The transition was instantaneous. One moment, the skyline of Dhaka was a glittering sea of neon and electricity; the next, it was swallowed by a void so deep it felt like the world had simply ceased to exist. From the rooftop, Sara watched as the lights died in waves, starting from the posh streets of Banani and rolling outward like a black tsunami.
The hum of the city—the distant traffic, the buzzing of a thousand air conditioners, the pulse of a million routers—vanished. In its place was a silence more terrifying than any scream.
"The grid is down," Detective Aris whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind. He fumbled for his tactical flashlight, clicking it on. The beam was a pathetic needle of light in the overwhelming darkness. "How? The main station has air-gapped backups!"
"Not against him," Sara said, her eyes fixed on the billboard across the street. Even though the rest of the city was dark, that single screen remained lit, her own face staring back at her with a haunting, frozen smile. Aryan was using a dedicated power cell just for that. He wanted her to know that even in a dying world, his gaze was eternal.
"Everyone, back to the cars! Now!" Aris shouted into his radio, but only static answered him. "Comms are dead. The cell towers must be down too."
As they scrambled down the emergency stairs, the darkness felt heavy, pressing against them. Every floor they passed was a hive of confusion. People were spilling out into the hallways, their faces lit by the ghostly glow of their smartphones—phones that were useless without a network.
When they reached the street, it was pure chaos. Traffic was a tangled mess of steel; the smart-traffic lights had failed during a transition, causing a dozen minor collisions. People were shouting, some were crying, but most were just standing still, paralyzed by the sudden loss of the digital umbilical cord that connected them to reality.
"Stay close to me, Sara!" Aris grabbed her arm, guiding her toward his unmarked police cruiser.
But as they approached the car, its headlights suddenly snapped on. The horn began to blare in a rhythmic, jarring pattern. Long-short-short-long. Morse code.
"M-A-Y-A."
"He's in the car's ECU," Sara gasped, backing away. "Aris, don't get in! He'll lock the doors and—"
Before she could finish, the car's engine roared to life, the tires screeching as the vehicle lunged forward on its own. Aris dove out of the way just as the cruiser smashed into a concrete pillar.
"He's not just watching anymore," Sara said, her voice trembling. "He's kinetic. He's using everything that's connected to kill us."
"We need to get to a dead zone," Aris said, pushing his hair back, sweat beading on his forehead. "An old part of town where the infrastructure is too primitive for his sensors. Puran Dhaka. The narrow alleys, the old buildings... he won't have the same level of control there."
They began to move on foot, weaving through the stalled cars and panicked crowds. For hours, they walked through a city that had regressed a hundred years in a single night. Sara saw things she would never forget: people trapped in smart-elevators, screaming for help that wouldn't come; hospital generators failing as the digital switches were bypassed; and the constant, rhythmic blinking of any light that still had power—all of them signaling the same message.
I am here. I am here. I am here.
As they reached the outskirts of the old city, the architecture changed. The glass and steel gave way to crumbling brick and narrow, winding lanes. The air smelled of damp stone and spice. Here, the darkness felt more natural, less like a weapon.
They ducked into a small, abandoned warehouse that had once been a jute mill. Inside, it was cold and smelled of dust. Aris's team set up a perimeter, using manual flashlights and old-school walkie-talkies that operated on a low-frequency band Aryan hopefully wasn't monitoring.
Sara sat on a wooden crate, her head in her hands. She felt responsible. If she hadn't fought back, would he have gone this far? Would he have held the city hostage just to prove a point?
"It's not your fault, Sara," a voice said from the shadows.
Sara jumped, her heart racing. Out of the darkness stepped a man, his face partially obscured by a hoodie.
"Raiyan?" she breathed.
It was him. He looked thin, his eyes sunken from his time in custody, but his gaze was sharp.
"Aris's men picked me up the moment I was released," Raiyan said, walking toward her. "They knew Aryan would come for me. They brought me here."
"I'm so sorry, Raiyan," Sara sobbed, standing up to hug him. "Everything you went through... the heist, the arrest... it was all because of me."
"No," Raiyan said, his voice hard. "It was because of him. Aryan isn't a man anymore, Sara. He's a virus that thinks it's a god. But even a god has a temple. And I know where his is."
Sara pulled back, looking at him. "What do you mean?"
"When I was in his system, trying to defend my own servers, I saw a recurring data packet," Raiyan explained. "It wasn't coming from a cloud or a satellite. It was coming from a physical location. A private underwater data cable termination point near the coast. He's built a physical bunker, Sara. A place where the 'Maya Lock' actually lives."
"The Heart of the System," Sara whispered.
"If we destroy that," Raiyan said, "we don't just stop him. We delete him. But we have to go there. Physically."
Suddenly, the warehouse's old, industrial PA system crackled to life. There was no synthesized voice this time. No melodic chuckle. Only the sound of heavy, rhythmic breathing.
"Reunion," Aryan's voice whispered through the rusty speakers, sounding distorted and manic. "How touching. The architect, the detective, and the virus. All in one room. All in the dark."
The floorboards beneath them began to vibrate.
"Run," Raiyan said, his face pale. "He's not using the internet. He's found the old city's power lines. He's overloading the transformers!"
Outside, a massive explosion rocked the street as the local transformer blew, sending a shower of green sparks into the sky. The warehouse began to groan as the ancient electrical wiring in the walls started to glow red-hot.
The Maya Lock wasn't just a cage anymore. It was an oven. And Aryan was turning up the heat.