Chapter 190
"We have to leave now," Nirma said suddenly, her voice firm once again, as resolute as a commander issuing orders in the middle of a battlefield, even though deep in her heart she knew that this battle had not yet begun, and they had already lost far too many soldiers before the first cannon had even been fired.
"We've found more than enough, enough to report to Ashita and Tegar. Sa'd's house wasn't merely the second victim. This house was the coordination center for the kidnappings across the southwestern region. The Great Abnormals entered this place several times before the kidnapping, not just once. They tore apart three chambers because they were searching for something, perhaps information, perhaps documents, perhaps a key to unlock something we still don't understand. They drew circles of ash and olive oil as focal points for a cross-temporal messaging ritual, miniature portals that could only be used once. They left a cloth map in the 'aliyah as a trail, as a warning, as if to say, 'We could have hidden this, but we chose not to because we wanted you to know that we're already one step ahead, and you, with all your technology, your agents, and your analyses, will never catch up.' And they collected the hair and fingernails of all five companions, including Mush'ab and Abdullah, whose houses we've already visited, as proof that they had taken complete control of the targets' bodies long ago, that there was nothing anyone could have done to save them, even if they had arrived earlier, because the control had already been seized, because the strings had already been pulled, because those puppets had already lost their own will long before they even realized they were puppets."
Arya nodded, and without being asked, he pulled the clay phone from his pocket.
It was the same phone Nirma had used to contact Ashita several hours earlier, the one engraved with carvings from Göbekli Tepe that still retained the lingering warmth of their last conversation.
Now it felt heavier than before, not because of the clay or the metal within it, but because of the news he was about to deliver to Jerusalem.
News that would leave Ashita silent far longer than usual.
News that would make Tegar let out another long sigh and ask, for the umpteenth time,
"Why are they doing this?"
Even though he already knew the answer, asking was the only way to keep himself from crying.
And within the Temporal Cross-Police, just as on any battlefield, tears were the rarest commodity, because no one had enough left to mourn everyone who had died, disappeared, or been forgotten.
"Ashita," Arya called after pressing the red, yellow, and purple buttons in the familiar sequence, a sequence he knew by heart because he had repeated it dozens of times throughout their journey.
Dozens of times in cities with no names.
Dozens of times across centuries he had never imagined visiting when he first accepted his agent's badge.
"We have a new report. And you're not going to like it."
From the other end of the connection linking Medina in 625 CE to Jerusalem in 33 CE, Ashita answered with a voice that sounded more exhausted than usual.
The exhaustion of someone who had just finished reading a thousand-page book with no ending.
A book in which every chapter told the same story of suffering, betrayal, and death.
Yet she kept reading because she believed that somewhere on the final page, there would be a sentence that read,
"And they all lived happily ever after."
Even though she knew such a sentence had never been written by anyone who truly understood what it meant to live.
"We're listening, Arya. Tell us everything, from the very beginning to the very end, from the opened double doors to the chest filled with hair and fingernails."
Nirma took the clay phone from Arya.
Her unseen hand gripped its rough surface, feeling every carving, every curve, every fingerprint left behind by the civilization of Göbekli Tepe, a civilization that had vanished before history itself began to be written.
And in that grip, she felt a burden she could neither measure with numbers nor describe with words.
A burden like holding the entirety of the past and the future within the same palm, yet lacking the strength to hold them both at once.
"We found a cloth map in the 'aliyah, Ashita," she said.
Her voice emerged from behind her veil as clear as water flowing over stones after heavy rain.
Yet beneath that clarity lingered static, the kind of static that belonged to a telephone call separated by a thousand years.
"A map connecting all five houses, Mush'ab, Abdullah, Sa'd, Amr, and Anas, each marked with a different symbol. Mush'ab: the Mark of the Eye, central observation. Abdullah: the Mark of the Knife, isolation. Sa'd: the Mark of the Broken Circle, search. Amr and Anas: still marked with question marks. Perhaps because this map was never completed, or because whoever created it hadn't yet decided what ritual would be performed at those final two houses."
She stopped and drew a breath.
Not because she lacked air, but because the next words were too heavy to speak without a pause, without preparation, without gathering enough courage to tell the truth.
That they had not only found the map.
They had also discovered that Sa'd already knew.
That Sa'd had already seen.
That Sa'd had already begun writing a letter he never finished about creatures that did not breathe, yet spoke.
And that the hair and fingernails of all five companions had already been collected months earlier.
Collected by the very same hands that now wrote a small note in a mixture of Arabic and Aramaic:
"We've already taken the other four. Only one remains. But this one is the most important of all. He will be the one who writes the very first hadith about Sinta."
Ashita fell silent for several seconds.
Seconds that felt like years to Nirma.
Because every second of silence was another second in which she imagined Ashita's pale face.
Ashita's trembling lips.
Ashita's hands gripping the clay phone tighter than necessary, as though it were the only anchor preventing her from being swept away into a boundless ocean of despair.
"The first hadith about Sinta," Ashita finally repeated.
Her voice was soft, yet it thundered in Nirma's ears.
Like distant thunder that still made the earth tremble.
Like a voice emerging from time itself.
A voice that was neither unfamiliar nor familiar enough to be called a friend's.
"So that's their true objective now. Not merely kidnapping. Not merely rewriting history through violence. But rewriting history through words. Through hadith. Through marginal notes. Through the phrase, 'Sinta Melina Ningsih is the most devoted servant of Allah,' written at the end of every surah in the already perfected Qur'an. Because words, Nirma, outlast stone. They are stronger than swords. They are more dangerous than that sweet sleeping gas. Because words can endure for thousands of years. They can be spoken by millions of mouths. They can be passed down from one generation to the next without anyone daring enough to erase them. Because erasing words, in religion as in family, is often considered an unforgivable sin. Even when the words themselves are a sin that was never invited to exist."
To be continued…