Chapter 171
Tegar, standing beside her, merely nodded in silence. Yet in his eyes, which were usually hard and filled with vigilance, for the first time Nirma saw something different.
Not agreement, not indifference, but a silent acknowledgment that he, who had always seen Nirma and Arya as fugitives, now saw them as something that had no name in the dictionary of the Temporal Cross-Police—perhaps allies, perhaps friends, perhaps merely two strangers who happened to walk the same path in the middle of a storm that chose its victims indiscriminately.
Nirma and Arya turned away, their footsteps leaving trails in the sand that had begun to glow golden beneath the slowly rising sun. Behind them, Ashita and Tegar still stood beneath the cluster of palm trees, their shadows shortening like time that was never enough.
Ten meters, twenty meters, thirty meters—and then, just as Nirma nearly lost the desire to look back, the air around her wrist vibrated.
Not the vibration of the wind, nor the trembling of the earth, but a vibration that could only come from one thing: the Temporal Cross-Police watch wrapped tightly around her left wrist, which had remained silent like stone for so long, suddenly came alive with a piercing alarm—high-pitched, intermittent, like a scream too afraid to escape a human throat.
"What is that?" Nirma asked, stopping in her tracks, her eyes fixed on Arya's watch, which was vibrating in the same rhythm. In the distance, she could see Ashita and Tegar lowering their gazes toward their own wrists, their expressions changing in an instant—from calm to tense, from tense to cold, like water suddenly freezing without warning.
Arya did not answer immediately.
He stood frozen, his hand raised before his chest, his eyes staring at the small screen on his wristwatch with a look Nirma had never seen before.
Not fear, not anger, but trembling—trembling like the ground before an earthquake, trembling he could not control even though every muscle in his body had been ordered to remain still.
"Arya," Nirma called again, louder this time. And when Arya finally lifted his head, Nirma saw something that made the bandage over her right eye throb violently.
Arya's eyes were wet, not from crying, but from rage too immense to erupt as a scream, leaving him only able to stand there silently with tears that never fell and a jaw hardened like stone bearing the weight of a mountain upon it.
"Members of the Temporal Cross-Police," Arya finally spoke, his voice hoarse like sandpaper scraping against dry wood. Yet beneath that hoarseness was something deeper—something that could perhaps be called an old wound that had never truly healed, now cut open again by the same blade.
"The ones assigned to the era of the Battle of Uhud and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ—six or seven days from now, depending on which calendar you use—they've sent distress signals. Not one or two. Several at once. Of all the survivors, they reported the same thing: a sudden attack from a highly organized group of Abnormals. Not an ordinary attack, Nirma. Not just an unexpected clash in the corridors of time. This was planned. They knew exactly where the agents were stationed, knew exactly when they were most vulnerable, and—"
Arya stopped, his breath catching in the middle of the sentence. For the first time, Nirma saw her companion lose his words—not because he did not know what to say, but because too many words wanted to come out at once, colliding in his throat until none could escape.
"And some of the members who didn't have time to defend themselves," Nirma continued softly, her voice flat, yet beneath that flatness was a cold certainty, certainty like a blade that knew exactly where to stab, "they were found dead. On the spot. At that very moment. Not wounds that time could heal. Not deaths that temporal intervention could undo. They died, Arya, and no one can bring them back."
Nirma tightened her grip on the book given by the old man, her cold fingers tracing the dents in its worn cover as though reading a map of a land she had never visited, yet somehow felt familiar at the edges of her memory.
"Is this the moment?" she murmured softly, so softly that even she could barely hear her own voice. Yet the wind of Medina blowing between the four of them had a cruel habit of carrying whispers to ears that were never meant to hear them, because Arya turned toward her with still-wet eyes, Ashita stiffened in the distance, and Tegar unconsciously stepped half a pace forward like someone realizing that the map he had studied all this time had been drawn upon paper easily consumed by fire.
"It seems they won't wait for us to form a strategy, Nirma," Arya replied, his voice still hoarse, though now another tone had slipped into it.
Not anger, not fear, but cold acceptance—acceptance like a soldier who knows that the battlefield never chooses the right time.
"The Great Abnormal have already begun to move. And if my guess is correct, this is only the beginning of something far greater than mere attacks at two points in time."
Before Nirma could respond, the air around Ashita's and Tegar's wrists vibrated once more.
Not the piercing alarm from before, but a different vibration—deeper, heavier, like war drums beaten not to raise morale, but to announce that there was no road left for retreat.
Ashita raised her wrist with hurried but controlled movements. Discipline lingered in every muscle of her body, discipline forged through years within the Temporal Cross-Police, discipline that allowed her to receive terrible news with an unchanged expression even if her heart was shattering into pieces.
"There's a new report," she said, her eyes moving rapidly across the small screen glowing with bluish light. And when she lifted her head, Nirma saw something she had never expected to see on Ashita's face.
Not fear, not confusion, but emptiness—emptiness like a room that had just been abandoned by something deeply important, leaving behind only dust that no longer knew where it belonged.
"Suspicious movements in Medina. Year 625 CE. Right now. At the place where we stand—or at least in the same version of time where we stand."
Tegar stepped closer beside her, his eyes also fixed on the screen of his own wristwatch. And when he read the contents of the transmission, his breath caught like someone who had suddenly forgotten how to draw air into his lungs.
"This isn't just suspicious movement, Ashita. This is—"
He did not finish his sentence, because Arya, who had also been checking his own watch—a watch that, despite no longer being officially connected to the Temporal Cross-Police network, still received the same transmissions, as though the universe itself insisted that bad news cared little for employment status—suddenly let out a long sigh, a sigh that left his chest like wind carrying news from a battlefield too distant to see, yet too close to ignore.
"The twelve apostles," Arya said, his voice flat. Yet beneath that flatness was a tremor that made the bandage over Nirma's right eye throb violently, throbbing like a heart that knew something terrible had just happened before the mind had the chance to process it.
To be continued…