PROTOCOL: TRINITY
Awakening the System
CHAPTER 1: THE LOBBY
SCENE 1: THE GOD SQUAD
The world was burning, and Rudra was laughing.
It wasn't a happy laugh. It was the jagged, manic sound of a predator who had just smelled blood in the water. On the screen, the virtual ruins of Pochinki were dissolving into a blur of rendered smoke and muzzle flashes, but in Rudra's mind, this was the only reality that possessed any mass or weight.
"Pushing! He's panic-spraying! Look at him, he's terrified!" Rudra screamed, his fingers dancing across the mechanical keyboard with a violence that threatened to crack the plastic keys. His avatar, a digitally clad berserker, vaulted through a broken window, an M416 spitting fire.
"Hold your angle, Rudra. Don't get greedy," a voice cut through the chaos—cool, detached, surgical.
Laksh. Five hundred meters away on a digital ridgeline, looking through an 8x scope. While Rudra was the storm, Laksh was the weatherman. He didn't see enemies; he saw geometry, drop rates, and inevitable outcomes. Crack. The sharp report of an AWM sniper rifle echoed.
"Knocked," Laksh murmured, sounding like he was ordering coffee. "Headshot. 245 bearing. Clean."
"I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding, damn it!" Rudra roared, his health bar blinking a frantic red as a grenade tumbled to his feet.
"I got you. Don't move."
Dhruv. The glue. The anchor. He slid into the room amidst the debris, popping a smoke grenade that bloomed into a grey sanctuary. While bullets chewed up the doorframe, Dhruv's hands were steady, administering the revive kit. He didn't care about the kill count; he cared about keeping the Trinity alive.
"He's one shot, Rudra. One shot," Dhruv said, his voice straining with the tension of a support player carrying the weight of the team's survival. "Heal up. We rotate to Zone in ten seconds."
Rudra didn't wait ten seconds. The moment the revive bar hit 100%, he was up. No med-kit. No hesitation. Just pure, unadulterated aggression. He swung the corner, pre-firing.
The final enemy fell.
The screen froze. The golden text exploded outward, flooding their retinas with the only validation that mattered.
WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER.
For a split second, the dopamine hit was physical—a warm, electric wave washing over three boys separated by hundreds of miles, uniting them as gods in a server built for slaughter. In this moment, they were invincible. They were legends.
Then, the match ended.
SCENE 2: THE DISCONNECT
The transition wasn't a fade-out. It was a crash.
Delhi.
Rudra ripped the headset off, gasping for air as if he'd been holding his breath for thirty minutes. The silence of his room rushed in to strangle him. It was dark, smelling of stale sweat and old desperation. The monitor's glow was the only light, casting long, grotesque shadows against the peeling paint.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The knocking on his door wasn't a request; it was a threat.
"Rudra! Are you still on that damn machine?" His father's voice. Heavy. Disappointed. A sound that made Rudra feel small. "It's 2:00 AM! You think games will pay the rent? You're wasting your life!"
Rudra looked down at his right hand. It was trembling. Not from adrenaline anymore, but from a sudden, crushing weakness. On the screen, he was a warlord. Here? He was just a disappointment in a dark room. He clenched his fist, trying to stop the shaking, feeling the walls closing in.
Mumbai.
Laksh gently placed his high-end headphones on the stand, aligning them perfectly. His room was a pristine box of white walls and ambient LED lighting. The air conditioner hummed a low, expensive tune, chilling the sweat on his neck until he shivered.
The door opened. No knock.
His mother stood there, a silhouette of expectation. She didn't look at him; she looked at the heavy textbooks gathering dust on his shelf.
"The mock exam results are out tomorrow, Laksh," she said. Her voice wasn't angry; it was terrifyingly indifferent. "I hope you haven't been wasting your potential. Your father expects the IIT rank. Not excuses."
She closed the door. The latch clicked like a pistol hammer.
Laksh turned back to his triple-monitor setup. The "Winner" screen was still there, reflecting in his glasses. He touched the screen, but felt nothing. The victory tasted like ash. He was the best sniper in the region, a master of strategy, yet in this air-conditioned cage, he felt like a ghost haunting his own life.
Uttar Pradesh.
Dhruv stared at the ceiling fan. It wobbled on its axis, making a rhythmic creak-whir-creak sound that marked the passing of time in his small, humid room. The plaster was cracked, mapping out continents of poverty he couldn't afford to leave.
He lay back on a thin mattress, the heat pressing down on him like a physical weight. Outside, a street dog howled, lonely and desperate. Dhruv looked at his phone. The screen was cracked, a spiderweb fracturing the light.
He felt heavy. Not just tired, but heavy with the weight of being the peacemaker, the healer, the one who kept everyone alive while he slowly suffocated.
He opened the group chat. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard. He didn't want to talk about the game. He wanted to talk about the pain in his chest.
Dhruv: Guys... real life is lagging today. Ping is too high. I can't move.
SCENE 3: THE CALL TO ADVENTURE
The notification pinged in the darkness of three different cities. It was a lifeline thrown into the void.
Rudra saw the message. He felt the anger in his gut—the rage at his father, at the dark room, at the shaking hand—curdle into a need for action. He couldn't stay here. If he stayed, he would shatter.
Rudra: I need to break something. Or I'm going to break.
In Mumbai, Laksh read the words. He looked at the physics textbook on his desk. It felt like a tombstone. He needed variables he couldn't predict. He needed chaos.
Laksh: System failure imminent. We need a hard reset. A server wipe.
Dhruv watched the messages pop up. He closed his eyes, imagining a place where the air wasn't thick with humidity and expectation. A place where the map hadn't been rendered yet.
Dhruv: Let's meet. Face to face. Parvati Valley. Next week.
The suggestion hung in the digital air. It wasn't a vacation plan. It was an evacuation order.
Rudra typed back instantly. Done.
Laksh followed. Confirmed.
They weren't going there to party. They were going to Parvati Valley because it was the only place on the map where the signal might be weak enough to silence the noise of their lives, and strong enough to find out who they actually were.
The game was over.
The quest had just begun.