In the first flat, Tanya Ahuja sat on the floor, wrapped in a police-issue blanket, and said to the officer who'd freed her: "What day is it?"

"Saturday."

"What month?"

"April."

She nodded. Processed this. Then she said: "Can I call my mother?"

In the second flat, Priyanka Reddy was already on her feet, walking toward the door, walking toward the outside, walking toward a world she hadn't seen in three weeks with the determined stride of a woman who had decided, somewhere in the silence of her captivity, that she would never be still again.

And in the third flat, between the servers and the screens, the police found the wall. The one Vikram had described. The gallery. Hundreds of photographs, each one a face, each one a number, each one a human being who had been reduced to a rating by a man who believed that people were content and suffering was a product and the line between watching and consuming had been erased so completely that he couldn't see it anymore.

Isha arrived at the complex at 4 AM. She didn't enter the flats — the forensic teams were already inside, and she knew better than to contaminate a crime scene. She stood in the corridor, looking at the three doors, listening to the sounds of rescue — the radio chatter, the medical teams, the particular commotion of a system working the way it's supposed to work.

Dev stood beside her. "It's over."

"The kidnapping is over. The story isn't."

She pulled out her phone. Opened the article. Updated it with four words:

"They've been found."

The countdown timer stopped. 04:23:41 remaining.

She'd beaten the clock.