PHOENIX BLUEPRINT
The night was still, too still, like Lagos was holding its breath.
Inside a small compound in Surulere, lit only by candlelight and a flickering laptop screen, Zainab sat with her back straight, face cold, heart loud. The file she decrypted was a maze of hidden governments, silent wars, and manufactured democracy.
Obi leaned over the screen, fingers trembling. "They're creating synthetic governance systems… AI-run political algorithms… fake elections, staged outrage, manufactured hope."
Zainab whispered, "They don't want to win elections anymore. They want to code the outcomes."
The file bore a name: Project Phoenix.
Its logo? A bird made of binary, rising from fire.
Raven's signature was on every page.
Below it: a second seal. One Zainab had seen before—on a gold-plated cufflink worn by Mala during his visit to her shop years ago.
The Jackal.
They weren't just laundering money or assassinating threats.
They were building something.
A regime behind the regime.
Obi sat down beside her, quiet.
"This goes beyond revenge, Zee. This is war."
She nodded, slowly, like a woman choosing her last breath.
"We leak it. Everywhere. All at once."
"But we'll be traced."
"I know. That's why we need insurance."
They contacted Mallam Yusuf. The old radio voice still had reach. Within hours, encrypted copies of Project Phoenix were sent to ten trusted whistleblowers across Africa. Each one with instructions: If anything happens to Zainab, you go public.
They called it "Operation Seam."
But that wasn't enough.
Zainab knew something deeper had to be done.
She needed to cut the head.
A week later.
Senator Felix Adio—Mala—walked into a private art auction in Abuja. He laughed too loudly, drank imported cognac, adjusted his golden cufflinks. Power had made him bold.
He didn't see the woman watching from the second floor.
Didn't recognize her in the midnight blue gown and platinum wig.
Didn't notice the miniature camera clipped to her fake clutch.
Zainab walked past him, dropped a card in his jacket pocket, and vanished into the crowd.
On the card, a single phrase:
"I remember Ilorin."
Mala stiffened.
His hand twitched.
The past had found him.
That night, Obi hacked into a private terminal at the Bureau's offshore server. It was firewalled to death—but he found a window.
Inside? Video footage.
Zainab's voice trembled as they watched:
Young girls in fabric workshops being trained not just to sew, but to encrypt data and smuggle messages.
Secret deliveries in Ghana and Senegal.
A meeting in Dubai with a tech billionaire who agreed to fund the Phoenix Protocol in exchange for controlling news cycles.
And finally—
A voice.
Clear.
British accent. Calm. Calculated.
"We don't need to kill truth. Just dress it up in prettier lies."
Zainab gasped.
That voice.
She knew it.
From years ago.
Not Raven. Not the Jackal.
Someone else.
A third player.
The one who first taught Dapo how to manipulate algorithms.
The one who told Zainab, during her escape from Ilorin, "If you disappear, make sure no one finds your shadow."
She stood up, rage in her ribs.
"I know who he is."
Obi blinked. "Who?"
Zainab turned to him, eyes burning.
"The Weaver."