'They?'
'The ones who came to your apartment. This time, my superiors will not risk coming to your aid. We risked too much, revealing ourselves during the incident on your roof.'
Aaditya was getting tired of being a pawn. It seemed that all this Narada and his colleagues cared about was their agenda, and he was expendable. He stewed in impotent rage. The next day when the door slid open and the woman who had given him the fresh clothes came in, a plan began to form.
'I just came to see how you're doing. Mr Muni told me you were troubled and I thought if nothing else, you may want to chat.'
The last thing Aaditya wanted to do was to make small talk, but he smiled and summoned two chairs, asking her to sit. Being the polite host to the hilt, if only in his own prison cell, he also called for some juice. The woman seemed genuinely surprised at this change in his mood.
'I never asked you your name.'
'It's Tanya.'
She asked about Aaditya, and he told her about his college and his background, and then asked her what she did.
'I handle Public Relations here. You may be surprised, but you're not the first person to have stumbled on to them. Of course, I don't think anybody has got involved in such dramatic circumstances for many years.'
Something in what she said struck Aaditya as odd, and he tried to put his finger on it. She sensed the change in his mood. 'Is something wrong?'
'You said "them".'
Tanya didn't get it at first, so Aaditya repeated himself. 'You referred to this organization as "them", not "us". That sounded weird. So, what is your real story?'
Tanya smiled, realizing her lapse.
'It still takes some getting used to. I am not one of the, let's say, original crew. I am originally from Canada, but have learnt to make this place, and this organization, my home.'
'So you don't fly around in those fancy machines and carry weird weapons, do you?'
Aaditya said it with a smile. Tanya took it at face value and replied with a laugh, 'No, thank heavens. I just do the PR work sitting at a desk in front of a phone and a laptop. They tried teaching me self defence, but I was hopeless, and why would I need it anyway?'
As she got up to leave, Aaditya asked her, 'Look, if you're not too busy, maybe you could stop by sometimes. I could go crazy just sitting here by myself.'
Tanya just smiled, but she did come back. Over her next four visits, Aaditya learnt several things. First, that there still seemed to be no resolution in sight for his situation. Second, he took careful notice of the exact spot where the door would slide open when Tanya came or left, and once she was gone, timed just how fast he could get there. Finally, he realized that he really enjoyed spending time with Tanya. She seemed to be genuinely concerned about him and went out of her way to make his stay less miserable. That made Aaditya feel just a little pang of guilt for what he was about to do.
The next time Tanya came, she had brought a few magazines for Aaditya. When they finished chatting, she got up to leave. Aaditya stopped her with a gentle tap to the shoulder.
'Hey Tanya, I wish we had met somewhere else. Soon I'll be gone and I doubt these spooks will let me come near them or here any time soon.'
Tanya smiled, but it was a smile tinged with sadness.
'Aadi, I really think my work is important, but I do miss having a normal life. Meeting you made me remember what that could be like. When they do let you go, I'll miss you.'
Just as she reached the door, Aaditya sprang into action. He reached her just as the door began to slide open. Aaditya pushed her aside and leapt outside the open door. She was too shocked to even resist.
He found himself in a long plain corridor, but having learnt how things worked here, he ran along its length, commanding doors to open, hoping that outside of his cell, the doors would open on command as well. He was about to give up when to his relief, a door slid open to his left. He ran through it, barely hearing Tanya's cries for him to stop.
He didn't know how much time he had or just how far he could go, but he was not going to stay cooped up in a cell any longer. His captors may be the CIA for all he cared, but either they had to tell him what they wanted with him or let him go. He was done with being a prisoner.
To his relief he soon found himself at the hangar where he had landed. The craft were still there, and while he was tempted, he realized that he would never get the time to figure out how to fly one before he was discovered. However, being in the hangar meant that the exit could not be far away. He looked desperately along the length of the hangar, wondering where he should start looking. He heard muffled footsteps coming from the wall behind him, and ran as fast as he could towards the end of the flight line.
Two or three figures emerged from the door he had opened. All around him there were nothing but closed walls. He desperately kept asking for doors to open, but either there were no doors here or they had been disabled when Aaditya's escape had become known. He was but a few feet from the far wall and about to give up when it suddenly swung open, revealing the same blue coloured craft on which he had come aboard. Oblivious to his escape, the pilot was coming in for a landing, and Aaditya took advantage of the open door to run outside.
What he saw made him stop in his tracks.
He was standing in a snow-covered rocky valley, with nothing around as far as the eye could see but jagged peaks topped with snow. With no sign of any humans or buildings around, it seemed as if he had been transported to an alien landscape.
***
Then the biting cold hit him. Though his clothes looked no thicker than an average cotton track suit, they somehow insulated all parts of his body that they covered, but his face and hands were exposed, and he was barefoot. He had no idea what the temperature was, his breath came out in smoky billows, and even though he had been outside for only a few seconds, he began to feel his hands and left foot go numb.
He glanced back inside the hangar. The blue craft had landed, and its pilot, the same young man he had seen on his roof, was running towards him. Aaditya stopped for a second, considering the choices before him. Should he give up and go back to the uncertain fate that awaited him inside his cell, or should he take his chances in the inhospitable landscape he saw in front of him? When he saw his pursuer take out a small device from his pocket, similar to the weapon he had seen used on his rooftop, he decided to take his chances.
Every step hurt, and Aaditya's left foot was already almost completely numb. For once, he thanked fate for his prosthetic right foot, which was immune to the cold, and soldiered on. He dove into a small crack on the side of the hill, hoping he could conceal himself from his pursuer, and also think through what he would do next. For a few minutes, it seemed his plan had worked. He could hear movement outside, but nobody disturbed his hiding place.
'The heat sensors show something here.'
With those words, the game was up. The pilot of the blue craft who had been chasing him reached in and looked at him, grinning. He seemed little more than a boy just out of school, with a thin face, unruly hair and dimples that showed prominently when he smiled. Aaditya contemplated resisting, but he was already so numb with cold that he wasn't sure what exactly he could offer by way of resistance. Also, despite his disarming appearance, he had seen how deadly the young man had been on his rooftop.
'First you steal a ride in my vimana, now you go and try to freeze yourself to death. What's with you?'
Aaditya didn't know what to say so he clasped the young man's hand and was pulled out of his hiding place. He found Narada standing there, none of the young man's amusement on his face.