‘Seems it’s going well.’ Deepika thought as she monitored Suraj’s vital signs. Currently, in the ward, there was the patient Suraj, seated on the berth next to him was Rahu, and finally, positioning herself closer to the entrance was Deepika.
The nurse had just gone out to perform her duties in the other wards. She said she would return in twenty minutes to check up on them.
It had been two minutes since she left. The ward was peaceful. Even though there were no signs of threat, with the security team patrolling within the hospital while disguised as common folk, Deepika didn’t intend to take things easy.
Her military uVR Earth blinked as she firmed her control over her drone, having also switched the lock to her suitcase to combat mode. This way, the moment a conflict arises, the drone would fly out of the suitcase without trouble. The suitcase was created to facilitate that.
A pair of actuators were embedded inside that could be actuated with a signal from her, thereby ejecting the drone with force. It would then take flight and perform whatever Deepika commanded.
“Haah…did I not sleep enough last night?” She yawned all of a sudden, feeling sleepy. Her eyelids turned heavy as no matter how much she struggled, her focus was slipping, and with it, she was gradually falling asleep.
Unaware to her senses, there was a tiny vial placed underneath the bed, situated behind one of the bed’s legs, present in a blindspot. Its cap was open and the fluid within seemed to be vaporising slowly but surely, colourless and odourless.
“Is it working?” The man who behaved as Suraj’s father acted like he was concerned about his son and peeked in through the window, observing the state of the people within the room.
“Give it one more minute,” The middle-aged woman who acted as Suraj’s mother spoke calmly, “The incapacitating agent I used needs three minutes to take effect. There’s still a chance they could subject themselves to pain and use it to stay awake. So, let’s not do anything that would alert them.”
Deepika stared out and observed the concerned faces of Suraj’s parents, ‘No, something is amiss. This level of sleepiness isn’t natural.’
She immediately transmitted a message to the security team, alerting them as she collapsed to the ground, deep asleep.
“Now!” Suraj’s father said as he pulled out a scalpel from his pocket and placed his hand on the doorknob, intending to enter the ward, ‘I can kill the target now…’
His thoughts were stuck, frozen over by the pair of feline eyes that glared at him. The moment he stared at Rahu with the intent to kill, he felt a primal sense of fear. His head craned up slowly and stared at the massive figure of a Liger crouched behind the berth.
It lay there, in silence, ready to pounce on anyone that dared to target Rahu.
Suraj’s father shuddered and stepped back, quickly averting his gaze to the unconscious figure of Deepika. The moment he did so, the Liger vanished from his vision.
But the moment he glanced at Rahu, it manifested once again.
“Do you…see it?” He muttered softly when suddenly, the middle-aged woman dragged him through the corridor and rushed down a flight of stairs.
“We need to escape. This mission is a failure.” Stating in a hurry, she pulled him with her and sprinted across the place.
Two people dressed in casual clothes arrived at the concerned ward by now as they noticed the middle-aged couple sprinting away.
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They glanced at the three unconscious individuals within the ward and alerted the security team, “There’s a situation. Pursue the fleeing couple.”
The two security team members entered the ward and observed the conditions of Rahu and Deepika; one of them, possessing medical knowledge muttered, “Thankfully, they are just asleep. They should wake up shortly after.”
In the meantime, the middle-aged couple rushed out of the hospital as they hightailed into the streets.
Four security team members chased after them, recording their pursuit, “Target fleeing into the alleys. Encircle them!”
“What should we do now?” The middle-aged man said as he sweated buckets. His skin looked strange, almost pale as faint patches were falling off. It was obvious that he was in disguise and thanks to his sweat, it was falling off bit by bit. “I…I can’t run anymore!”
“Just shut up for a second!” The middle-aged woman shouted as she pulled him and entered a narrow alley.
Five seconds later, two security team members entered the alley, alarmed upon failing to find the middle-aged couple. “Where did they go?”
There were just walls—of factories—on the two sides. The windows were large enough for a man to enter, but they were sealed with glass. Since there were no signs of destruction on them, the middle-aged couple shouldn’t have escaped through it.
Besides, it was strange. It was impossible for two middle-aged people who weren’t athletic in nature to disappear from plain sight in five seconds.
“Shit! Look around. Search the adjacent buildings too.” The Deputy Head of the Security Team, Ashok Kumar cursed in response as his uVR Earth blinked, scouring through all the electronic gadgets in the vicinity. Unfortunately for him, there were no CCTV cameras in the narrow alley. So, they had no visual of the place.
“How can two people disappear?” He stomped the ground and roamed through the narrow alley for thirty minutes before returning to his post.
The alley was empty in the first place, save for a couple of garbage bins. There were no doors for entry or even sever lines through which one could escape as a last resort. There truly wasn’t any means through which a human could disappear from there.
Ashok wasn’t aware of one thing though. The people he was pursuing were just a couple metres before him. They were in plain sight all along. But despite that, he was unable to see them.
Induced Reality—Invisibility Cloak!
Invisibility Cloak was nothing but two glass cylinders, with one placed within the other in a calculated radius difference. When an incident ray passes through the outer cylinder and hits the convex surface of the inner cylinder, it reflects and hits the inner surface of the outer glass.
After multiple hits, the light ray leaves out of the outer cylinder as a refracted ray. But the angle between the incident ray and the refracted ray is zero degrees. Meaning, it was as if the light was travelling in a straight line.
This implies that anything placed within the inner cylinder would be invisible to the naked eye. This was an age-old trick used since the nineteenth century by magicians. And that was the secret to the Invisibility Cloak.
The middle-aged couple stood within the inner cylinder. In reality, such a contraption didn’t exist. But in Ashok’s eyes, it did, for he was under the effects of Induced Reality.
As a result, he failed to see them.
It wasn’t just Ashok, but anyone part of the security team that stared into the alley was similarly placed under the effect of Invisibility Cloak.
Once the security team was out of sight, the middle-aged couple rushed out of the alley and entered a house that they had booked in advance.
“You…took too long.”
“Argh!” The middle-aged woman screamed in fright upon staring at a bloody youth kneeling on the ground. Blood leaked out of his orifices nonstop as his uVR Earth blinked erratically. Its blue light flickered at higher and higher frequencies before soon, it stopped.
The lights dimmed before vanishing, signalling that the user’s brain had died.
The youth collapsed to the floor, sending shivers down the spine of the middle-aged couple. The middle-aged woman hurriedly dialled a number through her Augmented Reality interface and spoke in a fluster the moment the call went through, “Sir, what happened?”
“It’s an expendable piece. You needn’t concern yourself with it.” A cold, mechanical voice resounded from the other side, following up with a question, “Were you able to make contact with Rahu?”
“We managed to put him to sleep. But the moment I stared at him with the intent to harm him, the Liger appeared.” The middle-aged man said.
“As I suspected. His Induced Reality has attained the level of passive sentience.” The mechanical voice said before commanding them, “Change your disguise and vacate the place. And before you leave,”
Followed by a pause, the voice announced with a chill-inducing tone, “Extract the corpse’s uVR Earth and keep it safe.”
“What…about the corpse?” The middle-aged woman asked, still reeling from shock at the sight of someone dying before her.
“Just leave it there. I’ll be sending someone to dispose of it.” Saying so, the call ended.
“What…have we gotten ourselves into?” The middle-aged woman let out an exhausted sigh, “It’s a mess.”
“What choice do we have?” The middle-aged man shook his head before crouching next to the youth’s corpse. He then began to unscrew the youth’s uVR Earth, “The day we stepped on this organisation’s tail was when we signed ourselves up for this.”
“There’s no other choice but to tread the serpent’s path.”
He then entered the bedroom and sat before the window, calmly removing his wig, followed by a fake layer of skin, stuffed with fat globules to form the facial structure of Suraj’s father. The skin was sourced from the original.
The accident was simply fabricated, all to lure Rahu into their trap. Suraj’s parents were just collateral.
With the layer removed, a thin, lacklustre face was revealed, androgynous in appearance. He proceeded to remove the layer of skin worn on his body like a bodysuit, groaning in relief, “Damn, it is heavy. How did that guy carry all this fat like it was nothing?”
“That’s his body’s natural state.” The woman removed her disguise too, resembling the man. They were a pair of twins, aged in their twenties. Disguising was their profession.
Before they were caught by their current employer, they worked on disguising themselves as married people and filmed themselves while engaging in acts of infidelity. Using that, they caused couples to break up and make money during the ensuing chaos.
Disguising themselves as a pair of college students, the duo cleaned the place of all their traces, carried their disguise kits, and left the place.