Vikram came around for ninety seconds, somewhere in the third kilometre.
He looked at the roof of the Innova. He said, in a voice that was very far from his normal voice: "I couldn't see him. I heard him before I saw him. That's how they hunt."
Then he went under again.
Nobody in the vehicle said anything. Aryan gripped the wheel. The road ran through the edge of the plateau, the ravines invisible below them now, just the red dirt and the pale sky and the last of the afternoon light bleeding out of it.
"Him," Priya said finally. One word. Not a question.
Nobody answered it, because the answering was already happening inside all of them and did not require speech.
