The municipal archives of Madhupur occupied the basement of a building that had once been a courthouse and now served as a storage facility for the city's forgotten history. The walls were lined with metal shelving units that stretched from floor to ceiling, each one crammed with cardboard boxes and bound ledgers and yellowing file folders that had not been opened in decades. The air was cold and dry, preserved by an ancient climate control system that hummed constantly in the background, and the fluorescent lights flickered with a regularity that suggested they were nearing the end of their useful life.
Nandini Rao had been here before, years ago, when she was researching a story about the history of Madhupur's educational institutions. She remembered the archivist, a thin, meticulous woman named Mrs. Chakraborty who knew the contents of every box in the building and could locate any document within minutes. Mrs. Chakraborty was still there, older now, her hair completely white, but her eyes still sharp and her memory still encyclopedic.
"The St. Emeric personnel records," she said, leading them through the maze of shelving units. "We received them twelve years ago, when the orphanage closed. They were supposed to be cataloged and preserved, but the funding ran out. They have been sitting in Box 847 ever since."
Box 847 was a large cardboard container, stained with age and damp, sitting on a shelf in the farthest corner of the basement. Mrs. Chakraborty gestured to it with a mixture of apology and pride.
"It is not much," she said. "But it is what survived."
Vikram and Nandini lifted the box onto a nearby table and opened it. Inside were dozens of file folders, their labels handwritten in fading ink. Staff directories. Employment contracts. Medical records. Incident reports. The paper was brittle and yellowed, but the information was still legible.
"Where do we start?" Vikram asked.
"We start with the administrators," Nandini said. "The people who ran St. Emeric during the years you were there. They are the ones who would have known about the abandonments."
They worked through the files methodically, sorting them by date and department. The administrators were listed in a directory from the year Vikram and his brothers had been admitted. The director was a woman named Mrs. Kapoor—the same Mrs. Kapoor Vikram remembered from his childhood, the tired woman who had assigned him the name Ishaan and sent him to Dormitory B. Her employment file was thick with performance reviews and disciplinary notices, none of which painted a flattering picture.
"Listen to this," Nandini said, reading from one of the documents. "'Mrs. Kapoor has been cited for negligence in the care of children under her supervision. Multiple complaints have been filed regarding inadequate medical attention, unsanitary living conditions, and failure to report incidents of abuse. Despite these complaints, no formal action has been taken.'"
"That matches what Brother Joseph told us," Vikram said. "The administrators did not care about the children. They cared about keeping costs low and staying out of trouble."
"There is more." Nandini turned the page. "A note from a caseworker, dated six months after you were admitted. It says: 'Mrs. Kapoor has accepted three children in the past year without proper documentation. When questioned, she claims the children were dropped off at the gate by unknown persons. I suspect she is accepting bribes to take in children who would otherwise be rejected by the system.'"
"Three children. Vikram, Rajan, and me."
"It seems likely." Nandini set down the file. "The caseworker suspected corruption, but nothing was done. The system protected Mrs. Kapoor."
They continued searching through the box, pulling out files and scanning their contents. Most of the records were mundane—supply orders, maintenance requests, routine correspondence with the Ministry of Education. But buried among them were fragments of a darker story.
A disciplinary report on a night caretaker who had been fired for "unauthorized contact with children." The caretaker's name was not Brother Joseph—it was a man named Das, who had worked the night shift before Joseph was hired. The report accused him of taking bribes from unknown individuals in exchange for accepting children without proper documentation.
A logbook entry from the night the real Vikram died. It recorded a phone call made from the administrator's office at 2:17 AM, shortly before Vikram's death. The number was listed, but the recipient was not identified.
A letter, dated two weeks after Rajan Mehta's death, addressed to Mrs. Kapoor from a law firm in Belur. The letter was brief and cryptic: "The matter you inquired about has been resolved. The remaining files have been destroyed. No further action is required."
"What matter?" Nandini said, holding up the letter. "What files were destroyed?"
Vikram took the letter and read it carefully. "The law firm—Devgan and Associates. I know that name. They handled some of Ascend's early legal work. Before we had our own attorneys."
"Arjun used them?"
"Yes. He said they were reliable. He said they understood the need for discretion."
"Then Arjun may know more about this than he has told us."
"Arjun always knows more than he has told us." Vikram folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket. "But this law firm—if they were involved with St. Emeric before they were involved with Ascend, there may be a connection we have not seen. A connection that goes back further than any of us realized."
Mrs. Chakraborty approached the table, carrying a small leather-bound book that had been tucked into a separate section of the archives.
"I found this," she said. "It was not in the St. Emeric box. It was in a collection of personal effects donated by a former employee of the orphanage. A man named Das—he worked as a night caretaker before he was fired."
"The man who took bribes."
"Yes. He died ten years ago. His family donated his belongings to the archives. This was among them." She handed the book to Vikram. "It appears to be a journal. Not very long. But it mentions names that may be relevant to your search."
Vikram opened the journal. The handwriting was rough and uneducated, the spelling inconsistent, but the words were clear enough. It was a record of bribes, meticulously documented over a period of three years. Names. Dates. Amounts. And a column labeled "Children Delivered."
The final entry in the journal was dated two weeks before Vikram and Rajan were admitted to St. Emeric. It read:
"Three children. Two boys, one girl. Delivered by the usual contact. Payment received. Files destroyed per instructions. Children assigned to Dormitory B."
Three children. Two boys, one girl.
"A girl," Nandini said. "There was a girl."
Vikram stared at the entry, his hands trembling. "We had a sister. We had a sister, and she was sent to St. Emeric with us. But she was not there when I was growing up. I do not remember any girl."
"The records are incomplete. Maybe she was transferred. Maybe she was adopted. Maybe she—" Nandini stopped, unwilling to finish the sentence.
"Maybe she died too."
They searched through the remaining files frantically, looking for any mention of a female child admitted to St. Emeric during the same period. The records were fragmentary, but eventually they found a single page—an admission form, partially filled out, for a girl named Anya.
The form was dated the same day as Vikram's admission. The child's age was listed as two years old. The parents were listed as unknown. The space for "reason for admission" was left blank.
"Anya," Vikram said. "Her name was Anya."
Nandini felt the world tilt. "Anya Sen. The girl who came to Ascend for a transformation. The girl whose mother was Nalini Sen. The girl who carried a letter from her dead mother calling in a debt."
"She is our sister. She has been our sister all along, and we did not know."
"But Nalini Sen was her mother. The diaries, the letter—they all said Nalini was her mother."
"Maybe Nalini adopted her. Maybe Nalini took her from St. Emeric and raised her as her own. Maybe that is why Nalini helped Arjun with the transformation network. She knew about the brothers. She knew about the connection. She was trying to protect Anya, and she was trying to protect me."
Vikram sat down heavily in a nearby chair. The journal lay open on the table before him, the words blurring and reforming. Three children. Two boys, one girl. A family that had been scattered and destroyed by forces they still did not understand.
"We need to find Anya," he said. "We need to tell her. She deserves to know she has a brother. She deserves to know she had two other brothers who died."
"We will find her. But first, we need to understand the full story. Who abandoned us? Why were we separated? What happened to our parents?"
Mrs. Chakraborty, who had been listening quietly, cleared her throat. "There is one more thing," she said. "Something I did not include in the box because it seemed unrelated. But now I think it may be relevant."
She walked to another shelf and returned with a folder tied with faded ribbon. Inside were newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, from the Madhupur Chronicle archives.
The headlines told a story that had been buried for thirty years:
FIRE AT BELUR ESTATE KILLS PROMINENT COUPLE
BODIES IDENTIFIED AS INDUSTRIALIST RANJIT SINGH AND WIFE MEENA
THREE CHILDREN MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD
The article was dated thirty years ago. The location was an estate outside Belur. The victims were a wealthy industrialist and his wife. The children—two boys and a girl, aged three, two, and one—had not been found in the wreckage. The police had presumed them dead, but the bodies had never been recovered.
Vikram read the article three times. His hands were shaking.
"Singh," he said. "Ranjit Singh. The name is different. The name is not Rana."
"Names can be changed," Nandini said. "Identities can be fabricated. You know that better than anyone."
"The man who abandoned us at the station—he was not our father. He was someone who took us from the estate. Someone who was supposed to protect us."
"Someone who was paid to make you disappear."
Vikram looked at the newspaper clippings, at the faces of the dead couple, at the description of the missing children. Two boys and a girl. Three children who had been presumed dead for thirty years.
"We are not orphans," he said. "We never were. We were stolen."
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!