"Why do we need to spot blind spots?" Anika had asked five hours ago, arms crossed, standing like a stubborn statue in their dimly lit office.
Kavir didn't respond right away. He looked at her, then at Ratan, then leaned back on the old office chair with a creak loud enough to suggest retirement.
Then he sighed dramatically and said, "How the hell did you manage to get this job?"
Ratan chuckled under his breath, flipping through a file as if this were a comedy show.
Anika narrowed her eyes. "Excuse me?"
"Listen, Miss Officer," Kavir said, brushing his unruly hair away from his face, "you've got dozens of uniforms and a thousand cameras in the city. But this guy…" He pointed to an invisible phantom in the air. "He doesn't care. He doesn't work like the rest of us. He hides in the cracks. And people like him? They depend on the blind spots."
Ratan took over. "We don't need to find every inch of blind space in the city. We just need the famous ones. The ones people already use. If he's smart, and we know he is, then he's using what already exists."
Anika still looked doubtful. "So, what? We find popular alleyways and hope he strolls through?"
"We find where monsters are born," Kavir said. "Not in labs. In shadows. Near schools. In broken parks. Behind convenience stores. And most importantly… in places where no one watches but everyone knows."
And that's how they ended up at the station.
Present time.
Three teenage boys sat in the interrogation room. All looked like they had lost a fight with a cement truck. Bruises bloomed on their cheeks. One had a split lip. Another's eye was a fat purple balloon.
They looked uncomfortable—partly because of the bruises, but mostly because they were sitting in front of her.
Anika stood near the whiteboard, dressed sharply in her khaki uniform, clipboard in hand, all-business expression locked in place.
Kavir leaned against the wall, arms crossed, the faintest smirk playing on his face. Ratan sat nearby, chewing gum, pretending to be uninterested but scribbling notes in a cheap spiral notebook.
"So," Anika said. "Why do you think you're here?"
One of the boys looked up nervously. "We—we didn't do anything now. We were just… hanging around."
"Hanging around in a blind alley behind a school. Where you were beating a younger kid," Anika replied flatly.
Another boy jumped in. "That's just how we play—"
Kavir pushed off the wall, stepping forward slowly. "How many of the ten missing students were your 'playmates'?"
They all fell silent.
Anika pulled out printed photographs and laid them on the table, one by one.
"Do you recognize them?"
They looked. The third boy hesitated before pointing to one.
"We used to… tease him."
"Tease?" Ratan echoed from his seat.
"Okay, okay. Beat up. But just that one. Only on that day—then he left school. We thought he was faking to get transferred or something."
Anika leaned closer. "That was the day he went missing."
Now the silence wasn't nervous—it was scared.
Kavir raised an eyebrow. "You want to go home?"
All three nodded.
"Sure," Kavir said with a pleasant tone. "Just one last thing. Who was the one who made your faces look like potatoes?"
They hesitated.
Finally, one muttered, "We were… fighting each other."
Ratan gave a cough that was suspiciously close to a laugh.
Two hours ago.
Kavir had walked into the alley.
The boys were busy throwing punches at a kid who clearly had no idea why the universe hated him.
Kavir didn't speak. He just walked up to them and tapped one boy on the shoulder.
They turned.
"Who the hell are y—"
That was it. One of them didn't even finish his sentence before Kavir slammed him against the wall. The second tried to punch him but ended up with his face in a trash bin. The third made a run for it and got clotheslined by Ratan, who had been leaning around the corner eating peanuts.
When Kavir dropped them off at the police station and said, "Found them breaking the law in the wild," Anika hadn't asked any further questions.
Present time.
"Do we have enough to work with?" Anika asked as they stepped out of the interrogation room.
Kavir nodded. "They named a few places. The usual: abandoned parking lots, that half-built mall, the broken park behind the temple."
"They also named a few convenience stores with zero cameras," Ratan added. "Apparently that's where the cool kids hang out."
"Alright," Anika said. "Let's start with the park."
They reached the location just before sunset.
The old public park behind the temple had been unofficially shut for years. Grass overgrown. Swings broken. A slide rusting into oblivion. Stray dogs were the only residents.
As they stepped through the creaking gate, Kavir took the lead. Anika followed, adjusting her belt as she scanned the area with trained eyes.
And then… Ratan appeared.
Kavir blinked.
Red coat. Red pants. Red shirt. Red hat. Black boots.
He looked like a magician that got rejected from a circus for dressing too loud.
Anika stared at him for a long moment and said, "What… the hell… is that?"
Kavir squinted. "You look like a crime scene."
Ratan adjusted his red hat with dignity. "I wanted to wear it. That's enough of a reason."
Kavir sighed and muttered, "I'm the only one dressed for actual investigation."
The three of them fanned out.
Anika brought over bits of evidence—an old shoe, a wrapper, a child's pen. She laid them at Kavir's feet like a dog eager to impress its owner.
He looked at them for half a second and tossed them aside one by one.
"Garbage. All of it."
She frowned. "You're impossible."
Then he froze.
Near the bench by the broken merry-go-round, he saw it.
A single broken fingernail.
Dried blood stained the edges.
He picked it up using tweezers from Ratan's bag and dropped it into a ziplock pouch.
"This," he said. "This shows resistance. Struggle. This wasn't an accident."
He motioned toward a trail of faint smudges on the dry earth—like something had been dragged.
They led to the gate.
And then… vanished.
No more prints. No more drag marks.
"Wiped," Kavir said. "Whoever did this covered their tracks right outside the park."
Anika pocketed the bagged evidence. "I'll get it tested. See if it matches the DNA from the missing boy."
Ratan looked at the trail. "So they were dragged to the road. Car, maybe?"
"Or carried," Kavir said. "One thing's clear. This park wasn't just a hangout. It was a collection point."
They stood in silence for a moment.
A quiet wind blew past, stirring dead leaves.
Kavir crouched near the bushes. "From here… anyone standing at the road wouldn't see anything happening inside."
"A perfect blind spot," Anika whispered.
"And the city is full of them," Kavir replied.
Ratan looked around. "We need a list of every such area. Places without light. Without CCTV. With tall walls or thick vegetation. We start mapping the city like a rat maze."
Anika nodded. "I'll get a team."
"No," Kavir said. "Get students. Or ex-bullies. Get people who used these places for mischief. Criminals know criminals."
Ratan snapped his fingers. "Like creating a shadow map."
Anika looked between the two of them. "I'm starting to believe you two might actually be useful."
Kavir smirked. "Careful. That's dangerously close to a compliment."
That night, they returned to their office.
Kavir sat on the sofa, feet up, thinking.
Ratan was at the desk, typing a draft for their "Blind Spot Map Initiative."
Anika came in unannounced.
"Test results will take 48 hours," she said, dropping a file.
"And until then?" Kavir asked.
"We dig," she said. "The city isn't just watching anymore. It's panicking."
She walked to the window, looking at the skyline.
"You think he'll strike again?" she asked.
Kavir stared at the ceiling. "You tried to provoke him on national TV. You mocked him. Called him a coward."
She turned to him.
Kavir grinned, eyes half-lidded. "He'll strike again."
Then he rolled over and pulled a blanket over his face.
Ratan, without looking up, muttered, "Let's just hope we find him before he finds another student."