The morning broke without permission.
Lagos wore its chaos like skin, sirens fading into silence, car horns bleeding into morning calls, and somewhere in the mix, the breathless anticipation of those waiting for the world to crack open. At the center of it stood Adesuwa, unyielding.
The Circle had written the city like a code, a set of commands embedded into its arteries: control the water, the power, and the airwaves, and you'd control the people. They thought they had planned for every variable, every possible betrayal. But the one thing their algorithms didn't account for… was grief.
Adesuwa stood before what remained of the DataNest facility, one of the Circle's peripheral towers in Victoria Island. Zee walked slowly beside her, his eyes darting across what looked like an ordinary tech firm. But she knew better.
"Their blueprints were never made of concrete," Adesuwa murmured. "They were made of silence. Of people."
Zee nodded, lips tight. "And you're about to be their noise."
She gave a grim smile.
Inside, Tunde was already at work, decrypting a final batch of files they'd stolen from a Circle courier's dead drop three days ago. His hoodie was soaked at the edges with sweat, eyes sunken from sleepless nights.
"You'll want to see this," he said as they entered.
The screen lit up with fragments of documents. Schedules, disbursement logs, and anonymized communications. But it was the recurring project code that stood out:
OP-NEMESIS.
Adesuwa froze.
That name… it had surfaced in one of Juwon's decrypted emails just weeks before he died. She had dismissed it at the time as another operation, another weaponized silence. But now the code appeared everywhere: attached to health funding pipelines, military contractor notes, and even press releases doctored before distribution.
"Look at this," Tunde said, isolating a list of codenames.
Her blood turned to ice.
Subject AJ-3. Classified Threat Level: Crimson. Status: Terminated.
Adesuwa read it again. It was her sister. Amaka.
Then another: Subject JL-6. Status: Terminated. Juwon.
And below, the word she hadn't dared to hope for: Subject AZ-1. Status: Inactive. Under Surveillance. Risk Level: Extreme.
Zee caught her eye. "They thought you were dead."
"No," Adesuwa whispered. "They hoped I was."
FLASHBACK—THREE YEARS EARLIER
Juwon had been nervous that night.
They sat beneath the rusted water tank in Yaba, where the internet signal flowed better than tap water. The stars were dull, muted by street lamps and a sky that hadn't seen honesty in decades.
"I think I've cracked something," Juwon had said. "The files Amaka sent me weren't just whistleblower reports. She had access. Real access."
Adesuwa remembered the chill in his voice. "She said they have kill switches embedded in our health records. Not tech kill switches. Human ones."
Back then, it made no sense. How could health records be weaponized?
"She mentioned codenames," Juwon added. "One was… OP-NEMESIS. She said anyone who knew about it died."
She laughed nervously. "So we burn the files?"
"No. We decrypt them."
That was the night the Circle chose to make him disappear. A suicide, they said. A rooftop fall. But Adesuwa had been with him hours before. There was no rooftop. There was no fall.
Just silence.
PRESENT DAY – 11:43 AM
The new target was a backchannel server farm buried beneath a seemingly innocent customs office in Apapa.
They didn't need permission anymore.
Adesuwa, Zee, and Tunde worked like silent hands of vengeance. The plan wasn't just to expose The Circle; it was to destroy their operating infrastructure before they could pivot.
"We hit their ghost," Tunde said. "And we do it now."
As they descended into the structure, the lights flickered as if resisting their presence. Behind a false wall, a makeshift server room hummed with secrets. Adesuwa moved carefully, her hand brushing cables and drives like a pianist searching for the right key.
Zee handed her a drive. "This one leads to the offshore shells. Senators. Governors. Even journalists. All tied to one core name."
He pointed to the screen.
SENATOR OLU BAKARE.
Adesuwa didn't blink. "Juwon's father."
Tunde stiffened. "It makes sense. Juwon was trying to undo what his father built."
"He died for it," Zee added quietly.
"No." Adesuwa's voice was steel. "He was killed for it."
FLASHBACK—ONE YEAR BEFORE
Amaka had reached out just once after vanishing from the news.
Adesuwa remembered her voice on that encrypted call: shaky, coded, and paranoid.
"They used my patient profile as a smokescreen," she had said. "They make people sick so they can 'cure' them. That's the business model. But not everyone gets to live."
"And Juwon?" Adesuwa had asked.
"I warned him. But his father… his own father signed the red list."
Then the line went dead. Hours later, so did Amaka.
PRESENT—2:57PM
The broadcast went live without a warning.
Tunde's code broke through major Nigerian satellite channels, hijacking prime time and splashing unfiltered documents across TV screens.
Health records tied to assassinations.
Evidence of manipulated pandemics.
Names of media anchors on payroll.
And finally, a last video of Juwon, unedited, recorded minutes before his death. He stared into the camera, voice heavy:
"If you're seeing this, it means they got to me. But it also means we cracked the circle. They won't stop. But neither will she."
He didn't say her name.
He didn't need to.
EVENING—SOMEWHERE IN LEKKI
Adesuwa sat in the darkened safehouse, a candle flickering beside her.
Zee paced. Tunde was asleep on the floor, exhaustion finally catching up.
She replayed Juwon's video one last time.
Then she opened the file Amaka had risked everything to send.
At the center of it all wasn't money. Or land. Or even power.
It was data. Profiles harvested from millions. Used to forecast political threats. To kill those who disrupted patterns. To keep a city forever obedient.
The Circle had designed Lagos like a maze. But what they never expected was that someone who had lost everything… would stop running.
Adesuwa looked up.
"We burn their future with the ashes of our past."