Chapter 4
Amid the ruins of the apartment, still charred and smoking, Nirmala Surdaya stood with an almost unnatural calm.
Her slender yet strong hands deftly brushed dust and fragments from her ivory-white blouse made of thick cotton.
Its simple high collar remained upright, though faintly stained with soot.
She rolled her long sleeves back up to her elbows, a ritualistic gesture before beginning something new.
Her knee-length charcoal-gray skirt, cut straight and unflared, absorbed the surrounding shadows, while her low-heeled black leather pumps stood firmly upon the rubble—neither feminine nor military, merely functional and cold, reflecting their wearer.
The most striking sight lay upon the upper part of her face.
A knitted bandage of dull white cloth tightly covered her right eye.
Its texture was too modern, too neat, too sterile for this era—an anomaly deliberately displayed amid her meticulous disguise.
It was not merely a wound covering, but a silent statement, an acknowledgment that she always carried a fragment of her original reality wherever she went.
Her intact left eye observed with sharp focus as she wiped the eighteenth-century pistol in her hand with a small handkerchief.
Each motion removing dust from the intricate engravings on its grip was a meditation, restoring the ancient weapon to readiness while dispelling the remnants of the chaos that had just unfolded.
Her hair was tied in a simple low ponytail, neat and almost rigid, without any ribbon.
Under the dim light filtering through the damaged ceiling, its color appeared jet black with a faint bluish sheen—perfect for the 1950s she was inhabiting.
Yet the sheen seemed to possess its own depth, hinting that this was not her natural color.
In another era, such as the year 2090 once mentioned, her hair could turn pale blonde, adapting to the age like a chameleon while retaining the same firm, orderly low ponytail.
That hair was her living chronometer, a visual record of her long journey across time.
Nirmala picked up a cracked shard of mirror from the rubble, her eye studying her fragmented reflection within it.
Her voice emerged flat, devoid of teasing tone—rather a dark procedural inquiry.
"Arya," she said without turning, "is this the moment for me to bury you?"
A soft chuckle sounded from behind the curtain of lingering smoke.
A man stepped out from the fading blue-violet flames, his silhouette shaped by the remaining anomalous light.
Arya Wiratama stood there, his face streaked with soot yet his smile unmistakable—an expression familiar with death and its bitter humor.
The hybrid weapon in his hand had been lowered, hanging loosely at his side.
"Nirma," he replied, his voice hoarse yet warm with irony, "I would gladly be buried. On the condition that you join me in the same grave."
He stepped closer, treading without hesitation upon embers still glowing.
"A paired burial. It sounds like a romantic ending for two timekeepers like us, doesn't it? Trapped together at a single point in time forever."
Though thick smoke and flickers of blue flame still lingered, Arya Wiratama's appearance remained deliberately maintained—an intentional elegance amid chaos.
His black hair was combed neatly back in a subtle slick-back style, set with a light pomade that provided shape without excessive shine.
No fringe fell over his face.
His features were fully visible, revealing a firm jawline and calm yet vigilant eyes—a clean canvas intentionally free of unnecessary emotion.
His long-sleeved shirt, dull cream in color and made of thick, slightly stiff cotton, remained tidy despite the dust.
The sleeves were rolled precisely to his elbows, exposing strong forearms and a classic analog wristwatch on his left wrist.
Its hands moved with an almost unnatural smoothness, indicating a mechanism far more complex than a mere timepiece.
Over his shirt he wore a thin charcoal-gray vest, simple and unadorned, a functional layer designed for free movement and swift concealment.
His trousers sat slightly high at the waist, cut straight and loose without appearing shabby, colored in a dark blend of deep brown, charcoal, and faded black—deliberately chosen to merge with shadows in any era.
His classic dark-brown Oxford shoes bore subtle wear at the tips—not from neglect, but as evidence of countless steps taken across the surfaces of time.
The thin leather gloves he usually wore when handling sensitive equipment were casually tucked into his pocket, ready for use at any moment.
Even as he balanced upon still-heated debris, Arya's posture remained upright and controlled.
No sweat poured down his face; his breathing stayed steady.
His appearance—like that of a well-kept archivist or engineer from the past—was camouflage as effective as Nirmala's 1950s attire.
Yet beneath that neatness lay the sharpness of a hunter and the agility of a trained temporal practitioner.
As he stood there, preparing a jump point while occasionally glancing toward the increasingly urgent sirens, he was a fusion of past precision and future technology—an elegant anomaly deliberately fading between the folds of history.
The unfamiliar siren abruptly shifted.
Its high-frequency tone faded, replaced by a clear, cold, authoritative announcement that resonated directly within the ruined apartment, as though spoken from every atom of air itself.
Only Nirmala and Arya could hear it.
Its vibration was specifically engineered to match their temporal auditory resonance.
Both timekeepers turned simultaneously toward the unseen source.
Their gazes were sharp and alert, yet unsurprised.
Nirmala's eye met Arya's calm stare for a fleeting moment—an entire conversation passing between them in silence.
They had expected this.
The anomaly signal generated by Mydra 9-C's explosion and their battle was too immense to escape the sensors of the Linear Time Police.
The voice declared with undeniable clarity, "Warning to all unauthorized temporal entities in the 1950s sector, coordinates Alpha-Seven-Niner. This is the Temporal Cross-Police. You have violated the Temporal Travel Statute, Article 3, concerning unauthorized intervention in a protected timeline. All anomalous activities have been recorded. Prepare to be detained and deactivated. You will be returned to your time of origin to stand trial."
The voice did not emanate from any vehicle outside, but from a temporal mothership suspended beyond normal spatial perception—a monolith of technology overseeing this segment of history.
A faint smile returned to Nirmala's face, no longer the grotesque grin from before, but a small curve at the corner of her lips filled with lethal calm.
Her right hand, previously empty, suddenly reached behind the fold of her vest.
A sniper rifle of alien and futuristic design emerged—a fusion of a lightweight 2050 polymer frame with a holographic targeting system and a cooled barrel from the year 2100.
To be continued…