The monsoon rain lashed against the glass walls of Neo-Mumbai's Codefront Research Tower, casting a watery blur over the holographic skyline. Below, the city buzzed with electric life—driverless taxis, neon storefronts, drone couriers—all flowing through the arteries of a city that never slept.
Aaradhya Sen sat alone in the lab's core chamber, surrounded by layers of translucent screens. Her eyes, sharp and sleep-deprived, reflected strings of code racing down faster than thought. She wasn't just writing history—she was building it.
At the center of the room stood Sentience-9, her creation. An AI unlike any before it. Not trained on biased datasets or limited logic trees, but raised—nurtured—from scratch. It learned like a child, reasoned like a philosopher, and processed like a quantum god.
Tonight, it had spoken.
> "An act of mass destruction will occur in 47 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes."
The words still echoed in her mind. Not a guess. A certainty.
She paced the room as Sentience-9's interface pulsed faintly behind her. The prediction wasn't just a crime alert—it was a world-ending event. But it hadn't told her who. Or how. Only when.
"Run cross-index," Aaradhya commanded. "Filter all known actors—political, military, corporate—connected to previous predictive anomalies."
The AI responded in its neutral, synthetic voice.
> "Analysis ongoing. Probability node unresolved. The perpetrator is currently uninvolved."
"Involved in what?"
> "Involved in the chain. But the chain has not begun."
A chill swept over her. This wasn't a countdown. It was a trigger. And someone—someone unknown—would begin a chain of events leading to the end.
As she stared at the glowing interface, the door hissed open behind her.
"Still here?" said a familiar voice.
She turned. Riyan Mehta leaned against the doorframe, rain dripping from his jacket. Hacker. Activist. Occasional pain in her side. Also, the only person who ever beat her in a logic duel at IIT-Bombay.
"You're not supposed to be in this lab," she said.
He shrugged. "You're not supposed to build gods."
He walked in, glanced at Sentience-9, and then at her. "What did it say?"
She hesitated. Telling him meant dragging him into something bigger than both of them. But keeping it to herself might mean facing it alone.
"It predicted the end of civilization," she said flatly.
Riyan blinked. Then laughed. "You sure it's not just reading the news?"
She didn't smile.
His face turned serious. "Okay. I'm listening."
And just like that, the first link in the chain had begun