Chapter 172
"The disciples of Jesus Christ. Those who would later become the first references when the verses of the Bible were written, those who would later become the foundation for the spread of teachings that would change the face of the world for the next two thousand years. Five of them were reported to have collapsed without cause."
He paused, swallowing with difficulty as though he were swallowing shattered glass, then continued in a softer voice, almost like a whisper.
"According to the agents who found them, the condition of those five apostles appeared as though they had inhaled gas—a gas that could only be produced by a group of Abnormals. But strangely, the gas did not kill. It did not injure. It left no marks whatsoever on their bodies except overwhelming drowsiness, drowsiness that caused them to fall asleep where they stood, in the middle of the road, in the middle of sermons, in the middle of unfinished prayers."
Hearing that, Nirma felt something strange within her chest.
Not pain, not tightness, but as though a piece of a puzzle had suddenly fallen into place with a sound too loud to ignore.
"Not to kill," she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else, "not to injure. Just to make them sleep. Long enough for… for what?"
Ashita looked at her with dark eyes, dark like a well that had never seen sunlight, and when she opened her mouth, her voice sounded like someone reading out a verdict.
"Long enough to kidnap the other seven."
The silence that followed Ashita's words became so dense that Nirma could hear the sand shifting beneath her own feet, could hear Arya's heartbeat pounding far too quickly even though his face remained expressionless, could hear Tegar gripping his own wrist so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
"The other seven disciples," Ashita continued, her eyes no longer fixed on the screen because she had already memorized the contents of the report within her mind, within the memory that never forgot even when she wished it would, "have vanished. Without a trace. Without resistance. Not a single agent stationed around them saw where they went or who took them away. They simply… ceased to exist. As though they had never existed at all. As though their names had been erased from the book of history before they could ever be written."
Before Nirma could fully process the news of the seven missing apostles, Ashita's watch vibrated again.
Not the heavy vibration from before, but a short, rapid vibration, like knocking on a door unwilling to wait long to be opened. And when Ashita raised her wrist this time, her movements were no longer hurried, but cautious, like someone opening an envelope knowing its contents could never be sealed away again. Nirma watched as Ashita's expression shifted from emptiness into something even worse.
Pale. Pale like cloth soaked too long in water until all its colors faded away, leaving behind only a meaningless white.
"There's more news," Ashita said, her voice sounding foreign even to her own ears—perhaps because she had never imagined that within the same day, she would have to deliver two terrible reports to people she had considered fugitives only hours earlier.
"From Medina. This year, 625 CE. From the same location where we stand—but in a different time, a different day, a different breath."
Tegar, standing beside her, unconsciously reached for Ashita's arm.
Not to support her, but to hold onto something, because after witnessing countless temporal disasters throughout his service, he had never seen his partner's expression look like this.
Not fear, not anger, but shattered—shattered like glass dropped from a height far too great, and everyone knew there was no glue strong enough to piece it back together.
"The companions and relatives of Prophet Muhammad SAW," Ashita continued, her eyes reading the screen while her voice grew softer and deeper, like someone slowly drowning in waters she had never imagined could be this cold, "who were supposed to meet tragic fates during the Battle of Uhud. They've disappeared. Without a trace. Without resistance. Just like the seven apostles."
"Mush'ab ibn Umair," Arya suddenly spoke, his voice flat, yet beneath that flatness was a tremor that made the bandage over Nirma's right eye pulse in a rhythm she had never felt before.
Not pain, not a mere throbbing, but like someone reading names from gravestones he had never visited.
"Abdullah ibn Jahsh, Sa'd ibn ar-Rabi', Amr ibn al-Jamuh, Anas ibn an-Nadhr. Five names. The same number as the apostles who collapsed. Not a coincidence."
Nirma turned toward Arya, and for the first time since the two of them had left the headquarters, she saw him standing differently.
Not upright like a soldier, not alert like an agent, but rigid like someone who had just realized that the pattern he had sought all this time had never truly been hidden—he had simply been too busy looking into the distance to notice that the answer lay beneath his own feet.
"And at the last known locations of those individuals," Ashita continued, her eyes still fixed upon the screen on her wrist, though the words now poured out on their own like a river no longer capable of holding back its waters, "the agents detected the same gaseous presence. Gas that could only be produced by Abnormals. Gas that does not kill, does not injure, leaves no trace—only drowsiness, only sleep, only a silence long enough for someone to take what they want without resistance."
Tegar, who had been gripping Ashita's arm all this time, suddenly released his hold. And when he stepped forward, there was something in his eyes no one had ever seen before.
Not anger, not fear, but a cold resolve, resolve like a stone that had rested at the bottom of a river for thousands of years and would never be worn away by even the strongest current.
"This was not an attack born from coincidence. This was an operation arranged with a level of precision that borders on the impossible. And if they succeed in implanting Abnormal knowledge into the companions of the Prophet—those who recorded, narrated, and safeguarded the legacy of the teachings—then there will no longer be any guarantee that the hadiths passed down to us remain pure as they originally were. Perhaps what remains will only be versions twisted by those who never truly believed in anything except their obsession with the return of a girl who once slaughtered her own family."
Nirma closed her left eye for a moment, and within that darkness she saw something she had never seen before.
Not flashes of the past, not visions of the future, but a map—a map stretching from Jerusalem to Medina, from Medina to places that held no names in any language of the world. And at every point upon that map were engraved names—names that were meant to become the foundation of faith for billions of people, names now threatened with vanishing like sand carried away by winds across a desert that never ceased to move.
To be continued…