Chapter 194
"Amr's house was not the primary kidnapping site."
Arya reached that conclusion after they finally made it out of the house with its low ceiling, ducking one last time to keep their heads from hitting the dried date palm beams before stepping through the narrow alley whose freshly laid stones were still damp with the night's dew, heading toward a place where they could breathe more freely without constantly keeping watch for the agents of the Temporal Cross-Police, whose numbers were the smallest among all the locations yet still numerous enough that they could not afford to let their guard down.
"This house was a testing site. The Great Abnormals used Amr's house because Amr had once been a sculptor. He was accustomed to carving tools and craftsmanship, so his house was filled with wood, planks, and equipment that served as the perfect medium for manipulating written texts. They wanted to see how quickly this manipulation could spread among the young men studying in his house, how deeply Sinta's name could be planted in their minds before, perhaps weeks later or perhaps months later, they carried that name beyond Amr's house and spread it into the wider community, to the marketplace, the mosque, the battlefield, and everywhere those young men went after finishing their lessons."
Hearing that, Nirma nodded.
Without being asked, she pulled the clay cellphone from her pocket and pressed the red, yellow, and purple buttons to contact Jerusalem.
Not to report what they had discovered, but to make sure Ashita and Tegar were still there, still breathing, still untouched by that sweet sleeping gas, still not transformed into puppets with no will of their own like what had likely happened to the companions whose hair and fingernails had already been collected inside those cold wooden chests.
"Ashita," she called, her voice emerging from behind her veil with a calmness she did not truly feel, because she did not want her fear to travel through the vibrations of her voice across thousands of years and thousands of kilometers.
"We're finished at Amr's house. It matches our earlier assumption. This was a testing site. The animals in the pen fell asleep in a different pattern from the people kidnapped in the other houses. The sleeping gas here was gentler, slower, as though they weren't trying to abduct anyone. They only wanted to make everyone... unconscious for a little while. And in the living room, we found a writing board with an added sentence about Sinta. It wasn't inside the perfectly preserved Qur'an, but on the practice board the young men used for writing lessons."
On the other end of the call, Ashita remained silent for several seconds, seconds that felt like years to Nirma because she could picture Ashita's pale face beneath the glow of Jerusalem's oil lamps, her narrowed eyes struggling to process information that defied reason even for an agent who had witnessed thousands of anomalies throughout her career.
When Ashita finally spoke, her voice sounded like someone who had just swallowed something far too bitter to spit out, yet far too large to swallow completely.
"A test," she repeated.
Her voice was quiet, yet it thundered in Nirma's ears like distant lightning that still made the earth tremble.
"So they weren't certain this method would work. They didn't jump straight to modifying the flawless Qur'an in Abdullah's house. They needed a laboratory, Nirma. They needed test subjects. Humans. Animals. Innocent young men. Wooden boards that could be written on and erased. Red ink that would never fade, yet could be tested to see how quickly it spread into the minds of those who read it. Amr's house was where they tested the poison before releasing it into the well. And if this poison works... then not a single writing board in Madinah will remain safe. Not a single young man studying the Qur'an will avoid seeing Sinta's name written beside the verses they have memorized. And from there, that name will grow, Nirma. Like weeds. Like cancer. Like something that can no longer be destroyed because it has already become part of its host's body, and if you kill it, you kill the host as well. That is why they chose Amr, not because he was weak, but because his house was the perfect laboratory, a laboratory where failure would cause only limited damage, but success would change everything."
They left Amr's house with far greater urgency than before.
Not because they were rushing, but because every second they spent inside that experimental laboratory convinced them more and more that the pattern they had been following was incomplete without one final piece, one last house in the southern part of the circle, one remaining name among the five targets whose hair and fingernails had already been gathered inside those cold wooden chests.
Anas ibn an-Nadhr, an ordinary young man from the Khazraj tribe, was neither a wealthy merchant like Sa'd, nor a former sculptor like Amr, nor a handsome envoy like Mush'ab, nor a fearless warrior like Abdullah.
Instead, he was a host, a man whose modest house with its walled courtyard often became the gathering place of the young men of the Ansar, a place where the Qur'an was recited and discussed, where friendships were forged into bonds stronger than blood oaths.
"The number of agents here is normal," Arya whispered as they arrived before a house whose walls were woven from date palm fronds coated with clay, thin and easily punctured.
Through the gaps in the woven walls, Nirma could feel the night breeze drifting in from the desert, air that should have been cold but instead felt strangely warm, warm like the breath of an unseen living creature.
"But look. There are holes along the bottom of the wall. It's as if someone dug through from the outside to insert something. Something that didn't want to come in through the door."
Nirma inhaled deeply.
This time, the scent was not faint as it had been in Amr's house.
The sweet smell of the sleeping gas was overwhelmingly strong, dense, and deeply embedded within the thin woven walls like the lingering traces of perfume that never faded despite its owner having left days ago.
From the sheer intensity of the scent, she could conclude that the volume of gas released in Anas's house had been far greater than in any of the others, as though here they had no intention of leaving behind even the slightest uncertainty, no opportunity for anyone to resist, nothing except perfect unconsciousness and everlasting silence.
"This isn't merely another target house," Nirma said.
Her voice emerged from behind her veil with a coldness that resembled an analysis determined not to be tainted by emotion, yet beneath that icy tone was a tremor she could not hide.
"This is the center, Arya. Anas's house is the heart of the circle we saw on the cloth map. And this gas... this gas proves they were not playing around here."
They stepped inside through the unlocked wooden door, just like the houses before.
This time, however, the unlocked door felt far more threatening because beyond it, in the walled courtyard spacious enough for Anas to host gatherings of the young men of the Ansar, Nirma and Arya immediately saw a massive hole in the center of the courtyard.
To be continued…