Chapter 16
They built temporal technology.
They developed anti-abnormal weapons.
They created intricate protocols to handle every possible contingency.
And they did it all alone, without guidance, without blueprints, without the protagonist who was supposed to lead the war against Abnormality.
In that silent space untouched by time, Nirmala slowly opened her eyes and gazed at the layers of years drifting around her like thin mist that never settled.
She smiled, a smile born not of happiness but of bitterness she had harbored alone for far too long.
For she knew exactly why no historical record ever mentioned the chaos that had nearly unfolded in 1950s Jakarta, about Subject Mydra 9-C who had almost annihilated thousands of lives with poison creeping through air, water, and reflections of light on glass.
Temporal Cross-Police had worked with remarkable skill—not in handling abnormal threats, but in twisting history so that no one would ever know how close the world had come to destruction of their own making.
"They twisted it beautifully," Nirmala murmured, her voice almost like the hiss of a serpent among the breathing layers of time.
"Like a master writer who can turn tragedy into a bedtime tale, like a sculptor who carves lies until they appear more real than truth."
She imagined how, in the future, inside the grand offices of the Temporal Cross-Police, public relations officers would swiftly construct narratives about how arduous their struggle had been against relentless waves of abnormal threats.
They would flood their era's mass media with exclusive interviews, tearful documentaries, and carefully designed statistics meant to prove that without them, the world would have long since shattered into pieces.
And no one would ever mention that the primary source of chaos had in fact come from their own incompetence.
Nirmala clenched her fists, feeling her blood surge with the urge to destroy something, yet she restrained herself.
In this silent space, anger would only cloud her focus.
She needed clarity to see the larger picture she had long understood only vaguely.
The Mydra 9-C case was merely one of thousands—perhaps millions—of examples of how rotten the organization claiming to guard time truly was.
Since their founding to address abnormal entities traveling across years, there had been almost no evidence that they truly functioned as intended.
They established military outposts in every nation.
They recruited thousands of personnel.
They developed technology supposedly the most advanced across the entire timeline.
Yet in the end, what they did was sit comfortably in padded chairs, receive reports from subordinates, and claim credit for every problem solved by others—or more often, for problems they themselves had created.
"Like unemployed officials granted rank in a government agency," Nirmala whispered, and for a moment her eyes gleamed with barely restrained fury.
"They arrive early in the morning, sit behind their desks, drink coffee while reading reports they never truly understand, then return home in the evening believing they have done something meaningful.
And when chaos truly erupts—when abnormals begin running through the corridors of time because no one has monitored them—they shout the loudest about how heavy their burden is, how great their sacrifice is, how the world should be grateful that they are still willing to shoulder it all."
Nirmala shook her head slowly, disgust thickening in her chest like mucus that refused to clear.
"Even though the root of the problem lies within themselves.
In their inability to see that abnormals are not merely threats to be captured and imprisoned, but also victims of the chaos they themselves created."
Nirmala had never dreamed of becoming a killer.
She had never imagined standing at the doorway of a family's home, hearing the cheerful laughter of a four-year-old girl who had just returned from a playground, then within seconds turning it into eternal silence.
Yet that night, in a grand residence belonging to the family who would pioneer the temporal teleportation system, Nirmala Surdaya did what had to be done.
Not because she thirsted for blood.
Not because she reveled in cruelty.
But because she had witnessed too much chaos born from technology that would later be misused by the Temporal Cross-Police.
She had seen how a teleportation system meant to preserve historical balance would instead become a weapon for twisting reality according to the will of those in power.
And when the trigger was finally pulled, when the gunshot faded and left only a child crying in the corner of the room, Nirmala knew there was no turning back.
The child looked at her with eyes wet from tears, eyes too innocent to understand what had just happened, too young to harbor the resentment that might one day grow within her heart.
Nirmala knelt, cradled that small face with her trembling hands, and whispered, "You will grow up hating me, and that is all right. But remember one day, when you are older and see for yourself what the organization your family will found has done, remember that there was a reason this night occurred."
Then she rose, seized the temporal teleportation device still warm from the touch of the bodies in that room, and leaped into the corridor of time that carried her away from that year, leaving behind a little girl whose cries gradually faded into the distance between eras.
The years that followed became a period of preparation beyond anything Nirmala had ever imagined.
She leapt from one century to another, gathering weapons from past and future, assembling equipment no temporal engineer would ever conceive.
She learned from experts long dead in official history.
She stole knowledge from libraries not yet built.
She concocted elixirs and poisons from plants that grew only in certain ages.
She traversed era after era with the precision of an archaeologist and the persistence of a hunter, ensuring that every tool, every weapon, every tactic she collected would serve her when she finally chose to begin her true mission.
To secure the abnormals before the Temporal Cross-Police could create even greater chaos.
At every stop, in every year she visited, Nirmala established hidden sanctuaries—safe cells that no temporal scanner would ever detect.
There she would bring the abnormals she managed to rescue—unfortunate beings born from fragments of literature made real, who deserved protection rather than persecution.
She built prisons that were also homes.
Security facilities that were also shelters.
An underground network stretching across the entire timeline, linking era to era in a secret bond known only to her and Arya.
And when everything was ready, when no preparation remained undone, Nirmala finally stood at the threshold of her greatest decision.
She would intervene in every operation undertaken by the Temporal Cross-Police.
Not merely to sabotage them.
Not to prove she was superior.
But to ensure that no abnormal would ever again fall into the wrong hands.
In every era where the Temporal Cross-Police dispatched units to capture those unfortunate beings, Nirmala would arrive first.
To be continued…