Mushin – Akala District, Pre-dawn
The streets of Akala were slick with rain, faintly glinting under the few streetlights that still fought the dark. Mutiu crouched behind a rusted gate, breath shallow, senses sharpened to the pitch of a hunting dog. Every distant shout, every scuff of a shoe against wet concrete, made him flinch. Water threaded down corrugated roofs and pooled in the gutters; the sound turned small things into threats.
He had been left here hours earlier under the pretense of release. In Akala, nothing that smelled like freedom ever came without a price. Bait. The thought gnawed at him. Whoever had orchestrated this wanted him seen—alive, watched, moving on a leash.
The envelope strapped under his jacket felt heavier with every step. Inside: paper that could topple towers—copies of contracts, bank transfers, invoices, cancellation memos, a ledger with names and numbers. There were account numbers routed through shell corporations, shorthand notes tying payments to a charity front, and an annotated spreadsheet that staggered even Mutiu's tired eyes: ₦53,000,000,000 circled, and beside it the jagged note "margin adjustment — Orion/ Eze".
He moved along the alleyways like breath itself: deliberate, quiet, on guard. Lamp posts here wore little black tags—tiny stickers that meant more to him now than the graffiti on the walls. Surveillance network markers. The North Lagos project wasn't about pipes and pavement, he realized. It was about being able to see and predict who breathed where. Whoever controlled that grid would map the city's habits—who gathered, who spoke, who organized. Whoever controlled the grid controlled the city.
A narrow passage opened onto the main street. Mutiu counted his steps, timed his pauses, ducked behind a heap of debris. He climbed the jagged outer wall, fingers cut raw, heart pounding. Once over, he looked back. The slum wavered in the early light; the alley swallowed sound. For a moment he dared to hope it was over. Then, because caution was habit, he walked faster.
surulere – bayo's office, early morning
Bayo watched the island skyline as if it were a graph he could read. From his office window the city looked indifferent—traders shouting, buses coughing, the day already making demands. Tope stood behind him, tablet tight in both hands, eyes tired.
"Mutiu hasn't checked in since last night," she said. "And the raid in Akala wasn't random. Whoever moved him wanted him noticed—alive, but seen."
Bayo didn't answer right away. He went to the map pinned on the wall and drew a finger along the routes between akala, mushin, surulere, and the north corridor. "North Lagos is the fulcrum," he said finally. "This isn't just infrastructure. It's a control contract. Tens of billions. Political ties. The winning bidder—Orion Holdings—has shareholders tied to Mr. Eze. They don't want fairness. They want complicity."
Tope's mouth thinned. "And you bid for this?"
"I did," he admitted. "We put in a design that prioritized transparency and community safeguards. We refused their kickback clause—twenty-five percent on approvals. They used our refusal as an excuse to award it to the consortium that promised them slices and silence."
She swallowed. "So they strip a neighborhood and map people's moves, and you're painted the outsider."
"Refusal makes them hate you," Bayo said. "Unpredictability makes you dangerous."
He turned to her. "Mutiu's alive because he knows streets. But his 'freedom' looks like bait. Someone is counting on him to bite."
mushin – narrow streets, late morning
Mutiu's boots sloshed through ankle-deep water as he threaded through side streets. Every shadow felt like an eye. He stopped under a balcony and unfastened the envelope for a moment, rifled through the top pages. He found the line items: Orion Holdings Ltd — invoices padded by forty percent; Greycoat Services — ghost payrolls listed as 'consultancy'; Balogun Foundation — a charity routing funds offshore to accounts nominally held in Mauritius and Seychelles.
There were names, too — small ones written in cramped ink beside bigger ones: O.T. Balogun, K. Ofori, Eze Holdings — shareholder. The ledger tied a commissioner's signature to consultancy fees paid to the charity the Chief publicly praised. Mutiu felt a cold clarity: this was the thread that could unravel them.
He ducked into a market and let himself be absorbed by the crowd. A man in a black jacket fell in behind him, not close enough to touch but close enough to read the rhythm of his steps. Mutiu slowed, let the man pass, and looped around. The tail was efficient, professional—someone's paid watcher. He'd seen men like that before; they hollered, they herded, they took. This one ticked on a different clock—calm, patient. A chess player.
Mutiu pulled a crumpled card out of his pocket, thumbed Tope's encrypted number. He typed a short string: "Envelope intact. Offshore trace. Tail obvious. Need extraction point."
He hit send and kept walking, letting the market swallow his scent.
surulere – office strategy, midday
The office felt too small for all the possibilities it now held. Bayo and Tope leaned over a scatter of printed pages, mapping options in ink and algorithm.
"They want control of the project end-to-end," Tope said, tapping a digital chart that showed payment flows. "They front the contract at ₦53 billion. Estimated lifetime returns make it worth a small country—permits, maintenance, upgrades. And the shareholders expected kickbacks. You refused. So they escalated."
Bayo drummed his fingers. "We need something that can't be wiped. Paper leaves a fingerprint. A paper chain with witnesses. And we need voices—someone from the inside willing to testify. Without that, they'll call everything fabricated."
Tope's face hardened. "Dare isn't enough. We need an international outlet, legal counsel, and a physical secure courier route outside their network. Port Harcourt. A handoff to Ireti's contact. If the digital trail is poisoned, the physical one is proof."
Bayo nodded. "And Mutiu?"
"He's bait," Tope said bluntly. "He's being seen for a reason. If they think he's moving evidence, they'll move resources to intercept him. We can use that—if we're careful."
Bayo looked up as the phone buzzed. Mutiu's number flashed.
MUTIU (text): "B… I'm moving. Streets feel wrong. Watchers at every turn."
Bayo thumbed a reply. "Eyes open. Trust nothing until you hit the safe house. Easy routes are most dangerous."
The line went dead.
north lagos – boardroom shadows, afternoon
High above the city, in a room of leather chairs and polished wood, Mr. Eze sat with a small circle of men. The boardroom smelled faintly of old money and new greed.
"He's defying us," Eze said, fingers steepled. "He refuses our terms, refuses our influence. That cannot continue."
A junior partner nervously adjusted his tie. "Sir, he's gaining traction. A press conference yesterday—public sympathy is shifting."
Eze's eyes narrowed. "Then isolate him before that sympathy becomes policy. Freeze his accounts. Apply pressure to his lenders. Sue over contract breach. Quiet measures first. If quiet fails, make the example loud."
Another man, younger and crisper in a tailored suit, leaned forward. "We also have Orion's network. Increase surveillance in key neighborhoods. We show presence—harass, not maim. Make it expensive to operate."
Eze smiled, small and lethal. "It's a business decision. A political decision. We protect the future income streams. ₦53 billion in contracts doesn't go to charity because one idealist won't bow. We ensure the market remains rational."
mushin – afternoon tension
Mutiu slipped down a side street and paused beneath a doorway. He'd expected to be intercepted. He'd also planned for that possibility: a decoy envelope, a burned SIM, a trackable bootprint. The men watching from the corner shifted, then moved to follow the decoy.
He let them trail the wrong paper.
As they left, Mutiu jogged to a safe house prearranged with a woman named Aminat, who ran a bakery and ran her lips less often than her eyes. She took him in without questions and pressed into his hand a plastic bottle of water and a bar of soap. Behind the counter, her radio hissed with local chatter.
"You walked into a trap," she said, hardly looking up. "They bait people like fish. What they didn't expect is that fish learn to bite back."
Mutiu laughed, small and ugly. "Then we bite."
surulere – evening resolve
By dusk, the office hummed with a new plan. Bayo had parsed the ledger, identified the shell company nodes, and traced the charitable routing to numbered accounts in a jurisdiction that required more legal teeth—but not impossibilities.
"We can't win this with just noise," Tope said. "We need a legal chokehold. We need affidavits from anyone complicit—an internal whistleblower, an accountant, a junior partner with a conscience. Once the documents are filed overseas, they can't scrub the paper in a server sweep."
Bayo looked out as the city went gold and black. "So we build the chain of custody. We protect Mutiu's path. We set a handoff in port harcourt at 0200. Dare will do the transfer to Ireti's line. And we time a press release in two windows—one local, one international."
Tope's relief showed, brief and sharp. "That's bold."
"It's necessary," Bayo said. "They thought hiding was security. It's arrogance. They confuse silence with safety. We will make sure their silence costs them exposure."
Outside, Lagos pulsed—indifferent and stubborn. The hum of vendors, the shout of a hawker, the distant siren—ordinary things that kept the city alive even as men arranged its fate in rooms of power.
closing note
Night swallowed Lagos. Mutiu moved like a shadow with purpose. Bayo planned like a man assembling a fragile cathedral of truth. The North Lagos contract hovered over the city like a storm: contracts, shell firms, offshore accounts, political favors, and a figure of ₦53 billion that could change fortunes and lives.
They were not safe. They were not yet victorious. But they were awake, and awake was dangerous to those who preferred breathing to be regulated in boardrooms and back offices.
Tomorrow the table would shift. Lies would be spun. Threats would sharpen. But one thing had been set: someone had seen the ledger, and the ledger could not be un-seen.
"Every breath has a cost," Bayo murmured, and then louder for the empty office to hear, "and every cost must be met with resolve."