Mission Forensic
Part 44: Choosing Tomorrow
Morning in the Same Society
The week after Shawn and Ahana moved into the society settled into a comfortable pattern faster than any of them expected.
The novelty of having their closest friends living barely a minute away should have worn off by now. It hadn't.
On Wednesday morning, sunlight crept through the curtains of Edward and Catherine's flat and spread slowly across the bedroom floor. Outside, Delhi was already awake. Somewhere below, a vegetable vendor announced his arrival with practiced enthusiasm. A pressure cooker whistled from a neighboring apartment. The society guard exchanged greetings with early office-goers as the city prepared itself for another day.
Inside the flat, however, the day was proceeding at a significantly slower pace.
Edward emerged from the kitchen carrying two cups of tea and immediately stopped.
Catherine was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, surrounded by notebooks, sticky notes, and a toxicology textbook thick enough to qualify as construction material.
"What happened here?" he asked.
Without looking up, she replied, "Academic excellence."
"It looks like a paper explosion."
"It is a highly organized paper explosion."
Edward handed her a cup.
She accepted it automatically, eyes still fixed on the highlighted pages.
For several seconds neither spoke.
The silence between them had long ago become comfortable.
Not empty.
Not awkward.
Simply familiar.
Eventually Catherine looked up.
"Do you realize we've become those people?"
Edward frowned.
"What people?"
"The ones who voluntarily wake up early to study."
"I was making tea."
"You were awake."
"That's circumstantial evidence."
She laughed softly.
Before she could respond, both their phones vibrated simultaneously.
A message from Shawn.
Emergency.
A second message arrived immediately afterward.
Not a real emergency. But emotionally important.
Edward sighed.
"That never means anything good."
The phone rang moments later.
"Crisis?" Edward answered.
"Major crisis," Shawn announced.
In the background, Ahana's voice could already be heard.
"There is no crisis."
"There absolutely is."
"There isn't."
"There is."
Edward exchanged a look with Catherine.
Some mornings required no explanation.
"What happened?" Catherine asked.
"Our kettle is broken."
A pause.
"That's the emergency?" Edward asked.
"You don't understand the severity of the situation."
"It's a kettle."
"It's civilization."
Ahana took the phone.
"We'll buy a new one after class."
"See?" Shawn said. "She has solutions but no sympathy."
The call ended shortly afterward, leaving Edward and Catherine shaking their heads.
"Three days," Catherine said.
"What?"
"Three days in the new flat."
Edward nodded.
"And they're already functioning like an old married couple."
The smile Catherine tried to hide gave her away immediately.
The Drive and the Campus
By the time all four gathered downstairs, the morning sun had fully claimed the city.
Shawn stood beside the society gate carrying a backpack that appeared heavier than necessary.
Ahana was reading something on her tablet.
Edward had stopped asking how she managed to read while walking.
Catherine climbed into the passenger seat while Shawn and Ahana occupied the back.
The arrangement had become routine.
So had the conversations.
Within minutes Shawn was explaining a cybercrime article he had discovered at midnight.
Apparently a man had attempted to hide financial fraud by deleting digital records.
Apparently he had failed spectacularly.
Apparently Shawn considered this deeply entertaining.
"People think deleting a file makes it disappear," he said.
"It doesn't?" Catherine asked.
Shawn stared at her dramatically.
"It physically hurts me that you asked that."
"I wanted to hear the lecture."
"You were going to hear it anyway."
Ahana looked up from her screen.
"He's been talking about this since breakfast."
"I am passionate."
"You are repetitive."
Edward smiled quietly as the conversation continued around him.
Traffic crawled toward campus.
Motorcycles slipped between vehicles with alarming confidence.
Street vendors arranged fruit beneath colorful umbrellas.
Students crossed roads carrying backpacks and coffee cups.
Delhi moved with its usual chaotic determination.
As NIFS finally came into view, something occurred to Edward.
The campus looked exactly the same.
Yet it felt completely different.
Only a few weeks earlier they had all belonged to the same stream.
The same classes.
The same lectures.
Now specialization has begun drawing invisible boundaries.
Not between friends.
But between disciplines.
Each day they walked toward different futures.
The realization was strangely satisfying.
And slightly unsettling.
The parking lot was already filling when they arrived.
Students moved across pathways carrying laboratory coats, laptops, files, and half-finished breakfasts.
The energy felt different now.
More focused.
More deliberate.
People weren't exploring anymore.
They were choosing.
Lunch at the Same Table
The morning disappeared quickly.
Edward spent most of his first lecture listening to Professor Ridhima discuss fingerprint databases and identification systems.
Across campus, Catherine found herself fascinated by a discussion on analytical instrumentation in toxicology.
Shawn emerged from a cyber forensics session carrying enough enthusiasm to power a small city.
Ahana spent nearly three hours in a biotechnology laboratory and appeared entirely satisfied by the experience.
By lunchtime, they reunited at their usual table.
The cafeteria was crowded.
Voices overlapped from every direction.
Some students argued about assignments.
Others discussed laboratory practicals.
A group nearby appeared to be debating forensic anthropology with unnecessary intensity.
For the four of them, lunch felt like a return to familiar territory.
Edward sat down first.
Catherine arrived moments later.
Then Shawn.
Then Ahana.
For a few seconds everyone focused entirely on food.
Then the conversations began.
"So," Catherine said, opening her lunch container, "how many fingerprints did you fall in love with today?"
Edward looked offended.
"I'll have you know fingerprint science is a serious discipline."
"That wasn't an answer."
"At least seven."
She laughed.
"Thought so."
Shawn immediately joined in.
"Our cyber professor spent thirty minutes explaining how people accidentally expose their entire lives online."
"Only thirty?" Ahana asked.
"He was showing restraint."
"What did you learn?" Catherine asked.
"Humanity is reckless."
"That sounds like an existing observation."
"It has now been scientifically confirmed."
The conversation drifted naturally from one subject to another.
Toxicology.
DNA analysis.
Digital evidence.
Fingerprint identification.
Each specialization seemed to speak a slightly different language.
Yet somehow they remained interested in what the others had to say.
That was the surprising part.
Not the differences.
The curiosity.
At one point Catherine began describing an analytical technique she had encountered during class.
Halfway through the explanation she noticed Shawn staring blankly.
"You stopped understanding three minutes ago."
"I stopped understanding at the word chromatography."
"That's concerning."
"I specialize in computers."
"That's not an excuse."
"It absolutely is."
Laughter erupted around the table.
Nearby students glanced over briefly before returning to their own conversations.
For a moment, Edward simply watched his friends.
The scene felt strangely significant.
The four of them had spent years studying the same subjects.
Attending the same lectures.
Preparing for the same examinations.
Now the paths were beginning to separate.
Not dramatically.
Not painfully.
Just naturally.
Each of them was becoming something different.
A fingerprint examiner.
A toxicologist.
A cyber forensic analyst.
A biotechnology specialist.
Different roads.
Same table.
Same friendship.
As the lunch period drew toward its end, Catherine leaned back slightly and looked around the crowded cafeteria.
"Do you ever think about first year?"
The question caught them all off guard.
Shawn smiled first.
"We were idiots."
"We're still idiots," Ahana said.
"True."
Edward glanced toward the windows where afternoon sunlight spilled across the campus lawns.
"Maybe," he said quietly, "but at least now we're specialized idiots."
The groan that followed from the entire table was immediate.
And entirely deserved.
The bell rang a minute later.
Classes waited.
Laboratories waited.
Futures waited.
But for a brief hour in the middle of the day, everything still returned to the same table.
The Announcement
The afternoon lecture had barely settled into its rhythm when Professor Ridhima entered the classroom carrying a blue folder beneath her arm.
Something about the folder immediately attracted attention.
Students possessed an almost supernatural ability to detect administrative announcements.
The whispers began before she even reached the podium.
Edward looked up from his notebook.
Professor Ridhima adjusted her spectacles and surveyed the room with her usual calm expression.
"I have an announcement regarding internships."
The reaction was immediate.
Half the classroom straightened.
The other half stopped pretending to take notes.
Professor Ridhima waited patiently for the excitement to settle.
"Since all of you are now in your specialization semester, the institute has begun coordinating internship placements with various forensic organizations and laboratories across the country."
The room became completely silent.
Internships.
The word carried weight.
Until now, careers had existed somewhere in the distant future.
A concept.
An ambition.
A possibility.
Now they suddenly felt real.
Names of institutions appeared on the projector screen.
National Crime Records Bureau.
Central Forensic Science Laboratories.
State Forensic Science Laboratories.
National Dope Testing Laboratory.
Cyber Investigation Units.
Research Laboratories.
Government Agencies.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Students simply stared.
The future had acquired addresses.
"You will submit your preferred organizations by the end of this week," Professor Ridhima continued. "Preferences are not guarantees. They help us understand your interests and coordinate opportunities accordingly."
Questions erupted immediately.
"What if we want more than one option?"
"Can we change later?"
"Are placements competitive?"
"Do grades matter?"
Professor Ridhima answered each question patiently.
Edward found himself staring at one particular name.
National Crime Records Bureau.
NCRB.
Something about it felt right.
Fingerprint databases.
National identification systems.
Large-scale forensic operations.
The idea lingered long after the lecture moved on.
Edward the CR
Unfortunately for Edward, the announcement created a secondary problem.
He was Class Representative.
Which meant every question eventually found him.
By the time the lecture ended, students had formed an unofficial queue beside his desk.
"Edward, where do we submit?"
"Edward, do we need signatures?"
"Edward, is NCRB difficult to get?"
"Edward, should I choose Delhi or Hyderabad?"
"Edward—"
"Edward—"
"Edward—"
By the tenth question he was reconsidering every life choice that had led him toward becoming CR.
Across the corridor, Catherine happened to walk past and witnessed the scene.
She paused.
Observed the crowd surrounding him.
Then smiled.
"Having fun?"
Edward looked at her.
The expression alone answered the question.
She laughed.
"I warned you."
"You encouraged me to become CR."
"I supported your growth."
"You supported my paperwork."
The crowd continued asking questions.
Catherine escaped before she could be recruited into administrative service.
Edward never forgave her.
Choices
The following day the forms began arriving.
Students submitted preferences one after another.
Some changed their minds twice.
Others researched institutions during lunch and changed them again.
By Thursday afternoon, Edward had finally completed his own form.
Under Preferred Internship Organization, he wrote:
National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)
The decision felt strangely easy.
A future built around fingerprints.
Identification.
National databases.
Pattern recognition.
It felt like an extension of everything he already loved.
Later that day he met Catherine outside the toxicology laboratory.
She was carrying three notebooks and looked completely exhausted.
"Tough day?"
"My professor assigned reading."
"That's normal."
"He assigned eighty pages."
"Ah."
She handed him her internship form.
He glanced down.
National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL)
Edward smiled.
"Toxicology wasn't enough. You chose more toxicology."
"It has advanced instrumentation."
"You sound excited."
"I am excited."
The smile she wore was impossible to miss.
For Catherine, the choice felt obvious.
Chemistry.
Drug analysis.
Analytical science.
Precision.
NDTL represented everything that fascinated her about forensic toxicology.
The following lunch break, Shawn proudly announced his own decision.
"IFSO."
Nobody looked surprised.
"You were always going to choose cyber investigations," Ahana said.
"It is the future."
"You say that every day."
"Because every day it remains true."
Shawn launched into a detailed explanation involving digital evidence, cybercrime networks, and forensic software.
Eventually Catherine interrupted.
"Have you actually submitted the form?"
There was a pause.
"...not yet."
The entire table groaned.
Ahana looked far more prepared.
Her form had already been completed.
Signed.
Photocopied.
Probably archived.
Her choice was equally unsurprising.
CFSL-CBI
DNA profiling.
Biological evidence.
Advanced forensic research.
High-profile investigations.
When Edward asked why she had selected it, she considered for a moment before answering.
"Because that's where I want to learn."
Simple.
Direct.
Completely Ahana.
Evening at the New Flat
Friday evening arrived with a sense of quiet accomplishment.
The forms had been submitted.
Deadlines had been met.
The week had finally slowed.
As unofficial celebration, the four gathered at Shawn and Ahana's apartment.
The new flat already felt different from the day they had moved in.
Books occupied shelves.
Curtains hung properly.
A few indoor plants had appeared.
Nobody knew where they came from.
Probably Ahana.
The dining table disappeared beneath takeaway containers, notebooks, and tea cups.
The conversation drifted naturally toward internships.
Future plans.
Career goals.
Places they hoped to work one day.
Outside, darkness settled over Delhi.
The lights of neighboring buildings blinked awake one by one.
From the balcony, the society looked peaceful.
For a while nobody spoke.
They simply sat together.
Comfortable.
Tired.
Content.
Edward leaned back in his chair.
"It feels strange."
"What does?" Catherine asked.
"Actually choosing."
Shawn nodded slowly.
"I know what you mean."
For years they had discussed careers in abstract terms.
Someday.
Eventually.
After graduation.
Now the future was beginning to take shape.
Not completely.
Not clearly.
But enough to recognize.
Catherine glanced around the table.
At Edward.
At Shawn.
At Ahana.
At the friendships that had somehow survived university, master's studies, distance, examinations, and change.
"We'll all end up in different places one day."
The words settled softly between them.
Nobody argued.
Because it was true.
Eventually careers would take them in different directions.
Different cities.
Different laboratories.
Different responsibilities.
Yet somehow the thought didn't feel sad.
Perhaps because they had already learned something important.
Distance was not the same thing as separation.
Shawn lifted his tea cup.
"To internships."
"To internships," Ahana agreed.
"To future forensic experts," Catherine added.
Edward smiled.
"To making it this far."
Their cups touched lightly.
A small sound.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing grand.
Just four friends sitting beneath the warm lights of a Delhi apartment, looking toward futures that finally felt close enough to touch.
And for the first time since specialisation had begun, the uncertainty ahead felt less frightening than exciting.
Tomorrow was no longer an idea.
It had started becoming real.
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