The Thirteenth Chair
793 Words
The sound came again.
Clang.
Metal against metal.
Not loud.
Deliberate.
As if someone wanted them to know they weren't alone.
Rainwater trickled down the stone steps into the darkness below.
Inspector Raghav pulled out his service pistol.
"Kian..."
"Wait for backup."
Kian didn't take his eyes off the staircase.
"If someone's down there, every second matters."
"And if it's a trap?"
Kian gave a hollow smile.
"They've been leading me into traps since the hospital."
He stepped into the darkness.
The air changed immediately.
Cold.
Still.
It smelled of rust, damp concrete... and something older.
Dust.
The kind that settles only when a place has been forgotten for decades.
The narrow staircase spiraled nearly thirty feet underground before opening into a reinforced steel corridor.
Emergency lights glowed faintly along the walls.
Impossible.
Someone was powering this place.
Raghav ran his fingers across the concrete.
"Military construction."
"What?"
"This isn't a basement."
He looked around carefully.
"It's a bunker."
The corridor ended at an enormous circular vault door.
Its surface was covered with bullet scars.
Someone had once tried to force their way inside.
Above the wheel lock, carved directly into the steel, were three words.
LOYALTY DEMANDS BLOOD.
Kian's jaw tightened.
His father had always repeated one sentence while raising him.
"Family before everything."
He had thought it was advice.
Now it sounded like doctrine.
The vault door stood slightly open.
Someone had entered recently.
Kian pushed it wider.
The hinges groaned.
The room beyond was enormous.
Circular.
Windowless.
A meeting chamber.
Twelve wooden chairs surrounded a black stone table.
Each chair carried a brass nameplate.
Chair One.
Chair Two.
Chair Three...
Most were too corroded to read.
Only three names remained clear.
RAGHAV SEN
The inspector froze.
"What..."
Kian looked at him.
"You've been here."
Raghav didn't answer.
Another name.
ARJUN DEV
Kian's father.
His pulse quickened.
The final readable plate—
MEERA DEV
His mother.
His breathing stopped.
"My mother..."
He looked toward Raghav.
"...was part of this?"
The inspector lowered his head.
"I hoped you'd never find this place."
Kian walked around the table.
Eleven chairs.
Then he frowned.
"Twelve."
He counted again.
One...
Two...
...
Twelve.
He looked back at the room.
Something felt wrong.
Very wrong.
The table was perfectly circular.
Yet there was empty space between Chair Twelve and Chair One.
Enough space...
For another chair.
One that no longer existed.
He searched the floor.
Fresh scrape marks.
Someone had removed it recently.
A thirteenth chair.
"That's impossible."
Raghav's voice echoed through the chamber.
"There were only twelve founders."
Kian crouched beside the scrape marks.
"They didn't remove furniture."
He traced the grooves with his fingertips.
"They erased someone."
Exactly like the scratched face in the old photograph.
Exactly like the missing records.
Exactly like the assassins with no identities.
Someone wasn't simply dead.
Someone had been deleted from history.
A projector suddenly flickered to life.
Neither of them had touched it.
Static filled the wall ahead.
Then...
An image appeared.
A grainy recording.
Twenty-eight years old.
Twelve men and one woman sat around this very table.
Kian instantly recognized his father.
Much younger.
No gray hair.
No scars.
No empire.
Just ambition.
Beside him sat his mother.
Alive.
Laughing.
The sight hit him harder than any bullet.
He had spent sixteen years trying to remember her voice.
Now she smiled only a few feet away.
Then another figure entered the recording.
The room welcomed him by standing.
Every founder rose.
Even Kian's father.
Even his mother.
Whoever this man was...
They feared him.
The camera never captured his face.
Only his hands.
One hand wore a silver ring engraved with a wolf...
...with three eyes.
The same symbol carved into the assassins' skin.
The man spoke.
His voice distorted with age.
"Gentlemen..."
"...today we build an empire."
A pause.
"But remember."
"If any one of us betrays this family..."
"...history itself will forget their name."
The recording ended abruptly.
Darkness returned.
Raghav whispered something Kian barely heard.
"No..."
"It can't be."
"What?"
The inspector's face had turned pale.
"That recording..."
"...should have been destroyed twenty years ago."
Before Kian could respond—
A slow clap echoed through the chamber.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Neither of them had moved.
The applause came from the shadows beyond the projector.
A man stepped into the dim light.
Perfectly tailored black suit.
Silver hair.
No umbrella this time.
Only an amused smile.
"The recording wasn't destroyed."
He looked directly at Kian.
"I kept it."
Kian raised his pistol.
The man ignored it.
Then he spoke the one sentence that shattered everything Kian believed.
"You've spent your entire life calling Arjun Dev your father."
He smiled.
"But has no one ever told you..."
"...why your blood type doesn't match his?"
- Writer
