Fade in. Static hum.
A projector flickers against the wall of Division 13's conference room. Slides click, one after another — crime scene photographs blurred by overexposure, rain, and blood-light glare.
ACP Mehta's voice cuts through:
"Twenty-three new bodies in three weeks. Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata. Same pattern — organ extraction, no traceable entry, no witness."
Aarav sits at the end of the table, silent, eyes fixed on the final slide: a symbol drawn in rust and water on concrete — the same stitched human outline he saw in Dharavi.
Dr. Nira Joshi pushes her glasses higher. "I ran DNA tests twice. You won't like the result."
Mehta: "Try us."
Joshi's tone tightens. "The samples match victims from the 1980s… and the 2000s. Some of these people have already been dead for decades."
The projector clicks off. The room darkens. Only the city's sirens echo from outside.
Mehta mutters, "So either someone's recycling evidence… or he's been killing before we were born."
Aarav, almost whispering: "He rebuilds himself."
---
Cut to newsroom.
Ceiling fans spin above a swarm of reporters. The smell of stale coffee and ink. Advaita Roy, late twenties, tired eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, types like she's carving through the keyboard.
She reads from her notes:
> "The Patch Man isn't a murderer. He's a mirror. Each death reflects the rot we ignore — organs sold, faces forgotten, names erased. He only rearranges what we already broke."
Her editor leans over her desk. "You write like he's a prophet."
She looks up. "Maybe prophets just know where to cut."
---
Cut to night street — Delhi.
Rain slicks the asphalt. Police cars flash under broken flyovers. A team uncovers another body — unseen by camera, only gloves, flashlights, and raincoats.
Father D'Souza stands nearby, rosary in hand. His voice trembles:
"I've seen his kind once… long ago. A boy from an orphanage near Pune. Said God stitched him back after the fire."
Aarav: "You're saying this man—"
Father D'Souza interrupts: "—was never a man. He was what remained when love and pain fused too long."
The camera lingers on Aarav's face — the rain on his eyelashes, the unease he hides behind training.
---
Interior – Aarav's apartment.
He lies awake, the file beside him again.
Dream fragments flicker — blood seeping into concrete, a hand stitching flesh, voices whispering from radio static:
> "To rebuild, one must first break."
"You are what survives you."
He wakes, sweating, the light from a billboard painting red waves on his wall. The radio, still on from earlier, murmurs a broadcast:
> "…another killing in Byculla… authorities remain silent…"
He switches it off. The silence is too complete — then a faint knock at his door.
When he opens it, no one stands there. Only a folded newspaper lies on the floor.
The headline reads:
"The Patch Man Returns — 1,000 Souls and Counting."
In red ink beneath the print, someone has written:
> You're looking for me, but what if I'm looking back?
The paper flutters in the night wind. Aarav stares, then slowly folds it and places it on his table beside the file.
Cut to black.