THE LAST NIGHT(CHAPTER 3 & 4)
1997 Words
"The Orestes Protocol is live, Musa," Josh said, stepping forward. "They’re going to trigger the Kill Switch tomorrow at noon."
Musa’s face went pale. He dropped the wrench he was holding. "No... no, it’s too early. Kola promised... he promised it was just a deterrent."
"Kola lied," Nengi said, her voice softening. "He’s going to brick the grid. And when he does, he’ll wipe the servers that hold the evidence of your innocence. You’ll be a criminal forever, Musa. Or, you can help us break into the vault tonight and take back the Master Key."
Musa looked at the flickering lightbulb in his room, then at the two strangers. He reached for a heavy, customised tablet on his desk.
"The vault has a three-factor authentication," Musa said, his voice gaining a sudden, sharp clarity. "Voice, retina, and a physical key. I can bypass the voice. Nengi can handle the guards. But the retina..." He looked at Josh. "The scanner is calibrated to the original architects of the system. The 'Legacy' profiles."
Josh felt his heart drop. "You mean my father's profile is still in the system?"
"Your father’s profile is the only one the system will accept for a manual. Musa confirmed. "And since you share sixty per cent of his retinal markers... Josh, your eyes are the only way in."
THE EYE OF THE STORM
The CBN Building rose out of the Lagos Island mist like a concrete glass. At 03:30 pm, the surrounding streets were quiet, save for the distant rhythm of the Atlantic and the occasional patrol of armoured security vehicles.
In the back of a delivery van parked two blocks away, Josh stared at his own reflection in a small handheld mirror. He was trying to memorise the pattern of his irises, wondering if the machine inside would truly see his father in him.
Tiwa’s voice crackled in his ear. She was miles away in Lekki, her fingers dancing across the keys to provide their digital shroud. "I’ve looped the exterior camera feeds for the next three minutes. Nengi, you’re clear for the service entrance."
Nengi didn't waste a second. She moved with the silent efficiency of a shadow, trailing Musa toward a side door that led to the basement maintenance tunnels. Musa was sweating, his glasses fogging up as he clutched the tablet that would feed the bypass codes into the building's nervous system.
"If we get caught in the lift, there’s no way out," Musa whispered, his voice trembling.
"Then don't get us caught," Nengi replied, her hand resting on the hilt of a non-lethal pulse baton.
They reached the sub-level elevator. This wasn't the public lift used by bank tellers and executives; it was a heavy, steel-plated cage that descended directly into the bedrock of the island.
As the elevator doors hummed open, they were met with a sterile, white corridor lined with automated turrets. Josh felt a bead of sweat roll down his spine.
"Tiwa, the guns," Josh breathed.
"I’m on it," she replied. On her screen, a progress bar crawled toward 100%. "I’m injecting a diagnostic loop into the fire-control system... Now! You have ninety seconds before the system realises it’s been spoofed."
They sprinted. The vault door at the end of the hall was a massive circle of forged titanium. Beside it sat a sleek, obsidian pillar, the biometric terminal.
"This is it, Josh," Nengi said, stepping back to watch the hall. "The Legacy scan."
Josh stepped up to the pillar. A thin line of red laser light swept across his face. A computerised voice, devoid of emotion, filled the small chamber, identifying.
For a moment, the world seemed to stop. Josh thought of the photo of his father standing at the Mushin gates, and the secrets he had died to
THE MASTER KEY
The heavy gears of the vault began to groan, a sound like a giant awakening from a decade of sleep.
Inside, the vault didn't hold gold bars or stacks of Naira. It held a single, transparent pedestal containing a small, glowing hardware token, "the Master Key" to the Orestes Protocol.
"Get it, Josh! We have to move!" Nengi shouted.
As Josh reached for the token, a secondary alarm, one not connected to the main grid, began to wail. A deep, resonant crimson light filled the corridor.
"Tiwa! What’s happening?" Josh yelled!
Static was the only answer.
"Tiwa? Can you hear me?"
Suddenly, a new voice cut through the interference. It was smooth, cultured, and utterly ruthless. Commander Kola.
"Hello, Josh," the voice said. "I must thank you. Only a direct descendant of Elias could open that vault. I’ve been waiting ten years for someone with your eyes to walk through that door. You haven't just found the key for us, you've delivered it."
Nengi spun around, her weapon raised, but the elevator doors were already sliding open. Six men in Vanguard tactical gear stepped out, their rifles levelled. Behind them, a screen on the wall flickered to life, showing the safehouse in Lekki.
Josh watched in horror as the camera showed the front door of the safehouse being kicked in. He saw Tiwa being dragged away from her monitors, her laptop falling to the floor.
"The girl for the key, Josh," Kola said calmly. "A simple trade. Don't make it a tragedy."
CHAPTER 4: THE MARINA GAMBIT
The air in the sub-level of the Central Bank was still thick with the scent of ozone and the burnt Leica battery. Josh shoved the Master Key a small, deceptively heavy cylinder of obsidian and gold, into his inner jacket pocket.
"We have thirty seconds before those elevators open," Nengi said, her voice dropping into a low, combat-ready octave. She wasn't looking at Josh; she was looking at the LED display above the heavy steel doors. 4... 3... 2...
"Musa, stay behind me," Josh commanded, though he felt anything but brave.
The doors hissed open. But instead of a hail of bullets, a flashbang grenade skittered across the floor.
"Nengi screamed".
The world turned into a screaming white void. Josh felt a hand grab his collar and yank him behind the heavy titanium vault door just as the corridor erupted in gunfire. The "Cleaners" had arrived. These weren't private security guards; they were mercenaries, moving in a synchronised "V" formation, their suppressed rifles spitting lead that sparked off the vault’s edges.
Nengi didn't return fire immediately. She waited for the rhythm. Pop-pop. Pop-pop. Between the third and fourth bursts, she spun out from cover, her pulse baton extended. She didn't aim for their chests; she aimed for the gaps in their armour, the neck, the inner thigh.
She was a blur of violence. Josh watched, terrified and mesmerised, as she disarmed the lead mercenary, used him as a human shield against his own team, and then deployed a smoke canister that filled the hallway with a thick, grey fog.
"Go! To the service stairs!" she yelled.
They ran. Josh’s lungs burned, a reminder of the Halon gas he’d nearly died breathing. They reached the stairs, Musa stumbling and gasping for air. They didn't go up, up was where the reinforcements were. They went down, into the dark, damp belly of the island’s drainage system.
THE DIGITAL HOSTAGE
Thirty floors above the chaos, in the penthouse of the Aegis Tower, Tiwa was engaged in a different kind of warfare.
She sat at a terminal that was faster than anything she had ever touched. Commander Kola stood behind her, his hand resting lightly on the back of her chair. It was a gesture of feigned fatherly affection that made her skin crawl.
"The encryption on the Orestes handshake is beautiful, Tiwa," Kola said, watching the lines of code scroll by. "Your father was a poet of logic. But he left a flaw. He believed humans would always be the final check. He built a 'Moral Gate' into the software."
"He built it so people like you couldn't use it," Tiwa spat, her fingers hovering over the keys.
"And yet, here you are, helping me bypass it," Kola smiled. "Because you know that if the heartbeat signal doesn't reach the bank vault in the next hour, the system will assume it's being tampered with and initiate a 'Scorched Earth' protocol. The grid won't just shut down; the transformers will physically explode. Millions will be without water, power, or hospitals for months. You don't want that blood on your hands, do you?"
Tiwa looked at the screen. She saw the map of Nigeria, glowing with thousands of nodes. Each node represented a community, a family, a life.
"I can bypass the gate," she whispered. "But I need the admin privileges. You have to give me your biometric override."
Kola hesitated. He was a man who survived on paranoia. "Why?"
"Because the gate is tied to the current CEO of Aegis. That's you. The software needs to know that the 'Order' is coming from the top. If I try to force it, the Moral Gate will trigger the explosion immediately."
She was lying. She was building a "Logic Bomb", a piece of code that would look like a bypass but would actually mirror the entire system back onto Kola’s own private servers, frying them instantly.
Kola leaned over and pressed his thumb to the scanner. Access Granted.
"You have twenty minutes, Little Bird," Kola whispered. "Make them count."
Josh, Nengi, and Musa emerged from a storm drain into the salt-heavy air of the Lagos Lagoon. They weren't in the polished world of Victoria Island anymore. They were on the edge of Makoko, the floating city built on stilts over the black water.
"We can't go back to the safehouse," Nengi said, scanning the horizon for the red-and-blue flicker of police boats. "They’ll be expecting us there. We need a neutral ground."
"I have a cousin here," Musa panted, wiping his glasses. "He runs a radio repair shop on the water. No power, no internet, just old-fashioned waves. Kola’s hackers won't find us there."
They paddled a pirogue through the narrow water of Makoko. The community was waking up, the smell of woodsmoke and frying fish filled the air. To the world, this was a slum. To Josh, it was the only place left in Nigeria where the digital eye of Aegis Global couldn't reach.
Inside the repair shop, a shack filled with gutted televisions and rusted antennas, Josh pulled out the Master Key.
"We have to get a message to Tiwa," Josh said. "If she thinks we’re dead, she’ll do something desperate."
"We can't use the cellular network," Musa warned. "Kola has 'The Eye', a satellite interceptor. The moment we broadcast, they’ll pinpoint this shack."
Josh looked at an old, towering radio antenna outside the shack. "What about shortwave? Can we skip a signal off the atmosphere? If we send it out of the country and have it bounced back, Aegis won't be able to track the origin."
Musa’s eyes lit up. "It’s old school. It’s slow. But it might work."
As Musa began to tinker with the dials, Josh sat in the corner, staring at the Master Key.
"Nengi," Josh said quietly. "If we do this... if we stop the protocol... we’re still going to be hunted men for the rest of our lives, aren't we?"
Nengi sat across from him, cleaning a wound on her arm. She looked at him with a weary kind of grace. "Josh, we were hunted the moment we decided the truth was worth more than a quiet life. The only difference is, now we’re fighting back."
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