Clandestine

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~That Man By Your Side~

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3:00pm

I wake up to the sounds of nurses shuffling around me. I don't wait and immediately get up rubbing my head.

"Ms. Prakash, welcome back. You were affected by the monoxide I don't know if you recall, so we aided you", the nurse nearest to me said.

"Thank you, what about Himanshu and Agent Castro?"

The door opens and the nurse looks up.

"Right here", she smiles as she gathers some medical supplies and leaves.

Himanshu comes in, a little sweaty.

"Hey, you okay?", he kneels down by my bed as I sit up and bring my knees to the side of the bed.

"Yeah, maybe some water." My head slowly starts to throb.

He immediately gets up to find some but I stop him with my hand. "Did everyone go home safely?"

He looks me in the eye. "Yeah, yeah everyone did. We have cops surrounding the school as well as the Principal."

He gets a bottle of water to me as I not so girly chug half the bottle.

"Not to sound rude of course, but why are you here?"

He laughs. "We are all here, even Castro."

My brows raise in surprise. "Boss let you and Hiral in?"

He gets his own water bottle and sits down in front of me. "Yeah, he said we proved we weren't enemies and I think he is going to recruit us for this mission."

Castro opens the door before I can comment. "Himanshu we need you here for a second. Tejasswi, glad you're okay."

Himanshu gives me a smile and leaves closing the door. I get up from the bed to tie my thick curly hair in a low ponytail and I shrug my olive cargo jacket out to reveal my plain white long sleeve tee tucked in black jeans.

My body is tired from the monoxide hit and my fingers hurt as I stretch them, recalling how I had to dismantle complicated bombs quickly.

They made it so it could be dismantled, so what were they trying to do?

Then again almost all bombs can be manually dismantled which is a good thing in any case.

Karan barges in two minutes and sighs heavily. He walks towards me and pulls me in a tight hug, hand in my hair.

Surprised, I hug him back.

"Feel okay?", he ask voice muffled in my hair as he rests his head on mine.

"Yeah, it was just monoxide. What happened with you where did you go?"

"It's a long story", he responds still drinking up my presence as I was his.

I was worried about him and Hiral.

I guess I got used to having him with me.

Felt weird when he wasn't.

"Well that's what partners are for I'm guessing, tell me."

He stays silent for a few beats and I let go of our embrace, urging him to tell me. He huffs, annoyed I let go and finally answers.