CHAPTER VIII GLASS SCRAPES
The house no longer felt like a home.
It felt like a crime scene that had not yet been cordoned off-no yellow tape, no gloves, just people moving through it with the wrong kind of urgency, contaminating everything they touched.
The kind of place where something irreversible had happened and everyone knew it, but no one was ready to name it out loud.
The lights were on everywhere; Too bright and seemingly invasive because they bleached the rooms of warmth, turned familiar corners clinical and unforgiving.
Shadows had nowhere to hide. Neither did dread.
Screens glowed where they didn't belong-on side tables, on window ledges, propped against books that had not been read in years.
Laptops lay open mid-task, tablets abandoned with frozen pages, phones vibrating endlessly on wood and marble alike.
Buzzing.
Buzzing.
Buzzing.
Missed calls, Unread messages, Notifications stacking atop one another like bodies no one had the decency to bury.
At the center of it all, Vedika sat before her main console.
She looked.... unfinished.
Her spine was rigid, posture locked into something that resembled discipline but felt more like paralysis.
Her shoulders were drawn tight, as if bracing for impact that had already occurred.
Her jaw was clenched so severely it seemed painful, the muscle twitching faintly beneath the skin.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, suspended in a posture of intent that never resolved into action.
They had not moved in ten minutes, and something a little peculiar frok the normal order did not escape Tara, as she noticed first.
She had been pacing-short, sharp movements, the kind born of rage with nowhere to land. She stopped mid-step when she saw Vedika's hands. Extremely still, as if the shock of something had rendered them useless, way too unusual for a hurricane with a skin as Vedika.
Unmoving.
"That's not funny," Tara said. Yet, Vedika showed no evidence of about to respond.
"Vedika," she tried again, sharper now, irritation edged with something colder. "Tell me you're not fucking frozen." Vedika swallowed, the lump of her throat following a rhythmic pace with her heart. Her fingers twitched, as she huffed out.
Then, quietly-too quietly-she said, "It's gone."
The words barely registered at first, light as ash.
Devika, who had been leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, fury simmering just beneath her skin, straightened immediately, eyes widening a fraction as her brows inched closer. "What do you mean, gone?"
Vedika blinked at the screen as though it had personally betrayed her. "I mean gone."
Tara stepped closer, the beginnings of panic tightening her chest. The sudden heat rushing through her skin, leaving an enthralling coldness in its wake made her particularly irritated, "Gone....how?"
Vedika finally turned toward them. Her eyes were bloodshot-not from crying, but from staring too long at something that refused to change no matter how hard she willed it to.
"Deleted," she said. "Wiped and Server-level purge."
The word purge detonated in the room.
Devika laughed once followed by a sharp and utterly disbelieving emotional scoff erupting from her throat. "You're joking."
Vedika shook her head.
"No," Devika snapped. "No, no, no. That's not-this isn't some intern-level Dropbox bullshit. This is your system. Your fortress, Vedi"
"I know," Vedika said hoarsely, as she stared at the screen, helplessness coiling her heart and will, tighter than she ever wished for it to.
Tara's breath thinned as she analysed Vedika's countenance, already hellbent and sure that there indeed was a fault; a fault as shallow as a well, "What's gone?
" she asked, her voice dropping into something dangerously lethal.
Vedika hesitated, as her eyes avoided Tara and Devika, similar to the bats when they are in the near proximity to the sun, almost allergic to the hard stare they were awarding her with and that hesitation was catastrophic.
Tara exploded. "WHAT. IS. GONE?"
Vedika flinched, not because of the intensity rather due to the sheer disappointment raising a brow from beside the irritation. Tara hadn't been one to scorn at her or undermine a bar Vedika had leaped over, so incidentally this change in sudden reactive expressions was shocking.
"All digital archives," Vedika muttered, "Everything not backed up physically. Case files. Surveillance logs. Metadata. Transaction trails. Audio pulls. Time-stamped correspondence."
Devika's face drained of color. "Rajveer."
"Yes."
"Aurobindo Sen."
"Yes."
"The shell networks," Devika continued, voice rising. "The offshore routing. The DUMMY TRUSTS."
"Yes."
Something inside Tara dropped; Not shattered but dropped.
Comparative to dropping your mother's larger than life and closer to heart than you flower vase, knowing well enough it is not broken yet unable to retard your thumping heart.
Like an elevator cable snapping clean through, and you see Heaven moments earlier before entering it. Or Hell.
"You opened the server," Tara said slowly. The day where Ishaani had to be tracked from wherever Rajveer had been tucking her, where Tara was acting hesitatingly with a strange sense of withdrawal.
Vedika didn't answer. She vehemently wished to have held Tara's words to a higher level.
"You opened it," Tara repeated, each word honed sharp enough to draw blood. "You opened your GODDAMN SERVER TO AN EXTERNAL NODE."
"I had to," Vedika snapped suddenly, spinning in her chair. "We needed speed. We needed access. We needed to trace the car, the financial bleed, the handoffs-"
"And you left the door wide the fuck open," Tara cut in. "You didn't sandbox. You didn't isolate. You didn't even mask the IP properly."
"I was under pressure," Vedika shot back. Tara laughed. It was not humor. It was hollow, edged, cruel. "We were all under pressure."
Devika stepped forward, anger tightening her frame. "You knew better."
Vedika's eyes flashed. "Don't."
"No," Devika said calmly, which somehow made it worse. "Don't you."
Silence crashed down between them, thick and suffocating. Vedika stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor with a sound that felt like damage. "I did it for my sister."
"And you fucked us all for her," Tara said without hesitation. Her partially glassy eyes glared at Vedika. She was grateful, having Ishaani back in the house yet the insurgency on Vedika's part was baffling and straight up brainless.
Vedika turned on her as though struck.
"What did you say?"
Tara didn't retreat. Her hands trembled, but her voice held. "This was a bait. And you took it. Hook, line, and sinker."
Vedika's laugh was brittle, razor-thin. She had stepped forward, marching Tara's stance as she glared Tara down, arms folded where she could grip her own arm, witholding from raking Tara's eyes, "You think I don't know that now?"
"Knowing it now doesn't bring the data back," Tara said. "Knowing it now doesn't change the fact that someone was waiting for you to blink."
Devika ran a hand through her hair. "Oh Lord, Vedika. You handed them the keys." Vedika's voice fractured, as her eyes found her elder sister, a part of her shattering upon looking at the disappointed expression on Devika's face. "I handed them nothing. They took it."
"Because you let them," Devika said, prusing her lips, her eyes avoiding any contact with Vedika's to possibly silence the pounding in her head.
Vedika who felt cornered and solely blamed for doing something, any loving and sane human would've done for their loved ones, was slowly getting agitated and just like clockwork, her hand landed flat on the desk.
The sound echoed through the room like a verdict.
"I DID IT FOR ISHAANI."
The room froze.
Her chest heaved. "They had her. They had my baby sister chained to a floor and you want me thinking about protocol? Best practices? Waiting?"
Tara's eyes burned. "I wanted you to think about traps."
Vedika rounded on her. "Don't you dare lecture me."
"Then don't you dare dress this up as noble," Tara snapped. "This wasn't sacrifice. This was impulse." Vedika's voice dropped, terrifyingly calm. "You don't get to say that."
"Why?" Tara demanded. "Because I didn't grow up with her?"
"Yes," Vedika said immediately. "Because you don't know what it's like to have your entire universe wrapped up in one person." Tara inhaled sharply. Control, Tara.
Then, quietly, she said, "You think I don't."
The words landed and Vedika stilled. Devika noticed as her gaze flicked between them. She had never stepped between them before and today would have been no different than ever.
"This isn't about your feelings," Vedika scoffed weakly.
"No," Tara agreed. "This is about consequences."
She stepped closer. "You think I didn't want to burn the world down for her? You think I didn't imagine tearing every man involved apart with my bare hands? I had seen her from your perspective too, Vedika!" Not anymore but I love her still the very same.
Vedika looked away.
"I stopped," Tara said. "Because someone had to."
Devika exhaled hard. "This took five days," she said. "They planned it." Vedika sank back into her chair. "I know." Her voice was smaller now, almost recessive as though that one sentence had taken a major part of her energy.
"They mirrored us. Waited. Watched. And when I opened the gate, they gutted it." Suddenly, like the aftermath of a storm, the silence was deafening and irresistible for the three looked at each other then away like robbers.
Tara closed her eyes. "A honeytrap." Vedika nodded once. "Can we retrieve anything?" Devika asked.
Vedika shook her head. "They overwrote everything."
"So we're blind."
"We have hard copies. Enough to hold Rajveer. Not enough to burn the rest."
From the hallway came the faint sound of Ishaani coughing. A reminder, sharper than Tara's words from a few moments ago. Vedika's shoulders sagged. "I can't do this anymore."
And with that, she crossed the room, as she left the room.
Devika stared after her. "She's breaking."
"She already broke," Tara said. "She just hasn't heard it yet."Devika rubbed her temples. "We're fucked."
"Not entirely," Tara replied.
"And now?"
"And now they think we're stupid."
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The quiet had weight to it, the particular gravity of a house that had stayed awake too long and forgotten how to rest. It wasn't silence exactly-there was the constant, insect-like whir of the air conditioner, the old boards ticking faintly as they cooled-but it felt curated, deliberate, as though the night itself were holding its breath out of respect or fear.
Ishaani sat propped against a small mountain of pillows, her body angled just so, careful not to provoke the ache that still lived beneath her ribs.
Pain had become a kind of companion these past days-predictable, familiar, almost courteous in the way it announced itself when she moved too fast. The bedside lamp washed the room in a dim, amber light that flattered nothing and forgave even less.
Bruises lingered in its glow, softened but not absolved, like memories that refused to blur no matter how much time you gave them.
Vedika sat beside her.
Not in the way Vedika usually sat-straight-backed, immaculate, arranged as if posture itself were a moral stance-but collapsed inward, elbows braced against her knees, hands locked together with an intensity that suggested she was afraid they might fly apart if she loosened her grip.
Her hair had slipped free of its clip, strands falling carelessly along her jaw and neck.
It struck Ishaani, with a pang both sharp and strange, that she had never seen her sister look unfinished before.
They stayed like that for a long time, suspended in the fragile truce of shared exhaustion.
Vedika stared at the floor as though it might confess something if she watched it hard enough.
Ishaani watched her sister instead-the rigid line of her profile, the way her jaw flexed at intervals, betraying the steady destruction of words swallowed whole.
"You can say it," Ishaani said at last, her voice gentle but firm, the way one speaks when offering a hand across a narrow bridge.
Vedika didn't look up. "Say what?"
"That you're angry."
The breath Vedika released might have been a laugh in another life. "Angry?" she echoed, lifting her head finally. Her eyes were rimmed red, scorched with wakefulness rather than tears. "Baby, I'm past angry."
Ishaani's fingers tightened in the bedsheet, gathering fabric as though it were something she could hold onto.
Vedika shifted closer without seeming to realize she was doing it, her shoulder brushing Ishaani's arm. The contact startled them both-an electric, fragile thing-and for a split second Vedika went rigid, as if expecting to be punished for it. Then she stayed.
"I built that system," Vedika said quietly. "Piece by piece. Safeguard after safeguard. I trusted it more than I trust people."
Her voice dipped. "And I left it open."
Ishaani rested her head against Vedika's shoulder, the motion careful, reverent. "You were trying to save me."
Vedika's breath fractured at the edges.
"That doesn't make it right," she said, harsher now, the words turned inward like a blade. "That's not strategy. That's impulse."
"You're allowed to care," Ishaani murmured.
Vedika turned then, truly looked at her. At the faint bruising along her collarbone, at the tension still lodged in her posture, as though her body had not yet been convinced the danger was over.
"I care too much," Vedika said. "That's the fucking problem."
Her voice broke, finally, on the last word.
Ishaani reached for her slowly, deliberately, leaving space for refusal that never came. She placed her hand over Vedika's clenched one, felt the tremor there.
"You didn't fail me," she said. "You didn't fail us."
Vedika closed her eyes.
"I failed myself," she whispered. "And somehow that feels worse."
The door opened after minutes, traitorous with a soft, protesting creak.
Devika stepped inside and stopped short, taking in the tableau before her-the way Vedika leaned into Ishaani, the way Ishaani held her there, the quiet reversal of strength that felt almost intimate in its vulnerability.
Devika closed the door behind her with care.
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't let anger spill theatrically into the room. That would have been kinder.
"Now....what did you do, Vedika?" she asked, her arms crossing like a verdict, eyes too sharp to allow comfort to seep into Vedika's worked muscles. Vedika didn't lift her head. "You already know, didi."
Vedika rarely used Didi for Devika, since the age gap way barely 3 years, yet when she selectively seemed to, it was often times because everything was overwhelming and the only person who could be successful in moving the dead pile of uncertainty away was her older sister.
Because the only guaranteed safety was Devika.
"I want to hear you say it."
The silence stretched, taut and unforgiving.
"I rushed," Vedika said at last. "I acted emotionally. I left the server vulnerable."
Devika crossed the room in long, measured strides and stopped in front of them.
"You don't rush," she said. "You don't get careless. That's the foundation of who you are."
Vedika flinched, which was already blasphemous considering who she had morphed herself into.
"Didi-" Ishaani began, instinctively tightening her hold. Devika raised a hand without looking at her. "Let me."
She crouched so she was level with Vedika's gaze, who was still sitting beside Ishaani.
"You didn't just risk information," Devika said quietly. "You risked lives. You risked leverage. You handed our enemies a blade and turned your back."
"I did it for her," Vedika said, her voice flat with insistence, her eyes hazy with regret and exultation.
Devika's eyes flicked to Ishaani, sharp with something like pain. "And what if that had cost you her?"
The words struck with surgical precision. Vedika's breath caught, violent and audible. "What if they'd known more?" Devika pressed. "What if they'd gone further?"
"Stop," Vedika whispered, barely above a score.
"No," Devika replied. "You don't get to evade this. You made a mistake. You own it."
Vedika looked up then, eyes glassy, stripped of armor. "I thought losing her would kill me," she said. "I didn't think beyond that."
Devika stood slowly.
"And that," she said, "is exactly why this hurts."
She rubbed a hand down her face, exhaling. "You're allowed to love her. You're not allowed to dismantle everything because of it."
Vedika nodded. "I know."
"Say it properly."
"I was reckless."
"Again."
"I endangered us."
"And?"
Vedika's shoulders sagged. "I need help fixing it."
Devika nodded once. "Good."
She turned to Ishaani, her expression softening. "You should be resting."
Ishaani shook her head. "She shouldn't be alone."
Devika studied her, then huffed whilst nodding. At the door, she paused. "We'll fix this. But don't make me say this twice."
"There won't be a next time," Vedika said.
"There better not be," Devika replied, and left.
The silence settled again, heavier now, as though it had learned something.
Vedika folded forward, pressing her forehead into Ishaani's shoulder. Her hands trembled openly at last.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so fucking sorry."
Ishaani wrapped her arm around her sister, resting her chin in Vedika's hair.
"I'm here," she said. "You didn't lose me."
Vedika breathed her in, like proof, like absolution.
And for the first time since everything unraveled, she allowed herself to believe it.
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A/N: Dear Readers,
I am alive, don't you worry. I know it's Been 20 days since I last updated, but my work has kept me strangely busy.