The Fog of Duty
The sky over Bandipur was bleeding.
Not in color, but in silence. A silence so complete it swallowed the gunfire before it reached the ears. Colonel Aaliya Rahman crouched behind a stack of sandbags slick with mist, her hand tight on the grip of her sidearm. The wind whispered through the pines like breath on glass, and the static in her comms unit pulsed faintly—then died.
“Command, this is Indigo-One. Do you copy?” she said, low but controlled.
No response. Just the faint whine of jamming interference.
Aaliya tapped twice on her earpiece, switched to fallback frequency, and scanned the ridge above. Shadows moved between the trees—too fluid for wildlife, too cautious for friendly. Her team was scattered. She couldn’t afford to be.
She turned to Lieutenant Veer, whose left arm was slick with blood.
“You’re not dead,” she said flatly.
“I feel dead.”
“You’re not. Patch and move. We regroup at the temple ruins.”
Veer grimaced but nodded. No argument. That was one thing about pain—it taught obedience.
Behind them, the village smoldered. Not fully aflame, not quite safe. An old woman lay slumped over a fallen sack of rice. A toddler’s slipper lay by her feet. Aaliya didn’t look twice. She couldn’t. Not now.
“Colonel,” Reva’s voice cracked through the fog as she emerged from the trees, rifle raised. “Perimeter’s compromised. We’ve got five minutes at best.”
“Four,” Aaliya replied, checking her watch.
“Evac’s blown. The double agent was a setup.”
She already knew. Had known since the moment they crossed the border checkpoint and the guards looked too polished, too polite. Her silence had bought them time. And time had bought her options.
“Veer, signal Crimson,” she said.
“Ma’am?” He blinked. “That’s not—”
“Signal Crimson. Now.”
Veer hesitated for a heartbeat too long.
“Do it,” Reva said, voice low but firm. “She wouldn’t pull it unless we were already past the line.”
Aaliya exhaled once through her nose. Her pulse was steady. Her mind was already two moves ahead, like always. The plan wasn’t broken. It had simply entered its next phase.
“Phase Crimson is active,” Veer whispered, thumbing the coded transmitter.
The little green light blinked once. Then again. And again.
Three pulses.
The message was sent.
Below them, in the valley haze, a convoy of insurgents rolled toward the ruined monastery that had served as their shelter for three nights. The operation was blown.
And now… it would burn.
Aaliya holstered her sidearm and picked up her rifle.
The mist smelled of ash and iron. Somewhere in the distance, temple bells began to ring—a strange, beautiful sound, out of place in the chaos.
“Let’s finish what we came here for,” she said.
And stepped into the fog.
The Appointment
Two weeks earlier, the air in the Ministry’s northern wing had smelled like paper, sweat, and polished boots. Colonel Aaliya Rahman sat alone at the end of a long teak table, hands folded, back straight, eyes still. Waiting.
They made her wait. Not out of protocol—but to remind her she could still be summoned.
Eventually, the side door opened. General Dass stepped in first, followed by two men in suits—one from Internal Affairs, the other from the Prime Minister’s Office. Neither looked thrilled to be there.
“Colonel Rahman,” Dass said, taking the center seat. “Thank you for coming on short notice.”
“Orders are not a courtesy, sir,” she said.
Dass gave a half-smile. “Still blunt, I see.”
The IA man cleared his throat. “Let’s get to the point. We have intelligence that a rogue insurgent faction operating near the Kalish border has obtained a bioweapon prototype. Manufactured off-books. Intended for mass testing.”
“Testing on who?” Aaliya asked.
“Refugee camps,” the PMO man said quietly. “Untraceable. Deniable. If they succeed, they’ll sell it.”
Aaliya’s jaw tightened. “And why are we still talking?”
The IA agent shifted. “Because the intel came from a double agent who requested personal extraction. They’ve promised full access to the compound.”
“So either it’s a goldmine,” Dass said, “or it’s a trap.”
Silence stretched. Aaliya let it.
The IA man finally muttered, “With respect, Colonel, you’ve been more diplomat than field officer lately. Are you sure you’re the right fit for this?”
She didn’t blink. “Do you want precision, or pyrotechnics?”
Dass smiled again. “We want someone who won’t flinch if this goes sideways.”
Aaliya rose. “Then give me my team.”
—
Two days later, she stood on a tarmac at dawn, reading over the dossier for the hundredth time as the transport chopper fueled up beside her.
Her team assembled with practiced silence:
Lieutenant Veer: Tough, impulsive, loyal to a fault. She’d pulled him from court-martial once. He’d never asked why.
Reva Sen: Intelligence officer with a photographic memory and the social grace of a landmine. Brilliant, but blunt.
Samir: Combat medic. Gentle eyes. Didn’t speak much. Always first to help and last to sleep. A field saint, Aaliya called him.
They boarded without fanfare. No goodbyes. No send-off. This wasn’t war. Not officially.
Inside the chopper, Aaliya sat facing forward, wind tugging her collar as the mountains crept closer on the horizon.
She touched her breast pocket—inside, a single photograph. Not of family, not of comrades. A village in the hills she’d once failed to protect. No buildings remained. Just smoke.
She kept it there to remember the cost of hesitation.
This time, she would not hesitate.
The Descent
They crossed the border in silence, buried beneath a humanitarian cover: unmarked trucks, medical crates, and forged paperwork issued by a neutral NGO. The documents bore enough truth to survive scrutiny and enough vagueness to survive war.
Aaliya watched from behind dark sunglasses as the final checkpoint loomed. A makeshift post manned by Kalish guards with well-oiled weapons and hollow stares. One looked no older than seventeen.
The truck slowed. Dust rose around them like a burial shroud. She could hear Reva’s breath tighten beside her.
“We’ve used this route before,” Aaliya murmured, voice low.
“Not since last year. They’ve changed patterns. Added new protocols,” Reva replied. “This could go either way.”
Veer tapped his boot against the truck’s floor. He hated the waiting, the pretending. Men like him weren’t built for lies. Aaliya raised a hand to still him. Timing mattered.
The guard approached, motioned to their driver, then leaned into the back compartment. His eyes swept across their faces. Too long on Samir’s gear. Too long on Reva’s rifle sling. Aaliya met his gaze, expression unreadable.
He hesitated, then moved on.
The truck rolled forward.
Only when the checkpoint faded behind them did Veer exhale. “He knew something.”
“He knew nothing,” Aaliya said. “But someone else might.”
They were in now—properly in. Beyond the last thread of political cover. If anything went wrong, there would be no calls for reinforcements. No extractions. No headlines. Just silence, sealed beneath mountains and moss.
The road twisted sharply as they left the main route and descended into a narrow valley flanked by pine-covered ridges. Villages became sparse. Signs of life thinned. Burned-out husks of homes littered the hills like the bones of forgotten promises.
They reached the target region by late afternoon: an abandoned farming village called Dagarh, nestled in a bowl of stone and silence. Aaliya had chosen it herself—half for its position, half for its ghosts.
Years ago, it had been a refuge. Now, it was rubble.
They set up base in what remained of the old schoolhouse. Roof caved in, chalkboards cracked. Desks rotting in place.
Reva planted sensors along the road. Veer checked weapons. Samir moved through the ruins like a priest, pausing at what had once been a child’s mural.
Aaliya stood at the edge of the village, staring down a narrow footpath that led to the jungle. It would be dark soon.
“Locals say the path leads to a ghost temple,” Samir said softly beside her. “Used to be a place for monks and madmen.”
“We’ll use it for both,” Aaliya replied. “It leads straight to the target zone.”
Later that night, as they sat around a heatless stove eating ration bars and tea thick with dust, Reva asked what everyone else was thinking.
“Why this mission? Why now?”
Veer looked up. “We’re soldiers. Does it matter?”
“It matters,” Reva said. “We’re not kicking in doors. We’re extracting a traitor with a whisper and a promise.”
Aaliya stirred her tea slowly. “Because if we don’t get to him, someone else will. And if we wait, the wrong person talks first.”
“You think he’s worth it?” Reva asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Aaliya answered. “But I know what’s at stake if he’s right.”
Veer stood to relieve Samir on watch. The night air had turned metallic, heavy with cold. Owls hooted from somewhere beyond the ridge.
Reva lingered as the others filtered away.
“There’s a story about you, you know,” she said quietly.
Aaliya didn’t look up. “Which one?”
“That you once refused an order during the Kaalpur siege. That you chose to save a dozen civilians instead of bombing the escape route.”
“That story’s true.”
“And the reprimand?”
“Also true.”
“Why are you still here?”
Aaliya met her eyes. “Because I didn’t save them all. And because sometimes the only way to protect people… is to disobey before the order comes.”
Reva said nothing else. But she didn’t leave either.
Outside, the fog had begun to roll in—slow and soft. The jungle whispered beyond the edge of their circle, and Aaliya knew: the descent had already begun.
Blood in the Silence
The attack came just before dawn.
One second, the jungle was thick with mist and birdcall. The next, it was gunfire and teeth.
Lieutenant Veer had taken first watch. He was crouched near the old schoolhouse doorway, watching the eastern rise, when the first shot rang out—sharp, echoing. Not a warning. A signal.
“Contact!” he shouted, diving back into cover as bullets sprayed the wall behind him.
Aaliya was already up, rifle in hand, voice level. “Reva, north side! Samir—triage station, now!”
The jungle erupted. Three insurgents broke the line first, dark-clothed and fast. One carried a machete. Another had what looked like a stolen military rifle. Veer met them head-on, teeth bared, eyes wide with something halfway between rage and clarity.
He dropped the first man with two clean shots. The second got close enough to cut before Veer turned and drove the butt of his weapon into his jaw. Blood sprayed, wild and hot.
“On your left!” Reva shouted from the far wall, her voice punching through the chaos.
The third attacker fell before he reached cover—Reva’s bullet finding his throat mid-sprint.
“Clear the courtyard!” Aaliya barked. “They’ll flank next!”
The team moved like bone and sinew—rough, imperfect, but unified. Samir dragged a wounded villager behind an overturned cart, already pressing gauze against the man’s shoulder. Aaliya caught his eye. He nodded once. Still breathing.
Then came the scream.
“Janu!”
It came from Veer. He was standing over the body of a young man—barely twenty. Not insurgent. Not soldier. A courier. A friend. Janu had been a fixer on the inside. Local, loyal, trusted.
A bullet had torn through his abdomen. Too clean to be coincidence. Too quick to be saved.
“He wasn’t supposed to be in range,” Veer murmured. “He stayed to help us.”
Aaliya crouched beside the body. Her face didn’t change. But her voice softened.
“He bought us five minutes,” she said. “Five minutes to live. Don’t waste them.”
Veer didn’t respond. He stood slowly, eyes burning. “We burn their camp.”
“No,” Aaliya said. “We follow the plan. Stick to the route.”
“Then the plan’s broken.”
She met his fury head-on. “The plan is all that stands between us and another village full of corpses.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Nodded. Barely.
By the time the last shot rang out, they were down one ally and two civilians. Five more injured. Samir moved like a ghost between the wounded, bandaging, stitching, whispering quiet nothings.
Reva approached Aaliya while Veer stood over Janu’s body, unmoving.
“Why was he out there?” she asked. “You knew something might happen. You didn’t tell him.”
“Because if I had,” Aaliya replied, “he would’ve still gone.”
Reva said nothing. But her eyes stayed hard.
They buried Janu before the sun reached the ridge. No ceremony. Just silence and the sound of earth falling onto a loyal man’s chest. Samir placed a dog tag at the head of the shallow grave. Not his, not Janu’s. Just a marker. Just something to say, *you mattered.*
Later, around the cold firepit, Marei stared into the dark. “We need supplies. Food, meds, ammo. We’re too exposed.”
Veer looked up, jaw clenched. “There’s an outpost north of the river. Cetza supply post. Guarded, but not heavy. We can take it.”
Reva raised an eyebrow. “Cetza? I thought they were flushed out after the Kalish collapse.”
“Some splinter cells stayed behind,” Aaliya said. “Picked up weapons. Contracts. Ghost funding from our own black channels, probably. They’re not just insurgents anymore—they’re scavengers with teeth.”
“It’s a risk,” Samir said quietly.
“So is starving,” Reva snapped.
Aaliya listened. The wind shifted. A night bird cried once and fell silent.
“We hit it at dawn,” she said. “Quick and clean. No fires. No noise. We take only what we need.”
“And if it goes wrong?” Samir asked.
“Then we adjust,” Aaliya said. “Like always.”
The night stretched on. The jungle had gone quiet again—but not in peace. It was a silence made of breath held too long. A storm that hadn’t yet landed.
Before sleep, Aaliya sat alone near the treeline, her rifle across her lap.
She thought of Janu. Of the trust in his eyes. Of how many more would fall before the mission ended. And of the question she hadn’t dared ask aloud:
What if the enemy wasn’t only out there?
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a faded photograph. The village. The smoke. The silence. She folded it once more and tucked it away.
Tomorrow, the fire would return.
And this time, she would walk straight into it.
Part IV – The Betrayal
The Cetza outpost sat in a saddle between two ridgelines, shielded by wind-warped pines and a curtain of fog. Aaliya studied it from a crumbled terrace just before dawn—no tower, no motion sensors, just a chain-link fence and a row of mismatched crates behind a corrugated tin wall. Quiet. Vulnerable.
Too vulnerable.
They moved fast and silent, descending the slope under cover of mist. Reva flanked left, Veer took point. Samir moved close to Aaliya’s side, gear rattling softly. Their breath steamed in the cold air.
Two guards were down before their rifles cleared their shoulders. The third dropped his weapon and ran. Reva’s shot hit him mid-calf. He crumpled into the dust.
The last—a boy, maybe seventeen—cowered near the fuel drums. Samir stepped in front of Veer just as he raised his weapon.
“No,” Samir said gently. “Let him live.”
“He’s Cetza,” Veer growled.
“He’s terrified.”
“We’ve all been terrified.”
Aaliya’s voice cut through the tension. “Tie him. Leave him water. We don’t have time.”
Inside the storage shed, the stench hit first—chemical, acidic, wrong. A stack of metal crates sat beneath a shredded tarp. Aaliya pulled one open.
Rows of syringes, foam-packed and sealed.
“Biotech,” Reva said grimly. “Sterile. Professional. These weren’t made in someone’s basement.”
Samir frowned. “Medical?”
Aaliya shook her head. “Weaponized.”
Veer kicked open a second crate. Dispensers. Gloves. Field-use tags.
“These were meant for live deployment,” Reva murmured. “This wasn’t just a stash. It’s a test node.”
That’s when Aaliya saw it—tucked beneath the foam. A compact comm unit, blinking faint green.
“Military issue,” she said softly.
“Not Cetza,” Reva said, already sliding it into her satchel. “One of ours.”
They regrouped inside the half-collapsed admin shack. Reva worked quickly, fingers dancing over the decrypt lines. No one spoke. The only sound was the wind outside and the distant creak of old metal in the cold.
The audio file unlocked.
A voice crackled through the speaker—clipped, bureaucratic, calm.
“This is Command to Agent Silex. Confirm asset location. Execute Phase Burn within 72 hours. Extraction team is to be considered expendable. Do not engage. Wipe all field evidence.”
Silence fell like snow.
Veer’s eyes burned. “That’s us. They’re talking about us.”
Reva stared at Aaliya. “You gave the order. Back at the ruins—you told Veer to transmit Crimson.”
“Yes,” Aaliya said.
“You didn’t tell us what it meant.”
“Because I needed you focused. Not afraid.”
Reva’s voice was sharp. “Focused? You walked us into a kill box. We’re ghosts waiting to happen.”
Aaliya stepped forward, her voice low but firm. “They chose me because I don’t flinch. Not in politics, not in combat. I was the perfect cover—trusted, loyal, expendable. They never expected I’d dig deeper.”
She pointed to the crates. “The Cetza aren’t just insurgents. They’re a proxy. These weapons were co-developed with help from our own internal factions. Black funding. Off-book trials. Refugees and border villages were the testing grounds.”
Samir looked sick. “And we were supposed to clean it up.”
“No,” she said. “We were the final test. They fed us a fake defector, sent us in deep, and waited to wipe the slate.”
Veer swore under his breath. Reva stood in stunned silence.
Aaliya straightened. “We don’t change what happened. But we can change how this ends.”
“You’re thinking of attacking the compound,” Reva said. “A full assault.”
“It’s the only way to erase the program. And expose it—if anyone’s left standing.”
A pause. Then Aaliya looked each of them in the eye.
“No shame if you want to turn back. There’s still a gap in the northern ridge. You can walk out with your life. But if you stay—this becomes ours. Not Command’s. Ours.”
Silence.
Then Veer stepped forward. “If we’re dying, I’d rather do it breaking something that matters.”
Samir nodded. “We burn it down.”
Reva didn’t speak. She just checked her ammo.
“Then it’s settled,” Aaliya said. “Phase Crimson was theirs. Phase Crimson Dusk is ours.”
They burned the crates and buried the comm unit in a cairn of shale and frost.
The fire lit the sky behind them.
This time, they didn’t look back.
Crimson Dusk
Snow had begun to fall by the time they reached the plateau.
The Cetza facility sat embedded into the northern ridge, built into stone and shadow. A jagged compound of steel and concrete, masked by alpine scrub and covered walkways. No guards on the exterior—too cold, too remote. They didn’t think anyone would come this far. That was their first mistake.
Aaliya crouched behind a frozen stump, scanning the ridge through her scope. “Two entrance points. Service shaft and upper gantry. Veer, you take the gantry with Reva. Samir, you’re with me.”
Reva was pale but steady. The fire from the outpost still seemed to burn in her eyes. “If we’re going in, we finish it. No fallback. No loose ends.”
“Exactly,” Aaliya said.
They moved with wind and frost. Silent. Focused. The base was colder than the air outside—mechanical systems barely running. Emergency lights flickered red along the walls. The place wasn’t abandoned. It was waiting.
In the central corridor, Samir found the first warning sign. A broken vial. Crystalline shards of frozen biogel melting into the concrete.
“This is bad,” he said. “This strain—if it’s temperature-stable—”
“It spreads,” Reva finished.
They pushed deeper, through labs and corridors filled with locked cages and crates. Paperwork burned in barrels. Computers half-smashed. Someone had tried to wipe the trail—but not fast enough.
They reached the central chamber: a containment room flanked by two sealed tanks. Inside, rows of canisters—pressurized, labelled with numbers, red tags, and barcodes written in military script.
“They were preparing for aerial deployment,” Reva said, her voice low. “Crop dusting. Altitude release. This wasn’t theoretical.”
Aaliya nodded once. “We take it all out.”
She moved to the console and keyed in the detonation sequence. Nothing. System locked.
“Manual override’s fried,” she said. “They sabotaged it from the inside.”
Veer pulled a pack from his back. “Then we plant charges the old way.”
As they spread through the chamber setting explosives, a sound echoed from the far corridor—bootsteps. Three guards. Armed. Masked. Still loyal to Cetza.
The firefight was short but vicious. Reva took a round to the shoulder. Veer pushed forward, downing two. Aaliya ducked behind a cryo tank and clipped the third. Then a scream—
“Samir!”
He’d been hit shielding Reva. Blood soaked through his chest, breath wheezing shallow.
“It’s alright,” he whispered. “Just… finish it.”
Aaliya gripped his hand. “You’re not dying here.”
He smiled. “Then hurry. Before I change my mind.”
Veer finished arming the last of the charges. The countdown began: four minutes.
They carried Reva between them, Samir’s pack left behind. They reached the lower tunnel as the first explosion rocked the chamber. Steel shrieked. The mountain shook.
“Go!” Aaliya shouted. “Take her—now!”
“What about you?” Veer asked.
“Someone needs to trigger the collapse. The inner fault line—if it holds, the virus won’t escape.”
“I’ll do it,” he said.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “You already did everything. Let me end it.”
He hesitated—then nodded. He didn’t say goodbye. Neither did she.
Aaliya ran back into the fire.
The final detonation hit just as she reached the tunnel mouth. A cascade of rock swallowed the facility in a wall of white and flame. The mountain howled. And then, silence.
From the tree line, Veer turned back once. Nothing but smoke. And snow.
Epilogue – The Quiet Return
The medal sat untouched in its velvet box.
Reva turned it once, then twice, as if it might suddenly explain everything. A silver star etched with a snake coiled through flame. There was no ceremony—just a man in a suit handing it over in a government office that smelled like paper and disinterest.
“In recognition of extraordinary service,” he’d said. “Classified file. No record. No press.”
“Of course,” Reva had replied.
Now, weeks later, she sat on a train heading north, the box still in her satchel. Snow streaked past the window in thin white lines. Mountains in the distance, bruised and quiet. Somewhere below them, buried in rock and ash, was what remained of the Cetza compound.
Veer had vanished two days after the debrief. No forwarding address. No word. Just a final look in the mirror before he walked out of the barracks and back into the wild.
Reva wasn’t looking for him. Not yet.
She stepped off the train at a small village station—no signs, no digital board, just a rusted bench and the scent of firewood. A local boy pointed her toward the edge of town, where the trees opened to a quiet hillside path.
She followed it.
There was a clinic there—barely a building. Tin roof. Blue shutters. Windchimes made from glass syringes and old shell casings. A line of children sat outside, waiting patiently with coughs and sniffles and scraped knees.
Inside, a woman moved between them with practiced ease. Scars trailed from her temple to jaw. Her gait was uneven. Her face had changed in small but unmistakable ways.
But Reva knew her.
Colonel Aaliya Rahman looked up from the examination table. For a moment, she said nothing. Just met Reva’s eyes with a calm that held no surprise.
“How’s the shoulder?” Aaliya asked quietly.
“Better than expected,” Reva replied. “And you?”
Aaliya shrugged. “Alive.”
“They think you’re dead.”
“Good. Let them.”
Outside, a wind stirred the pine trees. Children laughed. Somewhere, a kettle hissed.
Reva pulled the medal box from her satchel and placed it on the table between them. “This belongs to you.”
Aaliya didn’t touch it. “I don’t need a medal. I just needed to stop it.”
Reva nodded. “You did.”
They sat in silence for a moment, two soldiers without uniforms, two women who had seen the edge of fire and lived to tell no one.
Then Reva stood. “Take care of yourself, Colonel.”
Aaliya gave a faint smile. “I go by Kira now. Just a name. Just a person.”
Reva paused in the doorway, snow in her hair. “You were never just a person.”
Aaliya didn’t answer.
She turned back to the child on the bench and resumed dressing his wound, as if the world hadn’t ended once beneath her feet—and nearly taken everyone with it.
Outside, the windchimes danced.