Selvi leaned forward. “My brother wasn’t LTTE. He was a fisherman. You bombed his boat because your intel was wrong. Now I have your intel. I know about your daughter’s new friend at school. The one with the asthma pump.”

Srikant looked at his son, then at Suchi, who was pretending not to watch from the kitchen.

Suchi turned away. She didn’t believe him.

Back home, Atharva asked, “Appa, why are your knuckles bleeding?”

And that, Srikant realized, was the real beginning of Season 2. Not the terrorists. Not the virus. The moment his family stopped believing his lies—because for the first time, they were smart enough, and hurt enough, to see the truth.

Suchi found his emergency kit under the bed. “You promised,” she said, not angry—tired. “You said no more lying.”

“From what?”

He couldn’t tell her. Not yet. So he said nothing. And that silence—he knew—was the first crack in the second season of his family’s life. In the end, he cornered Selvi at the Marina Beach lighthouse at dawn. She had Dhriti’s friend Kavi with her—not a plant, but a sick boy she’d been feeding lies to.