The room was dark except for the glow of three monitors flickering like restless eyes. Rain pattered lightly on the metal roof overhead, but the hum of data scraping across Adesuwa's screen was louder in her mind.
Each file was a ghost.
Each decrypted packet of information is a memory clawing its way out of a shallow grave.
She hadn't slept.
Not really.
Not since Chapter One, since Juwon's body was found hanging in his father's Ikoyi home, a leather belt wound too neatly around his neck, the chair tipped over in a way that screamed orchestration, not despair. The story made the news in whispers: "Bright tech prodigy, lost to mental health."
But she'd known better.
Juwon had been many things. Restless. Reckless. Genius. But never suicidal.
And he had been close. Not just as a confidant, but as someone who saw the invisible threads of corruption long before they shimmered into view for others. He was the first to say the word "Circle" aloud in their dingy apartment, back when they still had hope.
Back before his fingers stopped moving across a keyboard.
Back before his silence became her war.
Now, sitting in a safehouse Tunde had scrambled to secure on the Mainland, Adesuwa scrolled through another decrypted file, one Juwon's friend, the hacker girl named Amaka, had died for. They'd called her "Vera" online, but Adesuwa had seen the fear in her real eyes the night they met in a rusted-out compound in Obalende.
"She was scared," Zee's voice echoed from the past. "But she came anyway. That should tell you how serious it was."
They'd met only once. Just long enough for Vera to slide a flash drive across the table and whisper, "If I die, they'll say I overdosed. But don't believe it."
Three days later, they found her in her apartment. Dead. A needle in her arm. Except she was terrified of hospitals. And her drug test came back clean.
The Circle had cleaned up.
Just like they had with Adesuwa's sister, Osamudiamen.
Murdered in her Unilag dorm room. The official story: suicide after exam pressure. But her body had bruises, and her notebook, full of pages documenting a series of untraceable government transfers, disappeared from her locker.
Adesuwa stared at the screen now, her reflection barely visible in the black frame.
These weren't accidents.
They were signatures.
She leaned forward, fingers trembling over the keyboard. Zee sat in the corner of the room, weapon disassembled on the table before her, but watching closely.
"You're shaking," Zee said.
"I'm remembering," Adesuwa replied. "They want us to forget. But I can't."
She tapped a key, and the screen filled with names. Not just politicians. Not just financiers.
Senators. Military contractors. Telecom executives. Even pastors.
All tied to The Circle.
And one name repeated: Senator Ayoola Adeyemi.
Juwon's father.
The betrayal had taken time to digest. Tunde was the first to say it aloud.
"He knew," he had muttered, back in Chapter Eight. "He knew what his son was uncovering. He just didn't care."
Or maybe he did.
Maybe that's why Juwon had to die.
Adesuwa's fists clenched. She remembered their last call, just two nights before he was killed.
"They're watching me now, Suwa. Not just on my phone. I think my dad's trying to... cover it all up. He doesn't ask questions anymore. He just nods."
He'd laughed after saying that, but it was hollow.
And now, the files he died for were alive again. Tunde had recompiled them into a secure leak folder. Zee had distributed USBs to trusted journalists. But they were just the first step.
"What now?" Zee asked, sliding the pistol parts back together.
Adesuwa didn't answer. She stood and pulled open the window slightly, letting the rain-slick Lagos air pour in.
Outside, the world moved like it didn't know.
But in the shadows of the city's arteries, something was about to shift.
FLASHBACK: CHAPTER TWO
The university courtyard smelled like old dust and wet leaves. Adesuwa was younger then, dressed in a light blouse and jeans, crouched over her sister's scattered notes. She picked up page after page, trying to make sense of diagrams that looked like financial forensics merged with oil pipelines.
She didn't understand them at the time.
But now, years later, she saw their design in the files Juwon decrypted.
Everything was mapped. Hidden accounts. Asset laundering. Even assassination logistics disguised as security payments.
Osamudiamen had discovered it first.
And paid the price.
"I think my roommate saw something she wasn't supposed to," she had told Adesuwa a week before her death.
She never clarified what.
Adesuwa never got the chance to ask again.
PRESENT
Tunde entered the room like a storm in slow motion. His eyes swept the perimeter. His phone was in a lead-lined pouch.
"Two journalists gone missing. One of them was the guy you sent the first tranche to."
Adesuwa's stomach knotted.
"They're speeding up," he said.
Zee loaded the pistol with a loud click.
"They're cornered," she corrected.
Adesuwa nodded. "That makes them dangerous."
Tunde pulled up a new map on his tablet, synced to their private network. "Tonight, we move on the warehouse in Ikeja. It's the hub for their data rerouting."
Adesuwa recognized it. She had circled it on her board two chapters ago.
"I want to be the one who goes in," she said.
Zee looked at her sharply.
"You're not a field anymore," she said.
"I never stopped being field," Adesuwa snapped. "I just lost people."
There was silence. Then Tunde nodded.
"Alright. You lead the breach. Zee, backup. I'll run counter-surveillance and extraction."
FLASHBACK: CHAPTER FIVE
"Do you know what it's like to realize your war is your inheritance?" Adesuwa had asked Tunde in their first serious meeting,"
He had just been burned from inside NIA, framed for a leak he didn't cause.
"I do now," he said grimly. "They used me to silence another agent. I was the bait."
From that moment, they'd become co-conspirators. Not just against The Circle, but against the silence.
PRESENT
They moved at 3:04 AM.
The Ikeja compound was silent, its gates held by private security posing as telecom guards. Adesuwa's team came in from below, through an old drainage tunnel mapped by Zee.
By 3:19, they were in.
By 3:25, alarms were off.
By 3:33, Adesuwa stood in front of a steel vault.
And found something that made her freeze.
Photos.
Of Juwon.
Of Osamudiamen.
Of Vera.
And of her.
Red marks across their faces. Code labels. Surveillance logs.
And a document that read, "Operation REND: Eliminate Known Echo Cells."
"Echo Cells?" Zee whispered behind her.
Adesuwa turned.
"That's us," she said.
Before anyone could respond, the vault lights turned red.
Backup was coming.
Tunde's voice crackled in the comms: "You have four minutes before SWAT, real or Circle-paid, descends. Pull out."
Adesuwa grabbed every file she could. But before leaving, she noticed one more thing.
An access log.
A recent one.
Used by Senator Ayoola Adeyemi.
The last login was 48 hours ago.
FLASHBACK: CHAPTER NINE
"He doesn't just know," Juwon had whispered. "He's part of it."
PRESENT
They made it out, barely. Bloodied, bruised, but alive.
And now they had proof.
Real names. Real plans. The operation name, REND, matched references in the deepest parts of Juwon's hacked archive. It wasn't just a surveillance program.
It was a hit list.
Built for extermination.
Of voices like hers.
EPILOGUE
Back at the safehouse, Adesuwa sat alone as the city began to wake outside.
Zee was on watch.
Tunde was compiling the data.
But she was still.
Still with the names.
Still with the memories.
Still with the ache that didn't fade.
And a voice echoed in her head, her sister's voice from the past:
"They won't remember me, Suwa. But if you survive... make them remember you."
Adesuwa's eyes sharpened.
"No," she whispered to the empty room.
"They'll remember all of us."
And with that, she began writing the broadcast message that would leak it all.
To every screen in Lagos.
To every phone.
To every mother who had buried the truth.
To every child who would grow in silence.
Because memory wasn't passive.
It fought back.