Sit," Mama B commanded, gesturing to a low wooden stool carved with symbols that seemed to squirm if you looked at them too long.
Tunde was led to a separate corner by Okoro. "He needs to be grounded," the Inspector muttered, handing Tunde a heavy piece of lead to hold. "If his soul wanders before you're ready to catch it, he'll end up a vegetable."
Amina sat. The cold of the Ikeja "Forge" seemed to seep into her bones. Mama B stood behind her, her heavy bronze collars clinking like a thousand coins.
"Close your eyes, daughter of the soil," Mama B whispered. She pressed a thumb, wet with some pungent, earthy oil, into the center of Amina's forehead. "Stop looking at the walls. Stop smelling the dampness of Lagos. Find the jasmine."
Amina tried to breathe. At first, all she felt was the familiar panic the fear of the Void-Seekers, the worry about their broken front door in Mowe. But then, the oil on her forehead began to burn.
Whoosh.
The floor beneath her didn't just disappear; it dissolved into a sea of clouds.
She wasn't in the marble courtyard this time. She was standing on a high, narrow bridge made of glass that stretched across a canyon of stars. In the distance, a city of silver and light pulsed like a living heart.
"You're early," a voice boomed.
Amina turned. The Alchemist-Tunde was there. He wasn't wearing his silver armor. He was draped in robes the color of a dying sun, his golden eyes glowing with an intensity that made her vision blur. He looked older not in years, but in the way a mountain looks old.
"I'm not early," Amina said, her voice echoing in the vast space. "I'm late. I've been living in a world of dust for ten years while you were... where were you?"
The Alchemist stepped onto the glass bridge. With every step, the stars beneath his feet flared. "Ten years? Amina, I have stood on this bridge for three hundred of your years. I have watched you be born, live, and forget me in a dozen different lives. Every time, I wait. Every time, the Void-Seekers find a way to make you believe the 'Real World' is the only one that matters."
Amina's breath hitched. Three hundred years?
"The man in the other world," Amina whispered. "My Tunde. He's suffering. He's scared. Is that you too?"
The Alchemist reached her. He didn't touch her jaw this time; he placed his hand over her heart. "He is the fragment. He is the part of me that chose to be human so he could stay near you when you fell. But a fragment cannot hold the Star-Core forever. It is leaking, Amina. The 'malaria' he thinks he has? That is his mortality breaking under the weight of my power."
He leaned in close, his forehead touching hers a mirror of what she had done in the shower back in Mowe.
"The Bureau wants to use you as a weapon. The Void-Seekers want to use him as a battery. But there is a third way."
"What way?"
"The Alchemy of Souls isn't about power," the Alchemist whispered. "It's about the Merge. You have to bring him here, fully. But to do that, you have to let go of the woman who stirred jollof rice. You have to kill the Amina of Mowe so the High Alchemist can wake up."
Suddenly, the glass bridge beneath them cracked.
From the dark clouds below, a massive, skeletal hand made of black smoke reached up, gripping the edge of the bridge. The air turned freezing.
"They are here," the Alchemist hissed, his golden eyes flashing. "Even in your trance, they have followed you. Wake up, Amina! Wake up and protect the fragment!"
Snap!
Amina's eyes flew open in the Ikeja safe house.
The room was in chaos. The monitors were sparking, and the mists in the glass tubes had turned a violent, oily black.
Mama B was pushed back against the wall by an invisible force. Okoro was screaming, his hand on his holster, but he was frozen in place, his body covered in a thin layer of grey frost.
In the center of the room, Tunde was hovering six inches off the floor. His back was arched, his mouth open in a silent scream. And standing over him was the Void-Seeker, his silver eyes fixed on Amina.
"Three hours was too generous," the Seeker said, his hand plunging into Tunde's chest not through the skin, but through his very shadow. "I'll take the Core now."