The air inside the clinic had changed.
Not temperature. Not scent.
Weight.
It had grown heavier. Denser. As if the walls had inhaled something that hadn't been meant for lungs.
A shadow loomed near the desk, unmoving.
Then it turned.
And the room remembered how to shiver.
-----
"Ah," the voice drawled, smooth as lacquered steel,
"So, it's you. The man behind the questions."
His coat caught the lamp's light just enough to outline the edges—neat, deliberate. Not a wrinkle out of place.
Dr. Rafiq didn't look startled. He looked like he had been waiting.
Isarish stepped out of the shadows.
"You know me?"
Dr. Rafiq offered a smile—thin, serene, insincere.
"Of course. Your name arrives before you do. Like smoke."
He gestured toward the scattered papers.
"You've seen them, haven't you? The names. The symbols. The poetry carved into bodies."
His hand hovered over a file. Not touching—blessing.
"But do you see what they truly are?"
Isarish's voice stayed dry. Calm.
"Show me."
Rafiq chuckled. No amusement in it—only calculation.
"They're not just names. They're coordinates." "Points on a design far older than your badge or mine."
Alice stepped forward.
Her voice cracked—not from volume, but from the unbearable weight behind it.
"You killed him."
He turned to face her.
"My brother," she said, teeth clenched behind trembling lips.
"You smiled at him. He trusted you. And you killed him."
There was a softness in Rafiq's face—but it didn't reach the eyes.
"He asked questions," he said gently.
"And the world has always been unkind to the curious."
Isarish's smirk vanished. His tone, too.
Now it was a scalpel.
"And what are you, Doctor?"
Dr. Rafiq's gaze returned to him. Calm. Composed. Too still.
"A surgeon," he said. "In more ways than one."
"I do not kill. I remove… disease. Guilt. Illusions."
He took one step forward.
"The truth, detective, is not something you find. It's something you're invited into."
Isarish didn't blink.
"Then invite me."
Rafiq smiled again. This time, wider.
"Oh, I will. When you're ready to bleed."
He turned and walked away—his footsteps echoing not like exits, but like promises.
Rayhan raised his revolver, but Isarish stopped him.
"Let him go."
"Are you out of your mind?!" Rayhan replied out of rage
"We're not chasing prey," Isarish replied.
"We're mapping a predator."
Alice collapsed to the floor.
Not dramatically. Just… quietly.
Like something inside her had finally stopped pretending to hope.
Tears streaked down her face—not loud. Not gasping.
Silent. Straight. Grief without theatre.
"He killed him," she whispered. "And he looked at me like it didn't matter."
Isarish crouched beside her. His face unreadable.
"It mattered to you," he said softly. "And that's why it matters to me."
They returned to the station.
Files lay open like wounds no one had closed.
The names weren't just ink on paper anymore.
They had faces. Patterns. Silence.
Twelve profiles.
Twelve different people.
But each one had been in Rafiq's care.
And each one had vanished like steam from a closed window.-
"They trusted him," Isarish murmured.
"They thought he saw them as patients." "He saw them as keys."
Alice stared at the names.
Each face flickered across the wall.
She looked at them the way one might look at graves lined without flowers.
"So… they're all dead?"
Isarish didn't answer right away.
"They're lost," he said. "And he knows where to find them."
Rayhan stepped closer.
"So, what now?"
Isarish's smile returned.
Not joy.
Certainty.
"Now?"
"Now we make him bleed a little too."