Chapter 52
Amid all the chaos, the carriage that had continued rolling without touching the ground since the first explosion finally began to slow down.
Its impossible motion, spinning in the air without ever grazing the earth, gradually came to a halt, and for a moment the carriage seemed to hover motionless in place—an absurd sight in the year 1101 AD, a scene that should have existed only in dreams or illusions.
Then, with a loud creaking sound, the carriage fell to the ground, its wheels striking the stones with a hard impact, though not as devastating as one might have imagined.
Inside, the two Prefect soldiers assigned to drive, who had been desperately trying to control the panicked horses, appeared utterly drained.
Their bodies hung limp in the driver's seat, their heads bowed, their hands still gripping the reins, yet no strength remained in their fingers.
Slowly, one by one, they fell from their seats, their bodies hitting the ground with a sound barely audible amid the crackling flames and the groans of dying horses.
Yet when they fell, when their bodies lay upon stones that were beginning to heat under the fire, it was clear that there were no significant physical wounds on them.
No blood, no broken bones, no torn flesh.
They had merely fainted, asleep in unconscious embrace, while around them destruction spread in every direction, and above them the sky remained streaked with white trails from rockets that were now beginning to subside.
Two minutes passed in a silence filled only by the crackle of flames consuming the remains of the carriage, the weak moans of dying horses, and the whisper of wind carrying the scent of smoke and burnt flesh in every direction.
No one appeared, no one moved—only corpses and unconscious bodies scattered along the stone road, forming a sight that would be etched forever into the memory of anyone who witnessed it.
The Prefect's soldiers lay in various positions—some flat on their backs with eyes closed, some curled like fetuses, some partially pinned beneath their own horses—all unconscious, their bones feeling paralyzed yet bearing no significant physical injuries.
The fire continued to lash at the shattered remains of the carriage, while dark smoke rose in columns into the once-clear morning sky, a striking signal to anyone around Constantinople that a dreadful event had just taken place in this secluded spot.
However, after one hundred and twenty seconds that felt like eternity, as the flames began to subside and the smoke thinned, a foreign sound suddenly broke the silence.
Not the voice of a human, not the cry of an animal, but the sound of a machine—a sound that had no place in the year 1101 AD, a vibration that made the surrounding air tremble at an unnatural frequency.
From behind the fading haze of smoke, a flying vessel slowly emerged, descending from the sky with a movement both graceful and menacing, its large, glossy black body contrasting sharply against the brightening blue of the morning sky.
The vessel hovered not far from the still-burning carriage, stopping several meters above the ground, and for a moment nothing moved—only the ship suspended in midair, its engines humming softly, small lights blinking across its surface.
Then the doors beneath the vessel opened, and one by one the units of the Temporal Cross-Police descended, floating downward with advanced devices that made them appear like beings from another world, landing calmly and with calculated precision.
The units began to move, stepping among the fallen horses and unconscious soldiers, their metal boots crunching against the stones with faint, almost inaudible cracks amid the silence.
They paid no heed to the horrific scene around them, did not glance left or right, showed neither pity nor disgust—only advancing with unwavering focus toward a single objective.
The carriage that still emitted flames and thick smoke before them.
One unit, clad in a slightly different uniform than the others—perhaps a commander—raised his hand in signal, and several others immediately spread out, forming a semicircle around the carriage, their advanced weapons raised and ready, eyes hidden behind helmets scanning every corner, every crevice, every possibility that their targets might still be alive and hiding.
At first, there was nothing.
The black-uniformed individuals had inspected every part of the shattered carriage, shining advanced flashlights into charred wooden gaps, sweeping life-detection scanners across the area, yet finding nothing but ash and melted metal.
The two individuals they sought, Nirma and Arya, seemed to have vanished into the earth, leaving no trace, no sign, nothing to suggest that they had been inside that carriage only minutes before.
The unit commander muttered softly, his voice distorted by the advanced helmet covering his face, then signaled his subordinates to spread farther out, to examine every square meter around the site, searching for the possibility that the two fugitives had been thrown clear before the explosion.
They moved with high discipline, metal boots stepping over stones and grass, firearms of the year 2900 raised and ready, eyes behind their helmets scanning with maximum vigilance.
One individual, the youngest among them, suddenly halted.
He lifted a hand to rub his eyes behind his helmet, feeling his vision blur from the lingering smoke, yet before his fingers reached the visor, he caught sight of something in the distance.
The figure of a woman, running toward their landing position, her movement swift and agile like a cat lunging at its prey, her brown cloak fluttering behind her, and in her hand something gripped that reflected the morning sunlight.
The individual opened his mouth to shout, to point, to warn his comrades—but the sound never left his throat.
A gunshot rang out, deafening in the silence that had only just begun to recover, and the individual's head snapped violently backward.
The bullet entered precisely at the back of his head, shattering the advanced helmet that was meant to withstand gunfire from any century, then burst out through his forehead in a spray of dark blood that stained his uniform before his body collapsed heavily to the ground.
"Nirma, now!" Arya's voice shattered the silence after the shot, his cry sharp and urgent, echoing among the trees and stones.
From the opposite direction, Nirma emerged at a run, her slender body darting through the drifting smoke, and in her hand she clutched a small, gleaming sphere no larger than a tennis ball.
With a flawless throwing motion, Nirma hurled the object toward the cluster of Temporal Cross-Police units who had just become aware of their presence, who had just begun raising their weapons, who had just started running for cover.
The object sailed through the air, spinning slowly, reflecting the morning sun, and when it reached its highest point above the crowd, it exploded.
Not an explosion of fire, not one that spewed shrapnel, but an eruption of blinding blue light—an electromagnetic shockwave bursting outward in all directions at an inescapable speed.
To be continued…