Date: June 27, 2012Location: Jadavpur Villa, Kolkata / Zurich / New Delhi / Mumbai / Nationwide
Aritra sat still in his study, staring into the darkened screen.
Outside, the monsoon whispered against the glass windows of the villa, the downpour blurring the view of Dakhuria Lake beyond. The storm outside was nothing compared to the storm he was about to summon.
"Lumen," he said softly.
The holographic assistant blinked into existence midair, blue light dancing around its form like an aurora. "Yes, Aritra?"
He didn't lean back. He didn't smile. This wasn't a moment of triumph. This was war.
"I want the vault opened. The one no government dares touch."
There was a pause. Lumen processed 0.3 seconds longer than usual.
"Are you authorizing Black Protocol 7?"
"Yes. Target: Swiss Private Banking Network. Internal code layers. Ghosted black accounts connected to Indian entities. Politicians. Judges. Corporate groups."
"And the retrieval scope?"
"Full metadata. Documents. Signature trails. Video logs. Mobile-linked backups. Anything flagged corrupt or illegal—bring it out."
Lumen pulsed, shifting into its deepest system access mode.
"And then?" it asked.
"Upload to OmniLink. Encrypted. Indexed. Categorized by state, position, and decade. No waiting."
The room fell into silence, the light from Lumen casting soft arcs across the antique wood-paneled walls.
"Target locked," Lumen said.
And the greatest breach in financial history began—quietly, methodically.
The storm rolled low over Kolkata like a great sleeping beast, thunder echoing from the skies above Dakhuria Lake. But inside Aritra Naskar's villa, the only sound was the humming pulse of high-frequency computation—silent to the human ear, deafening to global systems.
Aritra sat unmoved before the crystalline projection of Lumen, his AI assistant glowing faint blue in the darkened study. His hands steepled beneath his chin, he didn't blink as line after line of firewall bypass flashed past the holographic interface.
The command had been simple. The implications were anything but.
> "Access all linked Swiss financial institutions. Prioritize high-tier private vaults connected to Indian political, judicial, and industrial entities. Layered shells, offshore entities, numbered accounts—crack everything."
Lumen obeyed without hesitation. But even for the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created, this was no minor task.
> "Ghosting through SwissCore's encrypted VortexNet," Lumen reported, voice calm. "Deploying seven mirror masks. Estimated breach success: 87% in 93 seconds. Unmasking metadata packages. Compiling hidden owners…"
In a room across the world, vaults built to remain silent for generations shuddered in digital protest.
---
Zurich – Vault Node 7A – 4:03 AM CET
Deep within the fortified servers of a bank known only by initials to its elite clients, an anomaly bloomed like a virus through clean code. It didn't announce itself. It didn't crash any systems. It simply _read_.
Folder after folder—documents dating back to the early '80s, scanned ledgers, tax shelter transactions, dummy corporations—spilled into Lumen's mind. Every last rupee siphoned out of the Indian economy by corrupt politicians, real estate moguls, tax-evading film producers, ex-judges, media barons, and even charity heads.
> "Multiple joint accounts detected. Tagging metadata: Offshore Routing – Dubai, Isle of Man, Cayman, Mauritius, Panama."
> "Associated with Subject ID: Former Cabinet Minister, 3-term MLA from UP, connected to 1988 fertilizer scam."
> "Linked asset: Video file dated February 2004. Hidden camera. Content—bribery during mining license distribution."
> "Subject ID: Sitting Supreme Court Justice, hidden trustee of Swiss-Norwegian Pharma Consortium."
> "Subject ID: Media House Director, laundering slush funds via NGO fronts."
It didn't stop. The further Lumen dug, the more the rot surfaced.
---
Jadavpur – 9:37 PM IST
Aritra stood now, one hand on the back of his chair, eyes narrowing as the holographic data storm filled the air around him.
"Where are the hard proofs?" he asked.
> "Decoding cross-device sync logs from iPhones and Android devices of subjects. Accessing deleted videos, voice memos, private cloud uploads, and WhatsApp backups…"
Faint thumbnail previews blinked alive:
- A minister being handed a suitcase under a puja tent.
- A business tycoon snorting cocaine while laughing about offshore kickbacks.
- A judge exchanging a file folder for an envelope in the back of a courtroom.
Aritra's jaw tensed. Not in shock—but in anticipation.
---
10:05 PM IST – OmniLink War Room
Inside the hardened core of OmniLink's Indian datacenter, three top-level AI routing bots came alive. Not employees. Not operators. Systems.
They recognized the incoming data package from Lumen.
It was authenticated by Aritra's Black Seal.
> _"Launch Operation FireSky?"_ the system asked.
> _"Confirmed. Target visibility: Global. Shadow mode for Indian IPs deactivated."_
Millions of links flooded social feeds within three minutes.
The posts didn't use fancy titles. They didn't editorialize.
They simply showed.
Videos. Bank statements. Signed letters. Photos. Call logs.
Some of them—leaked directly from phones synced without their owners' knowledge—showed texts like:
> _"He's asking 10 cr to pass the land bid. Want me to send that girl again?"_
> _"Supreme guy says judgment is delayed. Needs vacation funds. You handle it."_
The people of India, on their evening tea breaks, saw faces they'd voted for—laughing while stealing from them.
---
10:20 PM IST – New Delhi – Political Firestorm
The Prime Minister's residence erupted in chaos.
Phones rang without pause.
"He uploaded what?!"
"What's this about judges?"
"Why wasn't the Election Commission informed?!"
"It's that damn OmniLink—shut it down!"
They tried.
Their IT cells stormed OmniLink with takedown requests.
But nothing moved.
Because unlike other platforms, OmniLink's global publishing interface was autonomous, decentralized, and governed by quantum-randomized access controls.
There was no admin.
And the only person who had root override access wasn't picking up any phone calls.
Aritra was watching.
And smiling.
---
Nationwide – 11:00 PM IST – Streets Begin to Burn and Shine
In small towns, people gathered around screens at chai stalls, gasping and cursing.
In metros, student groups began forwarding clip after clip.
Hashtags blazed.
> SwissLeaksIndia
> TheyStoleOurFuture
> NovaJustice
> ExposeThemAll
By midnight, the protests had begun.
---
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh – 12:15 AM – University Campus
Students filled the lawn, candles in hand, projecting a ten-foot-tall version of a leaked video onto a white wall.
It showed a ruling party MP taking a bribe—timestamped, geo-verified, with bank routing details.
> "They called us jobless. They called us fools," shouted a student activist. "But they were stealing the food from our mouths while we studied!"
> "We don't want revenge," said another, standing on a bench. "We want truth. Let them all fall."
---
Mumbai – 12:30 AM – Corporate HQ Panic
A board meeting for a major real estate conglomerate turned into screaming chaos.
"I told you to wipe the drives!"
"You said the backups were encrypted!"
"How the hell did that video of us end up in that AI thing's hands?!"
But no one had an answer.
Because the truth wasn't hacked—it had been recorded by the rot they themselves forgot.
And now, it belonged to the people.