Abeokuta — 4:30 a.m.
The first call to prayer hadn't yet risen when Bayo Adeniran slipped through the narrow gate behind the compound. His breath came in slow, measured pulls; each exhale ghosted into the mist that draped over Abeokuta's sleeping streets. He moved like someone rehearsed in escape — not rushing, not lingering, but calculating the seconds between shadows.
The hideout had grown too loud with silence. Every creak of the ceiling had started to sound like betrayal. Somewhere in the maze of data they'd uncovered, a trace signal had bounced back to Abeokuta. It could only mean one thing — someone had sold their coordinates.
He pulled his hoodie tighter and tapped the earpiece.
"Tope, status."
A faint buzz, then Tope's calm voice filtered through static.
"I'm set in Ibadan. Ayo's awake. He's been patching the filters since three."
"Good. Keep him off the grid till I get there."
"You're actually leaving Abeokuta?"
"Already gone."
There was a brief silence — the kind that carried the weight of understanding. Both men knew that once he stepped outside Abeokuta's cover, there was no turning back.
~ ~ ~
5:12 a.m. — On the highway to Ibadan
The road unspooled ahead like a strip of wet silver under dim streetlights. Bayo kept the headlights low, the vehicle's engine whispering over the asphalt. He'd driven this route countless times — but never with a target on his back.
His phone vibrated once. A secured ping. Ayo.
Ayo: "Uncle, someone tried to reroute your GPS. I locked it, but they almost had you. Signature's similar to the breach from last night."
Bayo: "Track it."
Ayo: "Already on it. Origin shows Abeokuta North, close to our old relay tower."
That tower had been offline for weeks.
Someone was using his own ghost signals against him.
He felt his pulse tighten.
"Tope, get the relay records from when we last used that tower. Compare the timestamps."
"On it," Tope replied. "But, Bayo… what if the leak isn't remote?"
"What are you saying?"
"What if someone from inside the old circle still has root access? Someone who knew your fail-safes."
The thought chilled him. Only three people had that kind of access — himself, Tope, and…
He stopped mid-thought. The name he didn't want to remember burned behind his eyes like an old scar.
~ ~ ~
Ibadan — 6:47 a.m.
Dawn crawled up the rust-stained rooftops of Ibadan. The air carried a sharp scent of dew and diesel. Inside a low building at Mokola, Tope stood by the window, fingers tapping an encrypted keypad. Lines of code ran across a tablet screen beside him, syncing with Ayo's system in real time.
"Uncle's thirty minutes out," Ayo's voice crackled through the comms. "I'm still picking faint pulses from the relay ghost. They're mirroring our feeds — like they're watching our backdoor."
"Can you isolate it?"
"Not without showing my hand. If I chase too hard, they'll know we're aware."
"So what's the play?"
"Bait them," Ayo said simply.
The boy's calm unnerved Tope sometimes — too sharp for his age, too fearless. He knew Ayo's mother had built half these protocols herself before everything went dark in Lagos. The boy had inherited her fire — and something else: her stubborn belief that no system was unbreakable.
"Make it clean," Tope said. "No noise. We'll need them to think we're still blind."
~ ~ ~
7:25 a.m. — Edge of Ibadan
Bayo's vehicle rolled into the old industrial district. The skyline here was a collage of rusted water tanks, broken signage, and half-forgotten warehouses — perfect for a ghost meeting. He parked beneath a leaning billboard, scanning his surroundings before stepping out.
The air felt charged — like rain and electricity shared the same pulse. He could almost feel eyes on him.
He crossed the street and entered a narrow alley between two warehouses. Tope was waiting by a steel door, tablet under his arm.
"Traffic?" Tope asked.
"Light. But I had company trying to rewrite my GPS."
"Same trail as before?"
He nodded. "They used my relay tower."
Tope exhaled. "Then we're not dealing with outsiders. Someone from inside knows your signature protocols."
"That's what scares me."
They stepped inside. The floor was littered with cracked tiles, the walls humming with the faint rhythm of servers stacked in one corner. Ayo's avatar flickered on a monitor — a stylized falcon logo Bayo had designed for him when this all began.
"Uncle," Ayo greeted through the feed, "you look tired."
"Comes with age and paranoia," Bayo said with a faint smile. "Show me what we've got."
~ ~ ~
7:43 a.m. — Inside the Warehouse
Ayo shared the main feed. Three blinking red nodes appeared on a map: Abeokuta North, Ibadan outskirts, and an unknown signal moving south.
"This one," Ayo said, highlighting the moving signal, "isn't just following you — it's triangulating both your and Tope's transmissions. Like it knows when you sync."
"Meaning?"
"They're listening in real time."
Bayo leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "How close?"
"Fifteen kilometers. If they keep pace, they'll reach Ibadan in less than thirty minutes."
Tope swore under his breath. "So, what, we run again?"
Bayo shook his head slowly. "No. This time we end it."
He turned to Ayo's feed. "Can you spoof my signal? Make it look like I'm heading toward Lagos instead?"
"Already building the decoy. But you'll have to stay dark for it to work."
"How long?"
"Ten minutes."
Bayo glanced at Tope. "Lock the entrance. We're going underground for a while."
Tope moved without a word, bolting the steel doors as the hum of the servers deepened. The lights dimmed to emergency red.
~ ~ ~
8:00 a.m. — Ibadan Subgrid
The decoy activated. On every surveillance map and dark channel, Bayo's signal was now speeding south toward Lagos. The real Bayo sat in the dark, listening to the soft whir of cooling fans.
"Tell me about the unknown signal," he said quietly.
Ayo hesitated. "It's encrypted with a dynamic cipher — old military type. I tried reverse-engineering it and got partial metadata. It pings under a user ID labeled 'EAGLE-1.'"
Bayo's head snapped up. "Repeat that."
"Eagle-One. Does it mean something?"
It did. Too much. EAGLE-1 was the old codename of his former commanding officer — the man who'd disappeared after the operation in Lagos five years ago. The same man who'd taught him to disappear.
Bayo's jaw tightened. "They found him."
"Who?" Tope asked.
"The ones behind the pipeline leak. The same network we exposed years ago — they're rebuilding, and they want the files we kept."
Ayo's digital falcon tilted its head. "Then we need to move those files somewhere they can't reach."
Bayo's eyes darkened. "Not yet. If Eagle-One is back, this isn't about the files anymore. It's about control."
~ ~ ~
8:27 a.m. — Unmarked Vehicle Approaching Ibadan
Outside, a black SUV rolled through the morning haze, its driver gloved and silent. A faint green dot blinked on his dash — the falsified Lagos signal. The man smiled thinly.
"Run south all you want," he murmured, "we already know where you'll hide next."
He pressed a button. A new beacon lit up — IBADAN SUBGRID NODE 3.
He wasn't following the decoy.
He was coming straight for them.
~ ~ ~
Inside the Warehouse
Ayo's voice came sharp. "Uncle, abort the decoy! They've seen through it — rerouting directly to your coordinates!"
Bayo's pulse jumped. "How long till contact?"
"Ten minutes, maybe less."
"Tope, prep the exit route. Ayo, kill every relay — now!"
"I can't shut them all down at once without triggering their tracer," Ayo replied. "They'll know we're about to vanish."
"Then let them know," Bayo said grimly, grabbing his go-bag. "It's time they realized the hunted still bites."
~ ~ ~
8:36 a.m. — Final Minutes
The servers whined under pressure as Ayo executed a full-spectrum wipe, data feeds collapsing into static. Tope pulled the underground latch free, revealing a tunnel leading into a half-flooded drainage path.
"Where does it lead?" Bayo asked.
"To the rail yard — west exit."
Bayo looked once more at Ayo's flickering feed.
"Kill comms after this, son. Reboot from a clean node. Use the fallback phrase."
Ayo's voice softened. "See you in the next shadow, Uncle."
The screen went dark.
Bayo and Tope slipped into the tunnel just as the warehouse doors thundered open behind them.
Footsteps.
Muffled orders.
The hiss of silenced weapons.
Outside, Ibadan's morning carried on as though nothing had happened.