Lagos Federal Intelligence Academy, 2079 – Two Months Ago
The day of graduation smelled like ozone and steel.
Drones hovered overhead, projecting holograms of the Nigerian crest above the parade ground. Rows of cadets in black-blue uniforms stood like blades in the sun, their neural badges glowing faintly. Behind the rigid discipline, the air hummed with anticipation — not joy. No one smiled on graduation day at the Lagos Federal Intelligence Academy. Not really.
It was a funeral for their old selves.
Tunde Bako stood in line, face blank, spine straight. He was twenty-three, wiry, with dark eyes that saw more than they should. Some cadets came from political families. Others were legacies of the military complex. Tunde? He came from a betrayed family, raised on boiled corn and survival, the son of a late Professor and a father he never saw again after the age of 9.
That same year he watched his mother died of stroke, something broke inside him.
That was fourteen years ago.
He hadn't cried since.
"You're not like them," his instructor once told him. "You don't fight for power. You fight to understand why it even exists."
He was top of his class — infiltration, biometric deception, neural mapping. He had a talent for going unseen, for mimicking voices, stealing patterns, wearing faces that weren't his. He'd been recruited early by NDLEC — Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Commission — with an elite undercover designation. But even among the best, Tunde was a ghost.
As the ceremony began, a booming voice echoed across the square.
"Today, we induct the next generation of shields against the dark."
Minister Kasim Bako stepped onto the stage, flanked by chrome-armored guards. His presence was magnetic — eyes like razors, smile like oil on water. He was the architect of the new NDLEC. To the outside world, he was a reformist. Inside the system, the whispers said he was something much colder.
"Our enemies evolve," Bako continued. "They hide behind cyber masks and foreign funds. But we evolve faster. We strike smarter. And we never — ever — blink."
The crowd cheered.
Tunde didn't.
He watched Bako the way a snake watches a hawk.
After the ceremony, while others drank synthe-beer and posed with their holo-families, Tunde stood alone, clutching the manila envelope his instructor had handed him.
Inside was a small card:
CLASSIFIED: UNDERCOVER LEVEL 6
Target: Operation NEON
Objective: Infiltrate, Gather, Dismantle.
There was no welcome. No handshakes. Only a destination burned into the corner.
Lagos. Zone 3. Report to Ghost Cell One.