Page 177 of No Boss
He tried to recall the last several turns and found gaps where memory should have been. He remembered following herdirections. He remembered turning the wheel. Yet the directions he had taken, he couldn't remember them.
He turned toward the woman.
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, eyes on the road ahead, calm, composed, untouched by any of it.
“I should be more concerned than I am right now.” His voice came distant, thoughtful. “This should feel wrong.”
She looked at him. “Does it?”
He opened his mouth, then stopped.
It didn’t.
That frightened him more than the situation itself.
Every instinct should have pushed him to stop, to turn back, to question. He was driving through an unknown stretch of the city in the middle of the night beside a stranger whose directions he couldn’t remember, and his map no longer showed where he was.
Yet the storm that had torn through him since Meera vanished had softened here. It remained, but no longer tore him apart.
He looked ahead.
The lane narrowed further. Stone spread across the road in patterns too intricate for any modern street. Silence wrapped around the car. Even the engine sounded distant.
A thought rose.
‘Was this even still Jaipur?’
“Here,” the woman murmured.
The car slowed. Ahead, a massive stone archway emerged from the darkness.
She stepped out. Her red saree stood out against the night, its color almost carrying its own light. “Will you come inside?”
Abhinav stayed seated for a second, staring at the frozen screen. His phone lay beside it. No missed calls. No messages. No updates. Nothing.
“My home offers stillness,” the woman’s voice reached him from outside. “And stillness brings answers.”
The words settled deep enough to unsettle him. His mind pushed back.
‘This is wrong. Unknown place. Unknown person. Go back. Find Meera.’
And with her name, came a whisper. “Hukum…”
Soft. So soft it might not have been sound at all. Just memory placed too precisely between one breath and the next.
His pulse stumbled.
‘Meera.’
His grip loosened. His eyes fixed on the archway, on the open wooden doors. He turned off the engine, picked up his phone, and stepped out. His feet carried him forward, following the woman inside.
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Darkness swallowed everything.
He stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Shapes formed eventually. Human sight always found a foothold in the darkness.
This time, it found nothing.
