They were forty minutes from the vehicle when Vikram disappeared.
He had been twenty metres ahead of the group, as always — his self-appointed position, the point position of a man who moved through dangerous territory by making himself the first thing to encounter whatever was in it. They had been retracing their route, following the ravine back toward the clearing where the Innova was parked, the camera still rolling because Aryan filmed the exit as well as the entry.
The ravine curved to the right at a section where the walls were particularly high and the path narrowed to one person wide. Vikram went around the curve. The group followed twenty seconds later.
He was not there.
"Vikram?" Aryan called.
The ravine walls threw the word back at him — the specific echo of enclosed rock, the word arriving from three directions, slightly different each time.
Nothing answered.
