Pallavi POV

  Pallavi crouched beside Sid, who lay buried under a silk blanket, and shook him awake. He and Varun had taken the first watch the previous night, guarding until their eyes could no longer stay open before trading places with her and Rohan.

  Sid and Varun stole George’s gun that night, and they were bracing themselves for a reaction. When silence followed instead, a question lingered: Did George not know it was Sid?

  Pallavi knew how they pulled it off. Sid had given her a crash course in his new ability the previous morning, using it to defeat her effortlessly during their spar. She almost wished she hadn’t discovered how it worked. She would have been far happier believing it was a simple invisibility skill, albeit one that could be shared.

  Pallavi was now more terrified of Sid than ever. The man could dismantle her mind and twist her perception of reality; at the start of their spar, the sheer dread had made it impossible for her to think straight. He was already a beast in combat, but this skill gave him wings.

  The question of why Sid brought her into the fold had always lingered in the recess of her mind. Moreso, after the fight where he wiped the floor with her. At first, she chalked it up to a random impulse, but that theory crumbled the more she got to know him. Sid didn’t make random decisions. His choices were deliberate, which meant he must have seen a specific value in her.

  She doubted it was her feminine charm, either. Even when she was vulnerable, Sid treated her with the platonic care of a brother, showing not a flicker of attraction. She preferred it that way, yet his indifference stripped away another explanation for her presence on the team. Without a logical reason for being on the team, the feeling that she was a fraud who got lucky took root in mind, affecting her self-confidence.

  Varun existed in a league of his own, obliviously arrogant as he flaunted his rapid level gains and expected the others to keep up. Rohan had been her anchor in that regard. He was someone who moved at her speed. The news of his leaving came as a shock, leaving her terrified as she was about to become a burden, the only one unable to keep up.

  The return to camp made her realize the truth—that she wasn’t weak. She was actually stronger than most people here. She just happened to be grouped with monsters. And one of them was stirring awake now.

  Sid transitioned from sleep to alertness without a sound, checking his surroundings before catching her gaze. “Any issues?”

  “No, nothing happened,” Rohan cut in before she could speak.

  Sid didn’t move. He held her gaze, waiting for her confirmation. Only after Pallavi nodded did he stand and begin folding his silk sheet.

  There were certain things which they’d kept a secret from Rohan, and their revenge against George and Bunty was one of them. Yesterday was a normal night for Rohan. Even a carefree one, given that they’d returned to camp after days of trekking through the wilderness. It was not the same for the other three.

  Pallavi, in particular, had struggled through the night. Sleep eluded her as she lay waiting for the inevitable retaliation, convinced George would strike before morning. The irony wasn’t lost on her: she felt safer sleeping next to a goblin horde than she did near human allies.

  Rohan pointed a finger at Sid, then swiveled it toward Varun. “Why do your sheets have holes?”

  Sid looked at the twin circles in his blanket, suspiciously placed near the center, and shrugged. “They might’ve been used for tents or something before. That bastard Naga gave us the scraps.” He shifted his focus to Rohan’s pile. “At least yours were new.”

  Rohan glanced at his own sheets and nodded, buying the excuse.

  Pallavi wasn’t sure of the exact details of how they stole the gun from Naga, but it involved the two sheets and Sid’s scary skill.

  With anyone else, that skill was dangerous. With Sid, however, it was a nightmare. Even before he gained the skill, Sid was the last person she would ever want as an enemy. It wasn’t because of his combat ability, which was comparable to her own. No, what she feared was his ruthless intellect.

  Sid led the team with practiced efficiency, commanding the group as if he had been doing it for years. He moved through the forest like a seasoned veteran, not a civilian displaced from society like the rest of them. Even Varun, for all his flamboyant skills, lacked Sid’s natural gravitas. He seemed to foresee obstacles, dictating how to secure a camp or navigate a pitch-black tunnel long before the problems actually arose.

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  He drilled them on every contingency, human or monster. He specifically targeted the threat of betrayal, making them by heart tactics in case Tony or George caught them alone.

  “Have you spoken to Naga about me staying back at camp?” Rohan asked. His voice was subdued, lacking its usual confidence, as if he were already second-guessing the decision. Pallavi hoped he would reconsider. She was desperate to keep a normal human on the team; without him, she would burn out trying to keep pace with the two monsters.

  “Yes,” said Sid. “He’s assigning you a crafting role on Mahesh’s team. Apparently, Mahesh has bounced back from his trauma and is leading the crafters now. Good for him.”

  The name was unfamiliar to Pallavi; she assumed he was a former colleague or acquaintance of theirs.

  “Yeah, Aditi mentioned him.” Rohan caught Varun’s sharp look and raised his hands in defense. “Relax. I didn’t tell her anything confidential. I know better than that.”

  Sid intervened, looking at Varun. “We need to stop antagonizing Tony. Aditi is close to him, and if we want a neutral stance with the Kurishingal family, we need to keep her on our side.”

  Pallavi shadowed Sid the previous day as they gathered intelligence on George. They methodically questioned acquaintances and members of George’s own group, a process that felt less like gossip and more like a police investigation. It was a necessary exercise. Sid’s entire strategy hinged on dissecting George’s skills—specifically, finding their limitations.

  Evidence suggested a strong bond between George and Tony, with George recently joining the Kurishingal family on a trip around the lake. This jeopardized their plan for a quiet assassination. She feared striking George wouldn’t just remove a threat; it would provoke Tony into dropping his mask of civility and attacking them head-on, right in the middle of camp.

  None of this would be happening if Rohan hadn’t wanted to come back. They should have continued their journey, growing stronger with every step. She was willing to wait for retribution, confident that they would eventually outclass Bunty and George. With the way her team was leveling, their superiority was inevitable.

  Sid met her worries with a melancholic smile. He admitted he had a strategy to neutralize Tony, though it was a grim necessity he took no pleasure in contemplating. She trusted him to act. She knew the lengths he would go to protect them.

  “Fine,” Varun said, locking eyes with Rohan. “You handle the communication with her. I want no part of it.”

  Rohan nodded, a faint smile playing on his lips.

  Sid’s gaze drifted off into the distance, interrupting the moment. He snapped to attention, his sudden alertness alarming Pallavi. Was it his Sixth Sense? Or did something go wrong with their plan to assassinate George?

  “I need to check something out.” He exchanged a silent, meaningful glance with Varun before turning to Pallavi. “You guys freshen up and pack the bags. Do not split up.”

  Sid vanished into the fog, signaling Varun to follow. He relied on informants inside George’s inner circle to alert him if George made a move or tried to leave the camp. They intended to eliminate him quietly and stash the corpse in the dense treeline, delaying discovery for as long as possible.

  She never dreamed of attacking people, especially a police officer. But the world had flipped. It warped her sense of right and wrong until the unthinkable became survival.

  If anyone deserved death, it was George and Bunty. They were planning to drug and assault her. But there was no judge here to punish them, and she didn’t feel guilty in delivering the judgement herself.

  The old world was dead. Now, they could build a fairer system, one where opportunity wasn’t limited by gender. The crystals certainly didn’t discriminate. They granted power regardless of gender, allowing women to rival or even surpass men. She was living proof of that, standing stronger than almost everyone else in the camp.

  What she loved most about the team was that they treated her as an equal from the start. They sought her opinions and, more importantly, valued them, giving her a genuine voice in their decisions. It was a scenario she had never encountered in her old life. Before this, her parents, relatives, or ex-husband had dictated every major choice, steering her fate for their own convenience. She cherished this new dynamic, determined to protect this sliver of freedom for as long as possible.

  Rohan and Pallavi went to the center of the camp to fetch water for brushing their teeth, only to find an empty tank. Off to the pond it is, she thought, resigning herself to the detour as they turned toward the water’s edge.

  The shoreline closest to the camp was reserved for drinking water. Bathing and laundry were forbidden in those waters to prevent contamination. Water collected from there underwent boiling in giant chitin bowls before finally reaching the camp’s wooden tank.

  Pallavi frowned at the sight of the cold chitin bowls, where the fires had been replaced by piles of grey ash, and realized with a start that even the reservoir tank was dangerously low. Shouldn’t someone have started the refilling process by now? Although it was early, the camp would stir in the next couple of hours, and the demand for fresh water was guaranteed to skyrocket.

  They reached the perimeter, skirting the rubble where the blue lizard had breached the wall the previous day. Pallavi stepped into the water, the cold rising to her knees, when she heard someone sprinting in their direction.

  Aditi came rushing toward them, breathless. “Rohan! Come quick! George has Sid surrounded. They’re attacking him!”

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