"I need a successor," Vijayaraghavan said. "Join me. Run Vilangu. Your wife will be safe. Your name will be cleaned. All you have to do... is put on the collar."
"Let them come," he said. "This time, I'm not standing outside the cage. I'm standing inside it. And I'm learning their language."
Vilangu Central was shut down. Warden Chezhiyan was arrested while trying to flee in a vegetable truck. Vijayaraghavan, the Ghost, was finally handcuffed by the student he had tried to corrupt.
The next morning, his face was on every channel. "Rogue Cop Massacres Innocent Workers." The evidence was surgical: his gun, his fingerprints, his vehicle. Even his wife, Nandhini, a senior lawyer, couldn't stop the machine. Within seventy-two hours, Arulmozhi Varman was stripped of his badge, dressed in a white lungi, and shoved into a rattling prison van.
He walked toward the rising sun, but the shadow behind him was longer, darker, and shaped like a wolf.
Destination: The name meant "animal" or "beast," and the locals had a darker translation: The Place Where Men Forget They Were Human.