Ananya’s fingers flew across the keyboard, instinct taking over where logic had stalled. The first thing she did was try to trace the packet's origin. It was a fool's errand. The packet had been routed through a dozen public servers, from a library in Chennai to a university in Delhi, its signature scrubbed clean at every hop. The ghost was good.

Frustrated, she leaned back, the ominous Sanskrit phrase burning on her screen. Dharma protects those who protect it. Was this a threat? A mission statement?

Her phone buzzed, making her jump. It was a text from Raghav, her old colleague from AstraGen, the only one who didn't treat her like a pariah after the breach.

Raghav: Heard you left that soul-crushing boutique gig. Find anything interesting to chew on?

Ananya hesitated. Telling him could put him at risk. But she was in over her head.

Ananya: Maybe. Something big. And weird. You hear anything about Minister Singh's "accident"?

The reply came almost instantly.

Raghav: Funny you ask. It’s all anyone in the security circles is talking about. The car's black box data is a mess. Completely wiped, except for one corrupted audio file of him screaming. People are spooked. Be careful, Nani.

A cold knot formed in her stomach. Wiped data wasn't an accident; it was a cleanup. Before she could reply, a new notification popped up on her main monitor. It wasn't a system alert. It was a direct, encrypted message that had bypassed her firewall. Her heart hammered. No one had those credentials.

She opened the message. There was no sender ID, no subject. Just one line of text.

They know you saw the ghost in the stream. If you want to know what it is, be at the Third Wave Coffee on 80 Feet Road in one hour. Come alone. Delete this.

Paranoia, sharp and cold, washed over her. Was this a trap? Was it the creator of the AI luring her out? Or was it someone else? The message vanished from her screen, deleting itself as promised. She was left staring at her reflection in the dark monitor.

Forty-five minutes later, she was sitting in a corner booth of the coffee shop, nursing a black Americano she didn't want. The air was thick with the smell of roasted beans and the low hum of conversation. Every person who walked in was a potential threat. Her hand trembled as she lifted her cup.

A young woman entered, drenched from the rain, her eyes darting around the room. She spotted Ananya and walked over, sliding into the booth without a word. She looked terrified.

"You're Ananya Sharma," she whispered. It wasn't a question.

"Who's asking?" Ananya kept her voice low, her body tense.

"My name is Priya. I—I used to work for the Mumbai Water Board. In the IT department." She was clutching a small, worn-out laptop bag to her chest like a shield. "I'm the one who sent the message."

"How did you find me?"

"I didn't," Priya said, shaking her head. "I didn't even know your name. I saw the anomaly in the data stream two days ago. A non-standard packet piggybacking on sensor 4B. I flagged it. My boss told me to delete the flag and forget I ever saw it. He looked... scared. I knew something was wrong, so I put a tracker on the packet's metadata before I complied."

Ananya's eyes widened. "The tracker led you to me."

"It led me to the IP address that finally decrypted the packet an hour ago. I ran a reverse search. Found your name on a few old cybersecurity forums. I took a huge risk coming here."

"What do you want?" Ananya asked, still wary.

Priya slid a small, encrypted USB drive across the table. "That's everything I have. The raw data from the stream around the time I saw the packet. My boss's internal memos telling everyone to stand down. I think they're using the municipal sensor network as a mask for something else." She leaned in closer, her voice barely audible. "Yesterday, they fired me. Two men in suits came to my house and told me to forget all about 'data anomalies' if I wanted my family to be safe. I ran."

Ananya stared at the USB drive. This wasn't an ally handing her a solution; this was a terrified whistleblower handing her a time bomb.

"Why me?"

"Because you were the only other person who saw the ghost," Priya said, her eyes pleading. "And you were smart enough to catch it. Please. Find out what it is."

With that, she stood up, pulled her hood over her head, and slipped out of the café, disappearing into the rain-soaked Bangalore evening.

Ananya was left alone in the booth, the USB drive feeling unnervingly heavy in her palm. The ghost now had a trail. And she had a choice: follow it deeper into the darkness or pretend she never saw it at all. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that it was already too late to turn back.