Chapter 160
They stepped out from the shadows of the alleyway, and when the first rays of sunlight touched their clothes—olive and dark brown tones deliberately chosen to blend with dust and stone—the two of them seemed to disappear into the landscape of Jerusalem like two dots that had intentionally made themselves insignificant, because in a city preparing to welcome Passover, becoming insignificant was the highest form of protection.
For the entire day, they wandered through winding stone streets that twisted like lost veins, from the market near the Antonia Fortress to the southern slopes of the Temple filled with pilgrims arriving from every direction, their languages mixing chaotically in the air—Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and whispers of Hebrew spoken in countless accents—all merging into a single roar of noise that the locals called "the bustle before Passover," a phrase that carried within it an unspoken anxiety, because no one knew whether this year would be different from the years before.
Nirma walked with the kind of steps she had learned from the arkif.
Not the steps of a cautious agent, but the steps of a village woman accustomed to carrying an empty jar to the well and returning with it full, steps that were never too fast or too slow, steps that never invited a second glance from anyone passing by.
At every corner, at every crossroads, the eye hidden beneath her veil moved endlessly—recording, comparing, searching for something that should not exist in the year 33 AD, in a city that within days would become the center of gravity for world history.
"Nothing," she said in the afternoon while they stood beneath the shade of a deserted portico, her voice nearly drowned out by the hiss of the wind carrying dust from the Judean desert.
"Nothing strange. Nothing that jumps out of its context. No metal that shouldn't exist, no frequencies that shouldn't be heard, no scents that don't come from kitchens or stables."
Arya, standing beside her with his staff resting on his shoulder, gave a small nod, his eyes fixed on Golgotha Hill rising in the distance—still empty, still silent, still waiting.
"Maybe," he said quietly, "the Abnormals aren't here. Maybe they already gave up. Or maybe they know that in this place, history is too great to be touched. Even for them."
Nirma did not answer, but her fingers brushed the clay jar hanging at her waist—empty, just as she had planned, because a woman going to fetch water did not need to bring water from home, and in a world where every movement was a message readable by the right eyes, she had learned that absence was the most honest form of testimony.
As the sun began to lean westward and the shadows stretched like fingers probing every crack of the city, Nirma and Arya returned to the stone alley where they had first appeared that morning—a cycle they had deliberately designed, because in a foreign city, having a place to return to was the only way not to become lost in more than one sense.
"One day," Nirma said while slightly lifting her veil to breathe air untouched by the dust of their own footsteps, "and still no signs. Maybe all we really need to do is observe. Not hunt."
Arya, after resting his staff against the wall, let out a long breath, his fingers unconsciously touching the bandages around his forearm, now itching from the sweat and dust that had accumulated throughout the day.
The teleportation that returned them to Medina happened in the same instant as when they had departed.
One pulse, one touch on the remote, and the air of Jerusalem—thick with the scent of limestone and tension—was replaced by the dry, warm desert wind, carrying pollen from the date groves that never truly stopped swaying even as time had advanced several hours in this place.
Nirma exhaled deeply as her sandals touched the same sand once again, beneath the same cluster of date palms, with shadows now shifted eastward as silent witnesses that they had left and returned without leaving behind enough traces to become a story.
But just as Arya opened his mouth to say something about the Quraysh route they would investigate on the road toward Uhud, the wind blowing from the south carried something that should not have existed there.
A silence too deep between the date trunks, a presence too heavy to be mistaken for mere shadows, and before Nirma could reach for the remote hidden within the folds of her abaya, two figures stepped out from behind the low-hanging branches with movements far too calm for people who had just arrived, and far too measured for people merely passing by.
"We didn't come to capture you," Ashita said, her voice flat like someone reciting a fact beyond question, while Tegar stood beside her with an expression Nirma recognized as deliberately loosened vigilance—a posture that said even though their hands were nowhere near their weapons, it did not mean they were careless.
Arya, whose hand had already moved toward his waist a second earlier, slowly relaxed his fingers, his eyes narrowing toward the third figure standing directly behind Ashita—a frail old man supported by both Ashita and Tegar, dressed in simple white cloth worn thin at the edges, his face wrinkled like a map of time traveled too far, and his eyes tightly shut as though he were sleeping while standing, or as though he had intentionally closed himself off from the world he was entering.
"What is this?" Nirma asked, her voice cold, though within it was a tremor Arya recognized as something rarely shown by his partner.
Not fear, but a premonition not yet given a name, like the way the body senses pain before the wound truly appears on the skin's surface.
Ashita glanced at her briefly, then turned toward the old man with a movement that could almost be called respectful, before speaking again, softer than before.
"This is the reason why we need to talk. Not as hunters and fugitives. But as people who equally want to know why this world—which should have already ended—continues to move in ways no one can explain."
The wind blew harder between the four of them, shaking the date fronds against one another with sounds like whispers that never quite arrived, and amid all of it, the old man remained standing with his eyes closed, unmoving, silent, as though he were merely an object that happened to exist in the same place as them—yet there was something in the way he stood that prevented Nirma from looking away, something in the folds of skin at his temples forming a pattern she vaguely recognized from an arkif she had never opened since their last mission, an arkif containing one name she had spent all this time trying not to remember.
To be continued…