CHAPTER 67

The flare painted the sky in blood.

Villagers looked up from cooking fires. Bikers paused mid-ride. A teacher in Ilorin dropped her chalk. From Jos to Abeokuta, those who once sat in Zainab's makeshift classes—her thread-trained army—recognized the signal.

It meant one thing:

She was in danger.

And the war had come home.

In the bush outside Kwara, Obi's breathing had grown shallow. The bandage Zainab wrapped with her scarf was already soaked. She dragged him through mud, heart pounding like a war drum. Branches tore at her arms. But she didn't stop.

"I'm sorry," Obi murmured, half-conscious.

"Shut up," she snapped. "Save your strength."

Obi coughed blood. "You were supposed to leave me."

"I'm not a tailor of betrayal," she whispered.

Behind them, boots crushed leaves. Radio clicks. Dogs barking.

Zainab reached a collapsed culvert and pulled Obi under. The scent of moss and oil filled their lungs. She pressed his head down as a searchlight passed over.

Obi grabbed her hand.

"If I die… don't bury me."

"Why?"

"Because martyrs don't lie still."

She swallowed her grief. They couldn't stop now.

An hour later, they reached a motorbike hidden under palm leaves—a drop-off from one of her former students. The key was taped to the seat.

Zainab rode with Obi behind her, unconscious, strapped with torn wrappers.

Destination: Kogi. A new contact. A final mission.

But Abuja was moving fast.

The man watching her video stood again. He was no longer calm.

"She's mobilizing."

"She was always more than needle and thread," another agent replied. "She stitched a network."

"She's disrupting the pillars."

They turned to another screen—a list of suspected allies, including Mallam Yusuf, Amaka, and four others. All marked: UNCONFIRMED.

Orders were issued.

One command: "Remove the seam before it unravels the cloth."

In Kogi, a safehouse built under a mechanic shop opened its steel doors.

A man named Hassan—graying beard, former intelligence, now underground—helped lift Obi from the bike.

"You came late," Hassan said.

"I always come on time," Zainab replied, falling to her knees from exhaustion.

Inside, the walls were lined with screens, maps, wires.

"This was a base of theirs once," Hassan said. "We took it."

Zainab stared at the map of Nigeria dotted with red pins. Each pin a node. A person she'd taught. A story she'd salvaged.

"I want to trigger the network," she said.

Hassan hesitated. "You'll put a target on every back."

"They already wear it."

He nodded slowly.

"Then let's start the final weave."

By nightfall, messages were sent.

To poets in Kano. Seamstresses in Benin. Riders in Makoko. Hackers in Ajaokuta. All once stitched by Zainab's needle, now the fabric of her resistance.

The message was short:

The last thread is pulled. Ready your seams. The cloth will burn.

But not all threads are loyal.

In a hotel room in Onitsha, a woman sipped zobo and smiled as she read the message. Her name was Ifeoma, code-named The Iris.

Once Zainab's ally.

Now Bureau-paid.

She dialed a private line.

"She's resurfaced."

A voice answered, cold and metallic.

"Location?"

"Kogi. A mechanic shop turned command center."

"Hold your position. Reinforcements en route."

Ifeoma ended the call.

She stood, slipped on a Bureau jacket, and said to herself:

"You taught me well, Zainab. But the needle cuts both ways."

Back in Kogi, Obi stirred awake.

Zainab sat beside him, watching lightning cut the sky.

"We don't have time," he said.

"We never did," she replied.

But her hands were steady.

Her needle, sharp.

And her next stitch was war.