The low-rated subjects, by contrast, had visible social networks. Family nearby. Close friends. Active social lives. People who would notice their absence immediately.
The Watcher wasn't rating beauty or attractiveness or any physical attribute. They were rating vulnerability. The score was a measure of how easy the person would be to take — how isolated they were, how long it would take for someone to notice they were gone, how thin the web of connections that held them in the visible world.
Isha looked at her own rating. 9.5. The highest.
She lived alone. Her family was in Ranchi. Her social circle in Delhi was professional, not personal — colleagues, sources, the transient connections of a journalist's life. Her closest friend was her editor. Her romantic life was a void she filled with work. If she disappeared on a Friday evening, the first person to notice would be Sahil, on Monday morning, when she didn't file her column.
9.5. Not a compliment. A threat assessment.
She was the most vulnerable person on the list.
"Sahil," she said, her voice steady in a way that her hands were not, "the rating isn't about beauty. It's about isolation. The Watcher is scoring how easy people are to kidnap."
Sahil looked at her. At the spreadsheet. At the pattern she'd uncovered.
"Then we need to make you the least isolated person in Delhi," he said. "Starting now."
He picked up his phone and made three calls. By 7 AM, Isha's apartment had a new guest — a former colleague named Dev, ex-military, who now worked private security and who owed Sahil a favour the size of a small country. Her office commute would be accompanied. Her movements would be tracked — by allies, not algorithms.
She was going to stay visible. Stay connected. Stay alive. And while she did, she was going to do the one thing the Watcher hadn't accounted for:
She was going to investigate the investigation. Hunt the hunter. Use the story not as content but as a weapon.
The Watcher had rated her 9.5.
They'd made a mistake. Not because the rating was wrong — it was brutally accurate. But because they'd rated a journalist. And journalists, when cornered, don't disappear.
They publish.
