Neel Dervin and the Dark Angel (25 page)

The crowd had begun to move in the direction of the stage. Divya looked at her watch.
“Ten minutes to the start of the concert.” she said. “We‟ll stay here until Saket arrives, and
then follow him in.”

“We won‟t have to wait long.” Neel said
, pointing towards the entrance gate. A black
Tata Sumo had entered the stadium. Mr. Malik Saket stepped out and peered at the concert
banner. His harsh, brutal face held a look of complete authority as he surveyed the grounds.
Neel was surprised to see only a couple of body guards with him. But then he noticed that
many tough looking men in the crowd nodded to the guards and Saket and realized most of
the guards were undercover.

“Let‟s go in.” Divya said. “The concert starts in five minute. Try to look normal.”

 

“What do you mean,try?” Neel asked indignantly.

Twelve minutes later, the entire stadium was filled with a deafening roar as Euphoria
took the stage. They waved to the crowd, smiling broadly, and then immediately launched
into one of their most popular songs. Neel hastily took out the noise cancelling headphones
he had brought with him and put them on, ignoring the people in his vicinity who were
looking at him strangely. The crowd grew even more loud and boisterous as the toe tapping
music of Phir Dhoom filled the stadium. Ten minutes later, Neel saw Malik leave the stadium
with a seedy looking man.

“It‟s time.” he said to Divya.

 

* * *

Mr. Malik Saket walked towards the solitary empty room behind the stage. His guards
fanned out in all directions. It wasn‟t really necessary to have so much security for this
meeting, but he wanted to impress Kundan‟s assistant with a sense of his power. However,
the assistant seemed almost glad to see so many bodyguards.

“Pleasure to meet you
,sir.” he said in a high, slightly nasal voice, shaking Malik‟s hand.
“Mr. Kundan is sorry he could not come to meet you personally, but a small security matter
has come up. You understand how dangerous his workis.”

“I don‟t care who I deal with as long as the
jobgets done.” Malik said curtly, switching
on his laptop. “Let‟s talk. Our business with Kundan is almost over but there are a few more
things we need. See these blueprints?” he turned the laptop to face the assistant. “It‟s a
molten salt reactor which has been developed at the B.A.R.C. by Doctor Rajesh Sinha. It was
personally designed by Sinha and is under lock and key most of the time. We need it within
two weeks.”

The assistant looked astonished. “That‟s a very short time…” he began to say.

But suddenly the roof of the room trembled, and then a fist punched through it. Before
either of the men could react, the hole was made bigger by hands tearing out chunks of
cement, and in the next second, a black clad figure had leapt into the room.

Malik backed up rapidly
against a wall. Kundan‟s assistant was frozen in fear. All he
could do was whimper,“Don‟t hurt me.” The figure knocked him unconscious with a punch
and turned towards Malik. Malik could hear his men coming to the door. He reached for his
gun. But before he could even raise it, the figure had grabbed the gun and crushed the barrel
close. Malik stared at him in amazement, and noticed the intruder was too small to be an
adult.

“Mr.
Saket, we need to have a little talk.” the figure said, and Malik realized he was
indeed very young, maybe a teenager. He grabbed Malik by the waist and broke through the
door. The bodyguards, who had drawn their guns, now froze, unable to get a clear shot at the
assassin.

“Take out the magazines from your guns and throw them away.” t
he assassin said. The
guards hesitated, but at a nod from Malik they obeyed, the stage hiding the strange little
drama from the eyes of the audience. “Good.” the assassin said. “Now don‟t stop to pick up
your guns before following us, I may have already killed him by then.”

With that, the assassin bent and leapt fifteen into feet into the air, landing twenty feet
away. He leapt again, this time moving thirty feet ahead.

 

The guards were too stunned to react at first. But then they quickly scrambled after the
diminishing figure of the assassin.

Several feet ahead of them, Malik was sailing through the air. Nothing in his vast
experience had happened to prepare him for this, and he had no idea how to handle the
situation. “What do you want from me?” he shouted at his assailant.

The kid came to a stop outside the grounds and dropped him. He lay on the floor, staring
at the figure in the dim light.

 

“You‟re a famous man, Mr. Saket.” the kid said. “Lots of people you‟ve double crossed.
Maybe one of them sent me to kill you.”

Malik had regained his poise by now. He sat up slowly on the ground.
“If you‟d wanted
to kill me, you could‟ve done it in that room. But apparently you want to threaten me instead.
Since you seem to know a lot about me, you should know who I work for, so it‟s impossible
that you‟d think one little boycould scare me.”

“You just saw me punch through the roof, do you really want to talk about what‟s
possible and what‟s impossible?” the kid said quietly.

 

Malikstared at him, remembering the giant leaps. “What‟s your name? Who do you
work for?” he asked.

 

“Irrelevant.”

 

“Than what do you want from me?” Malik yelled.

“To show you I‟m keeping an eye on you.”
the figure turned to leave, then turned back
and added,“Say hi to Kundan from me.” With that he jumped into the air, disappearing from
sight, just as the bodyguards came running to Malik.

Back in the small room behind the stage, Divya stood in front of Malik Saket‟s laptop.
Kundan‟s assistant still lay unconscious on the floor. The first part of the mission had gone
smoothly. All the guards had gone after Saket and Neel, but there was no guarantee for how
long they would stay away.

She inserted a pen drive into the laptop. The laptop was heavily encrypted and protected
by innumerable security measures. It would have been virtually impossible to access under
normal circumstances. She had been given the assignment because of the possibility that the
unprotected laptop might still have been some security measures left to hack through. But
now it all lay open in front of her. She swiftly sifted through the data on the laptop, copying
everything that seemed important. List of security personnel. People visiting the company.
Various machines and equipment dealt with recently.

Finally, Divya was satisfied that she had everything of importance. She took out the pen
drive and exited the room swiftly. She was making her way back to the stadium when a voice
came to her ears.

“Hey
, you!” the alarmed voice shouted. One of the guards had come back to check on
the laptop, and seen her suspiciously near the room. Divya did not turn, but continued to walk
swiftly towards the stadium. The guard hesitated, wondering whether he should follow her.
But then he made his way to the cabin to check whether the laptop was safe.

Divya made her way through the roaring crowd and out of the concert hall. She checked
her watch. Neel should be leaving Saket and returning to his house. She made her way to her
car, sending another message to Doctor Fahim confirming the success of the mission. She
hoped the information on the pen drive would be worth letting the enemy finally see the
Alpha soldier.

* * *

 

Half an hour later, Malik stood in front of Mr. Mehta in his office at Phlicer.

“… He threw me down and got away before
the guards could get there. Srivastav said he
saw a girl near the room when he went back. But the laptop was safe, and hecan‟t be
absolutely sure ifshe‟d actually gone into the room. Our men searched the area but the kid
had disappeared.I don‟t know who would use such type of an agent.”

Mr. Mehta leant forward, his expressionless faceshowing nothing of what he felt. “And
what did you say the boy did?” he asked.

“He could punch through walls, move faster
than I could see and jump thirty feet in the
air.” Malik said, anger struggling with awe in his voice. “I wouldn‟t have believed it was
possible if I hadn‟t seen it myself. And when I asked Kundan‟s assistant, he admitted the kid
had trashed Kundan‟s gym and securityguards a few days ago. Single handed.”

Mr. Mehta nodded, staring silently ahead. Malik waited for him to speak, but he
remained in his reverie.

“What does
this whole business mean?” Malik finally growled. He was filled with a cold
fury. Everything about the intruder had been a mystery. And Malik hated mysteries. He hated
not knowing the enemy and not being able to prepare an attack against them.

Mr. Mehta leaned
back in his chair. “It means,” he said slowly. “That Project Alpha is a
success.” He stared at the opposite wall, still lost in thought. “How very interesting.” he
murmured.

“Project Alpha?”
Malik frowned at him in confusion. His employer knew of his dislike
for working in the dark. But Mr. Mehta very rarely shared all of his thoughts with anyone.
“What is that?”

“The distant cousin of Kumbhkaran.” Mr. Mehta said quietly. Malik gazed at him in
shock as he rose to his feet.

“Very well
, Malik.” he said calmly. Even the news of the botched meeting had not
elicited any emotion from those curiously impassive eyes. “We won‟t need Kundan anymore.
We will find another way to finish the deal with Fuji Yama. Reschedule our appointment
with them for next week and triple the security around the complex. Give guns to all the
guards. Send Joshi to me with the head of the engineering department. I need them to make
something for me.”

As Malik left, Mr. Mehta walked over to the window, watching all the workers beneath
the size of ants toiling away. This little incident opened up vast possibilities but...

 

A little more caution would now be required.

 

CHAPTER 10: Bombs and Kittens

Two days after the mission at the concert, Neel was returning from school thinking
about what they had found on Malik‟s laptop. There was a meeting scheduled between Alok
Mehta and a representative of a Japanese company a week later. That appointment had been
rescheduled,no doubt a result of Neel‟s meeting with Saket. The government had gone to
great pains to find out the date and time of the new ticket booked by a Mr. Daisuke Sumoya,
a white collar employee of the Fuji Yama Corporation for an overnight visit to India. Now
they had another chance to use the element of surprise to their advantage.

“We need to know what Alok Mehta
wants with Fuji Yama.” Arjun had informed him,
as the entire team of project Alpha sat in the control room in the main building of Swan Labs,
two days after the second mission. “We are already finding out all we can about the company.
For now, however, the most disturbing piece ofinformation is this.”

A schematic appeared on a the screen of a tabulated list of numbers which was part of
one of the several files taken from Saket‟s laptop

“These are the
readings from a nuclear fission reaction.” Arjunlooked at Neel grimly. “If
these explosions took place in India, they violate the UN treaty and could potentially start a
war. But this is not enough to go upon. For now we have to gather more intelligence. Malik
Saket‟s files have done little but confirm our suspicions. We need more concrete proof.”

Neel nodded. “Maybe I‟ll find it at the meeting.”

 

“We hope so. And for finding conclusive answers, first and most importantly we need to
find out what K is.”

Neel stared at the minimized window of the other file that was open onscreen. The
information on the laptop was not nearly as complete as they had hoped. Several documents
seemed to be deliberately unfinished, and almost all the files were about infrastructure,
security details and appointments. It seemed even Malik Saket was not aware of what Mehta
was truly up to.

But there was one particular point of interest. There were several references to
something called Project K. It appeared in almost every document related to the machines
Mehta had already brought. But only that one alphabet was ever mentioned, and nothing
more.

“This is most likely the project Mehta is spending all his resources
on.” Doctor Fahim
had told Neel. “And it is our top priority for now. You will attend the meeting on the
scheduled date and find out as much as you can. It might be possible that Mehta would
change the date of the meeting yet again, so you will need to stay alert for whenever the time
comes to engage.”

The conversation had taken place several days ago. In the meantime Neel was free of
any missions or training for now, and was going to Aryan‟s house with Priyanka. He still felt
guilty about the time he had spent away from them both since becoming an Alpha soldier.
They had celebrated Diwali together at Priyanka‟s house a few days ago, and tonight he was
visiting Aryan after a long time.

At six o‟ clock that night, he and Priyanka got on their cycles a
nd made their way to
Aryan‟s house. It was a chilly night. Priyanka was wearing a sleeveless jacket over her jeans
and top. Neel had also put on an old threadbare jacket, and was wishing he could have worn
the glossy new one he had received at Swan labs instead.

As they parked there cycles, Neel saw Aryan coming out to greet them. Alongside him
trotted his dog, Prince, who got to them first and started licking their hands in greeting.

“Hi, boy!” Priyanka said, tickling him behind his ear. Prince‟s tail wagged even harder,
his muzzle widening into a remarkably human grin. He was a purebred Alsatian and had been
given to Aryan on his ninth birthday as a tiny puppy. He had since grown into a very
impressive specimen, with a shiny black coat of fur, chocolate brown eyes and a powerful
frame.

Neel grinned a greeting to Aryan. He stared up at Aryan‟s house
as they walked in. It
had been some time since he had come there, and he was again struck by the fact that Aryan
was probably the richest person he knew.

Aryan‟s father was a buildings developer and had put up more than half the buildings in
there neighborhood alone, making a massive amount of money in the process. Aryan had
always had just about everything he had ever wanted in life, with a lot of extras. In fact, he
had had every opportunity of becoming an extremely spoilt child.