Karna's Heir - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Unwanted Inheritance

The wail of the distant police siren eventually faded, replaced by the more mundane sounds of a Mumbai slum waking up – the clatter of steel tiffins, the argumentative shouts of vendors, the ubiquitous crows cawing their territorial claims. For Aryan, however, the internal siren of panic was still blaring at full volume. He sat on the edge of Ajay’s lumpy, questionable mattress, his head in his equally questionable new hands, trying to force his engineer’s brain to process a situation that defied all logic, all known physics, all common decency, really.

That’s when the buzzing started.

It was a low, insistent vibration, like an angry insect trapped in a jar. It seemed to emanate from the pile of discarded clothes near the foot of the mattress. Aryan froze, every nerve ending already frayed, now twanging with fresh alarm. For a ridiculous moment, he wondered if it was some kind of paranormal manifestation, perhaps Ajay’s disgruntled spirit demanding its body back. “Look, mate,” he thought, addressing the hypothetical ghost, “you can have it. It smells, it’s got a terrible hangover, and apparently, a less-than-stellar social circle. No refunds necessary.”

The buzzing came again, more demanding this time.

He cautiously poked at the pile of clothes with his foot. A battered, cheap-looking mobile phone, its screen spiderwebbed with cracks, vibrated its way into view. It was an ancient model, the kind you could probably drop from a three-story building and it would only complain mildly. The screen lit up, displaying a single, ominous word in block capitals: ‘BOSS’.

“Oh, lovely,” Aryan muttered, his voice still Ajay’s gravelly baritone. “My fan club. Wonder if they do requests? Preferably for a new life, or at least a body that doesn’t come with pre-existing vendettas.”

The phone continued its relentless, angry buzzing. He stared at it as if it were an unexploded ordnance, which, in a way, it probably was. Answering it felt like willingly sticking his head into a lion’s mouth. Ignoring it, however, felt like inviting the lion over for a leisurely dinner where he was the main course.

“Decisions, decisions,” he said to the empty room, the dark humor a flimsy shield against the rising tide of dread. “Option one: answer the angry, capitalized BOSS and potentially get yelled at in a dialect I barely understand, leading to my swift and messy demise. Option two: ignore the angry, capitalized BOSS and… well, probably also lead to my swift and messy demise, just with more suspense.”

The phone stopped buzzing. Silence descended, thick and heavy. Aryan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Maybe, just maybe, BOSS had given up. Perhaps he’d decided Ajay was a lost cause, already face down in a gutter somewhere, a victim of his own impressive capacity for self-destruction. That wouldn’t be too far from the truth, Aryan mused grimly.

His reprieve was short-lived. The phone buzzed again, with what felt like renewed fury. The screen flashed ‘BOSS’ with an almost palpable impatience.

“Persistent, aren’t we?” Aryan sighed. “Must be important. Or maybe he just misses Ajay’s sparkling conversation.” He picked up the phone, its cheap plastic casing feeling alien in his hand. His thumb hovered over the green ‘answer’ icon. What was he supposed to say? ‘Hello, Ajay’s currently indisposed, having been recently deceased and subsequently possessed by a bewildered engineer from Delhi. Can I take a message?’

He let it ring. And ring. Finally, it stopped, presumably going to voicemail, if a phone this archaic even had such a feature. Peace. Blessed, temporary peace.

He slumped back, his mind racing. He needed information. He needed to understand who this ‘BOSS’ was, and what he wanted with Ajay. His only resource was the fragmented, chaotic library of memories currently doing a hostile takeover in his skull.

“Alright, Ajay, old sport,” Aryan whispered, closing his eyes and concentrating, trying to coax some coherence out of the mental static. “Let’s see what treasures you’ve left behind in that noggin of yours. Anything that doesn’t involve cheap booze or back-alley brawls would be a start.”

He focused on the name: BOSS. Shetty. The name surfaced with a jolt, accompanied by a flash of a heavy-set man with a permanent scowl, small, cruel eyes, and a voice like a rusty chainsaw. Shetty. The memory came with a distinct flavor of fear – not just respect, but genuine, gut-clenching fear. Ajay was clearly terrified of this man. “Well, that’s reassuring,” Aryan thought dryly. “My new employer is a delight.”

The phone on his lap buzzed again. ‘BOSS’.

“For crying out loud,” Aryan growled, snatching it up. This time, his thumb, acting on some residual muscle memory from Ajay, stabbed the answer button before his own caution could intervene.

“AJAY! Where the hell are you, you worthless piece of…” The voice that exploded from the tiny speaker was a torrent of pure, undiluted rage, liberally sprinkled with curses in a rapid-fire Marathi that Aryan struggled to fully parse. It was Shetty. And he sounded like he was about to personally tear someone limb from limb. Preferably Ajay.

Aryan froze, his throat dry. He couldn’t speak. What could he say?

“…the package! Did you deliver the damn package, you idiot?” Shetty roared. “You were supposed to drop it hours ago! If you’ve messed this up, Ajay, I swear to all the gods, I will personally feed you to the…”

Package? Item? Another memory fragment surfaced, clearer this time. An order.

Shetty’s voice, less furious then, more conspiratorial, urgent. ‘This is big, Ajay. Very important. An item. You pick it up from the docks, from my contact. No questions. Then you take it straight to the new safehouse in Bandra. Understand? Straight there. No stops. No booze. And NO screw-ups.’

Aryan’s mind reeled. An ancient item. From the docks.

The memory of Ajay collecting it was hazy, shrouded in the nervous excitement and the alcoholic haze that seemed to be Ajay’s default state. He remembered a dimly lit warehouse, the smell of brine and something else… old, dusty. A shadowy figure handing over a surprisingly heavy, cloth-wrapped bundle. Ajay hadn’t looked inside. Shetty’s orders had been explicit about that. ‘Don’t even breathe on it too hard.’

Then, the critical part: the delivery. The new safehouse in Bandra.
Had Ajay delivered it?

Aryan sifted through the mental debris. There was the collection… then… then the pressing need for a drink. Just one, to calm the nerves. One drink had led to another. The Bandra safehouse, it seemed, had been forgotten in favor of the siren song of the local hooch joint.

He hadn’t delivered it.

“…ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME, YOU MAGGOT?” Shetty’s voice yanked him back to the present.

Aryan swallowed hard. He had to say something. He tried to mimic Ajay’s usual subservient tone, a memory of which helpfully supplied itself. “Boss… yes, Boss… problem…” he managed, his voice hoarse.

“Problem? What problem?” Shetty snarled. “The only problem you have is the one I’m going to create for you if that package isn’t where it’s supposed to be in the next hour!”

An hour. That was… not a lot of time, especially considering Aryan didn’t even know where this package was.

“I… I have it, Boss,” Aryan stammered, a desperate lie. “Just… small delay. On my way now.”

“You better be,” Shetty’s voice was a low, deadly hiss. “And Ajay? If you’ve so much as peeked at what’s inside… well, let’s just say you won’t have eyes to peek with for much longer.”

The line went dead.

Aryan stared at the phone, his hand trembling. The sheer, naked menace in Shetty’s voice had been terrifyingly real. This wasn’t like dealing with a difficult client who might withhold payment or write a bad review. This was a world where mistakes were paid for in blood.

“Okay,” he said to the cracked screen. “So, recap: I’m in the body of a gangster named Ajay. Ajay was supposed to deliver a mysterious ‘item’ for his psychopathic boss, Shetty. Ajay, being a model employee, decided to get drunk instead. The package is undelivered. And Shetty wants it delivered in an hour, or I become fish food.” He let out a shaky laugh. “This is fine. Everything is fine.”

He scrambled to his feet, his gaze sweeping the squalid room. Where would Ajay hide something important? Something valuable enough to inspire such murderous rage?

His eyes fell on a battered tin trunk tucked under the equally battered cot Ajay had used as a bed. It was the only piece of “furniture” in the room apart from the mattress. It looked old, a relic from a previous tenant, perhaps.

With a surge of desperate hope, Aryan knelt and fumbled with the rusty latch. It sprang open with a protesting squeak.

Inside, nestled amongst some truly filthy rags and a couple of empty bottles, was a bundle wrapped in what looked like a faded, once-expensive silk scarf. It was roughly rectangular, about the size of a shoebox, and when Aryan carefully lifted it, surprisingly heavy.

This had to be it. The “item.”

His fingers itched to unwrap it. Shetty’s threat about not peeking echoed in his mind, but so did the engineer’s innate curiosity, the desire to understand the mechanics of things. And right now, this item was the central mechanism of his impending doom.

“Sorry, Shetty,” he muttered, “but employee reviews are in, and your management style encourages… independent investigation.”

He carefully began to unwrap the silk. Layer by layer, the faded fabric fell away, revealing something… unexpected. Not gold bars, not drugs, not weapons.

It was a small, intricately carved wooden chest. Dark wood, almost black, with strange symbols etched into its surface. It looked incredibly old, the wood worn smooth in places, the carvings faded but still discernible. It had an air of… significance.

But this wasn’t what Ajay had collected from the docks. The memory flashes of the handover clearly showed a larger, cloth-wrapped bundle. This chest was too small.

Confusion warred with his fear. Had Ajay swapped it? Lost the original? Was this some kind of decoy?

The memory fragments shifted, a new reel playing. Ajay, after collecting the actual package from the docks – a much larger, heavier bundle – had indeed gone to the hooch joint. But before succumbing completely to the alcohol, driven by a moment of drunken paranoia or perhaps a rare flicker of cunning, he’d stashed the real item somewhere else. Somewhere he thought was safe.

And this wooden chest? This was something else. Something Ajay had possessed before this current mission. Something he treasured, or feared, enough to keep hidden. The memories associated with this chest were even more fragmented, laced with a deeper, older sense of unease, almost superstition. It wasn’t part of Shetty’s current job.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Ajay,” Aryan groaned, rubbing his temples where the headache was making a furious comeback. “Could you be any more complicated? It’s like a Russian doll of bad decisions and hidden liabilities.”

The phone buzzed in his pocket. He flinched, expecting Shetty’s rage. But the screen showed ‘UNKNOWN NUMBER’.

He hesitated, then answered, a knot of dread tightening in his stomach. “Hello?”

A different voice this time. Smoother, colder, with an undertone of amusement that was somehow more unsettling than Shetty’s outright fury. “Ajay, my boy. I hear you’re having a bit of a busy morning.”
Aryan didn’t recognize the voice, not from Ajay’s memories, not from his own life. “Who is this?”

“Let’s just say I’m a… concerned party. Interested in the successful delivery of certain valuable assets.” The voice paused. “Assets that you are currently in possession of, and that Mr. Shetty is so very eager to receive.”

Another player? Aryan’s blood ran cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The voice chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. “Oh, I think you do, Ajay. The item from the docks. Shetty is getting impatient. And when Shetty gets impatient, people tend to get… hurt. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“Who are you?” Aryan insisted, his fear making his voice sharp.

“A friend. Someone who appreciates the finer things in life. Things like that rather unique item you picked up. Just a friendly piece of advice, Ajay: deliver it to Shetty as agreed. Keep things simple. Trying to be clever in your line of work… it rarely ends well.” The line clicked dead.

Aryan sank back onto the mattress, the small wooden chest feeling heavy in his lap, the knowledge of the other, larger, more dangerous item – Shetty’s item – a lead weight in his stomach. He was caught. Not just between Ajay’s past and his own impossible present, but between at least two factions who wanted this mysterious “item.” And Shetty clearly wasn’t the top of this particular food chain.

Delivery to Shetty, the cold voice had advised. That seemed to be the consensus for his continued, albeit brief, existence. But Aryan had a terrible, sinking feeling, a chilling intuition that cut through the hangover and the fear. If this item was so valuable, so sought after, then the person delivering it, the loose end, the expendable goon named Ajay… he wouldn’t be walking away from that delivery. Shetty, or whoever this new, colder voice belonged to, would ensure that. Delivery meant death. A slightly more delayed death than not delivering, perhaps, but death all the same.

He looked around the grimy little room, at the cracked mirror reflecting a stranger’s face, at the cheap phone that was a direct line to his executioners. He thought of his own life, his own death under a collapsing crane, a death that had been swift, brutal, and utterly devoid of this agonizing, drawn-out terror.

A desperate, hysterical laugh bubbled up from his chest. “God,” he choked out, staring at the stained ceiling. “You really are playing a cruel joke on me, aren’t you? Killed by incompetence in one life, only to be resurrected to be killed by someone else’s criminal enterprise in another. What’s next? A plague of locusts? A particularly aggressive tax audit?”

The humor was black, bleak, the only defense he had left against the crushing certainty that he was well and truly, comprehensively screwed. The item for Shetty was still out there, hidden by Ajay’s drunken cunning. And he, Aryan, had less than an hour to find it and walk willingly into his own execution.