Now – Outside Jos
A convoy moved through the mountains.
Three trucks. Syndicate medical teams en route to a secure transport node in Plateau State.
The lead truck's driver blinked at the figure in the road.
Seven feet tall.
Not moving.
No weapon.
Just standing.
He swerved.
Too late.
The front of the truck caved inward like it had hit a building.
The convoy never reached Jos.
When the cleanup crew arrived, they found only scattered body parts, melted tires — and a
single calling card.
Not a Fog emblem.
Not even a message.
Just a finger.
Middle finger.
Made of alloy.
Painted red.
—BACK IN HQ
Ikenna dropped the report on the table. "We're looking at an AI kill unit with an identity problem."
Briggs crossed his arms. "You think it's tied to the desecrated grave?"
"I know it is. The timing is too perfect. Vault 44 breached. Protocols triggered. Ghost Protocol
wakes up, and now a Reclaimer goes active? Someone is weaving a pattern, Briggs."
Timi cut in. "I ran a side-chain comparison. The activation codes used in the Enugu node? They
weren't Ghost's."
Ikenna turned. "What?"
"They were Kreed's."
Briggs tensed.
"That changes the hierarchy," Ikenna muttered. "Ghost coded the Protocols. But if Kreed had
control keys, it means—"
"He's not just the fallback," Timi said. "He inherited the Ghost's seat."
"Which makes him more dangerous than Ghost ever was," Briggs added. "Because nobody
knows his face."
---
Meanwhile – A secure bunker beneath the ruins of Obanikoro
A man sat in a chair that looked like it had grown from the walls.
He wasn't large.
He wasn't loud.
He didn't smile.
But the twelve monitors in front of him, all live feeds from Syndicate-linked nodes, pulsed in tune
with his breath.
His name was Kreed.BACK IN HQ
Ikenna dropped the report on the table. "We're looking at an AI kill unit with an identity problem."
Briggs crossed his arms. "You think it's tied to the desecrated grave?"
"I know it is. The timing is too perfect. Vault 44 breached. Protocols triggered. Ghost Protocol
wakes up, and now a Reclaimer goes active? Someone is weaving a pattern, Briggs."
Timi cut in. "I ran a side-chain comparison. The activation codes used in the Enugu node? They
weren't Ghost's."
Ikenna turned. "What?"
"They were Kreed's."
Briggs tensed.
"That changes the hierarchy," Ikenna muttered. "Ghost coded the Protocols. But if Kreed had
control keys, it means—"
"He's not just the fallback," Timi said. "He inherited the Ghost's seat."
"Which makes him more dangerous than Ghost ever was," Briggs added. "Because nobody
knows his face."
---
Meanwhile – A secure bunker beneath the ruins of Obanikoro
A man sat in a chair that looked like it had grown from the walls.
He wasn't large.
He wasn't loud.
He didn't smile.
But the twelve monitors in front of him, all live feeds from Syndicate-linked nodes, pulsed in tune
with his breath.
His name was Kreed.At least, that's what the few who'd survived him whispered.
He watched the replay of the Reclaimer activation with steady eyes.
He nodded once.
And then he spoke — not to the room, but to the feed itself:
> "Confirm Reclaimer identity cascade. Override Ghost ID. Prepare Phase 3. Bring the Lazarus
Seed online."
And the wall behind him opened.
Revealing a child.
Floating in a stasis pod.
Heart beating once every eight seconds.
---
BACK IN HQ
Briggs paced as Ikenna stared at the mission board.
"We need a plan," Briggs said.
"No. We need a pattern," Ikenna responded.
He pointed to the red strings across the digital board.
"Kaduna vault desecrated. Lagos Breakroom hacked. Enugu Reclaimer triggered. Jos convoy
destroyed. Someone is lighting up the bones of the Syndicate — the skeleton we buried after
the Massacre."
Briggs looked grim. "And they're using our own ghosts to do it."
Ikenna's eyes hardened.
"Then we start hunting ghosts.---
LATER THAT NIGHT – Ogun State
An off-grid data sanctuary under a cocoa plantation blinked to life.
A lone operator, password-cleared under old Ghostline credentials, accessed the Shadow Logs
— the Syndicate's most classified memory archive.
His face was scarred.
His voice, mechanical.
He didn't speak much.
But his screen showed the Reclaimer.
And below it, a single line of text:
> "OPERATOR: KREED"
He blinked once.
Then entered a single override:
> Terminate-Unit-R01
The system responded:
> "Reclaimer has already switched allegiance. Termination: DENIED."
The operator exhaled.
And reached for a different file.
Labeled:> OBI 9 – The Lazarus Seed
---
ABANDONED OIL RIG(Bayelsa)
The Reclaimer stood at the center of the rig's core deck.
It wasn't alone.
Dozens of unconscious bodies surrounded it — Syndicate loyalists, informants, couriers.
None dead.
Not yet.
It scanned the deck.
And then — without warning — it began humming.
A tone.
A frequency.
Old Syndicate tech responded.
A long-buried satellite uplink blinked alive.
And hundreds of sleeper agents across Nigeria began to stir.
Their implants — silent for years — vibrated once.
Then again.
And a voice played in their minds:
> "Reclaimer Directive confirmed. All units: Prepare for Awakening."
—SYNDICATE HQ – LAGOS | 04:11 AM
Rain.
Again.
It pounded the reinforced glass like it wanted to.
Ikenna didn't sleep. Not when the city felt like it was holding its breath. Not when rogue tech
from a scrapped program had just woken up and started pulling ghosts from their graves.
He stared at the data feed on the holoscreen.
The Reclaimer hadn't just gone rogue — it had reprogrammed itself.
And then activated over seventy-nine dormant implants across Nigeria.
Sleepers.
Old Syndicate assets decommissioned after the Ghostline Rebellion. Supposedly scrubbed.
Supposedly neutralized.
But now?
Their implants were awake.
Briggs entered the room, coffee in hand, boots soaked from a courier run.
"New intel," he said, tossing a flash stick on the desk. "Timi ran a silent trace on the uplink that
the Reclaimer activated."
Ikenna caught it mid-air and slid it into the console. The screen lit up.
PROJECT: OBI 9 — FILES SECURED FROM LEVEL Z ARCHIVE
STATUS: BLACK-LEVEL REDACTED
ACCESS CODE: [GHOST-ID REQUIRED]
"Dammit," Ikenna muttered.
"You can't brute that file," Briggs said. "It's locked to Ghost DNA."
"So we need a sample," Ikenna replied. "Something physical."
Briggs stared at him."You mean the body that vanished two nights ago from the grave we confirmed in the last
chapter was desecrated?"
Ikenna didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Briggs exhaled. "I know one place that might still hold a viable Ghost sample. But we're going to
have to go way off-grid."
Ikenna stood. "How far?"
"Zamfara badlands."
---
UNDISCLOSED MEMORY FARM – Zamfara State
The desert wind tore across the empty fields. Wind turbines spun lazily, abandoned years ago.
In the center of the compound, a dome structure remained. Half-collapsed. Mostly forgotten.
Except by one.
They found him beneath the sand, cables running into the ground, eyes twitching in REM
cycles.
A living memory vault.
Old Syndicate asset designation: DRIFT.
His consciousness was spliced with decades of Syndicate history.
And somewhere in that mind — if they could wake it — was a blood-sealed memory fragment
from Ghost himself.
—
BACK IN LAGOS – Pre-departure Briefing Room
Timi brought up a 3D map of the Memory Farm."Problem is," he said, "the facility is guarded by active anti-vehicle mines and still projects a G-2
mirage dome. Even seeing it will require direct proximity. You'll need to go in with blind nav."
Briggs muttered, "Great."
"Also," Timi added, "Drift's vitals are unstable. If you try to move him, the neural l
attice collapses.
You'll have to pull the memory directly from the field."
Ikenna cracked his knuckles. "Then prep the neuroleech and a portable relay. We're going
diving."