Chapter 211
"So," Nirma said, her voice emerging from behind her veil in a tone that was flat but not fragile, flat like the surface of a lake far too calm to be a good omen, flat like someone who had been disappointed so many times that disappointment itself no longer had any taste.
"So does that mean you, Arya, and the Temporal Cross-Police agents who still believe this mission isn't suicide are preparing to head for the tenth location? The Underground Chamber of the Former Hasmonean Fortress near the Western Wall, if I remember the order from the list you mentioned correctly?"
Ashita nodded, a single short, firm nod without the slightest hesitation. Even though she tried to remain composed, to remain the kind of agent who never revealed weakness before her captain, Nirma could see it from the way her throat moved as she swallowed, from the way her fingers tightened ever so slightly around the necklace she was holding, and from the way her breathing suddenly became shorter than usual. Ashita was struggling with everything she had to keep her fear from seeping through the pores she could no longer seal shut.
"Exactly," Ashita whispered, her voice still lowered like someone speaking inside a silent mosque, like someone who knew that the words she was about to say were never meant to be heard by the sky, whose corners still lingered in darkness.
"Even so, I still have my doubts, Nirma. It's hard for me to believe that the Underground Chamber of the Former Hasmonean Fortress was truly used as the kidnapping site. The place isn't spacious enough to hide seven people at once, its walls are too thin to muffle sound, and it's far too close to an area frequently passed by pilgrims, merchants, and children chasing one another until sunset."
She paused, drawing in a long breath that escaped her chest like someone swallowing a poison that neither killed nor healed. When she continued, her voice had grown deeper, heavier, more like a confession she had never imagined would leave her own lips.
"But I believe, I have to keep believing, that there must still be traces left there. Something, no matter what form it takes. Perhaps fragments of memory trapped within the cracks of the stones, an energy anomaly still pulsing despite the passing of centuries, or clues pointing to their whereabouts: Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot. Those seven disciples were abducted using the same sweet-smelling sleeping gas, a sleeping gas that did not belong to the first century, a gas whose scent almost seems as though it can still be detected if someone dares to press their nose close enough to stones that have long since lost their breath over thousands of years."
Nirma heard those words, and within her chest, in the same place that had only moments ago been filled with prayers beneath an unfading golden light, something stirred once again.
It was neither emotion, nor thought, nor intuition, but something older than all of them, something that might be called empathy, or perhaps sorrow, or perhaps nothing at all because it was too heavy to be carried by words that possessed nothing more than air and vibration.
"And what about Jesus Christ?" Nirma asked, her voice quieter than a whisper, quieter than the dawn breeze carrying the scent of damp earth, quieter than the footsteps of an ant crossing the sand. Yet Ashita heard her. She heard every word with startling clarity, as unmistakable as Sinta's name being written over and over upon a wooden board that no one dared erase.
"How did He react after you, Arya, and every agent assigned to Jerusalem in A.D. 33 informed Him that seven of His twelve beloved disciples had disappeared? Did He remain steadfast? Did He continue praying for the safe return of those seven disciples? Or was there something different from usual, something that was never recorded in any Gospel because no one was brave enough to write it down?"
Ashita slowly shook her head, not with the quick, decisive motion she usually displayed, but with a slow, heavy movement like someone lifting their head above water after diving for far too long, only to realize they had brought back nothing from the ocean floor except lifeless shells and worthless sand.
"Hmm... hmmm... and hmmm..." Ashita murmured. Her voice was nothing more than a faint vibration, like someone trying to arrange words they truly wished they did not have to say.
Several seconds passed.
To Nirma, that brief pause stretched into an entire year.
Her heartbeat echoed inside her ears, filled her throat, then spread all the way to her fingertips, which had begun to grow cold beneath the increasingly heavy dawn dew.
At last, Ashita spoke.
The tremor in her voice was impossible to conceal, like the vibration of a string that had endured unbearable tension before finally being plucked by an exhausted hand.
That same tremor also resembled the voice of someone who had witnessed the same events repeated so many times that the boundary between reality and a recording playing on endless repeat had gradually faded away.
"Throughout our surveillance, for hours we disguised ourselves as pilgrims, merchants, and beggars sitting along the roadside with clay bowls that were never completely filled. Yet the Messiah showed no sign of changing His course whatsoever beyond continuing His teachings," Ashita said. As she spoke that title, the Messiah, her tongue felt unbearably heavy, heavy like feet trapped in quicksand that refused to release its victim, heavy like a faith beginning to crack beneath questions she had never dared ask because she feared the answers would weigh even more than the questions themselves.
"He continued teaching upon the hillsides, continued healing the sick, continued breaking bread and sharing it with the hungry, continued speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven as though nothing had been lost, as though the seven empty places around Him had never existed, as though the names Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, James, Thaddaeus, Simon, and Judas had never been engraved upon His heart with ink that no tears could ever wash away."
Ashita fell silent, swallowing hard. The motion felt like swallowing shattered glass that did not wound the flesh yet still scraped something deep within her chest, something that had no name in any human language because it had been born from the meeting of awe and confusion, of reverence and questions she dared not speak aloud.
"And this attitude, an attitude that some might call extraordinary steadfastness, or perhaps complete acceptance of a will beyond human understanding, matched perfectly with everything that took place before Christ ultimately underwent His crucifixion. There was no difference. No panic. No widespread search. No declaration that shook Jerusalem. Only His teachings continued flowing like a river that never ceased, even though the stones beneath its waters had shifted, even though its waters were no longer as clear as before, even though the fish that once swam within it had all disappeared, Nirma."
Ashita drew a long breath, a breath that escaped her chest like air trapped for far too long inside a cave with no entrance, like a question that had settled upon her tongue for so long that she no longer dared to give it voice. When she looked at Nirma with eyes that no longer shone after witnessing too many empty places that left behind no trace, her voice emerged with a tremor she could no longer hide, the tremor of someone exhausted from asking questions yet unable to stop because silence was a slower death than unanswered questions.
To be continued…