Chapter 189
"Arya, turn on your flashlight. The small one, the one whose light won't be visible from outside," Nirma whispered.
When the pale white glow from the device on Arya's wrist illuminated the corner of the storage room, both of them fell silent, silent like people who had just seen the corpse of their own sibling, silent like those who had suddenly realized that the world was unfair but had never found the courage to say it aloud.
Inside the open wooden chest, open like a mouth desperate to scream yet robbed of its voice, lay bundles of hair and clipped fingernails.
They were not carelessly discarded strands of hair or random nail clippings. The hair had been neatly tied inside small linen pouches, each labeled with a name written in deep black ink.
Mush'ab ibn Umair.
Abdullah ibn Jahsh.
Sa'd ibn ar-Rabi'.
Amr ibn al-Jamuh.
Anas ibn an-Nadhr.
The same five names.
The same five targets.
The same five men who were no longer in their homes because they had been taken by unseen hands, hands that would soon gain complete control over bodies prepared for this moment long ago, ever since these strands of hair had been cut without their knowledge, ever since these fingernails had been gathered from the floors of their washrooms by someone who entered in the middle of the night without a sound, without a trace, leaving behind nothing except the uneasy feeling that something was wrong.
Yet that strange feeling, like the fading memory of a nightmare, would soon disappear after breakfast, replaced by the routines of ordinary life, because human beings, by their very nature, are creatures who forget more easily than anything else.
That was their greatest weakness.
Yet it was also their greatest strength, because without forgetfulness, no one could survive in a world that offered a thousand reasons every single day to stop breathing.
Nirma felt a crushing tightness in her chest.
Not the suffocating pressure of someone deprived of air, but the agony of someone who had swallowed a slow-acting poison, a poison that did not kill the body, but destroyed something far more important.
Her belief that this world still possessed boundaries that could never be crossed.
"They planned this months ago," she whispered, her voice cracking around the edges like fractured glass that had not yet shattered, like rain that refused to stop but never fell hard enough to flood the streets.
"Even before we left Constantinople in 1101 CE, even before Ashita accepted the mission to investigate the anomalies in that city and year, they had already collected the hair and fingernails of these five companions. They already knew who the targets were. They already knew where they lived. They already knew the perfect moment to strike."
Hearing those words, Arya placed a firm hand on Nirma's shoulder.
Not to comfort her, because Nirma was the last person who needed comforting in the middle of chaos, but to remind her that they still had a mission to finish, that they could not fall apart now, that they had to complete what they had begun even as every fiber of their bodies screamed at them to stop and return home, to a home they no longer possessed, because home, like trust, is the easiest thing to lose once you choose to become a fugitive.
"There's a note," he said quietly, yet with unwavering certainty, certainty like the grip of a hand pulling someone back from the edge of a cliff.
"Beside the chest, Nirma. Look."
Nirma turned toward where Arya was pointing.
Beside the wooden chest filled with linen pouches of hair and fingernails, resting upon the damp earthen floor that had not seen sunlight for decades, lay a tiny piece of parchment, smaller than the palm of a hand.
Its writing was a mixture of Arabic and Aramaic script, a script Nirma recognized from ancient books she had once read in one of the libraries of the Temporal Cross-Police before choosing to flee. Books about languages that had died before they were ever truly born, scripts too obscure to earn a place in history, words spoken only by a single tribe in a single valley during a single century that history itself had never bothered to name.
She carefully picked up the parchment, her invisible fingers touching its fragile surface, delicate as the wings of a butterfly that would crumble if handled too roughly.
Beneath the pale white beam of Arya's flashlight, she read the sentence written in the very same black ink used to label the linen pouches.
"We've already taken the other four. Only one remains. But that one is the most important. He will write the first hadith about Sinta."
Nirma repeated those words silently to herself.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Like a child retracing the road home after being lost for far too long.
With every repetition, the tightness in her chest grew worse, suffocating like a room starved of oxygen, like lungs struggling against restrained tears, like the unbearable realization that they had misunderstood the map from the very beginning, that the battlefield they had believed to be an open desert was, in truth, a labyrinth whose walls shifted every time they came close to finding the exit.
"We've already taken the other four," she whispered, repeating the sentence so softly it was almost inaudible, like someone trapped inside a dream yet unable to wake because their subconscious insisted that the dream was real.
"The other four. That means Mush'ab, Abdullah, Sa'd, and one of the remaining two, perhaps Amr, perhaps Anas. They've already been taken. They've already vanished. They're already in the hands of the Great Abnormal. And only one remains, the most important one, the one who will write the first hadith about Sinta. Who is he?"
Arya bit his lower lip.
Not out of anger.
Not out of fear.
But because he felt something he had never expected to experience while standing before a chest filled with hair and fingernails.
Nausea.
The same nausea he had felt the first time he saw a corpse at a crime scene, back when he was still inexperienced, back when he still believed the world was fair and that every crime would eventually meet justice.
"The first hadith about Sinta," he repeated, his voice carrying the certainty of an undeniable conclusion.
Yet beneath that certainty trembled a vibration he could not hide, the tremor of someone struggling not to vomit.
"That's the key, Nirma. Not the kidnappings. Not the sleeping gas. Not the embroidered map. Not the circle of ash and olive oil. The hadith. If they succeed in making one person, one trustworthy Companion of the Messenger of Allah, one man whose words will be preserved by later generations, one martyr whose testimony no one would dare question, write or proclaim that Sinta Melina Ningsih is the most devout servant of God, then the first door will open. The door to the second hadith. The door to the third hadith. The door to marginal annotations in the Qur'an. The door to the belief that Sinta's name is inseparable from revelation itself, that she is part of the very foundation of faith, that there is no Islam without Sinta. And if there is no Islam without Sinta... then Sinta is—"
He never finished the sentence, because he did not need to.
The words were too heavy to speak, too horrifying to imagine, too similar to what had already happened on other worlds that had endured ten million apocalypses, where a single name spread like invasive weeds, poisoning the very plants that were meant to sustain life until nothing remained except that name itself.
A name that no longer referred to a person, but to something else.
Something without life, yet forever moving.
Something without a heart, yet forever beating.
Something without ears, yet forever listening.
Listening to endless praises offered by millions of mouths that never once stopped to ask:
"Who is Sinta, that we must speak her name every time we speak the name of God?"
To be continued…