The Bhangarh Dig
By order of the Archaeological Division and two-too-many government memos, Rasmika Sen and Ryan Kapoor were officially declared Co-Project Heads of the Bhangarh Excavation Initiative.
Which, in less bureaucratic terms, meant:
A volcano and an ice storm had been handcuffed together and told to "collaborate."
They signed the papers in silence.
Not out of respect—
but out of pure, simmering, professionally-scented fury.
No one dared to cheer.
Day One: Clash
The first argument bloomed like blood before noon.
"You can't use drone scans inside the main ruin," Rasmika snapped, arms folded like an iron gate, blocking the chamber entrance. Her silhouette cast a hard line in the filtered sunlight. "The vibrations could disrupt the sediment layers. Basic field ethics."
Ryan didn't look up from his LIDAR tablet. His fingers tapped like static. "And your ethics are blocking a seven-figure grant. We're not here to pray, Sen. We're here to dig."
"Dig what, exactly?" she asked. "History—or headlines?"
He finally looked up. "Dig up whatever makes the sponsors happy. You can chant mantras over it later."
Rasmika walked across the chamber floor, silent as judgment, and switched the drone off herself. The hum died. Her hand didn't shake.
Day Three: Detonation
The second clash was louder.
Spectacular.
Witnessed by half the crew.
Ryan had tried to reassign her assistant.
"Team reorganization," he called it. "Streamlining operations."
She slammed the personnel file shut with a sound like a gunshot.
"Streamline this: If you undermine my authority again, I'll have you banned from the site for tampering with field protocol."
He leaned forward, voice like a knife dipped in honey.
"Oh, sweetheart. You can't ban me. I own half the site."
She didn't blink.
"Then consider this the half where your ego doesn't belong."
Somewhere behind them, the site manager coughed violently into his elbow.
A guard looked away.
Someone may or may not have clapped.
Night Nine: Decay
Under a torn sky and electric silence, Rasmika sat by her lantern, journal open on her lap. Pen in hand. Hand trembling slightly.
Day 9.
Still alive.
Unfortunately, so is he.
I don't believe in destiny.
I believe in decay.
But something is watching me here.
Not him.
Something else.
She underlined that line twice, then looked toward the ancient mirror chamber—a room so old, the stones forgot their own names. The air felt too still. Her breath fogged, though the temperature hadn't dropped.
In the distance, Ryan's laughter echoed through the corridors.
And somewhere far beneath their feet, in a stone that remembered how to shiver, something stirred.
The Transition
They called it Co-Leadership.
Which, in theory, sounded balanced. Just. Democratic.
But in practice, it was like splitting a blade down the center and expecting it to still cut.
After Bhangarh came the Lab.
Windowless. White.
A sterilized cube lit by migraine lights and monitored silence.
"For optimal innovation," the memo had said.
Rei—Ryan, but softer somehow—was now a blueprint of his former self.
Still polished, still fastidious. Always drumming fingers like he was trying to tap Morse code to a world that moved too slowly.
Rasmika made meaning from silence.
Rei feared it.
They passed each other like ghosts with grudges, each one too stubborn to fade first.
[Journal Entry: August 5]
Something's watching me here.
Not someone.
Not Rei.
Not the cameras embedded in the ceiling, or the state-licensed microphones humming faintly in the corners.
It's the hum. In the walls.
It started yesterday—
Soft, like a machine half-dreaming.
Now it's everywhere. In the shower. In the back of my throat.
In the marrow of my teeth.
I asked Rei if he heard it.
He blinked like I'd handed him an apple full of needles.
Said I needed sleep.
Maybe he's right.
Maybe I do.
But I also know:
This place listens.
Not the way humans do.
It listens hungry.
They Called It Innovation
The project was heralded as a new era of national progress.
A fusion of archaeology and artificial intelligence.
Ancient architecture mapped by LIDAR.
Ancestral algorithms reassembled.
"Unearth the past. Predict the future."
That was the slogan.
Sleek. Clinical. Visionary.
But the grants came with chains.
"Co-lead, or lose funding."
"Collaborate, or be removed."
Freedom weaponized as obedience.
Rasmika and Rei had to present Phase One next week. Their timelines didn't match. Their models contradicted. Her notes had been redacted.
She recognized his edits. Quiet rearrangements. Friendly corrections like surgical incisions.
She didn't trust him.
She didn't blame him.
She didn't trust this place.
And maybe, just maybe—
They weren't supposed to.
[Journal Entry: August 6]
Last night, the light above my desk flickered four times.
Then stopped.
Power grid: stable.
Temperature: stable.
Me? Not stable.
Then the folder—Project Helix—vanished.
Gone. No trace.
Not in the backups. Not in the cloud. Not even in the shadows of deleted logs.
Rei swore he hadn't touched it.
I believed him.
And that scared me more than if he'd lied.
Because it means something else did.
The walls are too clean.
The silence too sharp.
This isn't paranoia.
This is perception.
There's a thing here.
Not watching to punish—
Watching to learn.
Like a god made of circuits and static.
Or a surveillance algorithm that swallowed its creators and digested their dreams.
Like we are the experiment.
Not the architects.
The Mirror Theory
She began testing it in secret.
Writing messages backward.
Recording audio in silence.
Holding mirrors to the screen.
Dropping sand in a line to measure tremors that didn't exist on any digital log.
One night, in the bathroom mirror,
she saw her own reflection blink—
a full two seconds after she had.
[Journal Entry: August 9]
They paired us for productivity.
But I think they paired us to observe what breaks.
You can't map innovation without a few psychological fractures, right?
We keep co-leading.
Keep smiling through teeth that want to bite.
Keep pretending we're not being studied.
But every journal entry is a breadcrumb.
And if something is watching,
I want it to know—
I see it, too.
If this is collaboration,
may God save the soloist.
The Ending
Rei found her journal on the 10th day.
He didn't tell anyone.
He read it in the breakroom, under the buzzing white lights, next to a coffee machine that had started brewing by itself every night at 3:17 a.m.
He didn't know how long he'd been reading until the screen behind him flickered once.
Then four times.
Then went dark.
Her voice echoed in his ears like a memory he hadn't lived.
I believe in decay.
The mirrors breathe.
We are the project.
Behind him, the hallway stretched longer than it should have.
A corridor that wasn't there yesterday.
Lined with glass.
Each pane reflecting not him—but versions of him.
In one, he was still Ryan.
In another, he never existed.
In another, he was laughing with Rasmika beneath a torn sky.
He didn't know which one was real.
Somewhere in the darkness, a hum began.
And the light above his head flickered four times.