Secrets Hidden In Time (Time #1)

16 | The Silence Before The Countdown Began

Perhaps, did the monster lurking there, 

with eyes that gleam and soul laid bare,

Cast at you smile—a twisted grin, 

cloaked in shadows, veiled in sin?

And as you shed your pretense, your mask, 

exposed to shadows, you dared to ask,

Did the lurking monstrous form, 

find within you, something scorned?

When your smiles felt hollow and strained, 

and words felt sharp, with truth unchained,

Did the monster lurking slyly, 

find a kinship within you, dark and wily?

But was it truly a beast, unknown?

Or a reflection of your own?

In the depths of night's caress, 

a haunting, fearsome, mirrored face?

So ponder, dear soul, and see, 

the monster in the dark may be,

Not a creature from without, 

but a shadow of your own self, devout.

- Hina

She swiftly capped the pen gripped in her nimble fingers as two crisp knocks resonated against the door of her office. Glancing at the fluttering pages of the leather diary on the table for one last time, she quickly closed it and then plunged it inside the left drawer of her wooden desk. "Enter."

The door unbolted to reveal the familiar tall and lean frame of her closest aide. "Jai Hind, Madam!"

"Jai Hind." She beckoned for him to get seated.

Pulling one of the visitor's chairs behind him, Bakhtawar comfortably settled himself down on it. "Didn't the I.G. discharge you of all your magisterial duties for this entire month? What are you doing here then?" He inquired.

"I later on requested him not to." Swiveling the chair around by ninety degrees, she picked up her satchel from above the filing cabinet behind and then unzipped it to fish out a notepad from it. Placing the notepad on her work desk, she kept her satchel back at its initial locus and then turned around to face her assistant again. "I am just a profiler; I don't need to be present at the SIT headquarters all the time."

Bakhtawar nodded his head while staring at the notepad, whose pages his boss was rapidly skimming through. "What is the matter?"

Hinduja instantly raised her eyes to look at him. "Any progress with that laptop we found in the store room behind the Purohit Villa?" She asked with her eyebrows knitted together.