The officer who came to brief Team 7 wore an IARF uniform Shyam hadn't seen up close before — plainer than DARF's, fewer insignia, the particular understated confidence of someone who worked close enough to the top of the ladder that she didn't need to announce her rank.
"Commissioner Priya Nambiar," she introduced herself, setting a tablet down on the briefing table. "IARF Selection Division. I'm here about the Global Selection Camp."
The room's energy shifted immediately — Meher sitting up straighter, Ramesh's eyebrows lifting, even Farah's careful stillness sharpening into real attention.
"Every major agency in the world sends sixteen trainees to a shared international camp," Nambiar continued, without preamble. "China, the US, Japan, Europe, and increasingly the rest of us — Africa, South Korea, the Arab League, Australia, and India. This year, for the first time, India's selection process is being run properly, start to finish, instead of the informal patchwork we've used before."
"What's changed?" Rathore asked.
"You have, Captain. Or rather, what your team stumbled into three weeks ago has." Nambiar's eyes moved deliberately around the table. "A confirmed international black-market organization operating inside Indian territory, using a local coup attempt as cover. That's no longer a DARF problem. That's a national security concern, and IARF is treating it accordingly — which means the case is now directly tied to this year's regional qualification for Delhi."
"Tied how?" Farah asked.
"Whichever DARF team fully closes the Zaid case — captures him, or confirms his death, and dismantles the backing structure behind him — wins Delhi's DARF regional spot for the Global Selection Camp." Nambiar said it plainly, like she was reading off a schedule rather than announcing the shape of the next several months of their lives. "You're not the only team in this city working an angle on it. Every DARF unit in Delhi has been quietly circling pieces of this for weeks. You simply have the head start of having already met him."
Silence settled over the table as that landed properly.
"Other DARF teams are hunting the same case," Birju said slowly.
"Yes."
"That seems needlessly competitive for something this serious," Ishita said.
"It's how the whole system works, Sub-Inspector. Competitive pressure produces results. It's not elegant. It's effective." Nambiar didn't seem remotely troubled by the observation.
Anya leaned forward. "What about IARF's own teams? Are they hunting Zaid too?"
"No." Nambiar's answer came without hesitation. "IARF runs its own selection track entirely separate from city-level ARF competition. We don't compete with DARF, MARF, or any regional force for spots — we have our own internal process, and Delhi's second regional seat belongs to us regardless of how the DARF case resolves. IARF will not be hunting Zaid for the purposes of this competition. Whether we hunt him for other reasons is a different conversation, and not one I'm authorized to have with you today." Her eyes lingered on Anya a moment longer than the answer strictly required. "Though since you asked — there's a separate reserve track alongside the primary sixteen. Eight veteran Tactical-class combatants, one per category, held in case a primary selectee can't continue. You're currently a candidate for Pterygota, Sen, on the strength of your record so far. Nothing's confirmed. If your performance on the Zaid case holds up the way it has until now, I'd expect your name to carry real weight when that selection is finalized. If it doesn't, it won't."
"Second seat," Rathore repeated. "Delhi gets two."
"Delhi is unique. Every state capital gets exactly one automatic regional seat — but in every state except this one, that seat still has to be earned against every other city team within that state. Maharashtra's seat technically belongs to MARF by default, but Pune's PARF, and half a dozen smaller city teams besides, will fight MARF and each other for the right to actually hold it before regionals even begin." Nambiar's expression flattened slightly, professional and precise. "Delhi doesn't have that problem, because Delhi is simultaneously a city and the national capital. One seat goes to whichever DARF team solves the Zaid case — competition entirely internal to Delhi's own DARF units, no outside city forces involved. The second seat is IARF's, uncontested, by right of being headquartered here. You have a real structural advantage most of the country doesn't get."
"And once regionals conclude?" Farah asked.
"Every region's winner — however they earned it — moves to the national qualifier. There, an advanced grading AI evaluates every combatant across every regional team, purely on demonstrated capability, no favoritism, no home-region bias. Top sixteen restricted-class combatants nationally, two from each of the eight categories, are selected to represent India at the Global Selection Camp. Every single team you'll face at that stage, from every state in this country, is already elite by definition. Surviving your own regional gauntlet is the price of admission, not a guarantee of anything past it."
"And Tactical class?" Shyam asked, quiet, the first thing he'd said since the briefing began.
Nambiar's eyes settled on him with real interest, as though she'd been waiting for someone to ask exactly that. "Everyone selected for the top sixteen is required to reach Tactical class before the global camp convenes. No exceptions. The world stage doesn't wait for anyone's growth curve, Mr. Raj — least of all a Water Monster-footed combatant with three weeks of formal training behind him."
The observation landed without cruelty, simply fact, and Shyam felt the whole room's attention shift toward him for a moment before Rathore spoke, cutting through it cleanly.
"He'll be ready," she said, no hesitation at all in her voice. "So will Nasreen. So will the rest of this team, if it comes to that."
Nambiar studied Rathore for a moment, something almost like approval crossing her composed face. "I hope so, Captain. Delhi hasn't sent a proper delegation to the Global Selection Camp in eleven years. I'd very much like that to change." She gathered her tablet, rising. "Solve your case. Grow your people. The clock started the moment I walked into this room, and I promise you, three other DARF units in this city heard some version of this same briefing today."
She left without further ceremony, and the room sat in a silence that took a long moment to break.
"Well," Ramesh said finally. "No pressure."
"Enormous pressure," Meher corrected, though she was grinning despite herself, some old competitive fire visibly kindling behind her eyes. "I love it."
Rathore looked around the table slowly — at Birju, solid and unshaken; at Meher, already restless with purpose; at Ishita, calm and considering; at Dev, unreadable as ever but clearly already turning strategy over in his mind; at Aakash, young and determined; at Farah, steady beside a cousin still finding her footing; at Anya, fierce and ready; and finally at Shyam, who held her gaze without flinching despite Nambiar's pointed reminder of exactly how far behind he currently stood.
"You heard her," Rathore said. "Every other DARF team in this city just got the same motivation we did. We have one real advantage over all of them, and it isn't strength." Her eyes moved deliberately to Shyam, then to Farah, then back around the whole table. "We know Zaid. We've stood in a room with him. We know what he wants, and we know he's arrogant enough to think none of us are worth fearing yet. That's an edge nobody else in this city has, and I intend to use every inch of it."
She stood, gathering the room's attention with the same easy authority she brought to everything.
"From today, the Zaid case is Team 7's only priority. Everything else waits." Her eyes swept the table one final time, landing last, deliberately, on Shyam. "Get strong. Get fast. We have a very short ladder to climb, and I'd rather climb it as the team that actually caught him than the team that simply survived meeting him once."
Nobody argued. Nobody, Shyam noticed, even looked tempted to.