Professor Haval stepped out of the class, Priya Parekh hot on her heels to get her opinion on some assignment or the other. Ducking behind the nearest wall, Rito held her breath and willed them not to look her way.

The last class before lunch break had just ended. Rito prayed she’d got the day right. A couple of times each week, Sinya would head over to the QRI building to meet her husband during lunch.

The Qayit Research Institute was located at the opposite end of campus. Dileep Haval, Sinya’s husband, was a renowned chemist and the current head of the Amven project. Apparently, he and Jehan had been the best of friends before the latter’s political ambitions manifested earlier that year, causing a very public dispute that had since become campus legend.

Rito had spent the last few days researching Fasih, reading up every last scrap of information she could find on his past, his career, his hobbies – anything that could help her figure out where he might’ve stashed the drug samples he stole from the club.

He was one of the most famous people in the country at the moment, but information about him wasn’t easy to come by. Fasih seemed to have taken pains to keep information about his life and his past from the clutches of the media; not an easy task when you were the youngest prime minister in the history of the country.

Still, Rito was no amateur when it came to research. And being a member of one of the most prominent families in the city did have certain perks. She had access to resources and people that the average snooping reporter could only dream of.

Fasih had been hailed as a child prodigy from the time he first surfaced in the capital city. Not that he was exactly a child at the time. He was almost fifteen when his father died, and that was a couple of years before he joined the QRI.

Growing up, Rito had heard her father mention Jehan every now and then. After all, Rajat had played a key role in setting up the Amven project. Still, until that fateful press conference a few months ago, she had only been vaguely aware of Fasih’s existence.

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She certainly hadn’t known that his father had killed himself because of the land redistribution drive her grandfather initiated, or that their home had been attacked by the local farmers, forcing Jehan to flee to the capital with the family cook.

The cook, Anuja, had apparently had a daughter. It had taken Rito some time to connect Sinya Banik, Anuja’s daughter and Jehan’s childhood friend, with Sinya Haval, her supervisor and the HOD of Comparative Lit. at one of the top universities of the world.

Rito groaned. Could her life get any more complicated?

So anyway, Fasih had started developing Amven after fleeing his home, now an orphan for all intents and purposes. His mother was still alive, of course. But Natalya Fasih had returned to her hometown in Maralana as soon as the land redistribution drive began, and had never set foot in Naijan since.

Rito supposed Fasih’s decade-long obsession with the drug could be attributed to all that early trauma. Her fifteen-year-old self would probably want a mind-control drug too, after being so thoroughly fucked over by every adult she’d ever known. And then there was the fact that he’d apparently tested early versions of Amven on himself. The man was a psychiatrist’s wet dream personified.

And yet, none of that had solved the problem of where she could find the drug samples Rinisa wanted. Until she remembered that she had found Afreen’s picture, along with the name of the La Fantome club, on Professor Sinya’s desk, all those weeks ago.

How had Sinya gotten her hands on that picture? More importantly, why did she have it? And then Fasih had shown up at the club, kickstarting the mess that Rito now found herself in.

Sinya had known Jehan since they were both children. Could it be that she was helping him behind her husband’s back? Could she be passing information to him in secret, or vice versa?

Such were the considerations that had convinced Rito to follow Sinya the next time she went over to the Institute to see her husband. Fasih had worked in that building for years. He couldn’t meet Dileep’s wife in public, of course, but there was a chance that he might’ve contacted her through one of his old colleagues at the QRI.

It was a long shot, she knew that. But it wasn’t like she was swimming in options. And every new scrap of information could make a world of difference.