Time Guard: The Awakening (21st Century) Page 7

  “I can get the reports from your place. Meanwhile, you chase Ankita in the past.”

  Arjun gently pulls out house keys from his pocket and throws them at Swati. “Also, can you get some of my clothes? They are in a cabinet in my room.”

  “How will I know which is your room?” Asks Swati while fiddling with the keys in her right hand.

  “The room has mine and Ankita’s photos all over the wall alongside the bed,” replies Arjun.

  “Nice! I’ll lock the door from the outside. If you return from the past before me, just give me a call,” says Swati, while wrapping herself in a long overcoat.

  “Ok. I will,” replies Arjun and walks towards the bed.

  Arjun lies down, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The next moment he pulls himself out as a soul. He observes Swati switching off the lights and walking out.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 10

  The Storm at the Airport

  23rd December 2012 10:30 PM | Jhang Bazaar, Faisalabad, Pakistan

  In the same abandoned butcher’s house Zaffar wraps himself in a blanket. Summoned by his mind to a new dream world, he finds himself stuck at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi.

  A blink of his eyes and he could feel his seatbelt crushing his waist as he sits in the window seat of a Boeing 747. He looks out of the window; the sky is crowded with storm clouds in shades of yellow and blood red, giving a golden lining to the clouds. The wind begins to blow in every direction. Dust spirals like tornados on the carpeted terminal and it soon starts to rain.

  To his surprise, it is not water that drips from the sky. With a striking sound, a metal arrow with a plastic tail hits the window and lodges itself in it. Zaffar turns his face away to protect himself from the flying glass shards. In front of him is an empty plane with its roof covered in arrows.

  “Excuse me Zaffar!” A sound pricks up his ears as it breaks through the noise of falling arrows. Though it had been years, Zaffar could still recognize the voice of Kaustav which echoed through the plane.

  Fear grips Zaffar as he tries to unbuckle his seat belt but fails to do so. The more force he applies, the tighter the seatbelt gets. After a minute of effort, Zaffar decides to slide out of the belt instead of attempting to unfasten it. The buckle tightens as he tries to slip out. The metal corners scratch him on his waist, drawing thin lines inked in blood.

  The belt tightens and more blood gushes from his abdomen. It gets absorbed in his green shirt, leaving brown stains. Finally, after an extreme struggle, he clambers out of his seat into the plane’s aisle as more arrows pierce the walls and roof.

  “Mr Zaffar, does this luggage belong to you?” a female voice echoes and grabs his attention. Zaffar turns around. Though Zaffar never clearly remembered the face of that air hostess, it came back to him in that moment.

  The bright Arabian face with big arc shaped eyebrows and blood red lipstick. She is wearing a mushroom-coloured blouse and a red hat. Despite so much resemblance, Zaffar couldn’t ignore the one difference in her appearance; Her eyes were completely hollow and he could see the scene behind her through the gap between the open eyelids as if the skull didn’t create a barrier

  A blink of eye and an arrow pierced through her head with its strike point close to her right ear. The arrow tunnels through her head, penetrating the other end near her left ear. It locks itself in her head and he can see the metal shaft passing right through her hollow eyes. But the strike doesn’t create any change in her expression.

  “Mr Zaffar, does this luggage belong to you?” She repeats. Zaffar looks back at her but doesn’t move a muscle. Anger and fear build within him as he recalls his last dream in the Yamuna sports Complex.

  Zaffar ignores her and fearlessly walks towards the exit. The holes created by the raining arrows let the air leak in. Zaffar could now clearly hear the noise of storm as he walks further towards the door.

  “Excuse me Zaffar!” The voice echoes in the plane and he could now hear it coming from the exit door itself. Recognizing the voice as that of Kaustav’s, he tightens his fists and takes cautious steps towards the exit. He vigilantly steps outside the plane’s exit door into the jet-bridge.

  The airhostess with the arrow lodged head follows Zaffar. She is carrying the same brown bag with her. Zaffar stands at the entrance of the jet-bridge and the hollow-eyed air hostess follows him. She halts a few feet away from him.

  Angrily, Zaffar turns around, and winds up a punch, which he aims at her faceHe thrusts his arm forward with full force. The airhostess drops the bag near his feet. The punch passes right through her. She gives Zaffar a horrifying grin.

  The next moment, both the air hostess and the plane covered with burning arrows drift backwards away from the jet-bridge, but the sound of her laugh continues to echo from within. Zaffar remains perplexed until the plane and the air hostess disappear from view. An arrow strikes his foot, further locking itself to the floor. Blood fountains out of the grooves around the arrow. Zaffar tries to pull himself away for a second.

  “ZAFFAR!” The loud voice of Kaustav echoes from the airport. Zaffar snaps the arrow in two, pulls out his foot and starts limping towards the jet-bridge exit, and into the airport.

  Kaustav waits for him at the terminal entry point dressed in the same white shirt with black straps on shoulders. His hollow eyes don’t surprise Zaffar. Anger boils further within him. Kaustav is holding, a thin film packet.

  Zaffar summons up his adrenaline. He swiftly drags his limping feet and tightens his fist to land a heavy blow on Kaustav’s face. As Zaffar walks closer to him, he smiles back with a mysterious grin. The next moment, he digs his nails into the thin plastic layer, tears it from the middle and blows it on to Zaffar’s face. The sound of the wind howls around Zaffar’s ears and a cloud of suffocating white powder surrounds him.

  Kaustav’s voice loudly echoes; “IT’S YOUR POISON, ZAFFAR!”

  His bleeding foot beings to hurt severely and his lungs feel the burn and suffocation at the same time. His eyes itch furiously as he tries to look around in the thick storm of the powder cloud. A minute later, an arrow stabs him in his back and a second later another one joins it in his left shoulder.

  Zaffar feels the suffocation of the drugs going on for hours. He eventually kneels down on the floor and closes his eyes. The drug storm gains strength and gradually rips Zaffar off the ground. He whirls around in the white tornado. More arrows stab him in various places. Soon, the pain is gone along with his consciousness, and his body disappears into the storm.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 11

  When They Took Her

  23rd December 11:00 PM | Swati’s Residence, New Delhi

  A clicking sound and Swati locks the door from the outside. Arjun glides near the kitchen clock and stares at it. The seconds hand comes to a halt first and then starts moving in anti-clock wise direction. The hour hand makes 21 spins and the clock reaches 1:30.

  13th December 2012 1:30 PM | Swati’s Residence, New Delhi

  Arjun looks out of the kitchen window as the sun shines brightly in the afternoon. Seconds later he passes through the ceiling and rises up in the bright sunny afternoon. A minute later, Arjun reaches Aditya Hospital.

  He heads straight to Ankita’s seat and feels happy to find her sitting there. The room also had another chair parked under the table with a white coat hanging from its back. The table is neatly arranged with a thermometer, torch and stethoscope lying in a tray along the side of it. The front edge of the table also had a name tag - “Dr Akif Parvez.”

  “Seems like Akif is out of hospital at the moment,” He thinks to himself and steps closer to Ankita.

  A minute later, a cleaner comes into the room, to whom Ankita curiously asks;

  “Shambo ji, I am not sure if I left any papers on the table yesterday evening. Did you find any on this seat or on Dr Akif’s Table?”

  “I don’t think so; I cleaned both the tables at eight in the morning but there wer
e no papers on the seat,” replies Shambo, a short old man in his late 50s with a dark face and white beard.

  Ankita gasps in despair and asks Shambo, “Any idea what time Akif arrived in the morning?”

  “Doctor Sahab came around 9.00 AM and left within minutes,” answers Shambo doubtfully.

  “Alright Shambo ji! I will call you if I need anything,” replies Ankita.

  Shambo leaves the room and Ankita pulls out her cellphone. She opens WhatsApp and drops a message to Akif. “What time will you be back at the hospital?”

  “I am outside near the Gurudwara. Just about to park my car. Will be there in a few minutes.”

  “Do you have that patient’s report?” asks Ankita through messenger.

  “NO,” replies Akif.

  Ankita briskly locks her phone, puts it in her bag and starts walking towards the exit. She steps out of the hospital entrance towards the main road.

  13th December 2012 2:00 PM | Yusuf Sarai Market, New Delhi

  Arjun continues to follow Ankita, who is standing near the busy street looking at the Gurudwara from a distance, trying to search for Akif in the crowd. A minute later she pulls out her phone and sends another message.

  “I am waiting outside the hospital. We need to talk. It’s URGENT,” she quickly types the message.

  As Ankita continues to look around, a hand pricks her with a needle on her folded arm, which is holding the cellphone. A young bearded guy with no moustache, wearing a black Kurta gazes at her, expressionless. Ankita looks back at him with gloomy eyes. She starts to feel dizzy.

  Arjun gets restless witnessing all this. He tries to hold Ankita but fails to do so. His hands pass right through her body. Ankita drops into the arms of the bearded guy. Ferociously, Arjun tries to grab the bearded guy but fails again. Meanwhile, a white Scorpio stops by and the bearded Guy drags Ankita into the car.

  “ANKITA!” A concerned loud voice comes from a distance alongside the Gurudwara.

  Arjun rises a few feet to get a better view. From a distance, he finds a horrified Akif running towards them, watching Ankita getting dragged into the white Scorpio.

  The bearded guy says to the other man sitting inside the car, “He is the second one.”

  The next moment, two guys wearing Taqiyah step out of the rear door. Both of them carry revolvers in their hand. The duo drop on to the pavement and start chasing Akif.

  The crowd starts making room for the two gun bearers as both of them start rushing down the sidewalk. Akif gets nervous seeing armed men rushing towards him. He starts running in the opposite direction towards the other end of Gurudwara.

  Meanwhile, the white Scorpio starts to move. For a moment, Arjun stands still, caught in a dilemma of whether to chase the gunmen who are pursuing Akif, or to follow the white Scorpio.

  The car moves off to a distance. Arjun looks at its broken number plate. – ‘B 6786’. Arjun decides on sticking to the plan and continues to follow the white Scorpio.

  The Car goes straight past another hospital, jumping the traffic lights, and takes a turn towards the right on the ring road. A few kilometres ahead, it comes to a halt near a highway crossroads.

  The same bearded man steps out of the car with the other half of the broken plate and screws it up alongside the remaining part.

  “HR 26 AB 6786” Arjun reads the number plate and memorises it.

  The car continues to move on the highway towards the neighbouring city, Gurgaon. After a few kilometres, it steers into a village named Jharsa, alongside the National Highway.

  From the traffic lights, the car turns right from the highway into a wide lane with hardware and scrap metal shops on the road. The white Scorpio goes deep into the village where the lanes narrow down and the metal shops are now replaced by small dairy farms, with buffalo droppings covering the entire lane.

  The car stops near an abandoned house with an old brass lock hanging in the middle. Arjun tries to recall if he has seen this place before while searching for Ankita, but couldn’t conclude anything.

  The bearded man steps out and pulls the unconscious Ankita from the car’s rear seat. Another man from the back of the car steps out and opens the lock. The door opens into a yard with further closed doors on two sides and a shelter on the right. The yard has brick flooring with mud patches in different places. Arjun observes a light brown hay bale stacked in the shape of a hill in one corner of the yard, near the door

  “Seems like this place once served as a dairy farm,” Arjun concludes.

  Three more men step out of the car and the last one bolts the door from the inside. Arjun continues to follow them. The bearded guy carries Ankita in his arms while one of the men opens the door to a room on the left hand side of the yard.

  The door opens into a small room with a single bed placed along one edge. One of the corners opposite to the bed contains a pile of half burned wood and shrivelled polythene bags and the other corner houses empty beer bottles arranged like bowling pins. The room also has a fan hanging in the middle from one of the angled beams, which is supporting the shed across the ceiling.

  One of the men switches on the light and the bearded guy puts Ankita on the bed and questions his colleague. “What time will she wake up?”

  “Approximately two hours more. You go and arrange some food for her,” the middle-aged guy with a mole on his face replies.

  Arjun takes a thorough look around and then rises up into the sky. A village with single storied houses and narrow lanes crowded with bikes and buffalos. Near the village, Arjun could see a bunch of tall buildings painted in red yellow, with green glass.

  “This building is visible from quite a distance and can be used as a landmark,” Arjun thinks, while rising up further into the Sky. He looks around for Qutab Minar and starts flying towards it.

  24th December 2012 1:30 AM | Swati’s Residence, New Delhi

  Arjun is back in his body. The moment he wakes up, he looks around the premises.

  Swati isn’t back yet.

  He fetches his cell-phone and dials her number.

  “I know where Ankita is,” Arjun tells her, the moment she answers.

  “Where is she?”

  “She is in a village in Gurgaon, Jharsa. I am leaving for Gurgaon,” replies Arjun

  “Wait! She was there in Jharsa on the thirteenth of December. Are you sure they would have kept her there for ten days?”

  “Not sure,” mutters Arjun.

  “Perhaps you can make a quick trip as a soul and find out if she is still there or not. I have Billal’s reports with me. I will reach home in another ten minutes. You can check her presence and be back by then.”

  “OK,” replies Arjun and hangs up.

  Arjun rushes to the bed again and leaves his soul the next second. He swiftly glides up to the sky towards Gurgaon and quickly traces the red and yellow Building near Jharsa. A minute later he reaches the abandoned dairy farm again which has the same brass lock hanging from the door.

  “Have they locked Ankita inside?” Wonders Arjun for a moment and then glides through the door.

  The animal fodder grabs Arjun’s attention again. “If there are no buffalos or goats on this farm, then why does this place still have animal fodder here?” Arjun thinks for a moment, but then ignores his thoughts and continues to look around.

  The same vacated dairy farm with broken flooring and damp walls. The dark, empty farm now saddens Arjun, as he searches and finds nobody there. He sweeps through the walls of each room multiple times, only to find emptiness. He looks in the room where Ankita was being kept, only to find a broken button from her overcoat.

  Disappointed, Arjun steps out in the front yard and hastily looks around. Unwilling to accept the truth, he glides through the adjoining houses to look for Ankita. After an hour of restless struggle, he flies up into the sky, back towards Swati’s residence.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 12

  The Hands of Blessings

  Zaffar regains his senses; he open
s his eyes and finds himself back at the airport. Kaustav is nowhere to be seen. He looks out of the tall windows at the airport. It’s a bright sunny morning with a clear sky. The passengers continue to walk in both directions, most of them carrying their luggage.

  Zaffar looks at his clothes and finds them to be clean and spotless. He quickly bends to look at his stabbed foot and sees that it is unmarked and encased in a clean sports shoe. He wriggles his foot to confirm it. Though bewildered, he feels relaxed on seeing that there is no damage.

  He quickly gets to his feet and finds the same brown bag on his shoulders. He pulls it off and turns it upside-down to see the same line of stitches running along the edges. Not sure of what to do, he starts walking forwards and takes a seat in a golf cart. A lady sits alongside him. She is wearing black sunglasses and seems to intentionally ignore his presence.

  The golf cart driver parks the car near a notice board embossed with a signage that says ‘Immigration’ - pointing down the escalators. Zaffar avoids going downstairs and decides to go to the nearest toilet.

  He looks around for a minute and finds one opposite to a vending machine. He approaches the toilet. From a few feet he sees a man stepping out of the cubicle, wearing dark sunglasses. Zaffar briskly walks towards the door but finds it to be locked.

  “How come this one is locked when a guy just walked out of it?” He wonders to himself.

  He tries another toilet, and then another, but can’t get in any of the doors. After a while of searching he finds no possibility of opening even a single one. As the morning sun rises further, the crowd increases. He decides to go downstairs and stand in the immigration line.

  He walks down the escalators and stands at the end of the queue. Seconds later, a man wearing black sunglasses stands behind him, and then another. A minute passes by. Zaffar drags his feet further through the maze, like a corridor drawn in velvet strips running across mounted pillars.