Chapter 199
Ashita continued, her voice growing softer, almost a whisper, like someone saying something she herself was unsure would be obeyed, because she knew that in missions like these, sometimes the only way to save something was to destroy it first. And destruction, no matter how noble the intention behind it, remained destruction. History, like God, never forgave those who damaged His creation, even for the most sacred of reasons.
Deep within Nirma's heart, in the place she never allowed to surface because it was where she stored every frustration she could never voice aloud, she let out a quiet chuckle.
It was not laughter born of joy, but a bitter laugh born from the unmistakable irony woven into Ashita's endless warnings.
"Are the Temporal Cross-Police really that afraid of a timeline they can never erase? she wondered, her left eye narrowing beneath her veil as she gazed at the fading moon above Medina, already growing pale as dawn drew near."
A timeline protected by holy scripture, by revelation that could never be altered because it was not merely a historical record, but something sent down from heaven, something untouched by the interference of any time traveler, something that, if you dared to lay a hand upon it, would cast you aside before you could even feel the pain.
Yet beneath that permanence, Nirma recognized a weakness that the architects of the rules had perhaps intentionally left exposed.
Although the revelation itself could never be erased, the way it spread, the way humanity read it, remembered it, and taught it to the next generation, remained fragile ground. It was a place where marginal notes could be inserted, where additional names could be written upon the wooden tablets used by young students, where crimson ink would never fade no matter how many thousands of times it was wiped away, because that ink came from a future that cared nothing for the sanctity of the seventh century.
So that's how they operate, she murmured to herself.
They don't alter the revelation, because revelation is far too absolute to be changed. Instead, they alter the memories of those who carry it. They change the hands that write, the mouths that recite, until one day no one remembers that Sinta's name was never there, that the Messenger of Allah never mentioned her, that she was never a witness to the Oneness of God, that she was nothing more than a little girl who murdered her own family at the age of six.
"You're laughing, Nirma," Arya suddenly broke the silence.
His voice was quiet but sharp, sharp like a blade that knew exactly where to strike.
"I can sense it from here. Not the sound itself, but its vibration. The kind of vibration someone gives off while holding back laughter at a funeral because they've just realized the person being buried had actually died long ago, only no one had ever been brave enough to admit it."
Nirma said nothing.
She simply raised her hand and pressed the red, yellow, and purple buttons on the Göbekli Tepe clay phone for the last time that night.
When the connection with Jerusalem ended with a soft click, like a leaf falling into still water, she felt a different kind of silence settle around her, one that was not empty but filled with the lingering echoes of Ashita's voice among the carvings of the world's oldest civilization, a voice reminding her of their status as fugitives, of the prohibition against disrupting history, of rules created by people who had never stood beside a bottomless portal, never seen footprints without big toes, never heard the message of the old man whose accent no one could identify.
With movements that were neither hurried nor hesitant, she slipped the clay phone into the deepest pocket of her robe.
In an instant, the pocket swallowed the device like a mouth that could never be satisfied, like the portal in Anas's courtyard that had never returned the stones thrown into its depths.
When the fabric of her robe settled flat once more without revealing there was anything hidden inside, Nirma released a long breath, the kind of breath that escaped from someone finally letting go of something they had held onto for far too long, far too tightly, far too fearfully.
"Now it's just the two of us again," she said.
Her voice emerged from beneath her veil lighter than before, light as though she no longer carried the burden alone, even though the burden itself had never grown any lighter. She had simply chosen not to feel its weight, because if she did, she might collapse right there in Anas's courtyard, beside the still-gaping portal, and she had no time to collapse. Dawn was almost here, and the agents of the Temporal Cross-Police would soon begin moving with full awareness instead of the half-confused state they had been in the previous night, when they were still uncertain whether to report or conceal their discovery of the circle of ash and olive oil.
"So, Arya, what's our next move? Before the Battle of Uhud truly begins, we need to lure the Great Abnormals out of hiding."
Arya did not immediately answer Nirma's question about drawing out the Great Abnormals.
He simply stood beside the still-open portal, his arms folded across his chest.
For several seconds, which felt like years to Nirma as anxiety crept over her with the approaching dawn, Arya rested his fingers against his chin.
His eyes remained closed, his brow furrowed as though he were reading something unwritten in the air, something heavy hanging between them, something they had perhaps overlooked all this time because there had been too much evidence scattered throughout every house they had visited, too many clues overlapping one another, too many names written across cloth maps, marginal notes, metal capsules, and the wooden tablets upon which young students learned to recite the word of God.
"Nirma," he finally said.
His voice was quiet but deep, deep like an ancient well that had never seen the sun.
"Have you noticed something beneath all of this? Something strange about the kidnapping of these five companions?"
Nirma frowned.
Not because she failed to understand Aryya's question, but because she understood far too much, and too much understanding often robbed a person of the ability to notice the smallest details hidden beneath mountains of information, like someone standing too close to an enormous painting and seeing only individual brushstrokes instead of the image as a whole.
"What do you mean? We've already uncovered so much evidence in every house. Sleeping gas, circles of ash, cloth maps, chests filled with hair and fingernails, messages from the old man, wooden writing boards covered in red ink, portal holes, footprints without big toes. What else have we failed to notice?"
Arya slowly opened his eyes after keeping them closed for so long.
Within those dark brown eyes, Nirma saw something she had never witnessed before.
It was neither anxiety nor fear.
It was cold suspicion, the suspicion of someone beginning to doubt that everything he had seen until now was an illusion deliberately constructed by hands far more intelligent than his own.
"Have you ever heard of two manipulation tactics known in the intelligence world as False Flag Overload and Mass Red Herring?" he asked.
His voice had become sharper, more methodical, like that of an instructor testing a student inside a dark classroom.
To be continued…