Mihika stood perfectly still, her muscles completely locking as her analytical mind shifted from art history to pure survival.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice echoing hollowly into the high-ceilinged exhibition hall outside her glass partition. "Ram Singh? Is that you? Did the backup generator trip once again?"
There was no answer. Only the aggressive and frantic drumming of the monsoon rain against the reinforced glass windows.
A cold prickle of sweat traced its way down the small of her back. The Jehangir Gallery operated on a triple-redundant power grid. A standard municipal blackout wouldn't kill the primary security feeds or the lights in the conservation wings simultaneously. This was purely intentional. Someone had cut the main source.
She reached into her linen trousers for her smartphone but before her fingers could close around the glass casing a soft distinct click echoed from the center of the main gallery floor. The unmistakable sound of a lock slipping its deadbolt.
Mihika's maternal grandfather had been a colonel in the Indian Army and if he had taught her anything before she had chosen a quiet life of academic preservation, it was that panic was a luxury which is reserved for people who wanted to get hurt. She quietly clicked off her fiber-optic light, plunging herself into total darkness.
Moving by pure muscle memory, her hand swept across the velvet-lined workstation until her fingers wrapped around a heavy, solid brass diya - an antique oil lamp she had been cleaning earlier that afternoon. It weighed a solid three pounds, with sharp ornamental ridges along the base.
Holding the brass weapon close to her chest she slipped off her flat leather loafers. She crept toward the heavy oak door of the restoration lab barefoot and pressed her ear to the wood.
Step. Step. Silence.
Someone was out there. And they weren't walking like a seventy-year-old night watchman. The footsteps were completely weightless, detectable only by the faint, rhythmic creak of the 120-year-old teakwood floorboards.
Mihika gently turned the brass handle of her door, easing it open just an inch.
The main exhibition hall was bathed in the eerie filtered gray light of the city's streetlamps cutting through the rain-streaked skylights. In the center of the room, standing right in front of the reinforced glass display case where the Chola collection was meant to be showcased tomorrow morning, was a silhouette.
He was tall, broad-shouldered and completely unhurried. He wore a dark impeccably tailored charcoal suit that moved with fluid athletic ease. A black tactical mask obscured his face from the nose down leaving only a pair of sharply alert dark eyes visible.
He wasn't carrying a crowbar or a clumsy sledgehammer. Instead, he pulled a sleek matte-black electronic device from his inner jacket pocket and pressed it against the battery operated biometric lock of the display case. The device whirred, cycling through thousands of alphanumeric rolling codes at a blinding speed.
Mihika watched her academic indignation temporarily overriding her fear. That display case used an advanced rolling-code encryption system she had personally helped install three months ago.
Within five seconds the display case emitted a soft defeated beep and the heavy glass door swung open.
"Bloody hell" Mihika muttered under her breath.
The thief reached inside, his black-gloved hands extending toward the velvet pedestal. But his hands came up completely empty. He paused looking at the empty space where the Goddess Parvati was supposed to be. He tilted his head, a soft amused hum escaping him in the quiet room.
"Looking for this?" Mihika stepped out of the shadow of the lab door, her voice cutting through the silence of the gallery like a scalpel.
The thief didn't jump. He didn't even get startled. He simply turned around with an agonizingly slow, casual grace, his dark eyes locking onto hers. He looked down at the heavy brass diya gripped firmly in her right hand, raised at an angle meant to crack a human skull.
"Well, hello there!" the thief said.
Mihika blinked. His voice wasn't the gruff, raspy whisper of a common street criminal. It was a rich, smooth baritone that carried a distinct infuriatingly confident lilt. He spoke with the easy elegance of someone attending a South Bombay sundowner completely unfazed by the heavy weapon pointed at his chest.
"Don't move" Mihika warned, stepping forward, keeping her center of gravity low just as her grandfather had taught her. "The police have already been alerted. If you take one single step toward that corridor, I will hit your central nervous system with this lamp."
The thief let out a low, genuine laugh that vibrated pleasantly through the dark room. "An unworking nervous system? Cruel. I like it. But let's be honest, sweetheart. You didn't call the police."
Mihika's grip tightened on the brass. "Try me."
"If you had called them you would be hiding under your very expensive restoration desk waiting for a siren" he said, taking a slow, measured step toward her. "Instead, you are standing here barefoot, looking exceptionally fierce and holding a piece of some silverware. Which tells me you're Mihika Agarwal. The resident genius."
"How do you even know my name?"
"I make it a point to know beautiful women who know their way around Chola bronzes" he said. His eyes crinkling tightly at the corners. He was smiling beneath that mask. "Now, why don't you be a good girl and hand over the Parvati? The people I work for don't have a very high tolerance for delayed timelines".
"I think, the people you work for are absolute idiots" Mihika snapped, her sharp eyes tracking his weight distribution. He was leaning on his right leg, perfectly balanced, ready to spring. "And so are you if you think I'm going to letting you walk out of here with a counterfeit artifact containing an encrypted military microchip".
For the first time, the thief's playful demeanor cracked. His eyes narrowed, the amusement instantly vanishing, replaced by a cold, sharp intelligence that turned the air freezing.
"So you found the chip" he stated. His voice dropping a full octave.
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