CHAPTER SIX: THE MAVERICKS’ DOSSIER: WEAPONS OF PURITY
1533 Words
Aisha Lawal (Maverick-037)
Age: 15
Recruited: At 11 years old
Specialty: Close-quarters combat & marksmanship
IQ Level: 159
Bio: Youngest Senior Enforcer in Council history. Holds the sparring ring record, 47 consecutive wins. Her neural scans show abnormal resistance to recalibration. Council suspects this is why her memories resurface faster than others.
Core Memory Fragment:
The smell of burning mosque carpets. A man’s hand, shoving her into a crawl space. Her mother’s laali dye. The taste of blood where she bit through her lip to stay silent.
Ebubedike Nnamdi (Maverick-209)
Age: 13
Recruited: At 10 years old
Specialty: Electronic warfare & infiltration
IQ Level: 156
Bio: Son of Onitsha’s legendary locksmith. Could pick deadbolts by age 6 using homemade tools; bobby pins, spoons, dental floss. Council engineers exploited his tactile genius, his neural implant hypercharges his fingertips, allowing him to hack systems by touch.
During a debriefing outburst, guards slapped cuffs on him, only for him to absentmindedly pick them open mid-tantrum.
Core Memory Fragment:
His father’s workshop. The metallic scent of key blanks. A half-finished lock shaped like a leopard, his birthday gift, never completed.
Chukwuemeka Okafor (Maverick-071)
Age: 17
Recruited: At 13 years old
Specialty: Heavy weapons & hand-to-hand combat
IQ Level: 155
Bio: 6'4”, towering over the squad, earning his "Giant" callsign. 210 lbs of battle-hardened muscle. Holds the record for most HK-Alpha solo kills, 12.
Secret weakness: Traumatized by chickens since that rooster-grenade fiasco.
Core Memory Fragment:
The weight of his baby sister in his arms as he ran. Her braids tickling his chin. Then, the sting of a neural injector. Her screams fading into static.
Zainab Bello (Maverick-556)
Age: 16
Recruited: At 12 years old
Specialty: Long-range elimination.
IQ Level: 159
Bio: Can calculate wind drift in her head. Holds the record for longest confirmed kill, 1,842 meters, using a rifle she jury-rigged from scrap parts. Only Maverick to ever outshoot Aisha in simulations.
Core Memory Fragment:
Her mother humming Hausa lullabies while polishing bullets. The way the sunlight caught the brass casings, like golden beads.
Richard Adebayo (Maverick-447)
Age: 17
Recruited: At 11 years old
Specialty:Tactical leadership & sabotage
IQ Level: 160
Bio: The Council’s favorite "cleaner." Leads high-risk purge ops with chilling efficiency. Rumored to have personally terminated 3 recalibration-resistant child soldiers.
Core Memory Fragment:
A chessboard in flames. His father’s voice: "Sacrifice the pawn to save the king."
Chioma Eze (Maverick-009)
Age: 18
Recruited: At 10 years old
Specialty: Psychological operations & interrogation
IQ Level: 157
Bio: The oldest active Maverick. Early neural logs show violent resistance to programming, night terrors, self-harm attempts. Now? She administers recalibration to others.
Core Memory Fragment: Her father’s rich baritone filling the church every Sunday, her brother’s worn guitar keeping time, her mother’s exasperated call from the doorway. “Hurry up! We’re late, again!”
Turning Point:
At 15, she was assigned to "debrief" a captured rebel child. When the girl screamed "They took us from Eket Market!", Chioma’s hands didn’t shake. Her report read: "Subject terminated. Intel unreliable."
Arike Williams (Maverick-199)
Age: 14
Recruited: At 10 years old
Specialty: Strategic warfare & tactical planning
IQ Level: 162
Bio: The Council’s "living supercomputer." Can map battlefields in her mind and predict enemy movements with 89% accuracy. Spends most ops in the war room with high command, only deploys for critical missions. She speaks in careful silence.
When words come, they cut deeper than her years should allow.
Core Memory Fragment:
Her grandfather drawing battle maps in the dirt with a stick. "See the angles, omo? Life is geometry." The scent of her sister’s coconut hair oil clinging to the humid air.
Bayo Adeyemi (Maverick-003)
Age: 12
Recruited: 10 years old
Specialty: Cyber Warfare & AI Countermeasures
IQ Level: 166
Bio: The Council's "Digital Ogun", a coding prodigy who breached Aso Villa’s firewall at age 8.
Used his dad’s tablet + CBN WiFi to h****k a PlayStation 6 shipment.
Now weaponizes that chaotic genius for the Council.
Technological Edge:
Designed the "Yam Code" firewall that blocks HK-Alpha hive-mind attacks
Created viral counter-programs that make 17% of HK units spontaneously reboot mid-combat
Installed backdoor protocols in Council satellites.
Physical Trait:
A jagged scar above his left eyebrow, earned at age seven when he tumbled down the stairs mid-mission to steal his dad's flash drive.
Always has energy drink stains on his uniform
Wears noise-canceling headphones 24/7
Permanent dark circles under eyes, 92-hour coding marathons.
War Room Ritual:
1. Chugs two cans of "Quantum Boom" energy drink
2. Hacks into enemy comms within 3 minutes
3. Chews gum violently while directing squads via neural link
Core Memory Fragment:
His older sister's voice: "Bayo, come eat!" as he dismantled the family dining table to build a signal jammer.
Battlefield Impact:
While others fight with guns, Bayo wages war in the digital trenches:
Council's Secret Fear: His implants are minimally suppressed, they need his creativity intact
The Scar Story: His father caught him hacking the school's website to provide free uniforms and books for struggling classmates. Fleeing his father's rage, he tripped on the stairs, leaving the jagged mark above his brow.
The Council High Command
General Osaze Daniels
Role: Supreme Commander
Traits:Never appears in person. Holograms flicker with static, some suspect deliberate distortion.
Signature Move: "Purification Protocols", entire villages erased for "rebel sympathies"
Dark Secret: Assassinated the president during the coup.
Commander Idowu Balogun
Role: Field Operations
Traits: Scar across his throat, covered with tattoos, from an HK-Alpha attack. Smells faintly of antiseptic and burnt wiring.
Psychological Warfare: Makes child soldiers watch replays of their own kills
Vice Commander Amarachi Chiemelie, AKA Mother of Purity.
Role: Psychological Operations
Traits:
Signature White: Head-to-toe ivory attire, 6-inch heels clicking like a metronome of doom
White Gloves: Rumored to hide synthetic skin grafts.
Ivory-Heeled Terror: Her antique pistol’s grip carved from real elephant tusk, and yes, she tested it on her rebellious brother.
Smells faintly of lavender and formaldehyde.
Psychological Warfare: Designed the neural implants and the ghost-voice that haunts child soldiers’ minds. Personally reprograms struggling assets in her white-gloved "surgery theater"
Strokes their hair while whispering: "Shhh... let Mother rewrite the pain"
Success rate: 98.7% compliance
Dark Secret:
Her office contains a locked cabinet with 975 vials, one for each Maverick's extracted childhood memory
Lieutenant Tayo Joshua
Role: Neural Recalibration
Traits: Wears opaque goggles. Hands always gloved.
Dark Secret: His "recalibrated" subjects have a 22% higher mortality rate.
Sergeant Garba Mohammed
Role: Weapons Development
Traits: Missing left arm, replaced with a prototype plasma cannon.
Irony: Designs weapons he calls "Ogun’s Blessings" though he’s Hausa.
Dark Secret: Each weapon DNA-locked only the chosen wielder can fire them.
One of the HK architects before they gained sentience, which cost him his arm
Major Ikechukwu “The Kola Oracle” Nwachukwu
Role: Intelligence
Traits: Always chewing kola nuts. Files disappear from his database.
Rumor: Knows where the Council buries its mistakes.
Dark Secret: Architect of the Child Soldier Program, he remembers every name, prays in none of their languages.
Council Recruitment Protocol
Qualifications:
Age: 10+ years
IQ: 132+ (pre-screening)
Processing Non-Qualifiers:
Town Assault: After raids, children under 10 are "discarded" (fate classified).
Injection Trial: Older children forcibly administered neural-enhancing serum
Pass: Body adapts = immediate conscription (ability testing begins within 24hrs)
Fail: Seizures = "recycled" for parts
IQ Verification: Surviving candidates take live-fire aptitude tests
Serum is 97% lethal for assets under 10, hence age cutoff.
Fate of Non-Qualifying Children (below 10 Years Old)
"Re-Education" Camps
Physically tested until "of age" (if deemed viable).
Survivors graduate to standard recruitment at 10+
Terminal Disposal (Failed Candidates)
Option 1: Sold as domestic slaves to Council. (Common use: hazardous labor)
Option 2: Trafficked to Europe for drug operations (primary export: narcotics to fund wars)
Option 3: Organ harvesting (heart/livers prioritized for high-value buyers)
Note: Mortality rate in camps averages 68% before age qualification.
Final Disposal (Unwanted Stock)
Method:
Ocean Dumping – Bound and weighted, dropped into deep waters (no retrieval possible)
Ghost Ships – Forced onto derelict vessels set adrift (starvation preferred over bullet waste)
Council Policy:
"Once cargo leaves port, outcomes are market forces, not our concern."
Neural Implant IQ Enhancement
Function:
Annual IQ Increase: +5.5% (compounding)
Active Duration: 3 years (optimal learning window)
Strategic Purpose:
Peak Acceleration: Subjects master combat/tactics at machine-level efficiency during enhancement period
Post-Expiry Retention: Skills become hardwired no regression after implant deactivation
Burnt Synapse Syndrome: Happens to 21 out of 100 child soldiers after 3 years with brain implants.
Symptoms:
Stuck in Battle Mode: They can’t stop thinking like soldiers, even during peace.
No New Ideas: Their brains freeze like a broken computer. They can’t learn new skills, only repeat old ones.
Emotional Outcome: They stop feeling joy or sadness. Just… emptiness.
Reason:
The implants force their brains to learn too fast and after 3 years, their minds burn out from the stress. Forgetfulness of certain things.
In Their Words:
"I remember every kill… but not what I ate last night.”
———
Dike locked himself in the restroom and activated the chip. The hologram flashed:
"THE m******e AT IHIAGHA"
[PLAY]
He tapped it. The screen spun for 30 seconds, then:
"FILE CORRUPTED."
With a snarl, he flushed the chip away.
- Writer
