Page 29 of Saving Noor

The sob that tore from her was one of staggering relief and renewed fear. “The girls, Samir. Yasmin and Amina. Faisal has them. He took them after he…” Her voice broke as her hand twitched again toward her empty stomach.

Samir’s jaw tightened. The boyish uncertainty was gone, replaced by a chilling resolve. “We know. Link is working on it right now. We’re going to get them back.”

“We?” The word was a question. She was trying to see the boy in this stranger, trying to understand the chain of events that led him from her side to this man’s protection.

Before he could answer, the door opened again. The man from the hallway entered: older, with a calm, assessing gaze that swept the room before landing on her. He had the same bearing as the others, but there was a stillness to him, a gravity. This, she now knew, was Link.

Samir straightened slightly. “Link, this is my mother.”

Link gave a slow, respectful nod. “Noor.” He said her name with a weight that acknowledged everything she had endured. “You’re safe here. My team will make sure of that.”

She stared at him, this man who was the answer to the year-long question of her son’s whereabouts. Gratitude and a deep, primal distrust warred within her. He had saved Samir. But he had also taken him. And now, he held all their fates.

“Where are my daughters?” she asked him directly, her voice gaining a sliver of steel.

Link met her gaze, his own unwavering. “We don’t have that answer yet. But finding them is our only mission now. You have my word.”

His word. From the man who held her son’s life in his hands. It was all she had.

She looked at Samir’s face. The fight for her daughters was here, now. And the soldier from the note was leading it. Her fingers, trapped in plaster, curled into the faintest, most determined fist.

18 - NOOR

The world had stopped spinning, but it hadn’t stopped hurting. Noor sat in a wheelchair that felt too large for her, a blanket tucked around her legs by the kind nurse, Layla. Her arms were heavy, useless things resting on pillows in her lap, encased in white plaster that felt cold against her skin. Every breath was a negotiation with her broken ribs, a sharp reminder of the boot that had put her here. But the physical pain was a distant drumbeat compared to the screaming silence in her mind where her daughters’ voices should be.

She had asked to leave the bedroom. The silence there was too loud. She needed to see the men who had taken her son and brought him back a soldier. She needed to see the machine that was hunting for Yasmin and Amina.

Layla pushed her into the apartment’s large living area. It had been stripped of its luxury and transformed into something alien. Thick black cables snaked across the expensive Persian rugs like vines. Monitors glowed with maps and streams of cascading text that moved faster than she could read. The air hummed with the whir of fans and the low, clipped murmur of voices speaking a language she knew, but in a dialect of violence she did not.

Samir was there instantly. He abandoned his post near the window and knelt beside her chair, his movements fluid and sure. He looked older than his thirteen years, his face set in a serious line that softened only when he looked at her.

“You okay, Ummi?” he asked, his hand hovering over her cast, afraid to touch.

“I am awake,” Noor said, her voice raspy. “That is enough.”

She scanned the room, her eyes wide, trying to catalogue the strangers. It was overwhelming. In Faisal’s house, men were loud, careless, and cruel. These men were quiet. They moved with a terrifying economy of motion, like apex predators conserving energy.

“Who are they?” Noor whispered to Samir, feeling a spike of anxiety. “There are so many.”

Samir shifted closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial murmur, just like when they used to hide from the guards. “It’s okay. They’re the good guys. They’re all here for you…and for my sisters.”

The word hung in the air between them—sisters. He said it with a shy kind of wonder, a title he was still learning to wear but was already fiercely protective of. Noor felt a fresh crack in her heart, not from pain, but from a sudden, overwhelming gratitude. He didn’t resent them. He wanted them.

A massive man with a thick beard and shoulders like a bull strode past their corner. He carried a heavy black tactical case that looked weighty enough to crack the floorboards, yet he set it down with barely a thud. Beside him, a leaner man was meticulously shaping a lump of red Play-Doh, pressing a tiny, pretend detonator into it. He spoke in low, calm tones, illustrating different charge placements on a crumbled piece of paper. The big man, Tank, nodded intently, occasionally prodding the Play-Doh with a thick finger, his powerful hands surprisingly gentle. They were deep in their own world, yet Noor felt their awareness of everything around them.

“Tank and Blast,” Samir whispered, nodding toward the pair. “Blast is the one with the Play-Doh. He’s teaching Tank about shaped charges, just in case.”

Careful with explosives, Noor realized, the concept absurd to her, yet she sensed the necessity.

She looked toward the center of the room. A long table was dominated by glowing screens. A young man with messy hair sat there, typing with a speed that blurred his fingers. He wore a headset, rhythmically chewing gum as his hands danced across the keys. Without looking away from his monitors, he reached out and adjusted a dial, instantly clearing a burst of static from the room’s speakers.

“Target vehicles are approaching the canyon,” a calm, disembodied voice announced from the speakers.

Noor frowned, looking around for the source. “Who is the voice?”

“That’s Swede,” Samir explained. “He’s in America. If Faisal uses a phone, a credit card, or drives past a camera, Swede sees it.”

Noor watched the young man in the chair isolate the audio feed, his eyes darting across three different maps. They are sorcerers, she thought. They fight with lightning and invisible waves.