Only V

Chapter 11 - Journey to abyss

A fleet of men surrounded the room as they came in through the doors, windows and balcony. They picked up Akash and carried him away.

Anirudh shouts in agitation, "Hey! Where do you think you're taking him"

Lector speaks from outside, "Don't worry, I did not kill him. He's just asleep and he'll be coming with us."

Anirudh comes over to Ishank where he sees him curled up on the couch, wiping his tears off. Anirudh sits besides Ishank and says, "I cannot believe it. This has to be a trick. I know we haven't witnessed a power like this before. But Pratyush is not an imbecile."

"Bu-But all these weeks we spent together, I couldn't build up the courage to tell him that I did in fact trusted him from the heart."

"What are you talking about?"

"Me and Pratyush. There was this cheating scandal that was busted a couple of years ago and Pratyush was the main suspect. We were roommates then. He told me about the seniors forcing him to take part in the whole plan. I was working on my summer internship at that time, I couldn't get involved. I should have gotten him out in the first place. I looked him in the eye and made him promise that he won't succumb to such measures. But, I did not know the full extent of the story. He was blackmailed. A senior, Manav emphasised that if Pratyush did not become a pawn in his plan, he will ask his friend in the placement cell to blacklist Pratyush and me. This would also have taken away my internship and his PPO. He tried telling me the full story and about the video but I ignored the details and just advised him to stay away from the matter. He then thought that it would be the best to just put a blindfold on his morals for once and get this over with. Things turned out to be worse and he finally had no choice left but to help the seniors cheat in their backlog exam.

He got busted due to an insider mole  among the seniors. The seniors blamed Pratyush and things got heated between the two. Manav slapped Pratyush and started a fight. The whole group got up on him to beat him. He ran out of there but he was not fast enough. He got caught in the sports field. It was do or die. In self-defence, Pratyush threw a rock at one of the senior which injured him bad enough to be an emergency. It hit the back of his head, just above his neck and he started fell to the ground and started bleeding. Horrified, Pratyush ran out of there and thought the seniors would surely help their friend but as it turns out, even the seniors ran away in fear of getting caught. Due to not getting immediate medical attention, the senior got permanently paralyzed. The authorities did not catch Pratyush as they were unsure of the main culprit. However, he got a sem-back, he lost his scholarship and his upcoming PPO was cancelled.

I got to know about the incident by Manav. He manipulated the details and made it look as if Pratyush was the only one responsible for the whole incident. I did not make it easy on him. I did not know the whole context and I believed taking someone's life away by paralyzing him was a sin not to be forgiven. I thought he broke my trust. I lashed out on him, stopped talking to him and even changed my room to Ishan's. We had this little physical fight too at the open air theatre. The video got viral in the campus.

Anger and agitation brought out the worst in me. I called his sick mother and told her about the incident as I thought it would be in the best interest of him, but actually it was just my mind bending the truth, it was not for his best interest but for mine. I wanted to see him in despair. But the situation went downhill. The news of his scholarship being cancelled shocked his mother and her medical condition worsened. She is in the hospital since.

I got to know the full truth after many months by a classmate who made a video from afar on the spot at that time."

Ishank's hands trembled with a mixture of grief and rage, the unspoken words of farewell choking his throat as tears silently streamed down his dirt-streaked cheeks. His face was a canvas of raw emotion, etched with lines of anguish and disbelief. His brows furrowed in a deep frown, his jaw clenched tightly, and his eyes, once vibrant with life, were now clouded with tears and a burning fury.