Everything around the duo seemed to have come to a standstill. There was the smell of blood in the air. Rana and Rudra started making their way towards their shelter. They noticed the night forest started getting on to them. They started to feel the coldness of the wind on their bones, the darkness taking away their senses. But this one certain path was traveled by the two far too many times, they would never lose their way. They were Rangers after all, anyone else would have easily surrendered. Rana and Rudra had made their way out.
.
They did not talk to each other. What they had experienced was something of the extraordinary. The door to their basement was opened and they allowed themselves to fall on their beds. Even if they were to discuss what went down, their minds were not in the right place at that moment. The cooldown was very much necessary.
.
The next morning, Rudra woke up to see Rana's vacant bed. Feeling a bit wary, considering the things that happened the other day, Rudra climbed the basement stairs to the office space. There he saw his superior working on something at his maximum focus. A new map of the forest now occupies a wall of the office that had been wiped clean. Copies of certain diary entries and pictures of strange objects also occupied the wall space. The image of a prostrated Rana came to Rudra's mind. Seeing the focused man in front of him, he felt a sense of suffocation.
"What's going on, Sir? What is all this!"
"Ah! Yes, Rudra.", Rana replies.
Rudra went through the dozens of paper sheets that occupied the wall.
"That is the copy of the journal of the Chief Engineer Ayub. He was the one who led the first survey party."
"Why do you have all this? … I thought the government had seized all the research data of the survey.", Rudra's eyes wandered through the wall.
Rana turned around and faced Rudra.
"We would have been killed yesterday. By whatever those things were. But we weren't. I couldn't tell you then, Rudra. You did well. Extremely well"
Rudra noticed something different from Rana. For the past 5 months that he had spent with Rana, he had never seen him with such focus and excitement. It felt as if Rana had discovered something. Something that he had been searching for a long time. He also understood then that it was the beginning of something big.
"Sir, what happened to your brother? Does all of this have anything to do with your brother?"
The question stopped Rana's train of thought. Rana looks at the wall and replied.
"I had given up on him, you know? I thought I would be left behind knowing nothing about him. But all of this. And yesterday. I understood something."
Rudra made a puzzled expression.
"You're not making sense, Sir!"
"My brother Naga was part of the survey team that went missing 13 years ago. I came here to find him, Rudra. I have been trying for the last 8 years. This job was something that was given to me because I specifically asked for it. I asked for it to honor my brother. He too was a Ranger like us."
Rana pauses and pointed his finger at the map of the forest.
"I found my resolve, Rudra. I am going to find out the secrets that this forest holds. I am going to find my brother. Yesterday, I found the missing piece that I have been searching for."
Rana plucks off a sheet of paper from the wall and shows it to Rudra.
"This is from the journal of the survey party's Chief Engineer Ayub. In this, he had plotted certain points on the map. I had always thought that it was a sketch of a possible road that they could have created to connect the two checkpoints. But it is not.
.
.
Rudra, the survey party was not only here to survey the forest. They were here to search for something. Something strange that possibly took their lives.
I have prepared my mind, Rudra. I have been staying here all this time for this. When you prepare today's report, you should write that Inspector Rana was killed in the forest by a tiger and you have traded your life for his dead body. There are still people outside who believe in me and my responsibilities. I can only go forward if it is like this. I hope you will do this for me."