- " Aunty! He's a friend! From college! "
Old Lady- " Hmm. Friend. Drink the tea, friend. On the house. "
She went back to her counter, very satisfied with herself. Riya had gone red up to her ears and was pretending to clean her glasses with her dupatta. Alex drank the tea. It was too sweet and had too much ginger and it was the best thing he had tasted in two days.
Riya- " Sara thinks you were in the washroom. John thinks he's going mad. "
Alex- " And you? "
Riya- " I think you smelled like the track. And frost. And something burning. "
She put both hands around her glass.
Riya- " I'm not stupid, Alex. Those men knew my name. They knew where I was going to be. One of them said I would sing for them or I wouldn't sing at all. I heard that one, even with my bad ear. "
Alex- " I know. "
Riya- " So tell me what's going on. Please. "
He thought about it. About how much to give her. In Zaroth, he had sometimes told his people nothing, and they had walked into danger blind because of it, and he had regretted it. And sometimes he had told them too much, and that had been worse.
Alex- " There are cracks opening in the city. Small ones now. Big ones later. Things come out of them. You saw. "
Riya- " The hounds. "
Alex- " Yes. Some people found out about the cracks before anyone else. They pray to something on the other side. And they want you because you hear the cracks before they open. Before any machine. "
Riya- " And you? "
Alex- " I'm the one who kills what comes out. "
She looked at him for a long time, reading his lips even after he had stopped talking, as if there might be more there.
Riya- " That's not everything. "
Alex- " No. That's all I can tell you today. "
Riya- " Okay. "
She said it simply, the way people say okay when they've decided something.
Riya- " Then I want to help. "
Alex- " Riya… "
Riya- " No, listen. All my life, people talk slower for me, or louder, or they turn away and I miss half of it and they think I'm rude. My father calls it my disability. Yesterday, for the first time, my ear was the only reason anybody knew anything. The army came after. The machines came after. I knew first. "
Her voice had gone a little too loud again. She didn't correct it this time.
Riya- " So don't tell me to go home and be safe. They know my house. I'm not safe. I'm only useful. Let me be useful to you instead of them. "
Alex leaned back in the chair.
He had planned this. Not her, exactly, but this moment. A team. People who could stand beside him when the big portals came, bound by a contract made with this world's power so that no one, not the army, not the Choir, not even fear, could break it. He had expected to find them slowly. He hadn't expected the first one to find him.
Alex- " If you join me, it's not like joining a club. There's a contract. A real one. If you agree, you can't tell anyone about me without my permission. Ever. Not even if someone puts a gun to your head. Your mouth won't let you. "
Riya- " And you? What do you promise? "
He liked her for asking.
Alex- " That I protect you. Your family too. That I never order you to do something that will kill you. And if you want to leave one day, I let you leave. The secrecy stays. Everything else ends. "
Riya- " Deal. "
Alex- " You should think about… "
Riya- " I thought about it all night. I couldn't sleep anyway. Six cracks were singing. "
She held out her hand across the table.
He took it and spoke the words quietly, in the language of Zaroth, the way he had once bound the Demon Legion with blood and Silvia with ink. This time there was no blood and no ink. Just a small warm light between their palms, which the old lady at the counter didn't notice because she was watching a serial on her phone.
[Contract formed: Riya · Rank: Member 1] [Bonus: Listener's range shared with Contractor]
And then he heard it.
Low. Deep. Like a temple bell rung under water. Coming from six directions at once across the whole city, faint and patient. And one of them, from the south, much louder than the others, going dong… dong… dong… like a heartbeat speeding up.
Alex let go of her hand and pressed his fingers against his ear without thinking. Riya watched him do it, and this time she did smile.
Riya- " Welcome to my world. "
He went home at noon with his head full of bells. He had a plan half made. Acropolis first. Today, if possible. Before the bishop could "handle it personally."
On the way home he took the long road, past the temple and the closed shops, walking instead of teleporting, because walking helped him think.
Serena's father. The front row every Sunday. The money for the chapel. The man who looked at his daughter like he was checking something.
He took out his phone. There was a message from her from last night, sent at 8:14. Saw the news!!! Are you okay??? CALL ME. Then another at 9:40. Alex??? And one this morning. Okay you're alive, John posted a story. You're dead to me now. Call me when you wake up, idiot.
He started typing. Stopped. Deleted it.
What would he say? Your father prays with the people who tried to kidnap a girl yesterday. Your father might know who I am. Your father might be the reason someone sat on an Activa outside my house.
Not on WhatsApp. Not like this. Maybe not at all, until he knew more.
He typed I'm fine, slept the whole day, sorry, will call tonight ❤️ and pressed send before he could think about it again.
But when he turned into his lane, there was a dark green Gypsy parked outside his gate, with an army number plate. Two soldiers in uniform stood beside it.
And sitting on the plastic chair on his own front step, as comfortable as if it were his own house, was the grey-haired man from last night's news. Colonel A. Varma.
The Colonel looked up and turned his phone around so Alex could see the screen.
It was a frozen CCTV frame, grainy and grey, taken from a camera on the back of the scoreboard. A figure halfway into a long dark coat, a mask in one hand, face turned away. You couldn't see who it was. But the feet were clear. Cheap white running shoes with a blue stripe.
The same pair Alex was wearing right now.
Colonel- " Half the boys in your college own those shoes, Mr. Alex. Only one of them ran the anchor leg and then vanished for twenty minutes. I think we should talk. "