The sun had just begun to set over the crumbling rooftops of Belgrade when the signal reached Taqreeban's server node.
A flicker in the encrypted data stream. A packet that wasn't supposed to be there. A heartbeat in static.
Camille, scanning from Lisbon, caught it first. Her screen lit up with a blinking prompt: RAAHIL_BETA_SIGNAL_DETECTED.
She exhaled sharply. He was alive.
Or at least, someone wanted them to believe he was.
She decrypted the packet, layer by layer, like peeling the skin of a ghost.
Inside: a coordinates string, an audio file, and a timestamp set 12 hours into the future.
The audio file was simple. One line:
"Find the lighthouse where silence meets salt. I will be waiting."
Camille immediately relayed the message to Mahira and Suhana through their dead drop.
—
At the exact time of the message, Raahil stood at the edge of the Adriatic Sea, facing a defunct lighthouse near the Montenegrin coast.
No guards. No surveillance.
Only seagulls and salt in the air.
He stepped inside, his footsteps echoing in the circular stairwell. At the top, he set up a small satellite dish and pointed it skyward.
Then he waited.
—
Meanwhile, in Delhi, Suhana sat at a rooftop café with a man she once called her director.
Now, he was a political advisor working quietly within a coalition of dissenters.
She slid him a file. Inside: details of backdoor deals between Indian intelligence and extremist proxies in Kashmir, funded to provoke violence ahead of elections.
His hands trembled.
"This could bury people," he said.
"Let it," Suhana replied.
"And what do you want from me?"
"Access to Parliament floor time," she said. "We have one chance to speak truth without being censored."
He nodded, slowly.
"Understood. But you'll need protection."
Suhana smiled grimly. "I'm not the one who should be afraid."
—
Mahira was already en route.
She rode on the back of a smuggler's motorbike through the edge of Herat, disguised as a migrant aid worker.
Her destination: the abandoned NATO listening post where she believed Raahil would go next.
She carried with her the final piece of the puzzle—documents proving collaboration between certain Pakistani generals and criminal syndicates in Gwadar, smuggling rare earth minerals and framing Baloch activists.
She intended to release it.
But only once she saw Raahil's face again.
—
Back at the lighthouse, the door creaked open.
A child walked in.
She looked no older than 12, barefoot, holding a wooden box.
Raahil stood.
The girl handed him the box and said in broken English: "From the river. For you."
Inside the box was a USB drive, wrapped in wax cloth.
He plugged it into his portable server.
A video loaded.
Camille's voice appeared:
"This signal is verified. Mahira is safe. Suhana is safe. And we believe in what comes next."
Raahil smiled faintly.
Then the screen flickered, and an urgent ping broke through.
It was not from Camille. It was a direct feed from a source he thought long dead.
Karamat Singh.
The man who had recruited his mother into RAW.
His handler. His betrayer.
The man presumed assassinated after Operation Dusklight.
The message was brief.
"You're running out of time. They know your next three moves. Istanbul is compromised. Athens is safe. Run."
Raahil closed the feed and burned the USB in the old lighthouse flame.
Then he turned, walked down the spiral, and vanished into the dusk.
—
In Pakistan, a strange video began circulating on closed WhatsApp groups.
It showed army officials talking over a muted table, with a text overlay:
"They promised to protect you. Then they sold you."
The video was leaked with metadata pointing to Taqreeban's server.
But Mahira denied releasing it.
"We didn't post that," she told Camille.
Camille checked her logs. "Someone is mimicking us."
"Or helping us," Mahira said.
—
The next broadcast from Raahil went live at midnight.
It was different.
He wasn't sitting. He wasn't alone.
Behind him stood three masked figures: one Indian, one Pakistani, and one unidentified.
Each held a document stamped with their nation's seal.
Raahil spoke:
"Tonight, we show you what your leaders say when they think the cameras are off."
He played the audio:
A private conversation between Indian and Pakistani negotiators discussing false flag operations, media manipulation, and the deliberate collapse of peace talks for political gains.
The audio ended. Silence followed.
Then Raahil's final words:
"Truth is no longer in the hands of the powerful. It's in yours. Decide what to do with it."
The screen faded.
Then came the words:
To be continued...