A New Normal
The exam hall stretched out before him, rows of desks bathed in pale fluorescent light, the scratch of pens against paper filling the air like static. Advik’s hand moved across the answer sheet, steady and sure. Question three. Thermodynamics. He knew this cold.
Someone coughed two rows back. The invigilator’s shoes clicked against tile. Everything was normal. Everything was wrong.
The pen in his hand felt too light. The fluorescent hum was too uniform, too perfect. He looked down at the paper, but the words blurred, rearranging themselves into shapes that made no sense. His chest tightened.
When did I sit down?
He tried to remember walking into the hall. Couldn’t.
The air felt thick, syrupy. He tried to inhale and his diaphragm caved.
The blow came from nowhere. Not a punch. Not a fall. Just impact. Pure, unfiltered force that crushed the breath out of his lungs and folded him in half like paper.
The exam hall shattered.
He was on his side. Knees jammed into his ribs. His own or someone else’s, he couldn’t tell. His body was twisted, compressed, limbs bent at angles that shouldn’t have been possible. Something hard pressed against his spine, metal cold through fabric.
He tried to move. Couldn’t.
His wrists were bound behind him. Ankles too. Not rope. Something smoother, tighter. Zip ties, maybe. Industrial-grade.
He tried to speak. His mouth was gagged, cloth stuffed between his teeth, secured with tape that pulled at his skin.
He tried to see.
Blindfold. Thick. No light leaked through.
Panic clawed up his throat, but he forced it down. Think. Assess.
The surface beneath him vibrated, steady and rhythmic. Engine. He was in a vehicle. Moving.
His skin prickled with heat. No, not heat. Pressure. He was wearing something. A suit. Airtight. Rubber lining pressed against his neck and wrists, sealing him in. The material was thick, industrial, designed to contain.
He inhaled through his nose.
Rubber. Antiseptic. Something sharper underneath. Chemical. Medicinal. The smell crawled into his sinuses, coating the back of his throat.
And then he heard it.
A hiss.
Not loud. Constant. A soft, mechanical exhalation that pulsed in time with his own ragged breathing.
His stomach dropped.
Gas.
The realization surfaced sluggishly, as if it had to push through syrup to reach him. His thoughts came apart at the edges. He tried to remember how he’d gotten here. Glass breaking. Shouting. The flash of movement in the hall. The images slid away the moment he reached for them.
The vehicle jolted. Not a gentle swerve. A violent lurch to one side.
Bodies slammed together. Someone’s elbow dug into his shoulder. A knee, maybe the same one, jammed into his side again as the space filled with muffled groans and the dull thud of impact against metal walls. The floor tilted under him, held there for a breathless moment, then shifted again.
Outside, noise bled through the shell of the vehicle. Shouting. Not panicked. Angry. Commands, maybe. The words didn’t make sense, but the cadence did. Sharp. Controlled. Irritated.
Then something else cut through it. A voice, raised over the chaos. Clearer than the rest.
Advik’s heart kicked hard against his ribs.
He didn’t know the words. He couldn’t even be sure what language it was. But there was a tone there. Tight. Clipped. Unmistakably familiar. The kind of voice that scolded without wasting breath. The kind that didn’t need to shout to be heard.
Aisha.
The name surfaced unbidden, bringing with it a spike of panic that sliced through the fog. His breathing quickened inside the suit, each inhale shallow, unfulfilling. The hiss seemed louder now, closer.
No. That didn’t make sense. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear properly. His brain was reaching for patterns because that was what it always did when things stopped making sense.
The gas pulled at him, dragging his thoughts downward.
The hiss changed.
Interrupted.
The flow stuttered, a brief gap in the constant stream.
Advik’s thoughts sharpened just slightly, enough to notice.
The tubing.
He could feel it now, thin and flexible, running from the valve near his neck down along his torso. It passed near his side, close to where his knees were bent.
His foot.
He couldn’t move his hands. Couldn’t sit up. But his legs, bound at the ankles, still had a few inches of play.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted his weight. The movement sent a spike of pain through his ribs, but he ignored it. He bent his knee, angling his foot inward, searching for the tube.
There.
He pressed down, gently at first, testing. The tube kinked beneath his heel.
The hiss quieted.
His vision cleared just a fraction. The fog in his head lifted slightly, like surfacing from deep water. He could think again.
He tried to take inventory. The vehicle was still moving, but slower now. The shouting outside had faded. Whatever had happened, it was over.
He strained against the blindfold, trying to peek through a gap at the edge. A sliver of light. Blurred shapes. Gray fabric. Another suit, just like his.
And then a face.
Shri.
A shadow loomed.
A hand yanked his foot away with efficient force. The tubing snapped back into place.
“Don’t,” a voice said close to his ear, calm, almost bored. “Try to be smart.”
Something adjusted near his mask. The hiss returned to its steady rhythm.
The last thing Advik registered was the vehicle leveling out again, the outside noise fading until it felt distant and unreal. The familiar voice disappeared into the hum of the engine. His thoughts thinned, stretched, slipped.
Darkness closed in properly this time.
And then there was nothing at all.
Ved became aware of movement before he understood it.
Hands were on him again, firm and impersonal, steering him forward while his legs struggled to cooperate. The blindfold stayed in place, but the air felt different now. Cooler. Cleaner. The vibration beneath his feet was gone.
Whatever had been carrying them had stopped.
The gag was gone, but his mouth tasted like copper and rubber. His legs barely held him upright. Someone steadied him by the elbow.
He wanted to pull away. Every instinct screamed to jerk free, to fight, to do something.
But he didn’t.
Not because he was afraid. Because he was furious.
These weren’t guards in uniforms. These were the people who had walked into the exam hall. The ones who had dropped students to the floor like broken furniture. Terrorists, by any honest definition. Evil, in the simple, unacademic sense of the word.
And now they were touching him.
Their hands were steady. Professional. Almost respectful. That made it worse.
Ved’s jaw clenched until his teeth ached. His breath came fast and shallow through his nose, not from fear but from the sheer wrongness of it. He wanted to scream at them, curse them, spit in their faces, but his body was too weak and they wouldn’t have cared anyway.
They moved him forward. Another hand pressed against the small of his back, adjusting his posture.
He hated them.
Not the vague, abstract hate you feel toward an idea or a distant injustice. This was sharp and personal. It burned clean and bright in his chest, the only thing keeping him upright.
Ahead of them, Shri’s blindfold came off.
Only for a moment.
White flooded his vision. Walls without seams. Floors that reflected light without showing footprints. Brightness so complete it erased shadows entirely.
His mind scrambled, instinctively trying to make sense of it. It reminded him of a hospital corridor he’d walked down once, years ago. Or the research wing on campus, the one with overly polished floors. Even the smell felt almost familiar, antiseptic and faintly metallic, like someplace meant to fix things.
For half a second, the lie almost worked.
Then he noticed what was missing.
No posters. No signs. No stains. No clutter. No scuff marks where people had leaned or waited or paced. No evidence of life.
The blindfold went back on.
The absence hit harder than the light had.
Shri swallowed and felt a slow, sinking weight settle in his chest. His mind reached instinctively for the idea that this was temporary. A holding place. A mistake. Something that would end once the right words were said to the right people.
A trip they were supposed to take flickered through his thoughts. This can’t be it, he thought. A stupid argument about dates. Myra complaining about packing too much.
They were positioned.
No one spoke. No commands. No orders. Just hands guiding them into place, Ved here, Shri there, Advik somewhere to the left.
The handlers moved around them like technicians preparing for surgery, adjusting restraints, checking vitals, making notes on tablets without ever looking at their faces. No names were used. No eye contact offered.
Ved stood rigid, every muscle coiled. He wanted them to look at him. Wanted them to see him. To acknowledge what they were doing.
They didn’t.
His gaze drifted.
Advik stood a few feet away, still in his suit, still blindfolded. Something was wrong. Ved could hear it in his breathing, fast and shallow, the kind that came before panic tipped into something worse. Advik’s chest rose and fell too quickly. His hands twitched once, then again at his sides.
One of the handlers noticed.
They stepped closer, calm and methodical, and adjusted a valve near Advik’s neck. There was a soft hiss.
Advik’s breathing slowed. Not naturally. Not by choice. Just regulated, like a system correcting itself mid-error.
Ved’s stomach turned.
He’d seen Advik anxious before, seen him overthink and spiral, but Advik always thought his way out. Always had a plan. Always had something to reach for.
Not now.
Now his body was being managed like a malfunctioning machine, tuned and calibrated without a word.
Ved clenched his fists. The rage sharpened, cutting deeper than before. This wasn’t just wrong.
This was obscene.
Shri leaned harder into denial. He couldn’t help it. His mind kept constructing futures that didn’t exist anymore. The trip they’d been planning. The coast Myra had wanted to visit. Blue water, white sand, shacks selling fried fish. They’d joked about skipping exams and just leaving, never serious, but it had been nice to pretend.
That future was supposed to exist. A week from now. A month. Eventually.
But the room had no clocks. No windows. No markers of time passing or time to come. Just white walls, silence, and the faint hum of machinery.
He tried to believe this was temporary. An interruption. A delay.
They’ll figure it out. Someone will come. This can’t last.
The thought felt thinner every time he repeated it.
The suits came off next.
Slowly. Methodically. Not as if time mattered.
Gloves peeled back rubber. Seals were broken. Cool air brushed skin that hadn’t felt it in too long. Water followed, warm and precise. Efficient.
No one commented on their bodies. No one reacted to flinches or stiffness or the way Ved’s shoulders stayed tense even after the suit was gone.
It wasn’t humiliation. It wasn’t violence.
It was preparation.
The separation happened without warning.
One moment Shri was aware of Ved nearby, could hear his breathing sharp and angry, could sense Advik somewhere to his left, still too quiet. The next moment, hands guided him to the right. A door opened. He was ushered through.
He tried to turn, to look back, to see if they were still there.
The door closed.
No final look. No chance to speak.
Just redirection.
Different corridor. Different door.
The awareness of the others vanished in stages, first one presence gone, then another, until the silence around him felt complete and intentional.
Doors opened. Closed.
Advik was guided into a room that looked like it had been designed by someone who had studied prisons but wanted to pretend they hadn’t. Smooth walls. Soft lighting. No obvious restraints. Nothing sharp. Nothing movable. Clean enough to feel unreal.
He stood there, heart still racing from the tail end of panic, waiting for his mind to catch up.
It didn’t.
Thoughts slid away the moment he reached for them. Systems. Plans. Models. All the things he relied on were absent, like a language he suddenly couldn’t speak.
Ved’s door sealed with a sound so quiet it barely registered. The injustice of it burned through him, bright and focused. Being trapped was one thing. Being trapped by people he knew, without question, were wrong was another. The anger had nowhere to go, no target it could reach, and that made it worse.
Shri’s cell closed last.
The cell was small. White walls. A bed, more like a cot, bolted to the floor. A steel toilet in the corner. A sink. An LED panel in the ceiling casting flat, even light.
No window. No clock.
A camera watched from the wall, a red light blinking steadily.
Shri stood in the center of the room, dripping water onto the floor, wearing plain gray scrubs that didn’t fit quite right.
The door sealed behind him.
Not loudly. Not ceremoniously.
It just clicked.
He stared at it for a long moment, waiting for something. A sound. A voice. An explanation.
Nothing came.
Slowly, with a clarity that frightened him more than fear ever had, he understood that the plans he’d been clinging to didn’t belong to him anymore.
Not postponed.
Erased.
The door stayed shut.
And in the quiet that followed, each of them understood, in their own way, the same thing.
This wasn’t an interruption.
This was their life now.