Chapter 179
No words were spoken between them, because there were no words sufficient to summarize what they had just witnessed.
That Great Abnormal moved in ways they had never anticipated. That they did not merely kidnap people but also left behind traces more bewildering than silence itself. That they seemed to want to be found, to be pursued, to be confronted—perhaps because they were tired of hiding, perhaps because they wanted someone to stop them before they could no longer stop themselves, or perhaps for another reason they would never understand until they stood face to face with the Great Abnormals themselves and asked:
Why?
"That's enough here," Nirma finally said, her voice quiet yet firm, firm like a decision that no longer needed to be questioned.
"We won't find Mush'ab bin Umair in this room. All that's here are objects that shouldn't exist in this place and gas that will lead us nowhere except to even more questions. We need to go to Abdullah bin Jahsy's residence, and after that to the homes of Sa'd bin ar-Rabi', Amr bin al-Jamuh, and Anas bin an-Nadhr. Perhaps we'll find the same pattern there. Or perhaps we'll find something entirely different. But at least we won't be standing still in the same place, doing the same thing, and expecting a different result."
Arya nodded, his hand moving to the button on his wrist to ensure that their bodies were still invisible, that they remained safe for the time being, that no agent had yet noticed the presence of two shadows moving among them, because shadows, like secrets, are never seen unless there is enough light to reveal them.
They stepped out of Mush'ab bin Umair's house the same way they had entered it—slowly, carefully, like cats walking across a moss-covered stone wall, unwilling to slip, unwilling to fall, unwilling to make any unnecessary sound.
The agents of the Temporal Cross-Police were still standing at their respective positions. Some had begun speaking in hushed voices, discussing what they had found—or rather, what they had failed to find. From the fragments of conversation caught by Nirma's keen ears, she could tell that they were just as confused as she was.
They did not understand why weapons from the future could be found inside a room that should have contained nothing but leather mats and water skins. They did not understand why the sleeping gas left behind no chemical traces that could be tracked back to its source. They did not understand why Mush'ab bin Umair—a companion of the Messenger of Allah known for his asceticism, a man with no enemies and no involvement in any conspiracy—had become the first kidnapping target in Medina.
"We need to move faster," Arya whispered once they were far enough away from Mush'ab's house.
"Once these agents realize they won't find anything here, they'll move on to other locations—including Abdullah bin Jahsy's house. We have to get there before they do, before the crime scene becomes contaminated by too many feet walking through it, too many hands touching everything, too many breaths erasing evidence that might only be visible to unseen eyes like ours."
Nirma nodded, and without saying another word, she quickened her pace, leaving Mush'ab bin Umair's house behind.
The mud-brick walls now seemed colder than before, as though the departure of its occupant had left behind not only emptiness but also coldness—a coldness like death, a coldness like nonexistence, a coldness like a question that would never be answered because the one capable of answering it was no longer in this world, or perhaps had never existed in it to begin with.
The house of Shi'b al-Jahsy proved far more difficult to approach than they had imagined.
The small valley northeast of Medina lay exactly where the flat land began rising into low hills that shielded the main settlement from the harsh desert winds.
Amid a silence broken only by the distant bleating of goats, Nirma and Arya stood behind a rocky outcrop, observing a semi-cave dwelling whose front wall had been constructed from dry stones without mortar, while its rear merged seamlessly with the valley cliff, as though the house had not been built but had grown directly from the earth itself.
"There are dozens of agents over there," Arya whispered, narrowing his eyes as he counted the silhouettes moving about the open yard.
The area, normally used for herding goats and storing dates, was now filled with Temporal Cross-Police agents standing guard in positions that were too rigid, too alert, too fearful that inside the dark cave, Abdullah bin Jahsy—the courageous companion of the Messenger of Allah who had once been sent to spy on a Quraysh caravan and later received permission from the Prophet to fight during the sacred month—might still be there, or perhaps had never been there at all, depending on which version of history they chose to believe.
Nirma carefully studied the agents' formation, and in her left eye, for the first time since leaving Mush'ab's house, something appeared that Arya had never seen before.
It was neither anxiety nor fear, but cold calculation, like a chess player who knows that the only way to win is to sacrifice something that appears valuable but is actually just bait.
"We can't simply walk in," she said, her voice emerging from behind her veil with a calmness that felt almost unnatural for such a tense situation.
"They're guarding every opening. Every crack in the stone walls. Every natural ventilation hole that should have been a weakness of this house has now become a surveillance point because they know the sleeping gas used to kidnap Mush'ab must have entered through those gaps. If we try to approach from any direction without a distraction, they'll see us—or at the very least, they'll sense that something is moving where nothing should be moving."
Arya let out a long breath. His hand slipped into the pocket beneath his robe, feeling around for the small objects he had collected during their long journey.
Not weapons. Not advanced equipment.
Just smooth pebbles he had gathered from the bed of a dry wadi several days earlier—pebbles that would not seem suspicious if discovered by anyone because, in Medina, stones were the cheapest, most insignificant, and most easily overlooked things imaginable.
"I have an idea," he whispered.
Before Nirma could ask, he had already taken six pebbles from his pocket, feeling their weight in his palm and calculating the throwing angles in silence, like an archer who no longer needed to aim because his body itself was the bow and his eyes were the arrows.
"Six pebbles. Six directions opposite the entrance. If I throw them one by one at irregular intervals, those agents will move toward the source of the sounds because they've been trained to respond to even the slightest disturbance. Within three seconds after the final pebble lands, there'll be an opening on the eastern side of the house—an opening large enough for us to slip inside, and one they won't notice because they'll be too busy searching for a source of noise they'll never find. Because the sound will come from stones striking stones, and in the desert, stones hitting stones is the most natural sound imaginable. The least suspicious. Yet also the most effective distraction."
To be continued…