The fire had started at midnight.
Ram stood in the rain, face soaked not from water but from sweat and ash, watching the flames devour what took years to build. His bio-robotic laboratory nestled in the mountains of Uttarakhand—his sanctum of secrets, the cradle of his most advanced AI minions—was reduced to a burning skeleton. The news hit the underground network within hours. Government agents whispered theories, foreign powers celebrated discreetly, and unknown enemies smiled in the shadows.
To the world, it was an unfortunate accident.
To Ram, it was war.
His mind raced. This wasn't just a building; this was the nerve center of his revolution. The facility had housed neural chip prototypes, adaptive biomech suits, even personality-mapped AI clones designed to serve as future mentors for the brightest minds in his schools. And now—it was gone.
Ram clenched his fists. For three years, he had predicted this possibility. Someone had finally moved against him, carefully, silently, cloaked in bureaucracy and plausible deniability. But he was ready.
In the shadows of the night, he activated Protocol Kaalchakra.
This wasn't just a countermeasure. It was a resurrection.
---
The underground vault beneath the school in Dehradun opened for the first time in years. Inside were containers filled with carbon-sealed servers, cryogenically preserved circuit boards, and five prototype AI cores—silent, dormant, but alive.
Ram didn't sleep. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his mind fully immersed in lines of code from the future. Fire had taken what he built in the open—but in the darkness, he would rebuild stronger.
By morning, the first reconstruction bots had awakened.
He didn't need government approvals. He didn't need foreign parts. He had prepared for this scenario, quietly manufacturing backups of every component within India's borders using shell companies run by his AI network. His enemy had struck, thinking Ram was still a boy with a vision.
They didn't know he was a ghost with an army.
---
A week later, the world reeled from a shock announcement.
An unknown Indian company named "Netra Systems" launched an AI-powered nano-fabrication plant capable of manufacturing precision chips—down to the sub-3nm level. The world knew only the US, Japan, and Taiwan could produce such tech.
Now… India had joined them. Quietly. Fiercely.
---
But this chapter wasn't just about revenge. In the quiet hours between rebuilds, Ram stood at his grandmother's bedside. Her condition had worsened. The potion he was developing—his experimental "Amrith-1" cell-rejuvenation serum—needed one more breakthrough.
"You've given your life for me, Dadi," Ram whispered. "Now I'll give mine to keep yours burning."
The room hummed softly, bioluminescent monitors glowing blue. His lab now occupied the hidden caves of the Himalayas, shielded by nature and guarded by AI sentries with cloaking tech. No one would touch his dreams again.
He called his core AI, Kavi-7, and uploaded a map of the human genome.
"Cross-compare longevity sequences with the cellular regeneration models from Project Phoenix," he said. "Use your quantum threads. We don't have time."
Kavi's voice was calm and powerful: "Initiating Sequence: Immortalis Alpha."
Outside, the world thought Ram had been set back.
Inside, Ram had become unstoppable.
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