The return to Yaba didn’t feel like a homecoming; it felt like a descent into a nightmare that had been meticulously preserved.
We arrived as the sun began to bleed over the horizon, casting a sickly orange light over the labyrinth of rusted zinc roofs and the smell of open gutters and charcoal fires. Alexander, Tunde, and I—the broken trinity—moved through the narrow alleys like ghosts. We were covered in the dried mud of the swamp and the stench of jet fuel, a stark contrast to the vibrant, chaotic life of the morning market waking up around us.
Alexander leaned heavily on Tunde, his face ashen, yet his eyes remained fixed on the crumbling facade of the apartment block at the end of the street. It was the "Factory"—the place where I had learned to code, where Tunde had sold his soul, a
