The confessional smelled of old wood and secrets. Adesuwa sat on the kneeler, head bowed, but her eyes remained sharp, watching through the perforated screen.
A breath on the other side. Then silence.
"You came alone?" the voice asked.
"No one comes to confession with company."
A pause. Then: "You were always clever. That's why Ajayi picked you."
Adesuwa's fists clenched. "He didn't pick me. He threatened me."
"That's still a kind of choosing."
The screen slid open slightly. A scarred hand passed her a flash drive.
"Everything is on here: the offshore accounts, the clergy contacts, the chain of command. But you didn't hear it from me."
Adesuwa's voice dropped. "Why now?"
"Because the Circle is eating itself. And even saints get tired of pretending."
She rose. The door creaked as she stepped out into the cathedral's side wing. Efe waited by the holy water font, pretending to pray. He slipped the flash drive into a lead-lined pouch.
"We verify, then we burn."
"No," Adesuwa said. "We leak. Burn it after the world sees the rot."
In a high-rise in Banana Island, Damilola faced her reckoning.
The man across from her wasn't wearing a mask, but he may as well have been.
"You're not my father," she said coldly.
The man, known in most files as Moses K., smiled. "Blood doesn't lie."
"No, but people do."
The dossier in her lap told a story her mother never dared say aloud: a priest-turned-agent, embedded in both The Circle and the intelligence directorate. A man who'd faked his death to erase enemies—and family.
"You let them come for us. You watched as they buried Malachy, as if that would erase the ashes."
"I did what was necessary to survive."
"And now?"
He leaned forward. "Now I do what's necessary to win."
She stood. "You're on the wrong side of that war."
The leak hit the dark web at 2:14 AM.
By morning, the Vatican Press was issuing denials, while encrypted forums buzzed with names, coordinates, and confirmed deaths. One post simply read, "The saints remember nothing. But the ghosts never forget."
That phrase spread like wildfire.
By midday, Adesuwa's safe house was compromised.
They fled through back alleys in Surulere, barely evading drones. Efe was hit, a graze to the leg. Damilola helped him limp through a butcher shop into a hidden trapdoor.
"Is this what winning looks like?" he muttered.
"No," Adesuwa said. "This is what truth costs."
Back in the cathedral ruins, a secret meeting took place.
Ajayi stood before a half-circle of robed figures. Behind them, stained glass shattered by a recent explosion refracted strange light across their faces.
"Containment has failed," one of them said. "What's your plan?"
Ajayi simply smiled. "Let them come."
"And when they do?"
"We baptize the city in silence. They forget. We remain."
Another figure spoke, softer. "And if they refuse to forget?"
Ajayi's eyes flicked toward the empty crucifix at the altar.
"Then we remind them what saints are capable of."
That night, as thunder cracked over Lagos, Damilola stood on the rooftop of an abandoned hotel.
The city blinked beneath her like a sleeping giant.
She held a burner phone in one hand and an old photograph in the other, her mother and the man who now claimed to be her father.
She dialed.
The voice answered on the second ring. "You've made your choice?"
"I have."
"And?"
"I'm not here to confess," she said. "I'm here to cleanse."
She ended the call.
Behind her, Adesuwa stepped out, watching the storm.
"Tomorrow?"
"We don't wait till tomorrow," Damilola said. "We start now."
Lightning split the sky.
And beneath it, the war for Lagos was prepared to write its next chapter in blood, memory, and fire.