Zugzwang
A week passed.
Not quickly. Not in a blur. Each day dragged itself forward like something wounded, leaving marks.
The campus settled into routines that felt like poorly rehearsed theater. Classes resumed. Cafeterias opened. Students walked familiar paths, but quieter now, glancing over shoulders at things that weren't there.
Kunal had locked himself in his room for most of it. Sometimes he'd emerge—pacing corridors at odd hours, phone in hand, thumbs moving across the screen in quick, deliberate strokes. Taking notes. Thinking. Always thinking. Then he'd disappear again, door clicking shut behind him like punctuation.
Information still reached him—forwarded screenshots, group chats he'd muted but still monitored, links sent by people who knew he was collecting pieces.
Unofficially, the word had spread: Naxalite attack. Rare this deep in Vallashia. Those things happened up north, in the dense forests, the contested territories. Not here. Not in the heart of the state, in a college town where the biggest concerns were supposed to be exams and placements.
But it had happened anyway.
And now everyone was pretending to move on.
Dev went to class.
He needed the distraction. Sitting alone in his room all day was worse—the walls had started to feel too close, the silence too loud. At least in class, there were other people. Other sounds.
He walked across campus in the mid-morning heat. The quad looked normal—students sitting under trees, a few playing frisbee, someone strumming a guitar badly. But attendance was down. You could feel it in the empty spaces, the missing voices.
The college had lifted compulsory attendance. "In light of recent events," the email had said. "We understand students may need time to process."
Processing. As if grief were a file to be opened, examined, and closed.
Dev reached the engineering block and climbed the stairs. His legs felt heavier than they should. Fourth floor. Room 419. Discrete Mathematics.
The classroom was more empty than usual.
He stepped inside and a few heads turned. Someone whispered. He felt their eyes on him, tracking his movement to his usual row. He kept his face neutral, didn't acknowledge them.
A guy from the row behind—Karthik, maybe?—leaned forward as Dev sat down.
"Hey." Tentative. "Is it true? About the Reddit threads?"
Dev didn't turn around. "What about them?"
"That your friends were... killed?"
Dev's hands stilled on his bag. He turned slowly.
"Taken," he said, voice tight. "Not killed. Taken."
Karthik blinked, caught off guard. "Right. Sorry. I just—"
"It's fine." Dev faced forward again. "Just... get it right."
The guy retreated. More whispers followed, spreading through the room like static. Dev ignored them. Let them talk. He had bigger things to worry about.
He looked around the classroom, cataloging absences out of habit.
Advik's usual spot—third row, left side, near the window—was empty. He'd sit there and doodle in the margins of his notebook when the lecture got too dry, sketching circuit diagrams that somehow always looked more elegant than the professor's.
Ved's corner seat in the back—empty. He'd lean back in that chair, arms crossed, pretending to be bored but always somehow acing the exams anyway.
Shri would've been... there. Two rows up, center. He'd lean back too far in his chair, balancing on two legs, and Myra would've told him to stop being an idiot before he cracked his skull open.
Aisha. She wasn't here either.
But Myra was.
Same seat she always took. Front row, slight right of center. Her bag sat on the desk next to her notebook, already open to a blank page. She stared at it without moving.
Their eyes met for half a second.
Then both looked away.
Dev thought: Maybe that's why Kunal doesn't come to his room anymore. Doesn't call him to Kunal's room either.
It felt incomplete without them. Without the noise, the arguments, the casual back-and-forth that used to fill the spaces between classes. Every second of silence was a reminder of what was missing.
The professor walked in, set down his bag, pulled up the slides.
"Alright, let's pick up where we left off. Graph theory—Eulerian and Hamiltonian paths..."
His voice droned on. Dev tried to focus. Couldn't. The equations on the board blurred into meaningless shapes.
He glanced at Myra again. She was writing something, her pen moving across the page in slow, deliberate strokes. Not notes. The words were too scattered, too uneven.
The lecture ended in a murmur of shifting chairs and closing notebooks.
The professor cleared his throat. "One more thing before you go."
Students paused mid-pack.
"From next week, my classes will be online. I'll send you the meeting links via email. Check your inboxes."
A few students looked relieved. Some shrugged, indifferent.
Dev glanced at Myra.
She looked almost... upset.
Not about the online classes. About losing this. This room. These seats. The visible proof of absence.
She didn't want to let go of it. Didn't want comfort or distance or the mercy of forgetting. She wanted to sit here, be reminded, keep the wound open. Stubborn. Deliberate.
Like she was daring herself not to move on.
The room emptied slowly. Dev gathered his things and left.
Behind him, Myra remained seated. Staring at the empty desks. Not moving.
On his way back, Dev cut through the pathway near the admin building.
An ambulance sat parked outside, doors open, paramedics moving with practiced efficiency.
He stopped.
A student was being loaded onto a stretcher—conscious, but pale, bandaged. One of the injured from last week, maybe. Or someone new. It was hard to tell anymore.
The paramedics worked in sync. One checked vitals. Another logged information on a tablet, scanning the student's ID badge with a handheld device, photographing the visible injuries from multiple angles. Everything documented. Everything recorded.
The student winced as they shifted him onto the gurney. The medic murmured something reassuring. Professional. Detached.
Within two minutes, the doors closed. The ambulance pulled away, lights flashing but no siren.
Dev stood there, watching it disappear around the bend.
A thought crystallized, sharp and clear: Everything gets stored. There must be a database.
Medical records. Incident reports. Ambulance logs. It all had to go somewhere. Colleges didn't just let ambulances show up without coordination. There was a system. A chain of information. A paper trail—or more likely, a digital one.
He turned and headed back to his dorm, walking faster now.
His room felt smaller than usual.
He dropped his bag by the door, sat at his desk, opened his laptop. The screen lit up, casting pale blue light across his face.
He stared at the blank search bar.
Central database. Medical records. Incident reports. Ambulance logs.
His fingers hovered over the keys.
The problem was simple: he wasn't a hacker. He could code—decently, even—but not like that. He didn't know how to break into systems, bypass firewalls, exploit vulnerabilities. That wasn't his skill set.
He typed: "ambulance database access"
Stared at it.
Deleted it.
Typed: "hospital records API"
Deleted that too.
Closed the laptop harder than necessary. The screen went dark.
He sat back, rubbed his face. This was stupid. What was he even trying to do? Play detective? He wasn't equipped for this.
He reopened the laptop. The screen lit up again.
His eyes drifted to the desktop—a folder sat in the corner: Hackathon_2024.
He stared at it.
Hesitated.
Then double-clicked.
The folder opened. Rows of files and subfolders. Code repositories. Documentation. Screenshots. Git logs.
Ved name appeared in the commit history. Multiple times.
Dev clicked through slowly. Saw the way Ved had organized everything—color-coded folders, detailed README files, even comments in the code making jokes to his future self:
// TODO: Optimize this before Dev sees it and judges me
// Also: Stop putting TODOs everywhere, past-Ved. Future-Ved is tired.
Dev's throat tightened.
It wasn't a specific memory. Not words Ved had said, not a moment he could point to. Just... this. The care Ved put into even the smallest projects. The way he thought ahead, left notes for himself, tried to make things easier for whoever came after.
Dev closed the folder slowly.
Sat in silence.
Didn't say anything. Just felt the absence.
After a long moment, he opened his laptop again.
Different approach.
GitHub loaded. Dev logged in.
The college hosted an annual hackathon. Big event. Students built projects, showcased them, uploaded the code to a shared GitHub organization. There was even a category specifically for "in-house products"—tools meant to improve campus life. Mobile apps for class schedules, room booking systems, food ordering platforms.
Someone, somewhere, must have built something for emergency services.
He navigated to the college's GitHub org. Hundreds of repositories. Years of projects.
He started filtering.
Search terms: "ambulance", "medical", "emergency", "Meridian College"
Hours passed. The light outside his window shifted from harsh afternoon to softer gold.
He scrolled. Clicked. Read README files. Checked commit histories.
2024: Nothing relevant.
2023: A half-finished symptom checker. Abandoned after two commits.
2022: "HealthConnect"—aimed at students, not staff. Not useful.
2021: Closer. "CampusER"—an app for logging first-aid incidents. But the data was incomplete, the repository archived.
Dev kept searching.
And then—finally—he found them.
Three repositories. All related to ambulance management and optimization for Meridian College.
Repo 1: EmergencyOpt
Clean code. Full ML pipeline for predicting response times. But the dataset was completely masked—patient IDs hashed, timestamps rounded, locations generalized. Useless.
Repo 2: AmbulanceML
Better structured. Predictive modeling, route optimization. Professional-grade work. But only the model was public. The data itself? Missing.
Repo 3: CampusMediTrack
Same story. Polished product, trained model included. No raw data.
Dev leaned back.
The models existed. Which meant the data had existed. Someone had used it, built these systems.
Someone still had the unmasked dataset.
He clicked back to AmbulanceML. Checked the contributors.
Main developer: Harsh_dev
The profile showed recent activity. Real name in the bio: Harsh Sharma.
Dev opened a new tab. Searched the college directory. Found the email: Harsh.sharma@meridian.edu
Then opened Microsoft Teams. Typed the name.
There. Full profile. Phone number listed.
Dev copied it. Opened his messaging app.
Stared at the blank text field.
First attempt: Too formal. "Hello, I am reaching out regarding your work on..."
Deleted.
Second attempt: Too desperate. "Please, I need your help, my friends were taken and—"
Deleted.
Third attempt: Too vague. "Hey, quick question about your project..."
Deleted.
He closed his eyes. Took a breath.
Then typed:
Hey, I saw your work on AmbulanceML. I need to ask you about the dataset you used—specifically the ambulance logs from your project. Do you still have the unmasked data? This is important. Can we talk?
Hovered over send.
His hand shook slightly.
He hit send.
Dev closed the laptop. Stood. Paced. Sat back down. Opened the laptop. Checked for a reply.
Nothing.
He forced himself to close it again. Do something else. Anything else.
He lay on his bed, stared at the ceiling.
An hour passed.
His phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
He opened the message.
Who is this? Why do you need that data?
Must be Harsh. Dev typed back quickly.
I'm a student here. My friends were taken in the attack. I'm trying to understand what happened.
The reply came faster this time.
I'm sorry about your friends. But I can't just share data. There are privacy issues. Ethical concerns.
Dev stared at the screen.
Harsh knew they were his friends. He hadn't said which students. Hadn't given names.
But Harsh knew.
Which meant people were talking. Which meant his name was attached to this now, whether he wanted it to be or not.
His jaw tightened. He typed:
I'm not asking you to violate anything. Just meet with me. In person. Let me explain.
Long pause. Dev watched the screen, waiting.
Finally:
Why in person?
Dev didn't hesitate.
Because I build trust person to person. Not over text. And because I need you to see that this matters.
Another pause. Longer this time.
Then:
Library tomorrow. 4pm. Come alone.
Dev exhaled.
Stared at the message.
Second-guessing himself already. What if this was nothing? What if the data showed nothing useful? What if he was grasping at patterns that didn't exist, chasing ghosts in spreadsheets?
But what else did he have?
He closed the chat. Set his phone down.
Tried to sleep.
Couldn't.
Myra woke before her alarm.
She hadn't slept well in days. But her body had decided this was morning, and lying in bed pretending otherwise felt pointless.
She got up. Went through the motions.
Brush teeth. Shower. Dress.
Not thinking. Not deciding. Just following steps that her body remembered even if her mind didn't care.
Life on autopilot.
She buttoned her shirt carefully, each button slotted into place with mechanical precision. Tucked it in. Smoothed the fabric. Neat. Controlled.
Looked in the mirror briefly. Looked away.
Her sadness had been left to ferment. She could feel it inside her, changing, souring into something worse. Something with edges.
She left her room.
Evening came.
A knock on her door.
Myra opened it.
Dev stood there, holding a meal pack. Two sandwiches, a pasta container, an apple on top.
She didn't invite him in. Just looked at him.
He shifted his weight slightly. "Thought you might've missed this."
She took the food from his hands.
"You didn't have to."
The words came out flat, but the meaning underneath was clear: Don't do this.
She started to close the door, then paused. "Goodnight."
The door clicked shut.
The door clicked shut.
Myra stood in the middle of her room, staring at what she was holding.
The Thursday combo.
Her chest tightened.
Two egg sandwiches, one pasta, one apple. The exact meal she used to share with Advik and Shri every Thursday. They'd split it three ways—Advik took the egg sandwiches, Shri his favorite apple, she the pasta.
And then it hit her, sharp and sudden: Dev never ate any of it.
But it was always him who brought it.
Emotions flooded in—grief, guilt, anger, all at once, crashing into each other with nowhere to go.
Tears started rolling down her face before she could stop them.
Then frustration. At herself. At her own helplessness. At the fact that she was standing here crying over a fucking meal combo.
She grabbed the pasta container.
Turned.
Threw it at the wall with everything she had.
The container hit with a violent crack—plastic splintering, louder and sharper than it should've been, like she'd thrown ceramic instead. The lid popped off mid-flight, sauce exploding across the white paint in dark red streaks. The impact left a small dent in the drywall.
Outside, Dev froze.
He'd been about to walk away, hand still half-raised from knocking. The sound stopped him cold—that heavy, wrong impact that seemed to shake the door in its frame.
He stood there, listening.
Muffled breathing from inside. Maybe movement.
He'd been about to say something before she closed the door. About to try, despite her coldness, because he knew she was hurting and he didn't know what else to do.
But the sound—
He lowered his hand.
Left.
Myra stood in the middle of her room, breathing hard.
The pasta had exploded against the wall. Sauce splattered across the white paint like a wound. The container lay in pieces on the floor—not just cracked, but shattered, fragments scattered wider than they should've been.
There was a dent in the drywall. Small, but visible.
She stared at it for a moment. Then at her hand.
Looked back at the mess.
Realized, slowly, that she might be overreacting.
Felt a small stab of guilt.
Dev was just trying to help. He always was. And she'd just—
She moved to the door. Opened it.
The hallway was empty.
She knew he wouldn't be there. Knew she'd taken too long. But part of her had hoped anyway.
She stood in the doorway for a moment. Then closed it slowly.
Turned back to the wreckage of her room.
Saw the apple. It had rolled into the corner, untouched, still perfect.
She walked over. Picked it up.
She'd never been a big fan of fruits. But right now she craved something sweet. Something clean. Something that wasn't covered in her own anger.
She sat on the floor, leaning against the wall.
Bit into the apple.
Chewed.
Bit again.
Stopped.
Pulled the apple away from her mouth.
Stared at it.
She'd bitten through the core.
Seeds, stem, the hard center—all of it cleanly severed by her teeth. The bite marks went straight through the densest part like it was soft flesh.
She turned the apple slowly in her hands, examining the damage.
She hadn't felt any resistance. Hadn't noticed the difference between the soft outer fruit and the hard inner core. Just bit down, and it gave way.
Something shifted in her throat. Not words. Not a cough. Something else. A pressure. A weight.
She swallowed.
It didn't go away.
She put the apple down carefully on the floor next to her.
Sat there in the mess of thrown food and her own confusion.
Didn't clean it up.
Not yet.
The next morning, a crowd had gathered outside the admin building.
Students stood in clusters, reading the new notice posted on the bulletin board. Some took pictures with their phones. Others just read and walked away, shaking their heads.
Dev passed by on his way to the library. Slowed. Read the notice from the edge of the crowd.
CAMPUS SECURITY UPDATE
Following the recent incident, enhanced security measures have been implemented for student safety. Counseling services are available. Normal operations will continue.
Students are suggested to respect the curfew timings and only move out at night with written permission.
- Office of the Chancellor
A brief mention, buried in the second paragraph of a longer email that morning, had clarified what everyone already knew: Unofficially, it was being called a Naxalite attack. Rare this deep in Vallashia. Those things happened up north, in contested zones. But here it was. Official now.
And this was the response.
Dev read it twice.
"Recent incident."
Not attack. Not kidnapping. Not abduction. Incident.
His jaw tightened.
His friends weren't an incident. They were people. They had names. Advik. Ved. Shri. They existed. They mattered.
Had names, a voice whispered in his head.
He stopped that thought. Forced it down.
Because statistically—
No.
He couldn't think like that. Not yet. Not when there was still a chance.
He turned away from the notice. Checked his phone. 3:47 PM.
He needed to meet Harsh. Because official channels weren't going to help. The administration was already moving on, wrapping everything in sanitized language and security theater.
If he wanted answers, he'd have to find them himself.
Across campus, Myra stood in front of the same bulletin board.
She'd walked here without deciding to. Her feet had just carried her, and now here she was, reading words that made her hands curl into fists.
"Enhanced security measures."
"Counseling services."
"Normal operations will continue."
She felt heat spreading through her chest.
The people around her were complacent. The administration. The security staff. The professors who kept teaching like nothing had changed.
Incompetent.
All of them.
Moving on. Pretending. Using language designed to minimize, to smooth over, to make everyone feel like things were under control when they clearly fucking weren't.
She didn't think highly of herself either. She knew she was barely holding it together, knew she was spiraling, knew the thing building in her throat wasn't normal.
But at least she wasn't pretending everything was fine.
At least she wasn't calling it an "incident."
Something inside her shifted. Settled into a new configuration.
She couldn't rely on them. Couldn't wait for the college to fix this, to investigate, to care as much as she did.
If she wanted anything done—whatever "anything" meant—she'd have to do it herself.
The thought scared her.
But it also felt true in a way nothing else had for days.
She reached up. Ripped the notice down. Crumpled it in her fist.
Dropped it on the ground.
Walked away.
Behind her, students murmured. Someone picked up the paper, smoothed it out, re-posted it.
She didn't look back.
In his room, Kunal sat cross-legged on his bed, phone in hand, notes app open.
Someone had sent him a photo of the official statement. He read it from his screen, the blue-white light harsh in the dim room.
He laughed once. Bitter.
Of course that's what they'd say. Enhanced security. Counseling. Curfews.
All reactive. Nothing about investigation. Nothing about answers. Nothing about the people who were taken.
Not killed. He refused that word. Taken. Which meant findable.
He scrolled back to his notes. Pages and pages of observations, timelines, inconsistencies.
Added a new entry:
Official narrative: Naxalite attack. No investigation details mentioned. No follow-up promised.
He stared at the words.
Then kept working.
Because being around other people felt wrong without the full group. Without Ved's sarcasm, Advik's overthinking, Shri's easy humor. Every conversation would just highlight what was missing.
He worked better alone anyway.
Always had.
Just then his phone pings.