Chapter 12
"There are no remaining traces of the destination coordinates," a technician reported, his voice laced with frustration.
"Their portal used one-way encryption with a self-burn protocol. Extremely advanced—and not mainstream technology."
The team did not stop at the field.
They split up again, jumping to other points along tonight's timeline.
To the rooftop of a shattered apartment building, to the cracked glass walls of an office tower, and even to the ceiling above the canal where Mydra 9-C had briefly hovered.
They gathered data like archaeologists assembling fragments of a lost civilization, hoping to uncover a pattern, a habit, or a security flaw that could be traced.
"Pay attention to biological residue," the lead investigator instructed.
"They ate here. There's a possibility of skin cell samples or temporal breath signatures left behind. Whatever it is—collect it."
It was a thin hope, since Nirmala and Arya were known for the meticulous cleanliness of their operations.
Yet every clue, no matter how small, could become the key to predicting their next move or locating their ever-shifting temporal base.
Technology faltering in the face of absence.
That was what the Linear Time Police investigation team felt after hours of scanning every centimeter of the incident area with the most advanced equipment from the future.
Temporal sensors detected only distorted echoes, deliberately scrambled energy traces, and the contaminated biological remains of Mydra 9-C.
There was no movement pattern, no portal frequency to decode, no usable biological sample from the two time wardens.
They vanished like smoke, leaving growing frustration among the investigators.
Meanwhile, the memory-cleansing team completed its task with cold efficiency.
There would be no memories of strange creatures, battles in the sky, or oddly uniformed figures lingering in the minds of 1950s Djakarta citizens.
A false calm had been restored, and both teams now merged into a single mass of confused personnel in the field, exchanging negative reports in voices that were beginning to sound irritated.
In the midst of this deadlock, the field operations commander decided to step down personally.
He felt the need to experience this battlefield not through data on a screen, but through his own senses.
With heavy steps, he left the still-cloaked mothership and walked along the quiet streets of 1950s Djakarta, far from the main incident site.
He moved between old buildings, down dark alleyways, breathing in air still free from heavy industrial pollution.
His mind revolved around methods, patterns, and overlooked possibilities.
What would two individualists like Nirmala and Wiratama do if they wished to insert a message—or inadvertently leave behind a trace that no sensor could anticipate?
His instincts led him to a dark corner near a pile of pungent trash behind a row of shop houses.
The narrow beam of his handheld device swept across the surface of the heap.
There, beneath banana peels and soaked scraps of newspaper, lay a different sheet of paper.
The captain bent down and carefully retrieved it with temporal isolation gloves.
It was an ordinary flyer, cheaply printed, advertising a dance event at a social hall.
But on the back, there was a scribble.
Not pencil or ordinary ink, but a very specific pen stroke.
The ink was deep blue with a faint metallic sheen—and what made the captain's pulse quicken was its chemical composition.
The portable scanner on his wrist analyzed it instantly, issuing a red warning beep.
"Warning: Ink composition matches 'Eternal Ink' from Chroma-Flux Company. Production period: 2018–2025 Post-Standardization. It should not exist in this timeline before 2018."
Captain Marcus Llewelyn—the full name of the commander long known simply as the Captain—held the flyer with both hands.
The light from his small spotlight fell directly upon the metallic blue scribble.
Behind his helmet, its visor now transparent, his eyes shifted from skepticism to intense concentration, and finally widened.
He was not merely reading the strange symbol, but focusing on the details of its strokes: the pressure at the start of a zigzag line, the curve of the number "7" resembling an arrowhead, and the dot in the center of a circle that was not a full stop, but a point with a tiny tail.
It was a code.
A very old and simple code once used by independent temporal intelligence gatherers before the Linear Time Police standardized operations.
And he recognized it.
The laughter burst out suddenly.
Not joyful laughter, but a short, sharp bark filled with bewilderment and bitter admiration.
"Ha. Ha."
Exactly two seconds.
By the third second, all emotion vanished, replaced by steel focus.
His gloved index finger tapped the advanced communication device attached to the cartilage of his left ear.
"Tap."
His voice, when it sounded across the team's communication channel, had completely changed.
Flat. Authoritative. Brimming with renewed certainty.
"All units, listen. Archive all investigations at the current site. Prepare for a coordinated temporal group jump."
He paused, eyes sweeping the scribble once more to confirm his interpretation.
"Our destination is the time span between 1096 and 1102 CE. Geographic sector: the Near East, conflict zone of the First Crusade."
A brief static silence greeted the order, as if the team were digesting the magnitude of the logical leap.
Marcus did not care.
He knew what he had found.
That handwriting—with its firm strokes and distinctive traits he remembered from a classified profile—belonged to Nirmala Surdaya.
It was not an accidental note left behind.
It was a message.
Perhaps one intended for them—or more likely, a personal note that inadvertently contained vital information.
And there, concealed among the symbols, was a coded phrase that translated as:
Resolve the anomaly "Exterminator" actively erasing civilian lives in the Crusade war zone.
"Subject 'Exterminator' is a classification code for a temporal anomaly that exploits the chaos of major historical wars to hunt and eliminate life on a massive scale, disrupting population balance and the genetic legacy of the future," Marcus continued, his tone shifting into that of a lecturer delivering a rapid briefing.
"They've moved ahead, pursuing another threat before we could capture them. They're not hiding. They're working. And now," he said, carefully folding the paper and storing it in a time-sealed container at his belt, "we know where to begin our next hunt. Prepare the jump in five minutes. We will meet them amid the fire of holy war and the chaos of history."
Fhooooh!
Fhooooh!!
They had not exited.
The realization came to Nirmala not as a thought, but as a physical sensation creeping along her spine.
The space around her was no longer the familiar portal corridor she had traversed thousands of times—not a tunnel of light coiling time like thread on a spool.
This was different.
It was a realm that was silent yet alive, quiet yet pulsing.
Here, time did not flow; it layered.
Each small step she took felt like treading upon stacked sheets of years neatly arranged yet out of order.
Arya beside her moved cautiously, but Nirmala stood transfixed, her eyes catching fragments drifting at the edges of her vision.
A flash of the Second World War fading into a 1920s dance party, which then melted into the slashes of nineteenth-century colonialism—all within less than half a step.
To be continued…