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Chapter 1: Beneath the Surface
In the heart of Delhi’s sprawling districts, where buildings stacked like haphazard blocks of grey loomed over teeming streets, Akash trudged quietly, a barely noticeable presence in the chaos. The honking cars, the vendors yelling, the crowd’s endless push and pull—these things were a part of Akash’s life as constant as the air he breathed. Yet somehow, he felt apart from it, as though a layer of glass separated him from the vibrant, chaotic city.
Akash, nineteen years old, moved with practiced anonymity. He had a face that, if seen, was forgotten a moment later—a thin, medium-built young man with thick black hair, intense eyes that almost hid beneath his brows, and an expression that rarely showed what he truly felt. People knew him well enough to greet him with a nod, a smile that barely lingered; no one really asked how he was doing. But that suited Akash just fine. He preferred the shadows, the quiet observation of things.
He paused at a street corner, watching as a group of teenagers huddled around a scooter, laughing and shouting. They wore branded clothes, the kind that flashed status as much as style, their faces carefree, almost defiant. Akash shifted his gaze away, his jaw tightening slightly. In his mind, those were “the chosen ones”—kids born with access to things he could only look at through the glassy screens of his phone, and even that felt borrowed.
His family’s apartment was a cramped two-bedroom on the fourth floor of an old building that creaked with the weight of age and rusted metal. The paint peeled from the walls, revealing spots of grimy plaster underneath. There were no elevators here, and the stairs, with their uneven, chipped surfaces, spoke of years of neglect. As he pushed open the door to their apartment, he was greeted by the familiar sounds of his mother frying something in the kitchen and his father’s voice, low and tired, murmuring on a phone call.
His father, Rajesh, had been working at the same desk job for nearly twenty years, shuffling papers at a logistics firm where raises were sporadic and promotions even rarer. Akash sometimes wondered if his father had ever wanted more, or if this life had simply been thrust upon him until he had accepted it out of sheer habit.
Dinner was a silent affair. Akash’s mother, her once-dark hair now streaked with gray, passed the dishes without a word. His father ate in silence, his gaze fixed on some distant point that only he could see. Occasionally, Rajesh would attempt a small joke, perhaps out of habit or a desire to keep a semblance of normalcy, but they always fell flat.
The quiet evenings at home were often punctuated by the sounds of their neighbors—a raised voice here, the hum of a TV there. But this evening, as Akash chewed his rice and dal, there was something different about the quiet. It was deeper, like the silence before a storm.
After dinner, Akash headed to his room and closed the door, blocking out the world he wanted to escape. He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of his own existence pressing down on him. He was an average student, a polite son, a “good boy”—someone who did what was expected and nothing more. But inside, he was something else. He was seething, a slow burn that only he could feel, and he kept it hidden, even from himself.
The sound of hushed voices reached him. His parents were speaking, too low for him to make out the words. But there was something different in the tone—something strained and fearful.
Curiosity, mixed with a gnawing sense of dread, compelled him to step out. He found his father sitting on the edge of the bed, a piece of paper clutched tightly in his hand. His mother stood beside him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. The lines on her face, normally softened with patience, were creased with worry.
“They’re letting people go,” his father said, his voice barely above a whisper. “They said it’s due to ‘budget cuts,’ but… I’ve given them everything.”
Akash felt a chill run through him. His father’s hands were trembling slightly, the paper rustling in his grip. The sight of his father—always a man of quiet pride—reduced to this state was like a slap across Akash’s face. He felt anger coil in his stomach, cold and sharp.
Later that night, lying awake in bed, he felt something shift inside him. He had spent years hiding, observing, swallowing the resentment that welled up each time he saw people flaunt lives he couldn’t even imagine. But now, something snapped. The anger wasn’t just anger; it was a kind of clarity, an understanding that the world around him was a cage, designed to keep people like him in their place.
If life was a game, he thought, then it was rigged—stacked against people like his father, who had poured everything into a system that had rewarded him with nothing. Akash wasn’t going to follow that path. The rules were broken, he realized, so he would break them too.
He didn’t yet know how he would do it. But the thought of pushing back, of making others feel the helplessness he did, gripped him like a fever. It was no longer enough to quietly endure. He would find a way to disrupt, to break the calm, orderly surface of the life they had all been forced to accept. The world had failed his family, and he would make it pay.
As the hours ticked by, Akash lay in bed, his mind racing with a plan that was still unformed but brimming with the potential for chaos. Tomorrow, he decided, would be different.
Chapter 2: Quiet Steps into Chaos
The following day came with an unexpected sense of calm, as though a storm had settled within Akash. The anger from the night before was still there, but now it felt clearer, sharper. Akash had always been good with computers. While others at school scrolled through social media, he spent hours exploring different websites, forums, and tutorials. He liked the sense of control, of being able to wander anywhere online without anyone knowing.
He’d stumbled into tech forums and even some beginner hacking guides out of curiosity at first. Most of it was harmless stuff—changing a few lines of code here and there, exploring open networks. But he remembered how it had made him feel back then, that rush of breaking through digital walls and seeing things he wasn’t supposed to. Back then, it was a secret, a hobby he kept to himself, a way to escape the boredom of everyday life.
Now, though, it didn’t feel like just a hobby. As he sat alone in his room that evening, the sounds of his parents’ tired conversations drifting in from the kitchen, he opened his laptop. The screen glowed in the dim room, casting a pale light on his face. This time, he wasn’t browsing aimlessly. He had a purpose.
Akash began exploring forums dedicated to digital disruptions, simple methods to cause minor annoyances. Nothing serious, nothing that would get him in real trouble—but enough to feel like he was pushing back against the world, even in small ways. He practiced by creating fake accounts, then deleting them; he learned how to send anonymous emails that couldn’t be traced back to him. Small things. But each success gave him a rush of satisfaction.
Then he decided to try something a little bolder.
There was a man who lived in the neighborhood, Mr. Kapoor, who had always been somewhat of a thorn in his family’s side. Mr. Kapoor owned a small business and was always flashing his wealth—new cars, vacations, expensive clothes. More than once, Akash had overheard the man speaking down to his father, making remarks that implied they weren’t working hard enough, that they were “too comfortable” in their middle-class struggles. Those words had stuck with Akash, especially now, when his father had lost his job.
Akash found himself scrolling through a government website that tracked and processed various citizen documents. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but as he browsed through different sections of the site, he found a small, underused link that led to a form submission portal. It was almost too easy to slip in, find the digital record attached to Mr. Kapoor’s account, and make a few small changes—nothing major, just enough to delay a pending document approval by a few weeks. It was a tiny inconvenience, a small, almost petty revenge.
But as he hit “enter” and saw the change take effect, he felt a strange thrill race through him. This man, who thought he was untouchable, who looked down on people like his father, would experience a taste of helplessness—even if only for a short time. The idea of causing frustration, of making someone feel a fraction of what his family felt every day, made Akash feel powerful.
The next day, he watched Mr. Kapoor’s usual morning routine through the window of his family’s apartment. The man went about his day, completely unaware that something in his well-oiled life had been quietly altered. Akash felt a strange satisfaction in that. This was what he wanted—control, revenge, but hidden, invisible, a small victory he didn’t have to share with anyone.
Later that night, however, as he lay in bed, a pang of guilt crept in. He wondered if he’d crossed a line. It was only a minor delay, something that might go unnoticed. But still, the fact that he had taken that step felt… strange.
But that thought, that brief flash of guilt, vanished quickly. He thought about his father, sitting silently at dinner, the quiet despair in his eyes, the way he held his head in his hands the night he’d learned he’d been laid off. The guilt faded, replaced by a renewed sense of purpose. This was just the beginning, he told himself. Society had failed them, and he would continue to act, bit by bit, to push back.
In the following days, he grew bolder, testing his skills on various small targets. A government email here, a minor data entry there. All of it was done quietly, skillfully, leaving no trail back to him. He spent hours each night hunched over his laptop, perfecting his methods, learning new tricks from the forums, improving his skills.
One night, he came across an idea in a forum thread that intrigued him: “digital bottlenecks.” This meant slowing down or redirecting data, creating small blockages that would delay processes. Someone in the thread had mentioned how a simple bottleneck could create weeks of delays in certain bureaucratic systems. The idea excited Akash. It was precisely what he was looking for—no one would ever know it was him, but he could cause enough disruption to make certain lives more frustrating, and that gave him a twisted sense of satisfaction.
He started small, creating these “bottlenecks” on a few local systems that affected bureaucratic processes. He focused on wealthier neighborhoods or people known for their influence. Delayed approvals, lost paperwork—small things, but enough to cause headaches for people who were used to everything working smoothly.
Akash’s actions were careful, subtle, and most of all, invisible. He made sure that his digital fingerprints were clean, covering his tracks so that no one could trace the disruptions back to him. He didn’t know if his work was having much of an effect, but just knowing that he was doing something made him feel like he was fighting back in a world that had never cared about him or his family.
But as the days passed, he noticed something new. He felt strangely isolated, even from his own family. His parents went about their routines as usual, unaware of the small rebellions their son was carrying out every night. And Akash, for his part, found himself growing quieter, more withdrawn. He hadn’t told anyone, of course, but the secrets he carried weighed heavily on him, making him feel even more separated from the people around him.
Yet, despite the loneliness, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. The anger still burned within him, and every small act of disruption felt like a release. He told himself that he was doing it for his family, for people like them who had always been treated as less. He didn’t think about the consequences. Not yet.
The satisfaction from his actions continued to fill a void he hadn’t even known was there. And with each small disruption, he found himself wanting more. Each tiny ripple in the system felt like a personal victory. And so, night after night, he continued, careful and calculating, growing more confident in his power to create invisible chaos in the world around him.
In his mind, this was only the beginning.
Chapter 3: Ripples of Chaos
The days slipped by, and with each night, Akash felt his confidence grow. The small disruptions he had created in his neighborhood were now almost routine. He had become an expert at moving through digital spaces unseen, slipping in and out of city databases and administrative portals with ease. Each time he logged in, each time he left behind a small thread of chaos, he felt a deep satisfaction that almost numbed the guilt.
One evening, as he scrolled through a local database, he found an opportunity he couldn’t resist. The city council was handling new permits for small businesses in the area, a process Akash knew could take months. Akash spent hours that night, his face bathed in the glow of his laptop, studying the system. He identified which permits were connected to the wealthier business owners in the area—those who always seemed to get everything processed quicker, thanks to their influence and money.
With a few lines of code, Akash introduced slight delays in the approval process for these specific permits. His modifications were subtle—just enough to add a layer of frustration without arousing too much suspicion. When he finished, he sat back in his chair, staring at the screen, feeling both powerful and strangely empty.
The next morning, he started hearing the murmurs.
Akash walked past his neighbors’ doors, catching snippets of conversations. A woman on the second floor was talking to her husband, annoyed that some payment hadn’t gone through. Down the hallway, another neighbor, who ran a small shop, was complaining about a delay in his business renewal permit. Around him, minor complaints turned into louder discussions, the frustration spreading like a virus.
For a moment, Akash felt proud. His efforts were creating ripples—real changes in the lives of the people he’d targeted, the ones who always seemed untouchable. But then he heard something that stopped him.
“Manoj’s shop might have to close if they can’t get the paperwork sorted soon,” an older woman mentioned in passing to his mother. “It’s ridiculous—they submitted everything months ago!”
Akash froze. Manoj was one of the few people in the neighborhood who was kind to his family. His shop wasn’t big or particularly profitable, but it provided for his family. Manoj was a decent man, struggling like everyone else, and now Akash realized that his actions had unintended effects. The “digital bottleneck” he’d created in the permit process hadn’t just delayed approvals for the wealthy—it had affected people like Manoj too.
A chill ran down his spine as he realized that his plan wasn’t as clean or controlled as he’d thought. He was hurting people he hadn’t meant to hurt. For a moment, he thought of undoing the damage, but as he opened his laptop later that night, the hesitation weighed on him. Undoing the disruption would require time, focus, and worse, an admission that his small rebellions weren’t perfect or precise.
Yet, instead of fixing it, Akash found himself adding to it. His anger and frustration were still there, bubbling beneath the surface, and it felt easier to ignore the consequences than to confront them. He justified it to himself: collateral damage was inevitable, and besides, if the system was flawed, then everyone should feel the consequences, not just the privileged few.
Days turned into weeks, and Akash became something of a ghost in his own life. He started avoiding his family, staying in his room longer, eating meals in silence. His parents noticed his withdrawal but assumed it was simply a phase, the result of stress or young adulthood. His mother tried asking him about school, his friends, his plans for the future, but he always responded with vague answers, brushing off her questions.
His father, on the other hand, was too preoccupied to notice. The layoff had taken a toll on him. He spent his days wandering from one office to another, searching for any job that would take him, hoping to find something stable. Akash saw the exhaustion in his father’s face, the dullness that had settled in his eyes. And yet, even that didn’t deter him from his nightly missions.
One night, Akash decided to target a larger system—the city’s transportation scheduling portal. It was more complex than anything he’d tried before, with layers of security and multiple points of entry. But after hours of carefully navigating the system, he managed to access the scheduling data, introducing minor disruptions into the timetable. Delayed buses, slight route changes—it wasn’t catastrophic, but it would cause inconvenience for those who relied on public transport. He reasoned that the wealthy rarely took the bus, so this was a way to target only those he blamed.
The next morning, Akash watched the neighborhood through his window. People were complaining about late buses, confused routes, and extra waiting times. He should have felt triumphant, but instead, a heavy weight settled on his chest. The disruption he had caused wasn’t affecting only the people he thought it would. It was hurting everyone, including the elderly, students, and workers—ordinary people who had no control over the world Akash despised.
As he watched an elderly man struggling to make it to a distant bus stop, his conscience gnawed at him. Was he truly achieving anything? Or was he just adding to the misery around him, dragging down people who were already struggling? The thrill he’d once felt from his actions had started to fade, replaced by a strange hollowness that felt impossible to shake.
That night, as he lay in bed, he couldn’t escape the feeling of discomfort that had begun to take root inside him. The line between right and wrong, which had once felt so clear, was now blurry. He’d started with a vision of justice, a way to make things fair, but now it felt like he was simply spreading the same kind of chaos he’d wanted to rebel against. The realization made him feel small, powerless—a puppet of his own anger.
The next day, as he sat in his room, he stared at his laptop, wondering if he could stop. Part of him wanted to, but another part still felt that urge for control, for power over the world that had ignored him. He was stuck between guilt and defiance, unable to decide which path to take.
And so, he kept going, trapped in a cycle he couldn’t escape, his actions becoming both a source of identity and a burden he didn’t know how to carry. For Akash, there was no turning back, not yet. He told himself he could stop anytime, but deep down, he knew he was already in too deep.
With each small act of rebellion, he felt the invisible weight on his shoulders grow heavier. And though he tried to ignore it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was slowly losing himself to the very darkness he had set out to fight.
