The SIT command center was a hive of digital noise and paper trails. ACP Vikram Aditya paced the room like a caged tiger.
"Start from the beginning," Vikram ordered. "Not the first body we found—the first person who went off the grid."
Ethan Stan, the hacker, bypassed encrypted archives for hours until a name popped up: Druvi K. Murthy.
"Wait," Vishwa noted, leaning over Ethan's shoulder. "Druvi disappeared three years ago. The serial killings started six months after that. Before Druvi, there's a gap. If we find out what happened to her, we find the origin of the rage."
Inspector Athira Swaminathan sat in the corner, her face illuminated by the blue light of the monitors. She was the one who pushed for Druvi's file to be linked to the serial killer. "Druvi was my sister," she said, her voice a low, steady vibration. "She was the first. The rest are just echoes of her."