Tales of the wretched: Ashok and his mother – Chapter four: Redemption flowing 7-8 October 2025
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Ashok slowly disengaged from Annie’s embrace attempting to put some distance between them and have a calm chat with her. His arms were still limp by his sides as he eased himself out of her clutch. He realised from her vice-like grip that it had been a long time since anyone had been kind to her. He thought about his mother again and how she had been helpless with nobody showing her any kindness while she struggled. This is how people were pushed into desperate actions because they felt completely disregarded by everyone around them. He sighed internally thinking that he had been too young to find a solution to their predicament and his mother had literally worked herself to death while reserving most of the food she could get her hands on to him. There had been no shelter when he was young, just places for single young pregnant women to go to until birth of their child.
He looked at Annie whose face seemed crestfallen as she wondered what to make of him pushing her away. He was not sure how to handle this as he had kept his feelings under wraps for the longest time ever, even while he was married, even when he was happy when dating his wife before he married her. He had always felt that if he gave in to his emotions it would be like a dam that might obliterate everything around him. He had hated his relatives for such a long time and with such passion that he was afraid of expressing any other emotion lest he get carried away and start expressing those feelings of hatred as well, be submerged by them and act only in line with what they released within him. At times he had felt that the hate was such that it would turn into a fire that would physically consume his heart.
- Annie, I just want to help you and your son but I have been a lonely man for such a long time that I do not know how to speak normally with people. - You did talk to me at the shelter - Well you see, that is different. At the shelter I have a role that I embraced and that is to help people in the shelter with food and blankets. I know the drill. It is unemotional, safe and almost always the same. I did feel sympathy for you because you reminded me of someone I knew a very long time ago but I usually interact with those who come to the shelter in a very mechanical way. There are no other emotions than perhaps a slight touch of pity. When I saw you at the shelter, it made something stir in me, something that I had thought I had let go a long time ago - So you don’t feel pity for me? - Not really. I am just overwhelmed by the need to keep you and your son safe.
After a long pause, he decided to tell her everything about his childhood, the desperate times when his mother could not sell what she had made, the resulting famine-filled days, how his mother had become so gaunt that she looked like a corpse, the absence of his relatives, their presence when she had died, his hatred of them, the orphanage that had saved him from the hatred that was eating him – at least for a while.
- Did you ever marry, she asked - I did, he answered - Did you love her? Did you have children? - I did love her but I guess the hatred inside did not allow me to love her properly. The love I had inside of me for her was like a shell, it was not bright and happy like she would have liked it to be. The hatred inside kept making a hole that neither my love for her, nor hers for me could ever fill and appease. Eventually she got tired of waiting for me to love her like she would have liked to be loved. Five years of a relationship that had the dull ache of unresolved hatred festering within it and she decided to move on. We never had children as she felt that I was broken and she thought that broken men should never become fathers. She had her own issues with her father who was never able to express love. It has been almost ten years since that day she decided to leave me. I guess it is best for broken men like me not to be in a relationship. - I don’t think you are broken. The man who left me with his child, that is a broken man. You don’t hurt someone you have loved unless you’re broken. Nobody who is whole would hurt another soul without reason. From what I have seen from you, you have only been kind to me and I did not see you hurt anyone else. You might have been badly hurt but you are not broken, not like what I would think of a broken man - Thank you Annie but I think she might have been right. There is this hole inside of me that never goes away, or at least not until that evening when I saw you feed your boy and something stirred inside of me, not until now when I saw how happy you were to be here. - Thank you for helping us. My boy had not had a good bath in so many months. They did not always allow us into the Bain des Paquis and I could not use them anyway during the winter months. I tried to stay under the radar so social services would not take him away - You can stay here as much as you want. You do not need to go to the shelter anymore, I will bring the food here.
Annie rushed and hugged him again and he let her hold him fiercely this time. His arms were still limp by his side but he started feeling like a stirring in his shoulders and arms which slowly twitched and his arms then rose to hold her around the shoulders, softly pressing her onto his chest. Her tears fell freely again on his coat and he sighed as he felt a stirring in his heart while he could see behind his closed eyes a slow glow that seemed to fill his chest. All the sadness of not having been able to help his mother seemed to soar from his heart to his eyes which brimmed with tears. As his tears mingled with Annie’s tears, he felt like a wall had crumbled within his chest. All the years of self reproach on his lack of initiative to help his mother flowed with the mingled tears, washing both their hearts from sadness and pain. It was as if redemption flowed within his heart and he smiled with gratitude for being able to help Annie and her boy.
She decided to clean things up more but in a different way as she could not bear the idea of sitting on the couch where the bulky dead man had sat. She took some Dettol wipes and went over the whole couch after stripping it from the covers she had put on it. She stripped the floor of all the carpets and set about cleaning the floor with the Dettol wipes which had a flowery smell to them. She scrubbed and scrubbed until her fingers ached. She realised she was letting her old OCD based behaviour come back because of this incident. She had never been able to stomach the smell of blood nor the sight of it oozing out of wounds. Her work at the unit was mainly intelligence based as well as catching criminals and she had fired her gun only a few times.
She washed her hands and decided that she would feel better after a good warm bath. She filled the tub with hot water, added some Epsom salts and a bit of cold water before she eased herself into it. The water and the salts started relaxing her aching muscles. All these hectic incidents were getting the better of her nerves. She wondered if she had done the right thing by leaving Dubai and getting to London where it was more difficult to hide from both her previous unit and from the ISWAP as well as Boko Haram. It seemed they were getting to her all too easily. She also wondered why Al Shabab would want to take down a head of a Boko Haram unit.
She was well aware that Boko Haram and Al Shabab were not exactly friends but she had never thought before that they would turn against one another rather than uniting against the Western world. Would it not make more sense for them to unite their strengths in order to have a stronger impact against the non-believers that they were looking to castigate? She heard a strange noise in her living room and froze. Who was this now? Boko Haram had already been there and her unit normally would not sneak into her apartment as they had their cameras everywhere and very likely already knew what had happened in the road outside as well as what had gone on in her flat. She had realised that they only wanted to monitor everything, especially Boko Haram movements and they did not seem keen on actually catching Manas.
She rose slowly from the bath, trying to make the least noise possible. She reached out to her gun which was on the chair next to the bath tub. Her gown was hanging on the wall opposite the bath tub and she doubted she would have the time to reach it. She wiped her feet on the rug to ensure she did not slip stupidly and make it easier for the intruder to overcome her. She held the gun at the level of her face, pointing it outward, determined to kill whoever it was in the living room. Her heart was racing as it had been a while since she had killed anyone directly. She burst into the living room gun cocked and ready to shoot and found herself face to face with a young black man who was pointing his gun at her...
The little girl went to sleep shortly after the Bogeyman had led her to her bedroom and hovered above her as if he were tucking her in. She slept a solid 8 hours without waking up even as the voices outside her bedroom had increased in their pitch before becoming unintelligible murmurs. There were neither dreams nor nightmares to trouble her sleep. She woke up the next day much later than usual and it seemed like the subdued voices of the night before had really picked up a lot. She raced into the hall towards the next room to check the square from where she kissed her mother daily but her mother was nowhere to be seen.
As she approached the square, she could smell the stench of urine mingled with the sickening smell of blood that she would later identify as two types of smells of blood, one from menstruation and the other from cuts in the skin. She tried to look through the square but the maid grabbed her arm and pulled her away. Her mother was whimpering most of the time but would also emit from time to time a terrible wail. The little girl was struck with fear, not from her mother but about what had happened to her mother. She tried to run towards the square again but the maid pulled her harder, tightening her grip on her arm, which would later cause bruises that the maid did not own up to.
The little girl’s heart began to hammer in her ribs and she felt like wailing together with her mother. She wanted to know what had happened and could not understand why those horrible smells emanated from her mother’s room. Her dad usually unlocked the door and accompanied her mother to the bathroom whenever she needed to so she could not understand why there was so much urine in the room. She could feel the Bogeyman forming next to her but she was too distraught to talk to him. She tugged again trying to free herself from the maid’s grip and felt her relax her hold on her. She rushed to the square and peeked through. On the ground, her mother lay whimpering and wailing, blood running from a gash in her head. There was blood all over her mother’s thighs and all the bloods mingled with urine that lay in a puddle in the middle of the room.
The little girl’s heart beat so much faster she felt like it was in her mouth about to come out with the vomit leaving her lips that had turned white. In one corner of the room she had seen her dad who seemed to be opening a box of band aids to put on her mother’s head wound. He also had big wads of cotton and she was not sure whether that was for her mother’s wound as well. On the side of one wall, where the windows were, she could see streaks of blood and bloodied footsteps. It was as if her mother had climbed trying to escape out of the window. Her dad was yelling to the maid that she should not have let her climb and throw herself from the window onto the floor. He seemed cross that the maid did not realise what was happening and had not heard all the ruckus as she was the one who slept closest to the mother’s room. The little girl wondered why her mother had tried to throw herself from the window onto the floor. It made no sense. Why was she doing that?
The Bogeyman turned towards the little girl, slipped his hand into hers and embraced her with the other hand. She felt the cold that had befell her grow stronger. A tight knot was forming in the pit of her stomach and the chill she felt seemed to occupy her whole back, making her shoulderblades stiff and painful.
- Why?, she said. - Your mother is very ill, said the Bogeyman. - I don’t want her to die - She probably won’t - Daddy said that if she causes problems he will take her away - Your daddy will not take her away. He does not know where to leave her - I don’t want mommy to go away. I don’t want mommy to die - This time she has not died but she will do this again. You don’t remember but the same thing happened when you were younger. You might not remember it now but some day you will remember. Your mother wants to die. She does not like being here. She hates the maid and she hates how she is not free to do as she pleases. She hates it here. She might keep doing this until she finally dies.
The little girl started wailing again and her mother echoed with her own wails. The Bogeyman stared from one to the other then wiped the little girl’s tears.
- I will make sure your mommy does not do this again, he offered trying to appease the little girl. - Please don’t let mommy die, the little girl said half whimpering half wailing - I promise you I will watch over both you and your mother - I want to go to bed, I don’t want to see mommy bleeding anymore - I will tuck you in and then watch over mommy. Don’t worry
The Bogeyman took the little girl to her bedroom and watched over her as she slept. He knew what had happened. He had been expecting this to happen again. Everybody else had forgotten but he had been waiting in the shadows for things to worsen and this to happen again. The Bogeyman had always known…
“Mom,” the little girl yelled plaintively. “It’s the evil bogeyman who’s come again to take me far away from you.”
“Don’t worry, go to sleep!” came the reply, articulated by a sweet voice from the next room. “You’ll see he can’t do anything to you. Besides, if you look at him closely, you’ll see he’s quite transparent and harmless. He’s our family bogeyman, and he’s not very bad.”
“I want to sleep with you, I don’t want him near me anymore,” the plaintive voice continued. The little girl risked a sideways glance, and indeed, he did look very pale and unlikely to harm anyone. That said, something in the cold stare he cast—the only thing quite visible in his entire being—froze her.
“You know perfectly well that’s impossible. Sleep now and you can come see me tomorrow,” the sweet voice continued, slightly tense from having to contain itself in the darkness of the night. It then started a chant that would have filled the heart of the happiest with the deepest melancholy, but which, through force of habit, had a profoundly calming effect on the little girl. The quintessence of melancholy was now the only possible representation of peace and gentleness in the little girl’s mind.
“You’re a mean bogeyman, but you don’t scare me because Mommy will take care of you if you bother me,” the plaintive voice continued with a hint of defiance. With that, the little girl brought her little puppet closer to her pillow and fell asleep, absentmindedly twisting its hand while the bogeyman looked at her, contrite and pained. He too, seemed under the very powerful influence of nostalgia from the chant sung by a voice that sought to blend into the night.
The next day, the little girl walked past the next room and, standing on tiptoe, placed a kiss on her mother's cheek through the square that made her accessible. She watched her again as the nanny, with her tentacled hands, braided her and put on her daily school uniform while preparing her takeaway lunch, pausing only to button her top and smooth the wrinkles in her uniform skirt. The uniform was so heavy that she felt like she was wearing armour.
Her mother watched her leave through the square until she was out on the street and out of sight with her sisters. As the door opened, a gust of rain carried by the wind rushed into the cramped hallway, and her mother shivered. She called out to the nanny to lower the screen that separated the entrance from the street. It was a kind of foresail and did a good job of keeping the rain out, but the nanny deliberately didn't use it properly, knowing that the mother couldn't get to the front door to do it herself. This procession of small misfortunes she inflicted on the mother seemed to satisfy her petty spirit, seeking revenge against the life that had made her a servant to families more fortunate than her own.
The little girl had often observed this battle between the two women with a mixture of pity, anger, and helplessness. The nanny knew full well that the price of her defiance would be paid later when the father returned, provided the mother dared to complain, but she probably told herself that just being able to delay the outcome of the punishment was enough to give her the petty satisfaction of being able to have the upper hand, at least for the day. Outside, the trash was piling up in front of Mom's window, another petty act that gave boundless satisfaction to the nanny, who knew Mom was incapable of getting them out from under her window without her help. On monsoon days, all this created a vile cesspool which odours ended up bothering everyone, including the nanny. After the first attempts, which she personally suffered, she had lost her composure and had made sure to ensure regular trash collection during the monsoon.
The daily departure to the Good Shepherd School of the eponymous character, the greatest of shepherds, the saviour of our human sheep souls, or in other words Christ, took place in the early morning hours to avoid the rush that could have contaminated the path that separated the four girls' school from the parking lot, which was quite far from the building, with sweat and foul language. They returned home in the late afternoon, always as early as possible after school for the same reasons.
Everything was proceeding in the same daily routine that offered few, if any, variations on the same theme until that fateful evening. The little girl, after her daily routine with her mother and the bogeyman—who, oddly enough, was developing more defined contours each night except for the non-existent legs—had fallen asleep as usual when she was awakened by a dull thud. She slipped out of bed and found the household in a state of supreme excitement. It seemed that her mother, fed up with the garbage under her window, had thrown all her food and the utensils it was in out the window. This was to create enough anger in the neighbourhood about the garbage left there and the general state of the street. Phrases flew in all directions, and the little girl saw her mother yelling through the door at the nanny who was trying as best she could to justify the whole garbage business.
The little girl slowly slipped back behind the wall to escape all the noise made by these adults, which was causing her intense pain in her head and ears. She felt the bogeyman's presence beside her and saw that his body had now become completely visible except for his legs, so much so that he seemed to be floating. He was no longer just a cloud of water droplets giving the impression of a face like before. He was now a real person with a body that stopped at his hips and a well-defined face. She reached out to him with her hand and he gently took it in his own, which seemed immense. The touch of his skin was cold. Without a word, she followed him out of the room to her bedroom. She turned her face towards him and said in a soft voice, "I'm not afraid of you anymore. You're not that bad, and it's not your fault that I'm afraid anyway." The bogeyman said nothing but simply walked beside her with unsteady steps, the slowness of which tried to match the little girl's short stride. He looked at her with his large, unfathomable black eyes, but she was truly no longer afraid.
"What is your name?" the little girl asked.
"I have several names," several voices emanating from the bogeyman answered her. "My name is Deck Aurum," one replied. "My name is Dess Peration," a second replied. "My name is Disilu Shan Men," a third replied. She lost the rest of the names in the ensuing racket, but suddenly the voices fell silent and from the silence emerged the following exclamation: "My name is Gro Wing Up," echoed by several voices emanating from the bogeyman.
"That's strange," the girl retorted. When Grandma died, they put a fire epita on her stone that said Grandma, Mom, Aunt, and everything, and at the end, Rajambal. For you, that's going to be too many names. There won't be enough room on one stone.
"It's called an epitaph," said the bogeyman in a gentle voice, “but it doesn't matter because, you see, I'll never die and I'll never need one.”
And it was as she followed the bogeyman that evening that the little girl felt how futile it had been to try to make him leave before. That evening, something in her chest had made a strange noise in her head. She had felt, just below the satin band that her mother usually tied for her on holidays in a beautiful, bright white bow, on the left side, a kind of quivering like a bird trying to escape. The pain was very brief but tangible yet it would never equal in intensity what she would feel the next day with the events that took place there and which made her give a permanent presence as well as legs to the bogeyman.
The Frost Chronicles 7: The corridor of time 27 April 2025
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She waited in her house the whole evening and the day after but her half-father or father, the King of Marid did not return to see her. She wondered whether she should try sinking into the ground again to visit him but thought the better of it when remembering how the other Marid did not seem welcoming at all. She knew she could invoke her father rather than sinking into the ground but he had seemed busy and summoning was not the right way to do it anymore as it made the Marid appear against his will. She still realized that she had to talk to him about the time when everything had gone haywire before she had learnt to summon a Marid.
She decided grudgingly to sink into the ground again with the image of her father in mind so that she would be transported to his vicinity and surely enough she landed near a Marid circle where they were all conversing in a language that was not any of the languages she had heard spoken on Earth yet she felt strangely familiar with. She did not think she could reproduce the words but she could understand them. They were talking about a big flood that they were supposed to channel on Earth to wipe out all humans. Her father, who sat on the same throne in the middle that she had seen before, was trying to reason with them but the younger of the Marids (if you could really ascribe youth to them who lived for thousands of years) seemed to be very hostile to his logic.
Slowly the Marids at the edge of the circle grew aware of her presence and turned to stare at her. She tried to enter the circle but they encircled her and started closing in on her. She felt that this could be the end of her as the circle they had been forming was very thick and her father might not even realise that she was there and in danger. She could hear in the background the young Marid arguing sullenly between each other as they did not dare speak aloud against him. She started calling out to her father and put her hand on her mouth in shock as she was talking the language they spoke.
In an instant her father was near her and it seemed like both of them were sucked into a hole. They emerged on the other side and she realized that it was in her house but several years ago because her children were not there yet. Her father frowned and moved swiftly forward and they were sucked again into another hole. Again, on the other side, it was not her normal time as she looked with a mixture of awe and dread at the image of herself walking in the desert, just after one of those nights spent there a year ago. She could almost touch herself and just as she reached out to touch that image of herself her father moved again and they were sucked into another hole. They emerged on the other side and she could see herself in shock like she had been almost a year ago after she had discovered the “circus” that she had been subjected to and in front of her, watching her with curiosity, she could see two of her ex-colleagues. These two had sneakily become lovers despite each of them being married and not sharing the same cultural or religious identities and had always pretended to be just friends. She had not finished looking at them with that realization that had dawned upon her, before her father moved again swiftly and she found herself at home again.
They talked a lot about those shifts into older realities and she begged him to let her know how to achieve those shifts. He told her that, aside from Demons who could materialize anywhere at will, it was only the Djinn and their rulers, the Marids, who were able to go back and forth in time. He said that as she was half-Marid, it might be possible for her to do so but it was not necessarily something that would come to her naturally. He asked her to master her astral travel first and then perhaps, she could shift timelines physically as well. He warned her, however, that shifting into timelines might alter their consequences and she might also end up stuck in the corridor of time. When he left her, despite all his warnings, she realized that she just could not keep away from such a tempting experience. She was first going to intensify her astral travels and then try to increase the impact of her light being so that she became of less dense matter and could travel through the corridors of time.
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She decided to get back to her flat and read a bit to take her mind off the events of the evening. She was glad that the bulky man’s body had been taken away as neither Manas nor she had the time to tend to that. She looked around her before opening the door to her building and stepping in. She recognized a faint smell of bleach and wondered what it might be. She quickened her step and reached her flat door. Something seemed off. She looked again at the door and realized that the stones in front had been moved about again. Somebody was in her flat and it surely wasn’t Manas as he had left towards the tube and could not have come back to the flat before her.
She pushed the door ever so slowly, hoping that the person inside would not know the door was opening but she realised this was futile as the corridor was lit while the room was half plunged in darkness.
- Come in, said a voice from what seemed to be the middle of the room. - Who is this, she said - A friend, or to be more precise, a friend of a friend
She entered the room very slowly, her eyes fixed upon the middle of the room where she could make out the form of two bodies sitting on her couch. Only one of them had spoken though and it seemed to be the one on the right. She was about to turn the switch on when the man spoke again asking her not to turn on the light.
- Close the door first, he said - Why, she said - Just close the door and then you can turn on the light.
She closed the door behind her feeling a tad more vulnerable as she did, realising that she would not be able to rush out as easily as she would have been able to, had she left the door open. She switched the light on and turned towards the men, letting a gasp out as she did so. On the couch sat side by side, the dead crumpled bulky man and another man she had never seen before. Before she could say anything, someone else came out of the kitchen and she found herself face to face with the man that she had identified as Younes.
I thought you were warned not to meet Manas again, said Younes - I heard the warning but nothing was said about when Manas would come himself to see me - You should have asked him to leave - You should know Manas is not a man to be trifled with or told what to do - Yes, I get what you mean but you still should have tried to make him leave for both your sakes - Well he is on his way to Cameroon now, isn’t he?
Younes smirked but said nothing. The man on the couch beckoned to Younes to hold the bulky man still. She realised that the bulky man’s clothes were smelling of bleach and it looked like the floor of the room had been cleaned up with bleach too. They had very likely removed the blood that must have flowed from the bulky man. She wondered whether they had cleaned up the road as well. The man came towards her very slowly and purposefully. He took her by the shoulders and made her sit on the armchair opposite the couch.
- Do you know this man, he said, pointing towards the bulky dead man - No, it looked like he was following Manas and me, and he seemed to have a gun, perhaps to kill us both - Very likely. He is a hired killer that Al Shabab have used in the past. He can easily kill western targets as he is a Brit who looks very inconspicuous, and the target does not even realise anything before it is too late.
She mulled over this thoughtfully, realising that they had been lucky that his gun had become noticeable, and Manas had shot him before he could kill them. This did not explain, however, what Boko Haram’s Nigerian members were doing with his body in her flat nor why they were waiting for her. The man who was towering over her looked at her keenly.
- You are wondering why we are here and why this body is here - Yes, I am not sure what you want to achieve, really - This is a second warning to you and let it be the last. We have taken pictures of the dead body in your flat and if you won’t stop meeting with Manas, we will send the pictures to the police and there will be witnesses to claim that you had shot him. We have a lot of people who would love to be witnesses to incriminate you. - Well don’t you think that Manas would get embroiled in this if you were to really try to frame me? - Manas might never find out or he might never be able to do anything about it. Do not make this harder than it should be. - Okay, she said, swallowing her pride and anger, realising she could not fight them
Younes and the other man got a large plastic container which they folded the bulky man in before taking him out of her flat. She did not know what they were going to do with him but was just relieved that they were all out of the flat now and she could collect her thoughts. She looked at the couch expecting there to be some stains, but it had apparently been perfectly cleaned up and even if there had been any drops of blood, it looked like nothing had happened there. She went to the couch, putting her nose where he had been sitting but there was no smell of bleach. Perhaps there had been no blood left to drip there then. She went to the door and locked it before trying to put the latch on as her hands trembled. How was she going to get out of this one, she thought…
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She looked again at Manas’s beautiful black face filling the screen with his lips parting on pearly white teeth in such a beautiful smile that it made her heart ache with longing. His face seemed to pop out of the screen.
She smiled back, yet she wanted to know the truth, even if it were to hurt her.
- Did you order my torture, Manas?
- How could you think that my angel?
- I don’t know. It seemed impossible that your supporters would do it without your permission.
- Those who have tortured you have been castigated. I know I cannot make it up to you, I can never remove the effect the torture had on you, but I have punished those who took it into their hands to punish you for my imprisonment. As soon as I was let out of prison, I tended to that.
- It was awful
- I know. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I should have left instructions that you should not be touched but everything happened so fast, and we had to run away from your anti-terrorist team.
- I forgive you. I see now that it could not have been you and you did not have time to make sure nothing happened to me.
- Meet me alongside the Thames, near the London Eye at 4 pm
- Tea-time! I see you are getting acquainted with the locals
- Anything for you, my angel. I have followed the change of your career and know that it is now here that you have settled down. I want to be with you and give you the best of myself.
- What about your terrorist gang? Are you going to be attacking civilians here?
- I wish I could answer you, my angel. Let’s not think about things that separate us. We have so much to catch up about. I have missed you so much
- Me too
The words almost suffocated her. She had missed him so much that it actually hurt her. She felt as if her chest had been bashed in, so difficult it was to breathe. She quickly put on her clothes and ran towards the tube. It would not take her long to get to the London Eye from Canada Water. She kept wiping nervously her hands on her jeans as she was sweating profusely, and her hands were wet too. She wondered what it would be like to be in his arms again. Would his love for her be the same? Had he been with other women while they were not together? What had he been doing after his release from the Cameroonian prison?
She got down at Waterloo and walked towards the London Eye. From far she could see Manas. He was disguised and now had a beard on as well as a wig, but she could easily recognize him. Suddenly she felt someone gazing at her on the side and turned to see one of her team members from the Cameroon operation. She also felt someone staring at her from the back and turned around to see another of her team members. They were closing in on her and she realized that her phone must have been tapped.
The good thing was that they had not yet recognized Manas so she turned around and looked squarely at the team member behind her. She pushed him and he fell to the ground. The other team member at her side closed in on her and caught her wrists. Stop fighting, he said but she started throwing punches at him while kicking at the other man who was trying to hold her legs. She saw Manas slowly back out of where he was and then turn and walk away. At least he is safe, she thought as her two team members jointly held her by the wrists and legs.
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