Chapter 186
From the other end of the connection, Ashita let out a long sigh—not a sigh of exhaustion, but one of relief, like someone who had finally set down a burden they had carried alone for so long without realizing that someone else could help bear it.
"Thank you, Nirma," she said.
Her voice was clearer now, calmer, like the surface of a lake that had long been turbulent and had finally found peace after the storm had passed.
"Thank you for reporting so quickly what you found at the houses of Mush'ab and Abdullah. Without your report, we would have been stumbling through the darkness in Jerusalem, crashing into the same wall over and over again without ever realizing that there had been an open door to our left all along. Now, at the very least, we know that the pattern in Medina and Jerusalem is the same—that the Great Abnormal is not only kidnapping people but also leaving behind confusing traces, that they are not only trying to implant Sinta's name but also seeking to alter the way the world reads its sacred texts, that they move in a systematic, calculated, and—"
She stopped, searching for the right word, then continued in a voice barely above a whisper.
"...desperate manner. They are not doing this because they are evil, Nirma. They are doing it because they no longer know what else to do. And that, in many ways, is more frightening than evil itself, because evil can be fought with goodness, but despair can only be fought with hope—and hope, as you know, is the rarest commodity in a universe that has endured ten million apocalypses."
Nirma did not answer.
She simply stared at the clay phone in her hand with an expression no one could decipher.
Not because she was deliberately hiding her feelings, but because they were too complicated to put into words, too tangled between anger and sympathy, between fear and determination, between the desire to destroy the Great Abnormal and the desire to understand them before passing judgment.
Then, with a movement that was neither hurried nor hesitant, she pressed the red, yellow, and purple buttons on the clay device once again.
The soft hum that connected Medina in 625 CE to Jerusalem in 33 CE ceased, leaving behind a silence unlike the one before.
It was the kind of silence left behind after a close friend had just departed following a brief visit, a silence that was not empty but filled with memories of voices recently heard, names recently spoken, and stories recently shared.
"We need to move," Arya said.
His voice had suddenly become firmer, more commanding, like a commander issuing orders before a battle.
"I've already made sure our bodies are invisible again. The Linear Time Police agents are still occupied at Abdullah's house; none of them are paying attention to us. And soon, if we move quickly and stay quiet, we'll arrive at the residence of Sa'd ibn ar-Rabi'."
Nirma nodded.
Without saying a word, she followed Arya, who had already started walking ahead.
They passed along the path connecting the valley of Shi'b al-Jahsh to the main settlement of Medina, passed beneath date palms whose fronds swayed gently in the cool night wind, passed through shadows that had no shape because their bodies had become like glass, like water, like absence itself.
And within her chest, something beat in the same rhythm as the necklace now resting in Ashita's robe pocket in Jerusalem—a necklace from the First World War, forged from cast iron with a rough surface and fine scratches no one had ever been able to explain, a necklace that could only be activated by shaking it once and then twice, a necklace that might be the only bridge between them and something—or someone—they had never expected to seek.
They arrived that very night, as the moon began to reveal half of its face above the low hills east of Medina.
Before them stood a house unlike the previous two.
It was not a simple structure made of sun-dried mud bricks.
Instead, it was a sturdy compound with chambers rising around a spacious central courtyard.
Its walls were built from reddish bricks that Arya knew came from the local wadi clay—harder, colder, and more imposing, much like its owner, a wealthy merchant and tribal leader who had no need to hide because wealth itself was the strongest fortress against poverty and fear.
"There are fewer agents," Arya whispered.
His eyes moved rapidly, counting the silhouettes guarding the double gate—the outer gate of hardwood standing wide open, and the inner gate woven from palm fronds that was also not fully closed as it normally would have been.
The strangeness of it settled deep into his bones because Sa'd ibn ar-Rabi', according to the agents' profiles, was famously paranoid about his family's safety.
Paranoid in the way only a wealthy man could be, knowing that his wealth was often the first reason others might hate him.
"And the gates are open. That's unusual. Very unusual."
Nirma inhaled deeply.
The sweet scent of sleeping gas still lingered in the air, but it was fainter than it had been at Mush'ab's house, like the remnants of perfume fading after its owner had left a room for too long.
From the subtlety of the scent, she concluded that the gas had been released earlier here, or in a smaller quantity, or for an entirely different purpose—not to incapacitate many people at once, but merely to calm one or two individuals who happened to be in the wrong place on the wrong night.
"Two possibilities," she said.
Her voice emerged from beneath her veil with a cold tone, cold like an analysis that refused to be contaminated by emotion.
"One: they finished here more quickly because the target was easier. Two: they deliberately released the gas earlier to ensure no witnesses remained before they carried out something beyond mere kidnapping."
They stepped through the double gates, which yawned open like a mouth that had never learned how to close.
The moment they entered the central courtyard surrounded by chambers—ghuraf, the term used for rooms with separate functions, some for sleeping, some for receiving male guests, some for gatherings of women, and some for storing merchandise because Sa'd was a wealthy merchant dealing in dates and leather, wealthy in the way only someone who never needed to look at a price tag could be—Nirma immediately sensed that something was fundamentally different about this crime scene compared to the previous two.
Not because the sleeping gas was fainter.
Not because there were fewer agents.
But because the three chambers on the western side of the courtyard... had been torn apart.
"Torn apart?" Arya repeated.
Disbelief colored his voice as he examined the reddish brick walls.
They had not exploded.
There were no signs of fire, no traces of explosives, no indications of force coming from within.
Instead, they had been dismantled from the outside, brick by brick, with the precision of someone taking apart a puzzle—not out of anger, but because they knew exactly where the piece they were searching for was hidden.
The bricks were neither shattered nor broken.
They had simply been removed from their clay mortar and stacked neatly beside the chambers, as though they were intended to be rebuilt once the search was complete.
To be continued…