FARIS
He woke up, refused food
SAMAR
He won’t feel like eating for the next 12 hours
Hand him an ORS
Ten minutes passed in silence. His mobile pinged again.
FARIS
He drank
Of course he would. He wasn’t a fool.
SAMAR
Keep giving him water
FARIS
Bathroom is a problem
SAMAR
Manage it
Are you there?
FARIS
I am outside
SAMAR
Recordings?
FARIS
We called that engineer from Abdul’s contacts
He is looking
A stomping of shoes and banging of shutters, and then their coupe door was torn open. A young man was panting, blood covering his clothes.
“Samar Dixit! Samar Dixit!”
“I am Samar Dixit.” He got to his feet as everybody woke up. The man was crying — “Atharva is calling you… they took her!”
“Took who? Where is Atharva? Who are you?” Samar pushed out of the coupe, realising that the train had stopped.
“They…” the man panted. “They… took Iram. Atharva went after them.”
“Iram?”
He nodded. Samar held his shoulder, eyeing his chest soaked with blood — “What’s wrong with you?”
