NEEDLES IN THE DARK

The lights died.

Then came the sound.

Soft at first—like a whisper dragging nails across silk. A hum that bloomed into a low-frequency vibration in Zainab's chest. Obi raised his gun, eyes darting. But there was nothing to shoot at. Only shadows.

A red bulb clicked on overhead, casting everything in blood-light.

The speaker crackled again.

"You stitched your way here, tailor. Let's see if your thread can survive flame."

Suddenly—WHOOM!

The floor panels snapped open. Gas hissed.

Obi grabbed Zainab and pulled her behind a mannequin. A dart slammed into its chest—needle-tipped, poison-laced. Zainab watched the eyes on the mannequin blink once before dying.

"I count three," Obi whispered.

"Four," Zainab corrected, pointing at the flicker of motion in the rafters. "They're not guards. They're machines."

"Drones?"

"Worse. Seamstresses."

The Architect's Seamstresses weren't women. They weren't even alive.

Automaton frames shaped like humans, made of carbon-fiber, sewing needles for fingers. One moved through the room like a dancer in a deadly ballet, threading wire traps between beams.

Zainab reached into her jacket and pulled out a fabric patch. At first glance, it was plain ankara. But when she twisted it, the thread lit up—a grid disruptor.

She tossed it into the center of the room.

Pulse.

The lights flickered, and for one second, all the Seamstresses glitched. Just long enough.

Obi shot the closest one through the neck. Sparks. Screams. Oil instead of blood. Another lunged, and Zainab ducked, sliding under a table, slicing its knee joint with a sharpened rotary blade she kept hidden in her bracelet.

The battle was chaotic—cloth torn, metal screaming, code scrambling.

Then… silence.

They stood among wreckage. Zainab's jacket torn, Obi bleeding from the shoulder.

"Now what?" he muttered.

She turned toward the central terminal.

"Now… we find The Architect's real name."

They hacked through the mainframe using a thread decoder Fatihah had left behind. One by one, encrypted files fell open like books whose spines had been broken.

Names. Dates. Exports. Death orders. Even funding from foreign companies, posing as humanitarian groups.

And finally, at the bottom of the directory:

SUBJECT 0: THE ARCHITECT

Real Name: Damien Wolfe

British-Nigerian. Ex-MI6. Thought to be dead since 2007. Last seen in Syria.

He had rebuilt himself using ghost accounts, laundering money through textile companies, operating above global law.

Zainab whispered, "He's not just the Architect… he's the thread that sews corruption across continents."

But then something else caught her eye. A folder marked:

"ZAINAB: PATTERN 12"

She clicked.

Inside—photos of her from Mushin. Audio from her first call with Obi. Screenshots of the moment she met Dapo. Every move. Every word. Every stitch.

She had been a test.A lab rat in a fabric experiment.Pattern 12: "Betrayal Under Thread."

Obi backed away. "They orchestrated all of it."

Zainab felt like her lungs had collapsed.

Even her choices had been manipulated.

"I'm going to tear this whole tapestry down," she muttered.

Just then—another file opened on its own. A countdown.

Self-Destruct in 04:59

Obi cursed. "We've got to go—now!"

They grabbed what they could.

Drives. Fabric samples. The map.

As they ran, fire swallowed the building.

Behind them, the factory exploded in silence—like a muffled scream wrapped in velvet.

But Zainab didn't look back.

Not anymore.

She had seen the full pattern.

Now she would become the scissors.