SWNOVELXO Chapter 18: Chapter 18 – Smoke Behind the Leaves
Outer Delhi – 5:21 AM
A black SUV sped through a quiet industrial stretch near the Delhi Ring Road, carrying Aryan Dev, Ravi, and two security escorts. The road, slick from early monsoon drizzle, shimmered with the faint glow of streetlights. Aryan sat reviewing microbial air samples on his tablet when a distant pulse jolted the vehicle.
There was no explosion — just a metallic click followed by total engine failure.
"Drive's gone dead!" the driver shouted.
The vehicle locked. The steering froze. Before the team could react, the car swerved unnaturally left, flipping mid-speed. It slammed into a concrete divider. The front crumpled like paper. Aryan, half-out of his seatbelt, was hurled into the side panel.
The driver died instantly. Blood ran from Ravi's brow. Aryan didn't move.
Minutes later, a drone passed overhead — unmarked — and vanished into the fog.
Later, forensic analysis would find a detonation signal embedded in the tire pressure sensors, disguised as a security update. A high-end remote kill-switch. Professional. Foreign. Designed to look like a malfunction.
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AIIMS Trauma Ward — 7:03 AM
Aryan lay unconscious, ribs broken, spleen ruptured. Oxygen hissed from tubes. He looked like a man split between worlds.
Ravi stood by his side, fingers trembling, clothes stained with blood and powdered glass.
"He's got internal bleeding," Dr. Kapoor said. "But it's not just the injuries. That crash wasn't random. Someone tried to assassinate him."
The ICU lights flickered briefly. Somewhere outside, thunder rolled over Delhi's smog-choked skyline.
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Sichuan-Tibet Border — 6:40 PM
Professor Li Wei stood at a clinic built from sun-baked stone, nestled between pine forests and snow-fed rivers. She smiled as villagers gathered, breathing in the herbal steam piped from copper cauldrons laced with eucalyptus and ginger.
She had just concluded a breakthrough call with Indian researchers—her formula showed over 80% efficacy against viral pulmonary strains.
Inside her lab, she filed one last encrypted report. Outside, three men waited.
They wore business attire, too clean for the terrain. Their Mandarin was awkward. Their guns were not.
She resisted. Screamed. Fought.
They silenced her with a needle to the spine. Instant paralysis. They whispered something in English as they took samples from her bag.
Her body was found dumped in a gorge three kilometers away. No records. Her lab was cleared and torched. Later, a Western pharmaceutical company's private jet was reported to have landed in nearby Lhasa without a filed flight plan.
Chinese authorities called it an "accident." Her village knew better.
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AIIMS ICU — Midnight
Aryan's body twitched. The machines clicked erratically.
Then silence.
The doctors held their breath — the flatline lasted three seconds.
And then — a pulse. Weak, but rising.
Lata whispered a Sanskrit verse beside him, clutching his hand:
> "त्वं भूमिः त्वं अप्सु त्वं अग्निः त्वं वायुः —
O Earth, you are in the waters, in fire, in air itself."
A mud idol of Mother Earth sat at the window, crafted by Aryan himself months ago. Wind rattled the windowpane as if something old and sacred had awakened to protect him.
---
Odisha Forests — Noon
In a tribal clinic surrounded by neem trees, Gurumayi offered free treatment to a line of coughing villagers. Her tamarind infusions and pepper-based smoke therapy had attracted wide attention.
Two masked men arrived with a false donation basket. One handed her a bottle — "for sterilizing the room."
She nodded with gratitude.
The liquid was laced with nerve agent.
She collapsed by evening. Villagers tried everything. She whispered, "Protect the leaves..." and passed away beneath the sacred banyan outside her clinic.
---
Tamil Nadu – Same Day
An underground herbal lab distributing sachets of tulsi ash and dried basil was reduced to rubble in a single controlled blast.
Two junior scientists were killed instantly.
One, barely twenty-four, had recently posted an open-source design for home air-purifiers using banana fiber and turmeric resin.
Their deaths were ruled "industrial malfunction."
A satellite image later showed a man with military gait walking calmly away from the lab fifteen minutes before the explosion.
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Pharma Boardroom – Undisclosed Location
"We've hit targets in four countries. Five if you count Nepal."
The executive committee of a multinational pharma conglomerate met in a soundproofed, windowless room. A slide showed images of Aryan's wrecked SUV, Gurumayi's clinic, and Li Wei's former lab.
"If Aryan survives," said a female board member, "we fund a whisper campaign. Question his data. Accuse him of spiritual fraud. If he dies, we take credit for his protocols. Repackage them."
A shadowy lobbyist added, "Phase three begins once the Global Summit votes to regulate traditional medicine as 'experimental.'"
---
Social Media — Global
The world erupted.
#PharmaKills
#ProtectTheHealers
#EarthFirst
#JusticeForLiWei
#WhoBombedTamilLab
These hashtags stormed the platforms, from Twitter to Weibo via VPN, from Koo in India to encrypted African forums.
A vigil outside AIIMS drew thousands. Candles lit the night like fallen stars. Screens played a loop of Aryan's public lecture on "microbial empathy and herbal memory."
"He's not just a scientist," a teenager told the press. "He's hope."
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Mimickers' Observation Post – Dubai
Two Mimickers stared at the globe's data feeds as the chaos unfolded.
"No need for further meddling," one said. "They destroy their own guardians."
The other turned to a glowing map showing strange immunity clusters in Kenya, Rajasthan, and the Vietnamese coast.
"The Earth responds through the humble. Through the ignored. And they're being hunted."
A flicker of something unspoken passed between them — not pity, but unease.
"We should not underestimate symbols."
---
AIIMS — Dawn
Aryan's eyelids twitched. He stirred.
He was alive.
Doctors gasped. Lata clutched his hand.
He whispered only one word:
"Fire."
Outside, the hospital lawn bloomed with marigolds after the rain. A nurse noticed the Mother Earth idol at the window—its mud surface now etched faintly with something new:
A spiral. Half-faded. Still watching.