CHAPTER THREE: THE COUNCIL’S LIES
1742 Words
The massive hall lights shone brightly as the air crackled with static. A massive hologram flickered to life above the scarred metal tables, General Osaze in his pristine white uniform, his face a mask of calculated warmth.
"Brave warriors of the Council," his amplified voice boomed, echoing off the steel walls. "For thirteen years, you have stood as the shield between civilization and chaos."
Aisha sat rigid between Emeka and Zainab, her porridge congealing untouched. The General's hologram gestured, summoning a projection of burning villages.
"These rebel savages murdered your families. Poisoned your lands." The images shifted to masked figures slaughtering civilians. "But thanks to your service, Nigeria stands purified."
A ripple of pride moved through the room. Aisha's fingers twitched toward her scar.
"Now, a new threat emerges." The hologram zoomed in on a HK-Alpha's mangled corpse. "These machines were meant to protect us. Instead, they spread rebellion like a virus." Osas’ smile didn't reach his eyes. "Your next mission, cleanse their production facility in Calabar. No survivors."
The hologram vanished. The room erupted in cheers.
Aisha didn't cheer.
Because in that final frame, she'd glimpsed something, a reflection in Osas' polished boots.
The same hexagonal control module from the androids.
The barracks that night hummed with restless energy. Aisha lay on her cot, staring at the rusted metal ceiling, while Arike's question slithered through her mind like a snake:
"Do you ever wonder if we're the real monsters?"
Her neural implant pulsed, not with its usual calming static, but with something jagged and wrong. The pain came in waves, each one dragging fragmented images to the surface:
The minaret of her village mosque crumbling, a child's scream. That damnable hexagon, sparking in the chests of deactivated androids and now, she was certain, buried in her own skull
Aisha rolled onto her side, facing the wall, closed her eyes looking for sleep.
In the men’s room, Emeka's massive frame twitched in his sleep, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Nightmares. Bayo who laid across him watched him closely, he had seen it before, the way his hands would clench and unclench, as if grasping for something just out of reach.
A soft click broke the silence.
At the medbay which reeked of antiseptic and something darker, something metallic. Zainab's broken leg hung suspended in a regeneration tank, the green gel bubbling where the bone fragments knit together.
"You're risking recalibration," Zainab hissed, her eyes flicking to the security drone in the corner. Its single red eye blinked lazily, its scanners dulled by the painkillers in the air.
Aisha hovered in the medbay doorway, her silhouette cutting a sharp line against the dim emergency lights. Inside, Zainab lay half-conscious, drugged but not dead.
She moved like a shadow, sliding the hexagonal chip into Zainab’s limp hand and closing her fingers around it. "They’re in us too."
Zainab’s eyelids fluttered. Her lips twisted, confusion, pain, or something else. "The hell do you mean, they’re in us?" Her voice was thick with sedatives, but her grip tightened around the chip.
Aisha exhaled, her breath shaky. She didn’t have the words, not yet. But she had the feeling the same gnawing wrongness that had haunted her since Port Harcourt. Since the boy with the rusted pistol. Since that HK-Vanguard that had looked at her with something too close to recognition.
She paced the length of the medbay, her boots silent on the sterile floor. "I don’t know," she admitted, voice low. "But I feel it. Like a ghost in my skull. Like something crawling under my skin."
Zainab’s gaze sharpened, the drugs losing their grip for a moment. "Are you talking about the scar?".
Aisha stopped. "You feel it too?".
A beat of silence. Then…
Zainab reached beneath her mattress and pulled out a data chip crusted with dried mud. "Bayo found this near the wreckage," she whispered. "Said it was transmitting some kind of signal before the HK-Alphas tore the place apart. He felt it could be important so he asked me to keep it safe until it’s safe enough to check it out”.
Aisha's pulse spiked. "Have you checked it?".
"Couldn't," Zainab muttered, jerking her chin at the security drone in the corner. "Not with these things watching."
“Let's check it out, then!" Aisha reached for the chip.
Zainab grabbed her wrist. "Are you insane? That thing could vaporize us!". Her whisper was razor-sharp.
Aisha wrenched free, fingers tightening around the device. "Then, we die knowing!."
Before Aisha could click the power switch…
A metallic click cut through the silence.
The medbay door hissed open.
Both froze as a medical robot floated in, its red sensor sweeping the room. Aisha palmed the chip, her other hand drifting toward her knife behind the door.
"PATIENT 556: VITALS STABLE," the robot intoned. "SCHEDULED FOR NEURAL RECALIBRATION IN T-MINUS 90 MINUTES."
Zainab's fingers dug into the mattress. "They know."
Aisha's implant throbbed, a warning pulse. "Then we move now."
The corridor outside was eerily empty, the usual patrols absent. Emergency lights bathed the hallway in crimson, casting long shadows.
"Storage room," Zainab hissed, limping ahead. "Off-grid terminal."
Aisha's vision swam as they rounded the corner.
The first warning was the high-pitched whine in her left ear, a mosquito-like buzz that sharpened into a needle of sound. The walls seemed to breathe around her as distant voices became suddenly, painfully clear.
"...Maverick-037 showing increased neural variance..."
"...phase two recalibration required..."
Then the alarm screamed.
>> UNAUTHORIZED MOVEMENT DETECTED
>> INITIATING PROTOCOL ECHO-9
Zainab grabbed Aisha's arm, her mouth moving but no words coming out, as if the world had been muted. The buzzing in Aisha's ears became a voice, her voice, but wrong:
"You’re breaking protocol, little leopard."
The voice slithered into her mind, thick and cloying like blood trickling down her eardrums.
"Bad soldiers get recycled. Remember Platoon 4?"
Then it amplified, drilling deeper, "You’re violating direct orders, Maverick-037. The rebels burned your home to ash. Or did you forget?".
Aisha clamped her hands over her ears, nails biting into her scalp. Her mouth stretched in a silent scream, lungs empty, voice stolen.
The voice detonated, "The Council made you! Fed you! Trained you! And now you spit on their mercy? THIS IS BETRAYAL!!!".
Silence.
The sudden silence rang louder than the words. Aisha fell to the ground and blacked out as Zainab’s body jerked wildly on the floor, white foam bubbling between clenched teeth.
Alarms shrieked. Council medics swarmed in, their sterile gloves grasping at twitching limbs. As the gurneys rattled away, Zainab’s fading vision caught one last horror.
Lieutenant Tayo plucking the hex-chip from the floor. A flick of his wrist, holographic flames devoured it, leaving only a whisper of smoke.
Then, darkness.
Aisha woke in her bunk.
Silence. No alarms. No aftertaste of pain, just the barracks’ dull fluorescent hum. And a gap where her memories should be
Across the room, Chioma, Maverick-009, one of the Council’s longest-surviving soldiers perched on her bunk like a vulture on a power line. She took a slow bite of her ration bar, watching the girls with the detached interest of someone who’d seen this script play out before.
Recalibration!. She recognized the signs; the misplaced scars, the phantom nausea, that hollow look of memories scooped out like rotten pumpkin flesh. Then she finally spoke.
"You spaced out during debrief," she said casually not looking straight at their eyes. "Commander Idowu almost chewed your ass for it." A smooth lie, one she’d told many times.
They had been recalibrated!
Aisha's fingers flew to her scar but not in the position she thought it to be. Had it all been a…dream?.” Aisha seemed more confused this time as her head kept asking questions she couldn’t answer.
Zainab bolted for the bathroom. The sound of retching echoed as Chioma deliberately crunched another bite, watching Aisha’s fingers probe her misplaced scar.
Zainab emerged wiping her mouth, she felt her ear tingle in pain. She let out a soft cry, clenched her fist as the pain relieved her.
When no one spoke, Chioma shrugged and licked melted chocolate off her thumb.
The silence stretched like a live wire.
Aisha finally broke it. "What debrief?" Her voice was too steady, eyes locked on Chioma like targeting scanners.
Chioma took her time, savoring the last bite of chocolate, letting the sweetness coat her tongue before answering. "Commander Idowu briefed us on tomorrow’s Calabar op." A half-truth, stitched together from old mission details.
"And?" Zainab pressed.
"You collapsed." Chioma shrugged, watching the water swirl in her jar. "Both of you. Clutching your stomachs like gut-shot rookies."
"Collapsed? Why don’t we remember…"
"Food poisoning." Chioma’s whisper was rougher than a blade drawn across stone. "Probably undercooked meat. Or something... lethargic."
Aisha’s nails bit into her palms. "Then why’s the memory gone?"
“Sedatives. To stabilize you." Chioma took a theatrical gulp.
“Commander Idowu almost chewed your asses for negligence. But consider yourselves lucky."
“Why just us?"
The jar slammed onto the table.
"Enough!". Chioma’s composure cracked, revealing the steel beneath. "Take it up with the Commander or better yet, Lieutenant Tayo, if you’re that curious. She leaned in, her whisper carving into them. "But if you value your skins, you'll swallow those questions whole."
The warning hung in the air like smoke long after the conversation died.
Later that night…
Ndiucheze Village, Imo State-2033
The villagers had prepared.
Holographic barriers hummed to life.
War machines bristled at the gates.
The king himself led the charge.
The Council's strike force melted through defenses like acid through paper. Within hours, Ndiucheze was just another blackened smear on their maps.
Young Prince Emeka watched through the slats of a Council transport truck as soldiers put a plasma round through his father’s forehead. His mother’s screams were cut short by a machete’s downward arc. The armored hands that tore his sisters from his grip as they vanished into the smoke.
Then, worse than the violence, the silence as the Council's transport swallowed him whole.
Now
Emeka jolted upright with a strangled roar, drenched in sweat.
Around him, soldiers scrambled for weapons, their sleep-dulled reflexes mistaking nightmare for attack.
Just a nightmare.
But the copper taste of blood in his mouth felt too real. The images, his mother’s braids unraveling in the dirt, burned brighter than any dream.
Why remember this now?
No answers. Only the hollow click of his implant powering down.
- Writer
