Chapter 209
On the first screen, Ali ibn Abi Talib stood near the back gate, his Zulfiqar, or perhaps another sword no less sharp, drawn a few inches from its scabbard. His piercing eyes swept across every corner in a way that left no place for secrets to hide. And from the silent movement of his lips, because the device captured only images and not sound, Nirma could make out a single word.
"Smell."
On the second screen, Zubair ibn al-Awwam remained atop his camel, his bow drawn with an arrow already nocked. It stayed aimed at the attic of Anas's house. Even though nothing moved within the attic, at least nothing visible to ordinary human eyes, Zubair never once shifted his gaze from that very spot after entering the courtyard, like a man who knew that the place least likely to conceal danger was precisely where danger was most likely to hide.
On the third screen, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas knelt beside the edge of an old, dry well. His broad body leaned forward, and his ear rested against the cracked rim as he listened to something that neither Nirma nor Arya nor anyone lacking the courage to press an ear against a well that might exhale the scent of electricity and ozone, something that had no place in the seventh century, could possibly hear.
On the fourth screen, Abbad ibn Bishr, Abdullah ibn Rawahah, and Zaid ibn Harithah stood guard at three different corners of the courtyard. Each held a sword, and none of them blinked. Together they formed an invisible triangle that could nonetheless be felt by anyone attempting to approach the center of the courtyard, where Umar ibn al-Khattab stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, his right hand gripping the hilt of his sword. His sharp, eagle-like eyes were fixed not upon the well, the attic, or the gate, but upon the ground beneath his feet, ground that was beginning to appear different beneath the brightening light of dawn, ground fractured into unnatural patterns, circles that never quite closed, patterns resembling a portal that had never truly sealed itself because something had passed through a crack that should never have existed.
And on the fifth screen, the smallest, the dimmest, the one that resembled a camera diaphragm opened only halfway because the incoming light was too brilliant for sensors never designed to capture such beauty, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) remained seated upon his white camel in silence. He neither moved nor spoke nor did anything except simply exist. And within that vision composed entirely of yellow light, gentle yet deeply penetrating, Nirma saw something she had never noticed before.
That light did not merely bless Ali, Zubair, Sa'd, Abbad, Zaid, Abdullah, and Umar as they sought to unravel the mystery within Anas's house. It also blessed them, Nirma and Arya, who stood outside as the veil of obscurity around them gradually thinned, with blood still pooled between Arya's fingers, carrying secrets they had never dared speak aloud for fear of being called insane, paranoid, or overly trusting in things that could never be measured through data.
"Now we can see them," Arya whispered, unable to conceal the tremor in his voice, the tremor of someone who had just realized he was watching people he was never meant to observe, crossing a boundary he was never meant to cross, doing something that might see him cast out from any timeline if anyone ever discovered it.
"And they have no idea we're watching. No one does."
Nirma nodded, one short, decisive nod without the slightest hesitation. Within that single gesture, she felt the immense weight of the decision she had just made, heavy like a sword hanging above one's neck, heavy like a name repeatedly carved into a wooden board that no one dared erase, heavy like a secret she had never shared with anyone, not even Arya, whose blood still stained the spaces between his fingers because he had failed to protect her from the wind unleashed by Umar ibn al-Khattab's sword.
"Now we move forward," Nirma said, her voice carrying a resolve that left no room to stop, like someone who understood that the only way to avoid drowning was to keep swimming, even when no shore could be seen.
"We'll move a little farther from here, toward the area around Masjid Dhirar. That's where the well is, the well that will lead us into the underground chamber never recorded by any historian, the chamber where those five companions may be waiting, or perhaps not waiting at all. But we have to try, Arya. At the very least, we have to reach it before dawn fully breaks and every trace is swallowed by a light that never forgives those who arrive too late."
They began to walk, Nirma leading with steady yet unhurried steps, steady like someone who knew exactly where she was going even though the map inside her mind still contained countless blind spots, steady like someone who had just received a blessing from an everlasting light despite believing herself unworthy of it. Arya followed close behind with slightly longer, faster strides, like a shadow unwilling to lose its master amid darkness that was slowly fading from pitch black into deep gray because dawn could no longer wait to be born. And between them, suspended in the suddenly colder air, the five holographic screens remained illuminated, watching without pause, serving as eyes that never blinked.
As they moved farther away from Anas's house, farther from the yellow light that still rested silently upon the white camel and closer to the empty ground that would one day become the site of Masjid Dhirar with all the controversy surrounding it, Arya suddenly reached out with his left hand toward Nirma. Not to stop her or grab her, but to retrieve something tucked inside her pocket, something he had never touched without permission because he knew how precious it was to his companion whose single eye possessed the sharpness of a thousand.
"The Göbekli Tepe clay phone," Arya whispered, his fingers moving with extraordinary care, as carefully as someone lifting a baby from a fragile cradle, as carefully as someone who knew that one wrong movement could destroy an artifact that no technology in any future era could ever replicate.
"I need to hear it one more time. There's something that's been bothering me ever since we left Anas's house, something about the jet engine sound inside it, a sound that should never exist within an artifact this ancient."
Hearing that, Nirma simply nodded, one brief nod without questions, objections, or hesitation, because she had learned that whenever Arya spoke about sounds that should not exist, it was never hallucination, paranoia, or madness. It was the intuition sharpened by thousands of hours spent analyzing data within the internal communications center of the Temporal Cross-Police, an intuition that was rarely wrong, even if he himself could not always explain where it came from.
To be continued…