The Courier's Code

CHAPTER 4 - THE INVITATION

TOLA'S POV



The folded Ankara lay on my desk like it didn’t belong in the room. Its colors seemed too bold for the pale, tired space I lived in—red and blue fighting for dominance, cut through with veins of white dots. Even under the weak morning light filtering through the threadbare curtains, the fabric seemed alive, breathing.

I traced those dots with my fingertip again, slow and deliberate. Not random. Not decoration. They carried a pattern, an encryption key. My brain kept returning to that fact, the way a tongue worries a broken tooth. I had seen ciphers hidden in stranger things—crossword clues, old receipts—but this… this was art turned into code. Beautiful and dangerous.

I shut my eyes and let memory drag me back.

The market.

The chaos of Ajala, people pressing close, voices hawking, bargaining, shouting. My nose filled with smoke from the exhaust of the buses passing by.

And in the middle of all that, Storyteller—calm, unhurried, as though he existed on a different timeline than everyone else. He had pressed the Ankara into my hand so casually I almost thought it was an accident. Almost.

Why me?

Why hand me this?

The question throbbed like a bruise in the back of my skull. I wasn’t extraordinary. I was Tola Ede, the girl who answered angry emails for a logistics company, who lived in a box of an apartment, who had more saved screenshots of memes than actual photos of herself. Nobody chose me. Not for things that mattered.

And yet here I was, fingers trembling slightly as I held proof that someone thought otherwise.

A sudden buzz on the desk jolted me. My phone lit up, screen bright and insistent against the fabric’s colors.

A new message.

I hesitated before opening it. My thumb hovered, ridiculous, as if touching the notification would burn me. Finally, I tapped.

“We move information in plain sight. Recipes. Fabric prints. Nollywood scripts. Anything that blends into daily life. You have a gift for seeing patterns. We want you.”

My breath caught.

I read it again, slower this time. We want you.

I leaned back in the chair, spine pressing into wood, the words pulling me into stillness.

A gift.

That was what they called it.

For years, my sharpness had been a flaw. People told me I overthought everything, saw shadows where there were none. Teachers rolled their eyes at my endless questions. Friends grew irritated when I noticed what they missed—tiny tells, repeated habits, lies tucked inside half-smiles. Too curious. Too suspicious. Too much.

But here, someone was saying it was exactly what they needed. Not a flaw. A tool.

A gift.

I stared at the screen until the words blurred. My heart thudded, uneven, as I typed back with fingers that didn’t feel like mine:

“And if I say no?”

The reply came almost instantly, like the sender had been waiting for that exact doubt.

“Then you’ll never hear from us again. But the ones who followed you in Ajala Market might be in touch.”

My chest tightened.

So I hadn’t imagined it. The flickers of movement at the edge of my vision, the brush of presence as I turned down the lane to Stall 3, the cold prickle between my shoulder blades. They hadn’t been ghosts of paranoia. They had been real.

Someone had been there. Watching me.

Watching me.

My throat went dry. The room suddenly felt too small, the thin curtains too transparent. I turned, half-expecting to see someone outside, a silhouette waiting on the street. Nothing but the pale light of morning, the empty road, the lazy flap of a plastic bag caught on a wire.

Another buzz. My body jumped.

A fresh instruction appeared.

“Your first task is simple. Forward the attached customer complaint to this address. No edits. No questions.”

I blinked. Stared.

That was it?

I opened the attachment. A regular complaint. Exactly like the ones that flooded my inbox every day at work. Some man grumbling about a delayed package, demanding compensation. I’d read a hundred like it. A thousand.

So ordinary it was almost laughable.

Except nothing was ordinary anymore.

My thumb hovered over the screen.

This was ridiculous. Cloak-and-dagger games weren’t for people like me. I wasn’t a spy, wasn’t some sleek woman in a trench coat with a shadowy network at her fingertips. I was a customer support rep with a cranky laptop, unreliable internet, and knees that ached if I walked too far in Lagos heat.

But…

But I could still feel the heat of Storyteller’s hand against mine, the folded Ankara slipping into my palm like a baton in a relay I hadn’t agreed to join. I could still feel the weight of those unseen eyes in Ajala Market.

If I said no, maybe they would stop contacting me. Maybe.

But what about the others—the ones following? What if they didn’t let go so easily?

My breath came fast, shallow. I tried to steady it, counting in, counting out. I stared at the complaint email again. It was just a forward. Nothing more.

Nothing more.

I tapped Forward.

Entered the address.

Pressed Send.

It was over in seconds.

The silence after felt louder than the market had. My room hummed faintly with the fan in my laptop, the tick of the old wall clock, the faint buzz of a generator outside. My chest ached as though I had run miles.

The phone buzzed again.

“Efficient. Calm under pressure. You’re in.”

My fingers went slack. The phone slid onto the desk beside the Ankara.

I should be afraid. Terrified, even. Whoever “we” were, they had just pulled me across a line I hadn’t realized was right at my feet. On one side: emails and delivery complaints. On the other, encryption in fabric, coded recipes, shadows at the market.

But fear wasn’t what dominated.

Underneath the tremor of anxiety, something else stirred. Something I hadn’t felt in years.

Excitement.

Sharp. Restless. Alive.

I pressed both palms flat against the desk, grounding myself. The Ankara stared back at me with its secret constellation of dots. The phone waited silently for the next instruction.

Whatever Storyteller had drawn me into, this wasn’t just a game.

And I wasn’t just a bystander anymore.