Damilola had never heard Lagos this quiet.
Not even during the lockdowns, curfews, or mass vigils of her childhood had the city held its breath like this.
She stood at the lagoon's edge under the fractured bones of the Third Mainland Bridge, eyes tracking a small motorboat drifting through the oily black water carrying secrets deeper than the tide.
Beside her, Adesuwa stood still, arms folded, jacket flapping slightly in the damp wind.
They had come here after the data leak
After the cathedral
After Malachy's cryptic fall into silence
A name kept circling back through the coded files like a ghost left in the margins of every document.
Site 39
Dust Zone
Known internally as Black Echo
"What do you think it is?" Damilola asked,
"A kill box," Adesuwa said flatly
"Or a listening post."
"Or both."
The boat hit the shore, and Efe jumped out, soaked up to his knees but grinning.
"We're in."
No questions were asked.
They boarded the boat.
The tunnel leading to Black Echo was older than the bridge above it, older than the sea walls, and older than the colonial remnants that scattered Lagos like broken teeth.
It had once been part of a British submarine project abandoned in the sixties.
Repurposed by the Circle in the early 2000s
It now lay beneath the water level, guarded by airlocks and decay
Efe bypassed the biometric locks using a pattern he had memorized from Malachy's stolen files
The gate groaned open, revealing a corridor lit in flickering amber light
The smell was unforgettable
Burned rubber
Mold
Copper
And something beneath it all
Soot
They walked for ten minutes before reaching the central hub
A circular chamber with a ceiling so high it disappeared into blackness
Screens lined the walls, all dead now
Cables sprawled like veins across the floor, leading to a large pillar of servers humming faintly.
In the center, a chair
Strapped to it
A body
Or what remained of one
"Jesus," Damilola whispered
The figure had no face
It had been removed surgically
No blood remained
Just the imprint of electrodes
Burn marks
His wrists were chained
The tags on his chest read
Subject 12
Alias Obalende Ghost
Former asset turned leak
Neutralized
Adesuwa stared
She didn't look away
She didn't blink
"We were always just pieces," she said
"In someone else's game"
Efe began scanning the server feeds
"They recorded everything here
Interrogations
Deals
Deaths
It's all archived."
He hesitated
"There's a file here titled Gethsemane."
Adesuwa turned
"Open it."
The file began with static.
Then a voice
Calm
British
Older
"This is Command Directive Three
To all Circle operatives embedded in Zone Delta
The prophet is compromised
The resurrection failed
Activate the Soot Protocol
Scorch all nodes
Silence all leaks
No names
No survivors."
Another voice followed a younger Nigerian female
"But there's a civilian network now
They've seen the truth
Some are defecting."
The first voice returned colder.
"Then the city must forget
If memory is a threat, we remove it
Even saints must be purged."
Silence
Then gunfire
Then screams
The audio ended
Damilola staggered back
"This was never about power
It was about control of history."
Efe nodded slowly
"They've rewritten it over and over
With fire and shadow"
Adesuwa looked at the chair again
Then at the servers
"We burn this place."
They planted charges along the base of the mainframe
Efe set the timers for fifteen minutes
No alarms rang
No voices rose from the darkness
Even the ghosts seemed too scared to speak
They emerged back into the lagoon's night
Wet and shivering
Lagos loomed in the distance, alive but unaware
They watched as the tunnel behind them shuddered
A column of water exploded upward as fire devoured the silence beneath
Black smoke curled like fingers reaching toward the sky
A cathedral of soot
"Another node down," Efe said quietly
Adesuwa looked east
"No."
"A tomb sealed"
Back in the city
The Circle convened
Not in a boardroom
Not in a chapel
But in a garden
Hidden behind a courthouse near Tinubu Square
Nine chairs
Only seven are filled now
Ajayi arrived late
His robe was stained with ash
"The site is gone," one of the men said
Ajayi nodded
"We knew this day would come."
Another elder leaned forward
"The people are waking up
The fear is cracking."
Ajayi smiled
"That's the point
The last phase cannot begin in silence
It needs noise
And then silence again."
They all looked at him
"You approved the Soot Protocol without consent," one barked
"I executed faith," Ajayi replied
"Not policy."
A pause
Then the woman at the end spoke
Softly
"And what of the Shepherds?"
Ajayi's smile faded
"They've strayed."
"Then bring them home."
He nodded
"I will."
Elsewhere
Dapo ran
His lungs burned, his legs felt carved from stone
But he ran anyway
Down the alleyways of Mushin
Through the rusted fences and past broken taxis
He clutched the stolen ledger to his chest like a second heart
Inside were the names of thirty-three assassins
Known as Martyrs
Sanctioned by the Circle
Most of them are dead
Some still active
One
Code name
Samaritan
Was Dapo's brother
Tunde
He reached the hideout in Alagbado just before dawn
He was met by silence
Then by a gun
Then by Tunde's voice
"You shouldn't have come."
At the same time
Adesuwa met with the new resistance node forming at UNILAG
Mostly students
Mostly angry
Mostly aware
They had gathered in an abandoned theatre room, using stage lights and student projectors to decode maps.
Every map led back to a single word etched beneath the blueprints
Sanctum
"It's real," a girl said
"Deep under Lekki
Buried since 1994
It's where the Circle began."
Adesuwa clenched her fists
"If we find it, we end this."
Someone laughed bitterly
"And if it finds us first"
Adesuwa replied,
"Then we make it choke on our silence."
Damilola found herself back at her father's old apartment
She had not returned since the day she buried him
Not since the fire that took their family home and pushed her into journalism and grief and vengeance
The apartment was untouched
A time capsule of his scent and notebooks, and broken radios
She sat at his desk
Opened a drawer
And found something she didn't remember leaving behind
A coin
Blackened
With the Circle's emblem on one side
And an inscription on the other
The Saints Remember Nothing
She stared at it for a long time
Then she whispered,
"But we do now."
At 8 PM, the city glitched
Screens blinked
Radios crackled
Phones rang without calls
Then it stopped
Normality resumed
But something was shifting beneath it
Like tectonic plates grinding
Like old bones remembering how to scream
Adesuwa received a call from a blocked number
She picked up
A voice
Mechanical
Female
Soft
"You're getting too close."
Adesuwa didn't respond
"I'm not warning you to stop," the voice continued
"I'm asking if you're ready to finish it."
Then silence
Tunde poured tea
Across the table, Dapo kept the ledger between them
"I read it all," Dapo said
Tunde didn't blink
"You think the Circle made me what I am?"
"They didn't."
"They just gave me permission."
Dapo clenched his jaw.
"Then why did you leave me alive?"
Tunde stared at the steam.
"Because you were always meant to remember me as a brother
Not a weapon"
Dapo's fingers twitched near the gun under his jacket
Tunde noticed
"If you shoot me now
You'll be free
But you'll also become me"
The words hung like smoke
Dapo didn't move
Tunde stood
And walked into the night
Three days later
A package arrived at Adesuwa's safehouse
No sender
Inside was a USB stick
Encrypted
Efe decrypted it in three minutes
It contained only one file
A video
Footage of a cavernous underground space
Filled with servers
And bodies
Dozens
Hung upside down
Skinned
Each tagged
Each smiling
On loop, the phrase played in the background
Sanctum welcomes you
Beneath it, the date
Tomorrow
Lagos held its breath again
Not because it was silent
But because it was listening
And in that pause
Beneath the soot
Within the silence
A reckoning waited
Not loud
Not burning
But absolute