the Countdawn Begins
1112 Words
The burning heat jolted me awake.
Not gently. Not gradually.
It hit like a verdict.
The sun stood directly above me, a white, merciless eye glaring down as if it had found me at last. Its heat scorched my skin, peeling thought from my mind, reducing everything to pain and instinct. Sand stretched endlessly in every direction—dunes rising and falling like frozen waves in a dead ocean.
No roads.
No landmarks.
No footprints.
Nothing.
Only emptiness.
Panic exploded in my chest. My breath shortened, sharp and useless, as if my lungs were collapsing in on themselves. I staggered to my feet, turning in frantic circles, desperate for anything—anything—that could tell me where I was.
“Hello?” My voice cracked.
The desert swallowed it whole.
Fear crept in fast and vicious, whispering a single, undeniable truth:
If I stopped moving, I would die.
So I ran.
I ran without direction, without reason, driven by something older than logic. The sand shifted beneath my feet, dragging me down, stealing my strength one step at a time. Sweat flooded my face, burning my eyes. My chest felt like it was on fire. Each breath scraped my throat raw.
The horizon bent.
The ground tilted.
My legs trembled violently.
Then they failed.
The world spun once—violently—before everything collapsed into darkness.
—
I gasped awake.
No sun.
No sand.
I was in my bed.
My apartment ceiling stared back at me, familiar and intact. The distant hum of traffic drifted through the open window. For several seconds, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My heart was still racing, pounding as if I had truly been seconds away from death.
A nightmare.
Just a nightmare.
That’s what I told myself.
But the fear didn’t leave. It clung to me, cold and deliberate, like a warning rather than an echo. The dream had been too real—too detailed—to dismiss.
And deep down, I knew something else.
Meeting the ambassador’s daughter again might kill me.
Her voice returned to me, calm and precise, exactly as it had been the first night we spoke.
“The solution is hidden in the words.”
The sentence echoed in my skull.
I didn’t know what it meant. But I knew ignoring it wasn’t an option.
I got out of bed and opened my notebook—the same one I’d been filling obsessively for weeks. I wrote everything down again, forcing myself to see the pattern I’d been avoiding.
The tattoo.
The blue car.
The silent phone calls.
The music.
The numbers.
Fragments of a puzzle, circling something I still couldn’t see.
The star tattoo came first.
Every source I found agreed on one thing: the symbol represented a turning point. A moment powerful enough to alter a person’s fate completely. Transformation. No return.
Meaningful.
Still useless.
Next, the word Camry.
I hadn’t expected much—until I found its origin. Japanese. Derived from kanmuri.
Crown.
My pulse slowed.
The ambassador’s daughter. The blue dress. The delicate silver crown she wore that night.
And the blue Camry parked across the street?
It wasn’t random.
It belonged to someone connected to her.
A messenger.
A watcher.
Or worse—a guardian.
Then came the music.
The track was titled “Words.” A simple name. Too simple.
Tracing its reference led me to a single location: Nizar Qabbani Street.
Her street.
That coincidence was too precise to be accidental.
Finally, the phone calls.
Every evening.
6:45 PM.
No sound. No voice.
Until I searched for 18:45.
What I found made my stomach tighten.
The number pointed to verses in both the Qur’an and the Bible—passages speaking of a rain that transforms. A rain that cleanses corruption, signals judgment, or marks the beginning of something irreversible.
A rain that changes everything.
The closer I came to understanding, the more the truth slipped away.
But one thing was suddenly clear.
If I wanted answers, I had to see her again.
—
The chance arrived sooner than expected.
A friend called me that afternoon.
“The British Embassy is hosting a celebration,” she said casually. “Anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. Big event.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
Through one of my high-profile clients, I secured an invitation.
Fate, it seemed, had decided to stop being subtle.
That night, the embassy glowed with wealth and power. Chandeliers spilled warm light over polished marble floors. Classical music drifted through the room, weaving between laughter and carefully measured conversations.
None of it mattered.
She would be here.
Minutes stretched thin as tension. Then an usher announced the arrival of the British ambassador and his daughter.
Every head turned.
And there she was.
Graceful.
Radiant.
Untouchable.
My chest tightened painfully.
I leaned against the wall, a drink in hand, pretending to observe the crowd. Then she looked at me.
Our eyes locked.
She started toward me.
Before she could reach me, a man in a white suit intercepted her, offering his hand. She hesitated—just long enough for me to notice—then accepted. They moved onto the dance floor.
But she kept glancing back at me.
As if checking whether I was still there.
When my glass emptied, I stepped away to refill it.
That’s when she appeared beside me.
Her smile was warm. Controlled. Dangerous.
“I don’t know if you’ll believe me,” she said softly, “but I admire your confidence.”
I handed her a drink.
“Not everything I do comes from confidence,” I replied. “Sometimes I just let people believe I have it.”
She laughed quietly.
We talked. About nothing. About everything. Family. Work. Life.
Then she said it.
She said she knew my friend.
My blood turned cold.
“How?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she took my hand.
“Dance with me.”
The music shifted. Maria McKee’s voice filled the room—soft, haunting.
As we swayed, she leaned in, her lips close enough that I could feel her breath.
“My friend was a British agent,” she whispered. “She was killed. And the people responsible believe you have what she obtained.”
The room vanished.
Sound disappeared.
Her fingers tightened around mine.
Suddenly, everything aligned.
My apartment.
The search.
The message.
You only have one month left.
The second sentence I hadn’t understood before finally surfaced in my mind.
Now I knew what it meant.
The clues weren’t hints.
They were markers.
A countdown.
A trap.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
6:45 PM.
Same number.
This time…
It rang again.
And someone answered.
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