Ajay let out a cold, mocking laugh. “Do you really think I use my personal device for this? The phone you texted is a burner, registered to a dead man. It’s already sitting at the bottom of the river. As far as the world is concerned, Meera took a sudden leave of absence from work to visit her hometown, checked out of her apartment, and vanished. The paperwork is already filed.”
He took another step forward. Meera swung the lamp wildly. Ajay ducked easily, grabbing the metal shaft and wrenching it out of her grip with brutal strength. He tossed it aside, the heavy base shattering the glass coffee table with a deafening crash.
The impact sent shards of glass flying across the room. One sharp fragment sliced across Meera’s cheek, leaving a thin line of bright red blood.
Seeing her blood seemed to trigger something in Ajay. “Look what you’re doing,” he snapped, his voice rising in agitation. “You’re ruining the timeline. The medical transport team is waiting in the basement garage right now!”
He lunged at her again. Meera tried to duck, but her foot caught on the edge of the rug. She crashed heavily onto the floor, the breath knocked completely out of her lungs. Before she could inhale, Ajay was on top of her, pinning her knees down with his shins and placing a heavy hand tightly over her mouth, muffling her screams into desperate, suffocating whimpers.
With his free hand, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a backup vial and a fresh needle.
“It’s just a sedative,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against her skin. “You’ll go to sleep, and you won’t feel a thing. Think of it this way, Meera… your meaningless, lonely life will give twenty more years to a beautiful little girl who actually has a future.”
Meera suffocated beneath his weight. Tears of absolute helplessness blinded her vision. She could feel the sharp prick of the needle pressing against the skin of her forearm. Her strength was fading; her muscles ached from the impact of the fall.
Is this how it ends? she thought bitterly. Tricked by the only man I ever trusted?
As her hand flailed wildly against the carpet, searching for anything to use, her fingers brushed against a small, metallic object that had spilled from her purse earlier.
It was her heavy, solid steel pepper-spray canister—disguised as a high-end designer lipstick casing, a gift from her overprotective college roommate years ago. She had never used it. She had always thought it was unnecessary.
Summoning every remaining ounce of adrenaline in her body, Meera wrapped her fingers around the canister. She didn’t try to aim for his face—his head was positioned too far back. Instead, she blindly raised her hand and pressed the trigger mechanism directly into his exposed ear canal.
A concentrated, pressurized stream of high-grade capsicum oleoresin blasted directly into Ajay’s ear and splashed across the side of his face.
The effect was instantaneous.
Ajay shrieked in agony—a guttural, animalistic sound. The chemical agent burning through his ear and entering his eye caused blinding, neurological pain. He immediately released his grip on her mouth, clutching his face and rolling off her, thrashing violently on the floor.
“Ahhhh! My eye! You bitch!” he screamed, completely incapacitated by the intense burning.
Meera didn’t waste a single second. She scrambled to her feet, coughing from the residual fumes in the air. She rushed back to the main entryway, her eyes scanning the wall near the door. There it was—the master control panel for the suite’s automation.
With trembling hands, she began smashing every button on the touch screen. Lights off. Curtains open. Climate control. Finally, her finger hit a button labeled: EMERGENCY BYPASS / FIRE ALARM.
A high-pitched, piercing siren instantly shattered the silence of Room 806. Red strobe lights began flashing violently against the walls.
Simultaneously, the electronic deadbolt on the main door clicked open automatically—a safety feature built into the hotel’s fire management system to allow emergency access.
Meera threw the door open and sprinted out into the long, carpeted hallway.
“Help! Fire! Murder!” she screamed, her voice hoarse, her face streaked with tears and blood.
