I was never one to believe in fate.
I believed in schedules, to-do lists, and carefully curated life goals. My days were measured by coffee breaks and checklists. I liked things predictable. Clean.
That was until the message came.
It was a Thursday afternoon. The kind of day where nothing goes wrong, but nothing particularly right either. My phone buzzed once, a short vibration, barely noticeable over the chatter of my office’s open-plan chaos.
I glanced at the screen, distracted.
No name. Just a number I didn’t recognise.
And a single line of text:
“She didn’t die. Meet me at the old railway station. Tonight. 11 PM. Come alone.”
I froze.
My throat dried up in an instant. I reread the message three more times.
“She didn’t die.”
She?
I knew only one “she” that could make my heart pause mid-beat.
My sister, Meera.
But that was impossible.
She died three years ago. In a fire. The kind that leaves no questions, just ashes.
I tried to laugh it off. Spam? A twisted prank? But my hands had already gone clammy.
Before I knew it, I was scrolling through her photos—the last one we ever took together. Her in that yellow scarf, me holding the camera. God, she loved yellow. And she loved old railway stations too. She used to say they held “People leave, but their unsaid goodbyes stay here like shadows.”
This had to be a joke.
And yet, that night, I stood at the rusting gates of the abandoned Shantipur Station, heart pounding like a war drum. I hadn’t been here in years. The place had been shut for over a decade, left to be devoured by moss and memory.
The fog had rolled in like a slow whisper. Cold, damp, and full of secrets.
11:04 PM.
Nothing.
Then I heard it.
A low humming.
No, not a train. It was a human voice. A lullaby.
Meera’s lullaby.
My blood turned to ice.
It came from inside the stationmaster’s cabin, half-collapsed and covered in ivy.
My feet moved on their own.
I reached the door.
It creaked open.
Darkness.
But then, a flash of pale light. Candlelight. And in its flickering glow, a figure sat on the floor, back to me.
Long hair. Yellow scarf.
She turned.
And my world exploded.
Meera.
Alive.
Older. Gaunt. Eyes hollowed, like someone who had seen beyond life.
“Amrita,” she whispered, tears spilling down her face. “You came…”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
“But… how…?”
She grabbed my hand, hers cold as stone. “I don’t have long. Listen to me carefully. I faked my death.”
My knees gave out. I fell beside her, mind spinning.
She spoke in a rush, her voice barely above a whisper.
“There’s a man. A powerful man. He runs something hidden beneath this city. Something dark. I was a part of it once. Unwillingly. I escaped. But I saw things, Diya. Things I wasn’t meant to.”
Her hands trembled.
“They came after me. I had no choice but to disappear. But they found me again last week. I hacked into an old server to send that message to you. I wasn’t sure it would reach.”
“You were alive all this time?” I choked out.
She nodded, weeping now. “I wanted to come back. Every day. But they watch. They listen.”
Suddenly, her head snapped toward the broken window.
A soft click.
Footsteps.
“They’re here.”
I jumped up, heart thundering. A figure was moving through the fog outside.
“I have to go,” she whispered, standing slowly. “They can’t know I told you anything.”
“No!” I cried, grabbing her. “You’re not leaving me again!”
She touched my face.
“I left you once to protect you. But now you know the truth. You can help.”
“Tell me how!”
“There’s a locker. Platform 3. Number 147. Inside is everything. Names. Videos. Files. It’s proof.”
Another crunch of footsteps.
She kissed my forehead.
“Be brave.”
Then she ran. Vanished into the mist.
I stumbled out moments later, breath catching, trying to follow her—but she was gone.
What followed was chaos. Men in black. I barely escaped. Somehow, I reached home.
Shaking.
Broken.
But alive.
I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t.
At sunrise, I went to Platform 3.
Locker 147.
It was there.
And it wasn’t empty.
Inside was a USB drive, a torn journal, and a small photograph of Meera and me—taken when we were ten, smiling, full of summer dreams.
I took it all.
I read the journal. I saw the videos.
People. Experiments. Hidden labs. Powerful identities. It was like something out of a movie—but real. Horrifyingly real.
I spent the next few weeks hiding. Investigating. Slowly leaking pieces of the information to trustworthy journalists and whistleblowers. I changed phones. Moved cities. I never stayed in one place for long.
But the truth… it spread.
News channels exploded.
There were arrests. Raids.
The syndicate began to crumble.
One day, weeks later, I received another message.
This time, just an image.
Meera.
Smiling.
Safe.
Behind her, a yellow field. Sunlight. Freedom.
And a single line of text:
“You saved me. You saved them all.”
Epilogue
It’s been a year.
I still don’t know where Meera is. She won’t tell me, and I don’t push.
Some part of me believes she’s still on the run. Still cautious. Still watching from the shadows.
But every few months, I get a message. No words. Just a photo. Her in a new place. A child laughing beside her. A tree she once loved. A book we both read as kids.
She’s out there.
And she’s living.
As for me?
I’m no longer just the girl with a checklist. I became the whistleblower no one saw coming. The girl who followed a ghost and uncovered a nightmare.
All because of a message.
An unexpected message…
That changed everything.
React
