The rain in Kolkata didn't wash things clean; it just made the filth wetter.
Ranveer sat in the waiting room of the 'Lifeline Heritage Clinic,' a crumbling colonial building in the shadowed alleys of North Kolkata. He fit right in. He wore a ragged, rain-soaked grey shirt and loose trousers. He sat hunched over, coughing deliberately into a stained handkerchief, his frame shivering as if racked by fever.
To the bored receptionist chewing gum behind the glass counter, he was just another desperate laborer seeking cheap medicine. To the dozen other patients staring at the floor, he was invisible.
But inside his blood, the Crown was screaming.
It wasn't a computer; it was a predator. It didn't like waiting. It could smell the rot beneath the floorboards—the scent of blood mixed with formaldehyde. It wanted to hunt. Ranveer clamped his hand over his wrist, forcing the black veins that threatened to surface back under his skin. Not yet, he thought.
"Mr. Roy?" the nurse called out, her voice flat. "Room 3."
Ranveer stood up slowly, clutching his side. He shuffled toward the corridor.
But he didn't turn left toward Room 3.
As soon as he was out of the receptionist's line of sight, his posture changed. The hunch vanished. The shivering stopped. He stood to his full height, his movements becoming fluid and predatory.
He stopped at a heavy oak door marked "STAFF ONLY - BIOHAZARD."
"Hey! You can't be here!" a male orderly shouted from the end of the hall, dropping his clipboard.
Ranveer didn't look back. He grabbed the brass doorknob. The bio-metal surged over his hand, and he crushed the brass doorknob. With a casual tug, he ripped the entire locking mechanism out of the wood, metal twisting like wet clay.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The stairwell was dark. The air changed instantly. The smell of Dettol and rain was replaced by something copper and sweet.
Blood.
He descended. One floor. Two floors. Down into the bowels of the city. The deeper he went, the louder the buzzing in his skull became. The Crown was scratching at the back of his mind.
He reached the bottom level. A massive steel blast door blocked the way.
Ranveer placed his palm on the metal. The suit surged, black liquid seeping from his fingertips, eating into the steel like acid. The lock dissolved. He kicked the door open.
Sector 9.
It wasn't a lab. It was a garden of horrors.
The vast underground chamber was bathed in sickly yellow light. Rows of industrial glass tanks lined the walls. Inside them were people—beggars, missing children, rickshaw pullers. They were suspended in thick green fluid.
They weren't dead, but they weren't truly alive. Their bodies were bloated, covered in pulsating tumors the size of melons.
Ranveer walked past a tank. Inside, a young woman floated, her chest cut open. Her heart was exposed, beating rapidly, covered in strange, bulbous growths. She was being farmed. Kept alive just to grow cancer like a crop.
Ranveer stopped. The woman's face… it was twisted in silent agony.
A memory flashed in his mind. Kashmir. White Phosphorus. Zoya's skin burning. Her scream.
RAGE.
It snapped the leash.
The Crown erupted. It didn't boot up; it roared. Thick black liquid exploded from Ranveer's pores, tearing through his ragged shirt. It coated his skin, hardening instantly into the invincible obsidian armor. The mask formed over his face, and the blue eyes ignited—not with logic, but with pure, hateful malice.
"You're early," a voice echoed from above.
Ranveer looked up.
Standing on a high steel catwalk, looking down at the slaughterhouse, was Dr. Malak. He wore a pristine white suit that gleamed in the dim light. He held a glass of wine, looking completely unbothered by the intruder in black armor.
Malak said, leaning on the railing. "I've heard rumors about. The Soldier in the Mythical Shell."
"You are farming them," Ranveer's voice was a low grind, like tectonic plates shifting.
"I am evolving them," Malak corrected, smiling arrogantly. "Cancer is just immortality without direction. I give it direction. But you… you are a brute. You wouldn't understand art."
Malak snapped his fingers. "Cleaning crew. Aisle 4."
From the shadows between the tanks, they emerged.
The Golems.
Seven of them. They stood seven feet tall, mountains of grey, dead flesh stitched together with staples and metal. They wore no clothes, only bolted plating on their joints. Their eyes were sewn shut. They didn't breathe; they hissed through vents in their throats.
Malak turned his back, walking away. "Kill him. And try not to break the tanks. The harvest is fragile."
The first Golem roared—a wet, gurgling sound—and charged.
It moved with terrifying speed for its size, crossing the distance in a blur. It swung a fist the size of a sledgehammer aimed at Ranveer's head.
Ranveer didn't dodge. He didn't weave.
He stepped forward.
CRACK.
The Golem's fist collided with Ranveer's helmet. The impact sent a shockwave through the room.
Ranveer's head moved an inch. That was all.
He looked at the Golem. The blue eyes of his mask flared brighter.
"My turn," Ranveer growled.
A jagged, three-foot obsidian blade erupted from his right forearm with a metallic SHING.
Ranveer drove the blade upward. It entered the Golem's chin and punched through the top of its skull. He ripped the blade out sideways, tearing the monster's head in half.
The Golem collapsed.
He grabbed the Golem's arm, planted his boot on its chest, and pulled. With a wet tear, the arm came off. Ranveer spun the severed limb and used it to bludgeon the Golem's head into paste.
The other six attacked at once.
It became a slaughter. Ranveer was a machine of death. He ducked under a lariat, grew metallic spikes from his shoulders to impale one attacker, and used his leg strength to kick another so hard its ribcage exploded out of its back.
One Golem grabbed him from behind in a bear hug. Ranveer didn't panic. He simply grew a blade from his back, piercing the creature's heart.
Within two minutes, the seven monsters were piles of meat.
Ranveer stood in the center of the carnage, black blood dripping from his armor. He looked up at the catwalk.
Malak was leaning over the railing, clapping slowly.
"Decent," Malak smiled. "Very decent. You might actually be worth my time."