Keya Dhawan is a hacker in Heart of Stone. She joins hands with Parker to expose the crimes of the man responsible for her parents’ death. Alia Bhatt plays the role of Keya Dhawan.
When Rachel Stone and her MI6 team are on a mission to catch Europe’s most wanted arms dealer, a woman hacks into their comms feed and creates problems for them. The woman then reveals herself to Rachel for a few seconds.
This hacker is so skilled that she is able to break through the highest levels of military encryption, including that of MI6. Due to this, both the Charter and MI6 try to catch her.
Settling an old score
With the help of the Heart, the Charter finds out that the hacker is a 22-year-old named Keya Dhawan. Keya is from Pune, India, and she lost her parents at the age of eight.
A billionaire investor, Niam Kharche, ran IT workshops for children from underprivileged communities in Pune. He came across Keya, who was a prodigy, in one of these workshops and took her under his wing.
Kharche trained Keya, and she became a proficient hacker. However, something led to their split. They went their separate ways, and Keya disappeared. Keya then became associated with a criminal life.
What the Heart does not tell the Charter is that Keya’s parents died because of Kharche. He conducted medical trials in India and used people like lab rats. Keya’s parents lost their lives in these trials, and Kharche covered it all up.
Kharche then took Keya under his wing. He thought he was doing Keya a favor, and Keya let him think that because she wanted to become strong enough to make him pay for what he did to her parents.
Switching sides
Keya now wants to steal the Heart and use it to expose Kharche. In fact, she is going to expose others as well who use people like herself for their own benefit. To do that, she teams up with Parker.
Keya sets up the casino of blood to lure Mulvaney, who knows about the Heart and the Charter. Keya then hacks the Charter’s system by delivering a Trojan wirelessly. Her code lies dormant in their system and gets activated when Keya and Parker need access to the locker.
Keya steals the Heart and it becomes her tool. She encrypts it to her biometrics to prevent Parker from accessing it without her and abandoning her. Keya made the right decision, as Parker, who gets away with the Heart, has to rescue Keya, who gets left behind with Rachel Stone.
Stone shows Keya that she is not like her by not killing her and points out that Keya is still a child, as she has not thought about the consequences of her actions. Keya soon realizes that Stone was right when she reunites with Parker and realizes that he has no qualms about killing people to get what he wants.
Keya never wanted to murder anyone; she just wanted to expose Kharche’s crimes. The murder of innocent people bothers Keya a lot, as she believes that her parents would never have wanted this. She decides to switch sides when she fails to stop Parker.
She disables the Heart and contacts Stone to warn her about Parker’s trap. She saves Stone’s life, and the two women work together to take Parker down. Once Parker dies and the Charter gets the Heart back, Keya is sent to prison.
Stone comes to believe that Keya wants to change the world for good and decides to give her a second chance. Keya then becomes a part of Stone’s team and does what Stone used to do when she worked with her MI6 team.
Also Read: The Charter in Heart of Stone explained