Divya

In a single story mud and brick house in the slums of Darjeeling, there lived a family of three. The mother, a hard working, kind and patient lady who gave her all for her family. The daughter, who, despite her young age, went out everyday on the streets of the big city, hoping to collect enough money to be able to eat for another day, and the father … A good for nothing alcoholic piece of trash whose sole reason for existing was to beat and torture his wife and daughter. Beating them brought him joy, and made him feel like he was in control of the house, and so he did just that. Everyday, he used to beat his wife for random reasons, excuses, just so he could raise his hand again. And everyday, his wife would just accept it, doing nothing in retaliation, all due to her immense kindness .. But you see, too much of anything is never good, and the same applies to kindness. The effect of this immense kindness? It all showed in her daughter. Seeing her mother being beaten day after day, brought her to hate her father for beating her mother and herself. And yet, she also came to hate her mother for not protecting them from her father. However, she never showed anything on her face. From a very young age, she had learned that if she ever showed anything other than obedience on her face, she would be beaten. In fact, she went as far as to create fake feelings inside herself… feelings of love towards her mother who 'protected her' and feelings of understanding towards her father who beat her because she was 'wrong'. And yet, her bubble, which she had become accustomed to, was suddenly broken without any warning whatsoever, when one day, she came home to find a dead mother and a soon to be dead father…

Flashing open her eyes, Divya immediately got up and started taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. Lying beside a highway, she remembered that she had fallen asleep due to being extremely tired. After realising what she had done, she had gotten very scared and immediately ran away from the slums. She kept running away from the city in one direction, and when she got tired of running, she walked, she walked and walked until she came across the highway, where she collapsed due to exhaustion. Her first thought after waking up was

'I'm free! I'm free.. But, what am I supposed to do now? Where do I go? I'm sure the police have already found out I killed those two, and now they're on the search for me… Where can I go? Is there even any place left for me to go?'

As Divya drowned in her thoughts, what she failed to realize, no, what she did not know was that death in the slums was a common event. And while the extremely bloody death of her parents might alarm some residents, the police would most likely never care about it. And if by chance, the police decided to investigate it, found out about her (which was another unlikely scenario, considering nobody who lives in the slums cares about anyone except their immediate family) and then caught her, she would not be sent to jail, or executed. Instead, she would probably be let off on house arrest or be placed under care of the government considering that she killed her father (who frequently abused her mother and herself) in self defence.

Suddenly, a loud horn sounded from beside her, bringing her back from her mind into the real world. Looking towards her right, she saw a huge truck with 18 wheels coming to a stop beside her, on the highway. After fully stopping, the driver's door on the right side opened and down came a fairly old looking man. He had a concerned expression on his face, as he gazed at the condition Divya was in. Wearing clothes that were torn and dirty, and with a thin, malnourished body, anybody who gazed at her would feel only pity for her. Slowly walking towards her, the old man stopped a few metres away from Divya and asked her,

"Do you speak Hindi, little girl?"

And when Divya replied with a nod of her head, he went on to ask,

"Are you alright? What happened to you? Do you want water and food?" And as if it was a sign from god himself, Divya's stomach growled loudly at that very instant, showing how hungry she was. Hearing the growl, the old man smiled and said,

"Would you like to eat some of the food that I have?"

With a slight smile on her face, Divya quickly agreed to his offer and tried to stand up and walk towards him, but quickly realised how foolish her efforts were considering how weak she was right now. Seeing this, the old man waved at her to stay where she was and then went back to the truck to bring the food. Bringing the food to her, he sat beside Divya and waited for her to finish it, which, to his surprise, didn't take that long. As soon as she got the food, Divya gobbled it all up and drank at least a litre of water, satisfying her hunger and thirst. After having her fill, she looked at the uncle in front of her, and for the first time in their encounter, spoke to him

"Uncle, do you think you could take me to the nearest city? Please? My parents are no longer with me, and I wanted to go to another city to begin a new life.. Do you think you could take me with you?"

Looking at this young girl who was suddenly asking him such a request, the old man for some reason felt compelled to agree to her request. He felt that helping her would be an amazing thing to do, and for a second here he had some doubts about why he was having these kinds of thoughts, but when he looked back at the young girls face, all these doubts vanished and all that was left was the desire to help the girl who looked so sad and alone.

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Meanwhile, in the PDM

'.......... I realise that this part is necessary for my plan, but what I failed to realise is that it would be this boring. Turns out that staying in a cell with chains binding all your limbs is very, very boring.'

After a long while, someone did start to come towards his cell. When Alaukik heard the sounds of the footsteps, he eagerly looked towards the door, hoping to 'see' a familiar face. However, he was disappointed, as the one who opened the door was just a guard. But, this guard was carrying something with him. In his hands was some kind of black metal chain, which Alaukik supposed were to be the replacements he asked for. And he was right. The guard walked up to him and one by one, carefully, replaced each chain with the counterpart he had in his hand. Apparently, it was made of a material that reduced the flow of psions in the human body, effectively making a mage similar to a normal human. This was supposed to be effective against Alaukik's huge psion count. After replacing all the chains, the guard turned around to leave the cell, but before he did, he dropped something beside Alaukik before locking the door and walking away. Looking at what the guard dropped on the floor, Alaukik started smiling immediately, and then when he reached for it and opened the stack of pages, he started laughing like a madman..

'Just you wait for me… Jamshed Abbas is it? Oooh, I'm gonna make a corpse out of you for sure,' was what he thought as he kept laughing wildly.