Chapter 174
"Strange," Arya murmured beside her, his usually flat voice now trembling with a tone Nirma had never heard before.
It was not fear, nor confusion, but something that could perhaps be called uninvited sympathy.
"This letter... should make me want to destroy something. But what I feel instead is... pity. Pity for beings who have witnessed ten million apocalypses and yet never learned how to ask for help without causing destruction."
Ashita, standing across from them, could only nod slowly. Her eyes, which had been fixed on the screen of her wristwatch, now drifted into the distance, toward the reddening slopes of Mount Uhud, as though she were searching for answers among stones that would never speak.
"It's as if they don't truly want to do this," Tegar continued, his usually firm and authoritative voice sounding fragile now, fragile like paper folded too many times.
"It's as if they wrote this letter while crying, or at least while regretting that no other option remained. 'We will not spill blood,' they wrote. 'We will not harm any soul. We only need them to believe that Sinta exists.' That sentence... I've read it over and over, and every time I do, what I hear is not a threat, but a sobbing cry that has been suppressed for far too long."
Nirma closed her left eye for a moment, and within that darkness she imagined the Great Abnormals—beings whose power was nearly equal to that of angels and gods, who had existed since before the first apocalypse, who had mutilated millions of bodies with the same hands that were now writing letters in neat and careful script—and for the first time, she did not see monsters.
She saw a group of children lost in a forest too dark to navigate, whose only way of asking for help was to scream as loudly as possible, even though they knew their cries might frighten the very people capable of helping them.
When Nirma opened her eyes again—after spending so long in silence broken only by the rustling wind carrying pollen from the date palm groves—she realized that the decision before them was not as simple as dividing a map into two parts.
"We have to split up," she said, her voice emerging from beneath her veil with a tone that no longer sought approval, but instead announced a fact she had already calculated thoroughly in her mind, like a captain who knows her ship will not be strong enough if everyone remains on the same deck when a storm approaches from two directions at once.
Arya, standing beside her, simply nodded—because he recognized that tone, the same tone he had heard when Nirma decided to leave the headquarters of the Temporal Cross-Police after burning it down without a word of farewell, the same tone that said that even though there were only two of them, the burden they carried would never be light enough to divide evenly.
"We'll remain in Medina," Nirma continued, her gaze shifting from Ashita to Tegar with a look that no longer concealed her suspicion.
Not because she did not trust them, but because trust, like a plant in the desert, required time to grow and could not be forced simply because a storm was approaching.
"We will do our best to investigate the disappearance of Mush'ab bin Umair, Abdullah bin Jahsh, Sa'd bin ar-Rabi', Amr bin al-Jamuh, and Anas bin an-Nadhr. Five names that were supposed to fall during the Battle of Uhud, yet now cannot be found either on or beyond the battlefield—only their names remain, like gravestones without bodies, like prayers that no longer know whom they are meant for."
Hearing that, Ashita let out a long sigh.
It was not a sigh of relief, but one that escaped her chest like that of a person who had just realized they could not be in two places at once, that they had to choose, and that the choice would leave a wound in a place they had never expected.
"But we can't leave the two of you here without supervision," Tegar said. His voice, usually so firm, now sounded like someone trying to convince himself more than anyone else, while the hand that had been gripping his own wrist moved toward his waist.
Not to draw a weapon, but merely to feel that it was still there, to remind himself that he still possessed something to rely on when words were no longer enough.
"Especially after what we've just heard about attacks occurring at two points in time simultaneously. If the Great Abnormals are operating at the same time—in Medina and Jerusalem within nearly the same moment—then leaving you two here would mean leaving you as targets without support, without an evacuation route, without anyone who could guarantee your survival if the situation worsens."
But Nirma smiled—a smile that never reached her left eye, a smile born from exhaustion she had hidden for far too long until it became something resembling perseverance, or perhaps resignation that had run out of other names—and when she spoke, her voice was quieter than usual, like a whisper that did not wish to be heard by the wind because the wind, like time itself, never takes anyone's side.
"We're already used to being targets without support. Ever since we destroyed our first headquarters, ever since we realized that the world we protected was a world that had never asked us to protect it, we learned that the only guarantee we can rely on is that there are no guarantees at all. But this time is different. This time we won't be alone—because you'll be in Jerusalem, won't you? In the days before the crucifixion, at the place where seven apostles disappeared and five others were put to sleep by gas released from the same hands that are now abducting the companions of the Messenger of Allah here."
Ashita, standing across from her, lifted her head, and for the first time since this meeting began, there was something in her eyes that no one had ever seen before.
It was not fear, nor doubt, but an acknowledgment born from the realization that although Ningsih blood did not flow through Nirma's veins, the soul dwelling within her possessed the same courage Sinta had shown when she stood before her family holding a sharpened knife.
"Very well," Ashita finally said. Her voice was no longer flat like when she first said, "We didn't come here to arrest you." This time there was a different tone to it, a tone that could perhaps be called newly born trust, or perhaps simply a decision made because there was no time left for doubt.
"We'll go to Jerusalem. To the days before the crucifixion, to the moment when seven apostles were declared missing and five others were found asleep without explanation. But before that, we must first report to the highest leadership of the Temporal Cross-Police. Not because we doubt your abilities, not because we wish to delay, but because without authorization and support from headquarters, we won't be able to access the correct temporal gateway to Jerusalem in 33 AD—and without that gateway, we'll only be wasting time we do not have."
To be continued…