"The phone call to the police — the anonymous tip that led them to the flat. That was the Watcher?"
"Probably. They wanted me found. They wanted the flat found. They wanted people to know what was inside it."
"What else was inside?"
"The photographs. On the walls. Like a gallery. Every subject from the Instagram account — all thirty-something of them. But not just the posted photos. Multiple shots of each person, taken over days or weeks. Surveillance photos. Following them to work, to shops, to homes. The posted image was just the one they chose to publish. Underneath was a full dossier."
"Were there others in the building? Other rooms?"
"I heard things. Through the walls. Crying, sometimes. Movement. I think there were other rooms. Other people."
"The other missing subjects."
"I think so."
"Were they released too?"
Vikram looked at her with his scanning eyes, and for the first time, they stopped moving. Completely still. Focused on her with the particular intensity of a man about to say something that has been inside him for days and is finally, painfully, coming out.
"I don't know. When the door opened, I ran. I didn't check the other rooms. I didn't try to help anyone." His voice cracked. "I ran. And I don't know if they're still in there."
Isha reached across and took his hand. The trembling slowed, slightly.
"Vikram, the flat was empty when the police arrived. If there were others, they'd been moved."
"Or they're somewhere else. The Watcher doesn't use one location — they can't. The police found one flat because they were meant to. But that doesn't mean it's the only one."
She left the hospital with a recording, a full notebook, and a new understanding of what the Watcher's List was.
It wasn't a stalking account. It wasn't a kidnapping ring. It wasn't a serial crime in the traditional sense.
It was an experiment. A controlled, filmed, scored experiment in human degradation. The Watcher selected subjects, isolated them, documented their decline, and rated the process like a review — 9.1, 8.7, 7.2, 5.6, 3.1. A descent measured in decimals.
And when the experiment was complete — when the subject had been reduced from a nine to a three, from a person to a number, from someone who mattered to someone who didn't — they were released. Discarded. Left on a street to find their way back to a world that didn't know they'd been gone.
The Instagram account was the showcase. The studio was the laboratory.
And Isha, rated 9.5, was the next experiment.
Unless she found the Watcher first.
