He walked to the barred window, watching the rain drown the street below. The city was a blur
of neon reflected on wet asphalt. Cars floated down flooded roads like half-sunk coffins.
Somewhere in the distance, a generator coughed to life.
"I think," Ikenna said finally, "the Ghost would've done it cleaner. More subtle. No dramatics."
"Then what's this?"
"A trap," Ikenna replied. "A breadcrumb trail with a false first clue. Someone wants us distracted.
Looking at the past, so we don't see what's coming next."
Briggs nodded slowly.
"We lock it down?"
Ikenna turned.
"Yes. Lock everything. No messages in or out until we sweep every Syndicate node between
Ajegunle and Kano. If any sleeper programs have reactivated, I want them traced. Every branch
head checks in by midnight."
He stepped past Briggs toward the door, pausing only once.
"There's something wrong with the middle finger," he said.
Briggs frowned. "Other than it missing?"
"No," Ikenna said. "The fact that it's the only one missing."
Briggs tilted his head. "Symbolic?"
"Possibly. Or specific."
Just then, Briggs's communicator buzzed softly.
He checked it.
Froze."What?" Ikenna asked.
Briggs looked up, expression pale.
"A body just turned up in the Kadara district morgue. Dumped in an alley behind an abandoned
textile mill."
"And?"
Briggs's voice was low.
"Missing all fingers... except the middle one."
Ikenna blinked.
He looked back at the synthetic hand. Then at Silas's body. Then out the window.
The rain was coming harder now.
And somewhere beneath it, the city's heartbeat had changed tempo.
Rain still beat down in Kadara, but it was colder here — like the city had forgotten how to be
warm. The streets bore scars of old fires, and the buildings leaned against each other like
junkies in withdrawal. No one smiled in Kadara. No one trusted the air.
Ikenna stepped out of the black sedan and into the morgue's rear alley. The storm hadn't let up.
His boots splashed into ankle-deep puddles. Briggs followed close behind, holding an umbrella
above them both.
The morgue was quiet. Too quiet for a night when the Syndicate had called for lockdowns
across three states. Too quiet for a night with a corpse missing four fingers — all except the
middle one.
The alley reeked of antiseptic, trash, and decay. A pair of morticians waited under a broken
canopy, flanked by two Syndicate field agents in rain-soaked tactical coats.
As they approached, the mortician stiffened and fumbled with a keycard.
"We isolated the body as requested," he said nervously. "Autopsy scheduled for tomorrow, but
we held off…"
"No one touches him," Ikenna said. "Not even your shadows.The man nodded and turned to lead them inside.
The Kadara morgue hadn't been upgraded in years. Cracked tiles lined the walls like dried
bones. The overhead lights flickered just like the bulb above Silas's body hours ago. And yet the
quiet here was different — heavier. Something about this place clung to you.
They walked past several steel doors until they reached Cold Storage 7.
Briggs stopped at the door. "Cameras?"
The mortician hesitated. "Offline. Someone bricked the feed two hours before the body was
found."
Ikenna's jaw clenched.
Inside, the corpse lay on a steel tray under a transparent bio-seal dome. Fully dressed — black
trousers, bloodstained shirt, no shoes. Tall, lean, male. The face had been wiped clean, though
one side was badly bruised.
But it was the hands that mattered.
Briggs activated the scanner above the body. The holographic overlay lit up in blue. His gloved
hand hovered over the right wrist and highlighted the mutilation.
"Left hand — index, ring, pinky, and thumb severed. Middle finger intact. Precise cuts.
Cauterized immediately postmortem."
"Same pattern as the clone," Ikenna said.
Briggs nodded. "But reversed."
Ikenna frowned. "Explain."
Briggs zoomed in the scan. "Clone was missing the middle finger. This one is missing everything
except it."
Ikenna took a slow breath.
A message. Two hands. One fake. One real.
A mirror. A code.
He stared at the middle finger.Not a crude insult. Not a street-level gesture.
This was something else.
Something older.
"Zoom into the knuckle," Ikenna ordered.
Briggs adjusted the hologram. The scan zoomed into the base of the finger, and both men
leaned forward.
There, burned faintly into the skin — almost invisible — was a mark.
Three dots.
One above the other. Vertical.
Ikenna stepped back, eyes widening just slightly.
Briggs saw it too.
"No one's used that symbol in years," he said.
"Not since the Fog Wars," Ikenna murmured. "Not since The One Who Refused."
---
Ten years ago, in a Syndicate that had not yet fractured into factions, there had been a purge.
Not of rivals.
But of dissenters.
The Fourth Man — the one the clone hand was built to imitate — had once tried to expose the
Syndicate's darkest unit: Division 33. He'd died trying.
But before him, there had been another. A silent operator. Unknown to most.
Codename: The One Who Refused.
He was the only known assassin in Syndicate history to walk away from a direct kill order — and
surviveNo face. No name. Only a mark.
Three dots.
Vertical.
He had vanished during the Breakroom Massacre.
Presumed dead.
Until now.
"Either someone's mimicking him," Briggs said, staring at the mark, "or he's back."
"Or he never left," Ikenna said quietly.
Briggs looked over. "But why leave a body now? Why return like this?"
"I don't know yet," Ikenna said, eyes narrowing. "But I'm going to find out."
---
Back in the car, the rain followed them like a curse. It pounded on the roof as Briggs drove
through the city's hushed veins. The dashboard flickered with comms updates, but most of them
were static.
Ikenna leaned back, thinking.
Silas hadn't known what he was carrying.
The clone hand had been built from old Syndicate biometric archives.
The body at the morgue bore a symbol from a man long considered dead.
Something was moving in the dark again — something that understood the codes.
"Pull up the old Fog files," Ikenna said.
Briggs hesitated. "You sure? Some of that's… off-limits."
"I don't care.Briggs tapped the console. The dashboard went red for a second, then displayed an encrypted
file tree marked FOG/LEGACY/ALPHA-RED.
He selected a file.
A figure appeared — grainy, face obscured, standing beside a burning car on what looked like
an old battlefield.
One of the last known images of The One Who Refused.
In the background were four corpses.
And a single severed finger on a stone.
Same finger.
Same mark.
"This isn't a warning," Ikenna said.
Briggs looked at him.
"It's a summons."
---
ELSEWHERE IN LAGOS…
A warehouse that hadn't been used in years lit up for the first time.
Deep underground, someone in a dark coat moved through a vault of old Syndicate tech —
retinal scanners, DNA sequencers, prototype assassins now shut down like dolls.
The figure stopped before a rusted locker.
Opened it.
Inside — a steel case.
They opened it slowly.
Inside… a finger.One finger.
With three dots carved into it.
Still
frozen in cryo-gel.
Still preserved.
And underneath it… a list.
Titled: "The Ones Who Broke the Code"
At the top of the list:
IKENNA ORUJI