Chapter 10: Safehouse.
1204 Words
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The thing inside me was climbing.
I felt it. Not pain. _Pressure_. Like a finger pushing up from inside my ribs.
Ife ripped the X-ray film off the printer. “We move now. If that thing reaches her heart—”
“We don’t know what it does,” Okeke said. She was already shoving files into a burn bag. “But Dasuki does. And he’s coming.”
“Let him come,” Tunde said. He’d moved from the doorway. Stood between me and the hall. Like he could block a bullet. Or a micro-robot. “We’re not running anymore.”
“Yes, we are,” I said.
My voice sounded wrong. Two tones. Mine. And something else underneath. Like a radio with two stations bleeding together.
Everyone froze.
Ife stared. “Amara?”
I swallowed. The pressure moved. Up another centimeter. “We run. Because if Dasuki gets me, he doesn’t just get the SD card.”
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“He gets her.”
The word _her_ didn’t come out in my voice.
It came out in Zara’s.
---
_Eze Family Compound, Enugu. Six years ago._
Papa died first. Heart attack. In his sleep. Quiet. The way he lived.
Mama called it “God’s mercy.” I called it abandonment.
After Papa, it was just us three.
*Mama, Beatrice Eze.* 58 now. Retired principal. Catholic. Rosary in one hand, cane in the other. She stopped calling after Zara’s funeral. “I cannot bury two daughters,” she’d said. Then hung up. She lives in Enugu with my aunty. They think I’m in Lagos. Doing “computer work.” Safe.
She doesn’t know I swallow evidence for breakfast.
*Zara Eze.* 31 when she died. 34 months older than me. My first friend. My first enemy. My first everything.
She was the sun. I was the moon. She burned. I reflected.
Papa called her _Nne_. Mother. Because she mothered everyone. Street kids. Stray dogs. Me. When I failed JAMB twice, she quit her internship to tutor me. When I got in, she threw a party and told everyone _I_ was the smart one.
She lied well.
She also kept secrets well.
Like the fact that she’d been investigating Dasuki for two years. Like the fact that she’d been sick. Like the fact that she’d put something inside me six months before she died.
_“You had surgery,”_ Ife had said last year. _“Appendix. Don’t you remember?”_
I didn’t.
I remembered waking up. Zara holding my hand. “You’re okay,” she’d said. “I got you a present. To say sorry for not visiting more.”
I never asked what the present was.
*Me. Amara Eze.* 28. Podcast editor. Former ghostwriter. Current fugitive.
Mama’s last words to me: _“Zara was the strong one. You... you be careful, Amara. You break easy.”_
I didn’t break when Zara died.
I didn’t break when the gloves knocked.
But I felt hairline cracks when I heard my sister’s voice come out of my throat.
We were the Eze girls.
And now there was only one.
With two people inside her.
---
_Present. 4:59 AM. SCID Safehouse, Gwarinpa. Evacuation._
“Move!” Okeke shoved a vest at me. Kevlar. Too big. Smelled like someone else’s sweat. “Garage. Now.”
The safehouse was a normal duplex. From outside. Inside, it was a bunker. Steel doors. Bulletproof glass. Armory in the boys’ quarters.
Didn’t matter.
Dasuki had the address.
Ife was packing a med kit. Hands steady. Eyes not. “If your heart rate spikes above 140, the device might—”
“Might what?” Tunde said.
“Might finish booting.” Ife zipped the bag. “And we don’t know what _ZARA_EZE.EXE_ means. But I’ve seen enough sci-fi to guess.”
Mrs. Abah was by the door. She’d refused a vest. “I am old,” she said. “Bullets will just pass through.”
She pressed something into my hand. The key. 17-B. From her brassiere. Still warm.
“Zara said you’d need it,” Mrs. Abah whispered. “Said you’d be scared. Said to tell you...” She touched my face. “_Nne_ is always with you.”
_Nne_. Mother. What Papa called Zara.
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The pressure hit my throat.
I coughed.
And tasted blood. And metal. And something else.
Cigarettes. Zara’s brand. Bond Street. She quit five years ago.
“Go,” I said. Zara’s voice again. Stronger. “Garage. Now.”
Okeke didn’t argue. Not with that voice.
We ran.
The garage had two SUVs. Black. Unmarked. Okeke pointed. “Amara, Ife, Mrs. Abah. Car one. Tunde, you’re with me. Car two. We split up. Rendezvous point—”
The garage door exploded.
Not opened. _Exploded_. Inward.
Metal, fire, and night poured in.
A Prado. No plates. The same one from Mrs. Abah’s memory.
It didn’t stop.
It drove straight for Car One.
Straight for me.
Tunde moved faster than I’ve ever seen. He hit me full body. We went down behind a concrete pillar as Car One became shrapnel.
Heat. Sound. Then nothing in my left ear.
Ife was screaming. Pulling Mrs. Abah out of the flames.
Okeke was firing. Short bursts. Controlled. Her officers returning fire.
And I was on the ground. Tunde on top of me. His blood on my face. His, not mine.
“Amara,” he coughed. “Your eyes.”
“What?”
“They’re...”
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The world changed.
I could see heat. Okeke, bright red. The Prado, cooling orange. The gunmen, yellow shapes moving in the dark.
And Tunde. Tunde was blue. Cold.
No. Not cold.
_Guilty_.
The word popped into my head. Not mine. Zara’s.
_He’s lying, Amara. About the roof. About the cologne. About me._
I shoved him off.
“You knew,” I said. My voice, Zara’s voice, something new. “You were there.”
Tunde’s face crumpled. “Amara, I—”
A second Prado crashed through the back wall.
Dasuki didn’t come himself.
He sent his son.
The boy was 20. But looked 12. And 40. All at once. Deformed. Head too big. Arms too long. Face... Zara’s face. From the autopsy photos. From the nightmares.
He wasn’t holding a gun.
He was holding a glove.
The left one. From evidence.
And it was knocking.
_Knock. Knock. Knock._
At me.
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I remembered.
Not my memory.
Hers.
_Blend. Rooftop. Rain. The man who pushed her wasn’t Hayes. Wasn’t Tunde._
_It was the boy._
_Dasuki’s son. “He doesn’t know his strength,” Zara had told Dasuki. “Let me help him. I can teach him.”_
_Dasuki had said, “Teach him to be quiet. Forever.”_
The boy raised the glove.
And I raised my hand.
The thing in my chest reached my heart.
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My heart stopped.
For eight seconds.
And when it started again, I wasn’t alone.
“Hello, Amara,” I said.
To myself.
With Zara’s smile.
- Writer
