THE UNASSIGNED

There is an island about 50 nautical miles off the coast of Veraval, Gujarat, whose name was erased from official government maps in 1960—'Bastak Island'. There was only one way to reach it: an old fishing boat owned by Ismail, a man who claimed that at night, he could see two moons in the sky.

Three researchers—Dev, Sara, and Professor Shastri—reached this island in search of an ancient manuscript. As they stepped onto the shore, the first anomaly occurred. Professor Shastri looked at his wristwatch; the second hand was ticking, but the time refused to move forward.

"Professor, why are the birds hanging upside down?" Sara asked in a trembling voice. In the sky, birds weren't flying; they were frozen in mid-air like sculptures, as if time itself had congealed.

As they entered the island's jungle, Dev felt his shadow separating from him. When Dev turned right, his shadow moved left.

"The environment here is sentient," Professor Shastri wrote in his notebook. Suddenly, an old lighthouse appeared in the middle of the jungle. The light from the lighthouse wasn't white; it was deep black. It was spreading darkness into the dark.

As they approached the lighthouse, letters began floating in the air. They weren't speaking, but their thoughts were appearing as text in the atmosphere. Dev thought, "We should run from here," and immediately, those exact words appeared in front of him. But the letters were in red, which weren't Dev's thoughts—they were the island's thoughts.

Entering the lighthouse, they reached a massive hall filled with thousands of mirrors. But these mirrors didn't show reflections; they showed their 'pasts.'

Sara looked into one mirror and saw that she hadn't even come to the island; she was still standing on the shore at Veraval. "Dev! Professor! We aren't here! We are still at the coast! This is all a mass hypnosis!"

Just then, Professor Shastri began to laugh. His laughter wasn't human. Instead of blood, salty seawater was flowing from his mouth.

"Sara, you are right. But it's important to know—is the Dev standing in front of you real, or is the Dev in the mirror real?"

Dev, panicked, raised his hand to attack the Professor, but his hand dissolved in mid-air, crumbling into sand. The island wasn't land; it was a gigantic organism that was turning human bodies into sand.

Dev and Sara ran to the top of the lighthouse to save their lives. Looking down, they saw that the sea didn't contain water, but millions of human eyes blinking in unison.

"Are we dead?" Sara asked.

"No," a voice replied.

It was the voice of Ismail (the boatman), who now appeared in the sky as a massive shadow. "You aren't dead. You are the breath of Bastak. Every 50 years, this island demands three new brains so it can think. Right now, you aren't Dev and Sara; you are the island's memory."

Suddenly, Dev remembered he had a photo in his pocket. He pulled it out, but his face was missing from the photo; the space was blank. His identity was being erased.

Sara jumped down, but she didn't fall. She began ascending toward the sky. There was no such thing as gravity on the island. Dev saw that Professor Shastri had now turned into a stone, inscribed with the words: 'Research completed'.

Dev gathered his last bit of strength and smashed the glass of the lighthouse. As the glass shattered, the entire environment splintered like a broken mirror.

Kartik (the writer of the story) closes his notebook. He is sitting in a coffee shop in Ahmedabad. Dev, Sara, and Professor Shastri are sitting across from him.

"How did you like my new story?" Kartik asks.

The three friends look at him. Their eyes have no pupils. The Professor slowly places his hand on the table; his hand begins to crumble into sand.

Sara says softly, "The story is good, Kartik, but why didn't you write that you yourself are still on that island, and this coffee shop is just your illusion?"

Kartik looks out the window. The streets of Ahmedabad are gone. There are only birds hanging in the air and a lighthouse casting black light.

Kartik opens his notebook. On the last page, a new sentence had just been added—in red ink:

"The story is over. Now, reality begins."