The I.O. medevac helicopter was a stark, vibrating world of white light and antiseptic chill. Kiran lay on a gurney, sensors clinging to her temples, her chest rising and falling in the shallow rhythm of deep exhaustion. The Echo crystal, now sealed in a lead-lined case, hummed a sub-audible frequency that made Dan's teeth ache.
He stared out the blast window at the Punjab countryside scrolling below, a patchwork of dark fields and distant, twinkling village lights. The Saint's forgiveness was a weight in the hold. The girl's fragility was a weight in the cabin. And the creature's black, reflective eyes were a weight behind his own.
The Custodian. The name echoed in his head. It wasn't in any of the standard I.O. bestiaries. That meant it was either new, or so old it had been deliberately forgotten.
"Vitals are stable. No permanent psychic scarring. She's just… empty." The medic's voice was tinny through Dan's comm. "Like a cup that held an ocean and now just holds the shape of it."
Dan gave a tight nod. He knew the type of emptiness. It was the space left after a trauma, waiting to be filled with either healing or worse things. He kept his gaze outside, but his awareness was fixed on Kiran. The moment in the pumping station—that split-second bridge between their eyes—had left a psychic residue. He could feel the ghost of her awe, the hollowed-out calm in its wake. It was an unauthorized connection. A breach of protocol. Officers didn't link with assets; they secured them.
The helicopter didn't return to the Sector-10 safe house. It descended towards a nondescript agricultural research campus outside Ropar. As they dropped, Dan saw the tell-tale signs: the perimeter fence a little too high, the seismic sensors disguised as irrigation equipment, the lack of any birdlife on the roofs. This was Site Gurdwara—a deep-cover psychiatric and containment facility for sensitive human assets.
They touched down on a rooftop pad. The hatch hissed open, and the sterile smell was replaced by the faint, ever-present scent of sandalwood incense and langar hall food—a deliberate, calming olfactory camouflage. Two orderlies in white kurta-pyjamas, their faces professionally blank, took Kiran's gurney. Dan followed, the Echo case locked to his wrist.
They moved through corridors painted in warm, restorative colours, past closed doors behind which whispered impossible things. Vyas was waiting in an observation room that overlooked a soft-lit interview suite. The Commander looked at the crystal case, then at Kiran being settled into a plush armchair with a blanket, then finally at Dan.
"Report was… vivid," she said, her voice devoid of praise or censure. "The 'Custodian.' Describe it again."
Dan did. The waxy skin. The suit. The shadow-slide movement. The pure black eyes.
Vyas entered something into a holopad. "A Daayan's consort? A refined Brahmarakshas? Unlikely. It operated with transactional purpose. It wanted a specific weaponized memory." She looked at Kiran through the one-way glass. "Why this memory? And why now?"
"The buyer," Dan said. "Who was it brokering for?"
"A question that will keep us up at night. More immediately: she is our only link." Vyas nodded towards Kiran. "The Echo was integrated with her consciousness for 72 hours. Even extracted, it will have left imprints. Memories of its memories. You made contact during extraction. A resonant link."
Dan stiffened. "It was operational necessity, Commander. To focus the resonator."
"I'm not faulting you, Officer Singh. I'm utilizing you. That link is a thread. You will be the one to debrief her. She's been through a supernatural trauma. A familiar face, however briefly seen, is the best anchor we have."
"Protocol dictates a trained psych-interrogator—"
"Protocol," Vyas interrupted, "also dictates we don't let weaponized saints' memories fall into the hands of suited nightmares. The link is a tool. Use it. Find out what she saw, what she felt, while the Echo was inside her. Anything about who might want it, or why." She finally looked directly at him. "And Dan? Be careful. You weren't just a conduit for our tool. You were a consciousness in proximity. The Echo may have… left something with you, too."
---
The interview suite was designed to feel nothing like an interrogation cell. Low, warm light. A carpet the colour of earth. Kiran sat clutching a mug of chai, the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She looked smaller than she had in the pumping station, younger than 19. The hollow awe was gone, replaced by a trembling, bone-deep confusion.
Dan entered, having shed his tactical gear for a simple grey I.O. tunic and trousers. He sat not across from her, but at an angle, reducing the sense of confrontation.
"Kiran," he said, his voice softer than he used in the field. "My name is Dan. I was there at the canal."
Her eyes focused on him, a flicker of recognition. "The man with the light. And the… the numbers in his eyes." She'd seen his tactical overlay. The link went both ways.
"Yes. I work for an organization that deals with… things like what happened to you. The memory that was attached to you. We need to understand it to make sure it doesn't hurt anyone else."
"It didn't hurt me," she whispered, staring into her chai. "It was… heavy. Beautiful. It was like knowing every language of kindness at once." A tear slid down her cheek. "And now it's quiet. So quiet it's loud."
Dan leaned forward slightly. "Before it was with you, where was it? Do you remember how it came?"
Kiran's brow furrowed. "The eclipse. I was at the well. The light went strange—not dark, but thick. And then… it was just there. A feeling like being home before I even left. It had been waiting. In the stones. In the water. For a long, long time."
"Waiting for what?"
"For a door to open." Her voice took on a distant, recitative quality. "It showed me… not pictures. Meanings. A key of peace for a lock of coming war. A shield against a weapon that doesn't cut flesh, but… severs souls." She shuddered.
Dan's mind raced. A lock of coming war. A spiritual weapon. The I.O. had whispers of something called Project Riptide—a theoretical cascade-event meant to tear the veil between the material and the astral plains. Was the Echo a counter-measure? Or a component?
"The thing that came for you. The man in the suit. Did the memory show you anything about that?"
Kiran's fear was instant and palpable. She shrank back. "The Empty Man. The one who collects… final moments. He doesn't eat them. He builds with them. An… architecture." She was speaking in metaphors now, the imprint of the Echo's nature shaping her testimony. "He wants the Saint's moment because it's a perfect cornerstone. Unbreakable. Forgiving. To build a wall that… that would make the world forget how to be angry. How to fight back."
A wall of enforced, mass-amnesia peace. A psychological siege engine. The horror of it, so much more insidious than a bomb, settled in Dan's gut.
The door to the suite opened. An orderly stepped in. "Officer Singh. Commander's orders. Your psych-evaluation is scheduled."
It was a reminder. A warning. He was being debriefed as much as she was.
As Dan stood, Kiran's hand darted out, surprising herself as much as him, and grabbed his wrist. The contact was electric. Not romantic, but deeply human. A spark in the quiet she described.
"When you took it," she said, her eyes wide and pleading, "I saw your memory, too. Just a flash. The boy by the river. You blame yourself. The Echo… it wanted to forgive you. It tried."
Dan froze. The memory of Arjun, his childhood friend, slipping beneath the chaotic currents of the Ravi during a monsoon swell. Dan's fingers, slipping from his. The failure that had forged him. It was his most guarded secret.
He gently pulled his wrist back, his professional mask firmly in place. "Rest, Kiran. You're safe here."
But as he left for his own evaluation, her words burned. It tried. The weapon had tried to absolve him. And the creature, the Custodian, wanted to use that same absolution as a brick in a wall of forgetting.
That night, in his sparse quarters at Site Gurdwara, Dan dreamed. Not of Arjun, but of the pumping station. In the dream, he held the resonator, but the light that flowed from Kiran wasn't golden. It was the inky black of the Custodian's eyes. And it didn't go into the crystal. It flowed into him. When he looked down at his hands, they were made of grey, waxy stone.
He woke with a gasp, his heart hammering. On the bedside table, the digital clock flickered, its numbers stretching and blurring for a second before snapping back to normal.
He sat in the dark, the hum of the facility around him. Vyas's warning echoed. The Echo may have left something with you, too.
It wasn't forgiveness. It was a hook. A connection. And as he felt a faint, alien pull towards the west—a subconscious compass needle pointing in a direction that felt empty—he understood.
The Custodian hadn't just lost a weapon. It had lost a cornerstone. And now, through the residue of the Echo and the link he'd formed with Kiran, it might just have found a way to track what it sought. The architecture of its plan required that perfect, forgiving memory.
And Dan, unwillingly, was now part of the blueprint.