Devil in the Rain

DEVIL IN THE RAIN

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Episode 1

The Last Kiss

Some are born in darkness. One woman prayed he would find the light.

~ ~ ~

The rain had no mercy that night.

It fell in sheets, cold and relentless, drumming against the windows of St. Mary’s Hospital like it was trying to break in. Thunder rolled across the sky in long angry waves. The kind of night that made people lock their doors and pull their children close.

But inside Room 14 of the maternity ward, Malathi had no time to be afraid of storms.

“Breathe, breathe, breathe—” the nurse kept saying, her voice calm in a way that felt rehearsed.

Malathi could not breathe. Not properly. Each contraction hit her like a wave she could not outrun, crashing through her body and pulling her under before the last one had even finished. She gripped the iron railing of the hospital bed so hard her knuckles had gone white.

“Rajendra—” she gasped.

Nobody answered.

~ ~ ~

He was supposed to be here.

Outside her room in the corridor, Rajendra Varma stood with his back against the wall and his phone pressed to his ear. His jaw was tight. His eyes were unreadable — the kind of eyes that had seen too much to give anything away easily.

Something was wrong.

He had felt it since they arrived at the hospital. A prickling at the back of his neck that he had learned never to ignore. He had posted men at every entrance. Four on the ground floor. Two at the stairwell. Suresh at the end of this very corridor.

It still did not feel like enough.

“Talk to me,” he said quietly into the phone.

Static. Then — “They are here. East side. At least twelve of them. Maybe more.”

Rajendra closed his eyes for exactly one second.

Twelve men. In a hospital. On the night his wife was giving birth.

Whoever had sent them had planned this carefully. Had waited. Had chosen this exact moment — when his hands would be full, when his heart would be somewhere it had never been before, when Rajendra Varma would be the most human he had ever been in his life.

And they had struck.

He straightened up and turned to find Malathi’s uncle already standing behind him.

~ ~ ~

Shankar Rao was sixty one years old and looked every year of it tonight.

He was a broad man, once powerful, now thick around the middle with grey at his temples and deep lines around his mouth. He had been the one to bring Malathi here when her pains started. Had sat in the corridor for three hours without complaint, refusing tea, refusing to leave. Just sitting there with his hands on his knees like a man keeping guard.

He had known Rajendra long enough to read his face.

“How many?” Shankar said.

“Enough.”

“Which floor?”

“Ground. Moving up.”

Shankar nodded slowly. He looked at the door of Room 14. Through it, faintly, they could hear Malathi — one long ragged breath followed by a nurse’s voice telling her to push.

“She is almost there,” Shankar said quietly. “She just needs a little more time.”

“Then go.” Shankar turned to face the stairwell at the end of the corridor. He rolled his neck once. Slowly. “You go to the other side. Draw as many away as you can. I will stop what comes up these stairs.” He paused. “This is my niece in that room. That is my blood she is about to bring into this world.”

He said nothing more. He did not need to.

Rajendra held the old man’s gaze for a moment — something passing between them that had no name and needed none. Then he gripped Shankar’s shoulder once, hard, and walked toward the far end of the corridor without looking back.

~ ~ ~

The sounds reached Malathi in fragments.

A crash from somewhere below. Shouting. Running footsteps. The nurses in her room had gone pale. One kept glancing at the door. Another had moved to the corner and was gripping her phone with both hands.

Malathi heard all of it.

But she also heard something closer — from just outside her door. A single gunshot. Then two more. Then a silence that was somehow worse than the noise.

She gripped the bed rail and pushed.

The baby came into the world at 12:09 AM screaming at the top of his lungs.

A boy.

Small and furious and absolutely alive.

The nurse placed him on Malathi’s chest and for ten seconds — just ten seconds — the war outside did not exist. There was only this small warm weight against her heart. This tiny fist curling around her finger. This face looking up at her with wide dark eyes full of something that looked too much like trust.

Hello, she thought. I have been waiting for you.

~ ~ ~

The door opened.

Not a nurse. Not Rajendra.

It was Ravi — one of Rajendra’s men, young, barely twenty five, his shirt torn at the shoulder and his face carrying something that made Malathi’s chest go cold before he even spoke.

“Where is Shankar?” she said.

Ravi looked at the floor.

“Where is my uncle?” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“He stopped them on the stairwell.” Ravi’s voice was barely above a whisper. “All of them. He did not step back even once.” He stopped. Swallowed. “He said to tell you he loves you.”

The room was very quiet.

Malathi looked down at her son. At this new face that had just arrived in the world, still learning what air felt like in his lungs.

She pressed her lips together and did not let herself fall apart. Not yet. There was no time for that yet.

“Rajendra?” she said.

“He went to draw them away from this floor.” Ravi hesitated. “We have not heard from him in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes.

“They are clearing the building,” Ravi continued. “Room by room. Malathi-ji you have to move.”

“Help me up,” she said.

~ ~ ~

She was bleeding.

She knew it. Could feel it as Ravi helped her to her feet — warm and steady. The room tilted sideways. She grabbed the bed rail, breathed through it, waited for the world to level out.

Every part of her body was screaming. She had given birth forty minutes ago. Forty minutes. Her body kept sending that message to her brain in waves of pain she had no time to acknowledge. The nurses were saying something — something about she cannot, something about she must not — but their voices were already far away.

She had been through pain before. She had never had a reason like this to walk through it.

She took her son from the nurse’s arms. He was wrapped in a hospital blanket, warm. She pressed him against her chest and his small sounds stopped.

Smart boy, she thought.

Ravi led her through the back corridor — narrow and dimly lit — away from the sounds of boots on tile growing louder with every floor. The emergency exit at the end opened to a concrete stairwell. Cold air rushed in. The sound of rain hit her like a wall even before she stepped outside.

At the bottom of the stairs Ravi stopped.

She understood without him saying it.

“Go,” she told him.

He looked at her the way people look at someone when they are not sure they will see them again. Then he turned and ran.

Malathi pushed open the exit door and stepped into the storm.

~ ~ ~

The rain was violent.

It hit her immediately — cold, hard, relentless — and she curled her body around her son like a shell. Her bare feet found wet gravel. She moved anyway. One foot then the other. Bleeding and barefoot and soaked through within seconds.

The baby had not cried since they stepped outside. He lay against her chest with his eyes open, watching the rain fall past her face. Silent and watchful and impossibly calm. Like he understood that silence was survival.

She heard the vehicles twenty minutes later.

Two of them. Moving slowly. Headlights sweeping left and right, patient and methodical.

Malathi pressed herself flat into a doorway. Back against the door. Son against her chest. Every breath controlled and silent.

The beam of light swung into the alley. Moved across the ground. Crept toward the doorway where she stood not breathing, not moving, not existing.

It stopped two metres short of her.

Held there for three long seconds.

Then moved on.

She stood in the doorway for a full minute after the sound of engines faded before she allowed herself to breathe again.

Then she looked up.

Across the road, set back behind a low iron gate, was a building. Old and modest and quiet. A painted board above the entrance, the letters weathered but readable in the next flash of lightning.

Shanti Orphanage — Est. 1987

One window had a light on. Warm and yellow behind a curtain.

Malathi stood in the rain and looked at that light.

Her arms tightened around her son.

I cannot keep you safe, she thought. I do not know where I am going or who is still alive or what is waiting for me on the other side of this night. But if they find me with you…

Her arms tightened further.

~ ~ ~

She crossed the road.

Pushed the gate open slowly so it would not creak. Walked across the small yard to the covered veranda where the rain could not reach. She sat down on the veranda floor and held her son properly for the first time. Not while running. Not while hiding. Just held him.

His whole body fit between her elbow and her hand. His weight was nothing. His weight was everything.

She did not know how long she sat there.

Long enough to memorise the curve of his nose. The shape of his ears. The way his tiny chest rose and fell with each breath. Long enough to say everything she would never get to say out loud.

Then she reached up and unclasped the gold chain from her throat.

A simple thing. A thin gold chain with a small pendant. She held it in her palm for a moment in the dark.

Then she looped it carefully around her son’s tiny neck.

So you will always have something of us, she thought. So whoever finds you will know you were not abandoned. You were protected. There is a difference. Remember that there is a difference.

She stood up. Her legs shook. She did not let them stop her.

She knocked on the door. Three times. Loud and clear.

Then she leaned down one last time and pressed her lips to his forehead. Held them there until she had memorised the warmth of his skin, the smell of him — milk and rain and something that was only him, only this, only now.

“Rajendra,” she whispered against his forehead.

She had not said it out loud until this moment. His name. Her son’s name.

“I will find you,” she said. “I do not know when. I do not know how. But I will find you. I promise you that.”

Footsteps on the other side of the door.

A latch turning.

Malathi stood up straight, turned, and walked back into the rain without looking back. Because she knew that if she looked back she would not be able to keep walking.

And she had to keep walking.

For him.

~ ~ ~

The door opened.

An old woman in a white nightgown peered out into the darkness, squinting.

She looked left. Looked right. Saw no one.

Then she looked down.

The boy on her veranda looked up at her and blinked.

Around his neck, catching the light from inside, was a thin gold chain.

The old woman — Prema, who had run this orphanage for thirty one years and thought she had seen everything — stood in the doorway with one hand pressed flat against her chest.

Then she bent down and picked him up with careful, practiced hands.

“Where did you come from?” she whispered.

The boy said nothing.

Outside, the rain kept falling.

And somewhere in the dark wet streets of the city, a mother kept walking.

Prema did not know his name. She did not know his blood. She did not know what storm he had been born into or what storms were still waiting for him.

She only knew that the chain around his neck was gold and real and placed there by hands that loved him.

She did not know that twenty five years from now, that same chain would be the only thing in the world that could save him.

――― End of Episode 1 ―――

Episode 2: The Boy With No Name

Coming Soon