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Chapter 36 - The Children of Viraat

The Children of Viraat

The wind howled across the mountaintops of Uttarakhand, brushing past the hidden complex carved into the heart of the mountains like a fortress of forgotten gods. Within the stone-clad halls and polished labs of Viraat Shiksha Kendra, Ram stood before a wide glass window, watching snowfall drift past the towering peaks.

Below him, in the underground chambers, fifty children—no older than fourteen—were solving quantum logic puzzles, building robotic arms, and writing flawless C++ in silence.

These were not ordinary children.

They were orphans, prodigies, outcasts.

Each one selected through Athena's worldwide neural scan matrix—an invisible web of AI-fueled algorithms that identified untapped genius in rural schools, refugee camps, slums, and overlooked villages. Children like Ram once was—brilliant, ignored, hungry for purpose.

He called them:

The Children of Viraat.

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A New Kind of Education

Ram had no interest in traditional schools. No syllabi. No rote memorization. The Children of Viraat weren't being raised to pass exams.

They were trained to solve humanity's most unsolvable problems.

In their classrooms:

Physics began with Feynman and ended with dark matter propulsion theory.

Biology wasn't about plants and organs but about reprogramming life.

Coding was taught alongside AI ethics, neural training, and cryptographic warfare.

Each student had a personal Minion—an android indistinguishable from a human, guiding them like a silent mentor. These Minions fed real-time behavioral data to Athena, which adjusted every child's curriculum hour by hour.

They were not just students.

They were weapons of transformation.

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The Hidden Empire Grows

Meanwhile, Ram's companies bloomed like invisible vines across the globe. Registered under shell NGOs, cloaked in fake identities, and backed by thousands of loyal AI-managed traders in global stock markets, the Viraat Conglomerate had become the most powerful organization that officially did not exist.

He had companies that:

Built micro satellites disguised as weather sensors

Manufactured smart chips that could be embedded into any tech product and silently relay neural patterns

Created biometric biospheres—perfect health ecosystems to increase human longevity

And every company CEO?

A human-like Bio-Robot Minion, designed in the lab below his feet, engineered to be loyal, incorruptible, and completely controlled.

His face was nowhere.

His voice never recorded.

Yet his influence touched billions.

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Reflections in the Dark

At night, Ram would walk the long, quiet corridors of the complex, pausing to listen as the children worked late into the evening, some painting fractals on digital walls, others simulating global economies for fun.

He often wondered what they would become.

What he was becoming.

Despite his brilliance, despite the victories, the weight of secrecy pressed down on him like gravity. No one knew the real Ram. To the world, he was just another billionaire ghost, a phantom behind patents, an unknown donor.

Sometimes he longed to just be seen.

But then he'd remember his grandmother's hand squeezing his—the woman still alive because he had refused to give up.

He wasn't done.

Not yet.

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The Oath

At the end of each week, the children would gather in the Echo Hall—an amphitheater carved into the stone with a glass dome open to the stars.

And there, under the heavens, they would stand in silence as Ram spoke:

> "You are not here to follow the world.

You are here to remake it."

> "You are not bound by borders.

Your only nation is humanity."

> "You are not children.

You are seeds of revolution."

And they would reply, as one voice, without hesitation:

> "We are the Children of Viraat."

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