In the grim underbelly of Dharavi, even the word city felt like a punchline. For a man raised in the kaleidoscope of Chau Cera, this caricature of urban life felt as cultured as a rock. Yet, compared to the cesspool he’d just escaped, he might as well have stumbled into the Garden of Eden.

Before him stood a building so saggy and unremarkable, it could’ve easily moonlighted as a retirement home for melancholic cockroaches. Painted in a hue of turquoise loud enough to wake the dead, The Maharaja’s Palace proudly proclaimed itself the best hotel in the quarter. Even worse, it was. Despite the charm deficit, his current home boasted both reliable plumbing and private baths, two rare luxuries indeed. A room for the week also cost less than a coffee back home.

“Here we are,” he announced.

The glare she shot him could’ve curdled milk. He felt a surge of…something, perhaps grudging respect, that he struggled to swallow down. His newfound companion was a pain in the ass, but damn if she wasn’t good with a fork—and she had a soft spot, too. It was a peculiar blend, and one that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. He also couldn’t keep hauling her around like a sack of potatoes, but figuring out what else to do made juggling chainsaws seem fun.

So while he mulled his options, he played doorman.

As the door creaked open, the tired clerk lifted his gaze. A hint of bewilderment flickered across his worn-out face as he pondered what his least favorite guest might be doing with a walking landfill. But Ceres had a cure for idle wonder; reaching into his coat, he conjured a fat roll of hundred daric notes and began peeling them off. The other man’s eyes bulged like overstuffed cushions, at the sight. In this den of cardboard barons and plastic bandits, where trades were made with bits of colored paper and murder was just another form of negotiation, Ceres doubted if he’d ever even laid eyes on a genuine daric note—of any denomination.

The counter was scarred and pitted, and had seen more wear than a treadmill in a hamster prison. Placing five hundred darics down, he slid them across with a solemn expression. “There are now two of us, staying in my room.” He paused meaningfully. “See that we’re not disturbed.”

Next to him, the urchin froze like a deer in the headlights. Her lack of escape attempts so far both puzzled and amused him; perhaps she’d realized that outrunning death itself would be easier. Most people gave in when pushed to the brink, but this wasn’t a surrender—it was survival calculus at its finest. She was conserving her energy, and wits, for her eventual dash to freedom. The more he had to rough her up now, the less she’d have left in the tank when her moment finally came. It was a twisted game of cat and mouse, where the mouse was playing the long con.

He approved.

Guiding her past the dumbfounded clerk, he pointed toward the stairs. The hotel’s architecture made the Qutub Minar look like a perfectly straight line, with everything tilting ever so slightly to the left. His room awaited them on the second floor, at the end of a long hall that could double as a tightrope; reaching it, she made a move for the doorknob. Acting faster than a striking snake, he seized her wrist and provoked a startled yelp. Holding a finger to his lips, he indicated for her to remain silent and then dropped down to examine the threshold. The single hair he’d rigged as an alarm remained in place, a mute testament to his paranoia—and her potential folly.

He had enemies, including Dharun.

Convinced that the room wasn’t concealing unwelcome guests, he pushed the door open and gestured. Still clutching her wrist, she stepped inside and stopped dead. He couldn’t fathom what’d provoked that reaction—certainly not his knack for detective work—but she gawked at the unimpressive space like she’d just walked in on zombies doing yoga…or into the Imperial Palace itself. “What is it?” he asked, collapsing into one of the room’s two chairs.

She glanced over, biting her lip. “I’ve never…seen a room this nice.”

The admission shouldn’t have shocked him; around here, luxury was having a roof over one’s head and at least one wall that didn’t wobble like jeli on a trampoline. Spreading his arms wide, he smiled. “Step right up, and behold the marvels of modern convenience! It’s a wonderous realm where the toilet flushes like a charm, the sink flows with liquid magic, and the shower rains down cleanliness like a diving blessing! It’s the impossible made possible, a two-headed goat of comfort and hygiene!” He gestured. “Go inside, and experience this wonder for yourself.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Her eyes widened like saucers before she darted out of sight and, seconds later, the bolt slid home with a finality that echoed in the stale air. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all as he turned his head to gaze out the window at the dying embers of the setting sun. A drink sounded divine right about now, among other things. If this were a vacation, he’d be lounging with some vision of loveliness and not playing butler to a utensil-wielding gnome. He had a preference for companions who were easy on the eyes and, should the mood strike, easy on the touch. Alas, his current companion fell short on both counts and their shared abode in this pit of despair only served to enhance her lack of allure.

His stomach grumbled, a reminder of his neglect since dawn. Casting a glance at the bathroom door, he couldn’t help but ponder when his new friend had last indulged in a proper meal. Judging by her appearance, she encountered food as often as she bathed. With a resigned sigh, he reached for his phone and summoned something from a restaurant down the road. It wasn’t gourmet, but it hadn’t made him vomit—so far—and in this den of gastronomic horror that was amazing.

The wretched little gremlin remained holed up in her makeshift fortress, no doubt plotting her grand escape. Well, good luck with that; it was more secure than a bank vault, with no windows and an air vent too small for even someone of her size. She looked like a stiff breeze would knock her over, and couldn’t weigh more than his rucksack. He, meanwhile, was two hundred pounds of muscle. Flexing his broad shoulders and stretching his arms above his head, he reassured himself that he was just bored. He definitely wasn’t curious, about her or her predicament.

She’d get bored, eventually, and then they’d see. The sun was almost to the horizon, casting a lurid glow over the glittering stripe bisecting this cesspit of a slum and painting it a sickly shade of orange. Whatever toxic cocktail flowed through those behemoth pipes originated here, although most of Dharavi’s inhabitants treated the Kaveri River like a multi-tool—using it for everything from bathing to laundering to flushing away their troubles. His new friend probably did, too, scrubbing her sorry rags in a cocktail of industrial runoff from a long list of polluters: tanneries, factories, distilleries, textile mills, and even hospitals. As for Ceres, he forked over a small fortune for supposedly filtered water that didn’t taste too much like rotten eggs and disappointment. But oh, how he missed the opulence of the public baths on Brontes.

He wasn’t supposed to want things, but he wanted to go home.

Do not dwell in the past, the mantra went. Do not dream of the future. “Concentrate on the present moment,” he muttered to himself, propping his feet on the table, and scowling at his boots. We are what we think, the Brotherhood preached, as if thoughts alone could mold a man like clay. The organization that some called a cult had directed his life since age sixteen and, until arriving on Mahima IV, he’d been just fine with that arrangement. He wasn’t planning a mutiny, he wasn’t Dharun, but questions had begun to bubble up like indigestion after a bad meal. Here he was, with a job to do, and that should’ve been the end of it. Whether the target deserved his was beside the point, a thorny question best left unasked. Assassins were tools, plain and simple, designed for a purpose beyond their understanding.

Indeed, understanding was often unhelpful.

He and Dharun had been like brothers, once. They’d trained together, gone on missions together, and even shared women. Then disaster struck, like a meteor, ripping through the fabric of their lives and severing their bond between one breath and the next. If Dharun had only confided in him about how he felt, truly felt, then maybe things wouldn’t have gone so badly off the rails. But Dharun had kept his cards close, leaving Ceres—and everyone else—to shuffle in the dark. Not that Ceres was a saint himself; he enjoyed his vices, from booze to bed-hopping, almost as much as he relished his work. When push came to shove, however, he stood firm in his belief: the Brotherhood doled out its own brand of justice, no matter how twisted or cryptic.

The clerk rang the room, announcing that dinner was served.

Running a hand through his hair, he wondered if it was safe to go downstairs. His captive had been remarkably silent, which was suspicious, but he doubted that she’d effectuate an exit in the time it took to fetch dinner. Besides, getting dressed was a production—for women, at least. What, was she going to pull a naked escape through the window? He frowned. Knowing his luck, she just might. He couldn’t go forever without food, though, as tempting as that was around here.

He’d leave the situation to fate, he decided, and proceed from there.

The specter of even more disasters should scare him, more than it did. He’d also known, from an early age, that he didn’t have what others would refer to as normal emotions. Indeed, he’d been referred to more than once as a sociopath although he found that term confining. He did feel things, just not the same things that other people did. He felt need, desire, and occasionally…longing.

For what, he didn’t know.

And he came back to his room, and he did.