"Did you have to be so obvious with that IB-12 guard?" Mitran was yelling angrily, and this time he was pacing his room at the eight-storey TTI building. "He was just doing his job."

"Chief!" Omkar sighed and, frankly, he had given up yelling. "He kept a bad watch. Move on!"

With his bandaged nose and forehead, Omkar looked bad enough, and yes, he had endured some yelling from the night shift doctor for that too.

Dr. Bhide was resting in the TTI clinic bed as of now.

After the initial worry about how the doc had taken his first and only kidnapping, Omkar saw the doctor yelling at Omkar, as soon as he had seen Omkar, and no, Omkar had no other doubts about the mental well being of the doc.

As usual, Mitran was in a bad mood.

"Tapesh Agarwal, wants your head for doing what you did at IB-12."

"Who the fuck is Tapesh Agarwal?" For a change, that came from Vidyut.

Now, without Vani at his home and acting as a diversion for a break-in into a high security prison, Vidyut was still trying to get most of the facts right.

Vidyut did not understand many things.

The original plan had been to just go to IB-12.

Vidyut did not even understand where that had come from.

Even as Mitran was signing the register at IB-12, Omkar had seen who had come to the place before them – courtesy of the register, and as usual, after that, the dude had gone nuts.

All Vidyut had seen was a belligerent Omkar pushing a guard back angrily, asking the guard how he had not been able to recognize someone as important as Mitran or how the guard had the audacity to ask a man like Mitran to come to a place like this.

The next thing, Vidyut knew, between a placating Mitran, a furious guard, and an angry Omkar, the dude had vanished. And by "dude," that meant Omkar.

The furious/stupid IB-12 guard had taken ten full minutes to realize that.

Which was when they all heard the damned gunshot.

The furious guard was now joined by a very important looking dude and three other guards, and they had all raced towards a cell, only to find it locked from the inside.

In between yelling at the door (stupidly) and hearing another gunshot from the room, the guards had broken it down.

God, Omkar had looked foolish with his broken nose.

Vidyut was not stupid enough to misjudge what had happened in the closed cell.

But he did not understand why Shreya was suddenly the good girl now.

Yes, it had been painful for Vidyut when Shreya had been arrested three months back.

But Vidyut knew that Omkar and Shreya were closer. Omkar and Shreya had joined TTI at the same time, and they had together formed EZ1. Aadi had joined at the same time. But Aadi had always been a military man. He had that air of seriousness. Most of the time, Shreya and Omkar had ganged up against the ex-commando—which had been the reason for breaking the ice between Aadi and the other two.

Yes, they had their history, and Vidyut knew that Shreya's arrest had hurt Omkar terribly, though he never talked about it

As far as Vidyut could make out now, the end result of Omkar's shenanigans today, were that Shreya had always been a good girl and, coming to know that, the important looking guy from IB-12 had literally blown his top.

But that whimpering Kairav said something about Dr. Bhide, and things changed again.

After apprehending Omkar, Shreya, and Kairav Saral in that prison, Mitran and the chief of IB-12 were having a high-volume shouting match.

The end result was that, after a lot of yelling, Shreya was about to be released in three days.

When Mitran and that IB-12 chief were having a fighting match, Omkar disappeared again.

Vidyut did not know what to think about that.

After all that was over and they were back, Mitran had been relieved to see Bhide at the TTI clinic, and Mitran had thanked Omkar for that.

No, Vidyut did not know what Omkar had done about that either.

Mitran snorted, angrily eyeing Vidyut. "What is with you? Why are you asking such stupid questions?"

No, Vidyut did not appear chastised. Just a little confused. He thought that Mitran was in one of his rants and gave it up. Omkar would figure it out and tell Vidyut later. Of that, Vidyut had no doubts.

"It is not a stupid question, chief." Omkar amended. "It is an irrelevant question. Why does Vidyut need to know the name of the chief person of IB-12?"

Mitran snarled angrily. "Shut up!"

Then, a second later, Mitran looked a little less angry. Why, became obvious to Vidyut a little later. "I failed Shreya, Om." For the first time in living memory, Mitran sounded broken to Vidyut. "I should have looked deeper. She is TTI. I chose her. And I just abandoned her, when she needed her people."

Vidyut was appalled on hearing that.

So was Omkar. "Chief, there is nothing much you could have done beyond a confession."

There was silence for a few seconds, and Mitran still looked moody. "Will she understand that?"

"She does not blame you, chief." Omkar told his boss in a gentle tone. "She hates Kairav and that is it. She does not have any grudges against us."

At the mention of that name, Mitran saw red again. "I will make sure that asshole can't walk for the next three months!"

"If it helps, I broke one of his knees, chief." Omkar offered.

Mitran studied Omkar, and there was a dull smile at that. Yes, it was wrong, and no, none of the men in that room thought that was wrong.

Mitran's smile changed when he remembered something else. "Tapesh wants to reprimand you and wants you demoted, Om." Mitran studied Omkar. "And I had been in half a mind to allow that...."

Before Mitran could complete that sentence, Omkar butted in. "Chief, I am an agent here. I am not ranked. No one here is. How is he going to demote me?"

Yup, that was a very bad question to ask.

Omkar was sure that all of Mitran's nice and guilty mood had just evaporated. Yes, Omkar wanted that. Mitran looked terrible when he tried to be nice. He really did.

Besides, to be fair to Omkar, he did not address the reprimand issue. It was a touchy thing for everyone else at TTI. Till date, Omkar had twenty-five reprimands in his eleven year career—that was the highest for any TTI agent anywhere. A reprimand stayed on the record of the agent, and for every reprimand, the agent's overtime pay got cut. What Omkar hoped no one else knew was that he read the reprimands in his spare time because it made for some hilarious reading. Omkar did not even know what his overtime pay was, to get worried about that.

"Leave. My. Office. Now." Mitran barked angrily.

"Chief, I can't do this on a piecemeal basis now." Omkar was very serious. "Finish yelling at me for this time. I got a wife and I need to spend some time with her. I just cannot be dragged for this again and again."

There was another stifling silence for another second. Mitran finally realized that he had actually wasted a lot of his time and sympathy on an idiot who did not deserve it, not an inch of it.

"Why are you like this?" Mitran whined in exasperation.

Omkar and Vidyut studied each other, and then Vidyut shook his head.

"He really has a wife and she could be angry with him, chief." Vidyut offered in a clarificatory tone. "He has been like this for six months now." Vidyut amended that. "I mean, she was not always angry with him. That could be a thing that happened this morning with the whole Vani thing. Or could be the whole Bhide doc thingy..."

"He gets the point!" Omkar yelled angrily. "Keep your mouth shut."

"Why?" Vidyut demanded. "You think, Mitran doesn't know all that you do?"

There was a second silence as Omkar snarled angrily at Vidyut. Even more mercifully, Omkar did nothing about Vidyut's comment, or Mitran knew he was going to have a bickering in his hands.

As if Mitran did not have enough problems in his life.

Thankfully, Mitran hadn't wasted his sympathy on Vidyut. Or he would have regretted that too.

"Out! I want both of you out of my office. NOW!"