The first plume of smoke rose over Marina like a curse, swirling through the slats of the morning sun.
Lagos had stopped pretending.
Ash and flame now served as the city's new grammar, spoken not with tongues but through sirens, screams, and the staccato bursts of gunfire echoing from Obalende to Ikeja. There was no more illusion of peace. Just the groan of a city exhaling all its buried truths at once.
Inside the safehouse in Onikan, Dapo stood by the window, watching the orange glow stain the horizon. He hadn't slept. He didn't need to. Sleep was for those with futures; in Lagos, futures were negotiable.
"They've started rounding up members of the Independent Watchdog," Aisha said, reading off her secure tablet. Six cells collapsed overnight. We're losing people."
Dapo didn't flinch. "We knew it would come to this."
Aisha closed the tablet. "But not like this."
He turned from the window, his voice brittle. "Exactly like this."
Outside, somewhere in the east, a transformer exploded. The shockwave rumbled through the building, sending dust trickling down the wall. It was a prelude.
The war had begun.
Across the Third Mainland Bridge, the Governor's convoy sped past burning tires and scattered barricades. The once-compliant police escorts now glanced nervously at the crowd's eyes, not their chants. These were not ordinary protests. They were coordinates in a rebellion's blueprint.
In the bulletproof vehicle at the front, Governor Nnamani sat silently beside his special adviser, Chief Oloruntoba, whose phone hadn't stopped buzzing.
"They've surrounded the Broadcasting Corporation," Toba said finally. "Your face is everywhere. They're calling you the Butcher of Bariga."
Nnamani exhaled slowly. "Let them speak."
"Sir, this isn't Twitter noise. The Northern Bloc is considering withdrawing its support. The eastern governors have declared neutrality. If we lose the center",
"We won't," Nnamani snapped. "We'll control the message. By nightfall, they'll call it a military provocation."
"And the footage?"
"Discredit it."
Toba hesitated. "We can't erase everything."
"Then burn what we can't erase."
Back in Yaba, in a derelict warehouse now converted to a field command post, Hassan was pacing furiously. The intel from Ikeja was murky; their communication lines flickered like faulty candles.
"The safehouse was compromised last night," a masked operative reported. "Two of our embedded contacts have gone silent."
Hassan cursed under his breath. "Too fast. We moved too fast."
"Dapo's team is still active. They've gone to ground."
Hassan's eyes narrowed. "Good. Because if we lose him, this whole operation collapses."
"But sir, with the governor locking down the media and security forces swarming the mainland, how do we regain momentum?"
"We don't," Hassan replied grimly. "We redirect it."
Inside a dimly lit cybercafé basement in Surulere, Timi, the hacker prodigy known as 'Smokescreen', was at war with the national firewall.
Lines of code scrolled violently on the multiple screens as he attempted to breach the encrypted servers of the State Broadcast Authority.
"Too many traps," he muttered. "They've set a kill switch."
"Can you disable it?" Dapo asked from behind him.
Timi cracked his knuckles. "I can feed it lies instead."
"Do it."
Timi's fingers danced across the keyboard. "When this signal goes live, the world will see everything. The leaked documents. The secret prisons. The body count."
Dapo exhaled. "Then let Lagos watch itself burn."
In the upper district of Victoria Island, as wealth clustered behind gates and guards, the Lagos Elite Circle gathered for a clandestine emergency session. Senators, billionaires, and foreign consultants were all seated beneath the golden lights of the exclusive Meridian Club.
Chief Adediran, old and regal in a crimson agbada, tapped his glass.
"We must decide. Do we bleed with Nnamani or amputate now and survive?"
"Survive with what? The rebels are not unified. If we support them, they'll devour each other."
"But if we support the governor and he falls, we become targets."
Silence.
Until one voice, soft but unmistakable, cut through: "Then we crown someone else. Someone who owes us."
Heads turned toward Abeni Adegbite, CEO of one of the largest agricultural conglomerates on the continent. Her red lipstick was as sharp as her tone.
"The people want blood," she said. "Let them have it. But we choose who bleeds."
That afternoon, the streets around Tafawa Balewa Square erupted in a standstill confrontation.
Thousands had gathered. Banners waved. Drones hovered. And from the rooftop of a nearby building, Dapo aimed a camera, not a weapon.
He streamed live.
"This is not a coup," his voice echoed across devices. "This is reclamation."
The feed cut to scenes of abandoned clinics, schools with caved-in roofs, police torture videos, and forged electoral results. The final image was a live map: oil shipments were rerouted to private accounts tied to names in the governor's cabinet.
Dapo spoke again: "Power belongs to the people. And today, the people remember."
Seconds later, across dozens of locations, rebels acted.
Barracks gates were breached.
Broadcast towers were seized.
A convoy transporting encrypted documents was hijacked.
By nightfall, the regime was gasping for air.
But power, as always, retaliates.
Inside the Governor's secret bunker beneath Ikoyi, Nnamani stood in front of a screen showing the live feed from Dapo's stream.
"He's become a symbol," Toba said bitterly.
Nnamani's eyes narrowed. "Then we'll break the symbol."
Toba was unsure. "He's gone underground. The only trail is from the hacked feed."
"Then find the signal's origin. And burn it."
By midnight, Dapo and Aisha were moving through the back alleys of Oshodi, heading toward their emergency exfil point.
Suddenly, gunfire erupted.
Three rebels went down.
A drone exploded overhead.
Aisha dragged Dapo into a narrow corridor. "They found us!"
"Fallback plan?"
"Radio silence. The next time we speak, it's over a coffin or a new country."
As they ducked behind a pile of crates, Dapo whispered, "I'm not dying yet. Not tonight."
"Then run."
They bolted.
Back at the Meridian Club, Chief Adediran received a secure call.
"Yes?"
"Phase two is in motion," the voice said.
"And the boy?"
"We'll handle him. But the throne is yours."
"No," Adediran replied with a smile. "The crown belongs to whoever survives the smoke."
To be continued…