Chapter 1
THE FUNERAL
H8 graveyard – Islamabad – 11:47 hoursThe grave wasn’t dug deep enough.
Captain Ahsan Malik’s coffin listed slightly to the left, as if even in death, he was
leaning into the wind. The Pakistani flag draped over it was threadbare at the
edges not from age, but from being folded too many times by hands that no
longer had the strength to care.
Only four people stood in the rain:
Two junior sepoys (faces numb from standing guard over a "traitor’s" body all
night)
One old mullah (reciting verses without conviction, eyes on his watch)
Adeel Malik (Agent 27) (seventeen years old, holding his breath so he wouldn’t
scream)
The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was sharp needles against skin. The kind of rain
that made memory sting.
SEPOY 1: "Yeh wohi bhai hai na? Jo keh raha tha ke Captain beqasoor hai?"
(Isn’t this the brother who claimed the Captain was innocent?)
SEPOY 2: "Haan. Par ab toh sab khatam hogaya."
(Yes. But it’s over now.)
Adeel (Agent 27) bent down. The mud sucked at his dress shoes as he laid a
single flag fragment over the fresh soil torn from the one that once flew over his
brother’s base. The crescent on the scrap bled into the soil like a wound
reopening.
MULLAH: "Kisi ka beta, kisi ka bhai... Rab sab jaanta hai."
(Someone’s son, someone’s brother... God knows the truth.)
Adeel (Agent 27) didn’t look up. He didn’t blink. His jaw was locked so tight his
molars ached. The rain melted the flag’s crescent into a bloodstain.
ADEEL (Agent 27): "Yeh khatam nahi hua."
(This isn’t over.)His fingernails carved half-moons into his palms. Later, the scars would remind
him:
Silence is a weapon. Grief is a whetstone.
As the final prayer ended, Adeel (Agent 27) turned away. Not to leave but to
begin.
Behind him, the whispers grew louder.
