The Immortals’ Code #20

Welcome back to The Immortals’ Code, all of you who have been asking.

If you are reading it for the first time, click HERE to start from the beginning.

But allow me refresh your mind a little…

Leonel has just gotten dumped by Kyenpia who is mad at him for beating Ishi up and leaving him in a critical state. But Leonel has his reasons, seeing that Ishi is the weakest link on the opposing side that wants to see the Cabal down. The Light Virus created by Doctor B which hold the frame for the new Nigeria that Captain and his men want to rebuild after the destruction of the old one, is in Ishi’s care. Hence, Leonel’s prompt action to take him out of the picture.

Bloodbath is about to be unleashed and 43 is doing everything to see it not happen. The Cabal are not playing either. They have summoned David and Lanre to Doctor B’s house to probe them. Leonel has decided to lend an arm to 43 as he drives over to the mansion to help stop the Cabal.

 

DOCTOR B’s MANSION

The moment was epic. It was one David would never forget. Who would have ever believed that Leonel could point a gun at Captain and tell him without flinching how he was going to murder him, and then actually go ahead to squeeze the trigger?

The bullet flew out so fast David did not believe it was happening. Before this, he was with Lanre in Doctor B’s mini home cinema where the Cabal’s top six were interrogating both of them. In attendance were Captain, Judith, Princess, Samuel, Oloche and Segun, Lanre’s father. It was expected to be a serious interrogation session but Ishi’s father, Samuel, and his closest friend, Oloche kept interrupting them with snide remarks and silent chuckles over private jokes they were sharing with each other. No one paid them any mind, though; it was something they were all used to.

Oloche was a small, thin man who wore only Hugo Boss clothing and shiny shoes. He kept a scanty afro that was thinning in the center and carried around an extra pair of shoes as replacement for the ones on his feet if he as much as saw a speck on them. But he was neither recognized for his footwear nor choice of designer clothing. Oloche was renowned for his billions and collection of awards as a successful bank CEO. So busy he was, he sometimes excused himself from the Cabal’s meetings. Everyone knew on a good day, he would rather be in his office somewhere in Marina than bother about most of the issues they often discussed in their gatherings. Issues, for instance, like who had the right to have the Light Virus in their possession. Oloche expressed this particular thought to Samuel in a whisper and Samuel found some lewd joke as a retort that put them both into giggles like little school girls. David had read Samuel’s lips and gotten the gist of the joke, finding it amusing as well but Captain’s monologue aimed at intimidating he and Lanre into handing over the Light Virus and dropping out of the 43 investigations kept him in a serious pose. Threats followed the monologue, of course. But David was already impatient with the whole proceeding and showed it with his body language while Lanre maintained an unreadable expression. They both had been left standing for over thirty minutes while the Cabal members sat comfortably, each on single couches in a twelve-sitter setting in the mini cinema.

Despite the circumstances surrounding the interrogation, the place was comfy with a floor laid with an exotic Mandarin rug swanking of bamboo designs of dark brown and cream, a ceiling lit up by calm fibre optic lighting, walls adorned with landscape paintings and a 109-inch plasma television covering the wall facing the sitting area. The overall background was an exquisite blend of brown and cream but its fascinating ambiance did nothing to hold David captivated. He had just started to whine about his time being wasted when Leonel burst into the cinema, a loaded weapon in his hand.

At first no one took him serious. But after looking at the empty stare in his eyes and the way he charged towards Captain, they all became immobile. Soldiers standing guard outside barged in, having just discovered that Captain was in danger. They caught Leonel at the end of a brief, dispassionate speech as he held Captain hostage on his seat. The soldiers were ordered to stand down but the second they obeyed the order, Leonel’s gun went off and Captain clutched his chest, throwing his head back on his chair.

Assault rifles cocked in unison in the wake of the gunshot and aimed at Leonel.

“I’ll shoot him again!” He bellowed. “Stand down!”

The soldiers looked at Captain who nodded at them from his place of pain.

“Put the gun down, Leo,” David pleaded but Leonel maintained his pose while his fingers around the gun’s grip were beginning to get restless.

David glanced at Captain. He was losing blood fast. With difficulty, he turned to Samuel for help. Absolute silence followed. Only Lanre had not been knocked off by Leonel’s actions. The moment he saw him charging in, he predicted the unlikely outcome. Everyone knew Leonel was his father’s favorite; shooting him was improbable but Lanre had seen it happening before it did and prepared himself to protect Leonel at all cost. And now that he was certain that neither Leonel nor Captain were under further threat, he dashed toward Leonel and shoved him down, subduing and relieving him off the Beretta in his hand.

The soldiers instantly closed in on them but Captain stopped them again with a raised finger. David walked towards Leonel as well and he stared at him, worried. His brother’s eyes appeared as though they were caught in a trance but when they met David’s, a look only he understood was relayed to him and chills went down his spine.

He watched as Leonel was picked up by a brawny soldier and taken away against Captain’s orders. He followed them out and stopped the soldier, pulling Leonel aside.

“It had to be done,” Leonel said.

“You wanted to kill him?” David asked, barely audible.

“I’m not that stupid. Captain won’t die but from his sickbed he’ll delay Bloodbath temporarily. He can’t stand to have his plans run under his nose without him being conscious of every step.”

“Leo, you could have killed him.”

“It was a gamble. I carefully missed his heart.” Leonel smiled. “But I just bought you guys enough time to move in on the Bloodbath militia. Thank me later.”

Leonel turned to the soldier and surrendered himself into his custody again. As they walked down the long hallway of the third floor of Doctor B’s home, he turned and smiled at David once more. It was a sort of smile that tried to mask what his heart was actually going through. He had done the unspeakable and he was afraid of what awaited him. No one was skilled at serving revenge better than Captain and Leonel knew what was coming for him.

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

Judith served her guests each a glass of wine. She picked a glass of her own and took the weight off her feet, easing herself into a chaise lounge. The room was dark, lighting lowered to maintain the shadows. There was silence but somewhere in the house Mozart was playing. Judith and her guests all seemed to be listening to it, especially Oloche even though he had some computer device in his hand that cast a soft glow on his face in the dimness of the room.

“Ah,” he smiled, “this is a beautiful piece.”

“What is?” Princess asked, coming out of a deep thought.

“Mozart’s Requiem. The song playing now.”

“Mm,” Princess replied and the silence came upon them again until Oloche spoke once more.

“Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictis…”

“Oh now you’re just showing off,” Princess muttered after having the first taste of her wine.

Oloche smiled. “It’s a classic, Princess. Even you will have to agree. Mozart was genius. A fool, though, with a short lifetime of a strange illness, women and reckless living. But this Requiem, this Mass of the Dead is a work of pure genius. The Confutatis that I just recited…”

“Oh bore…” Princess rolled her eyes and concentrated on the red of her fingernails.

“…is the fifth movement in the Dies Irae Sequence and it’s a combination of the fierceness of hell with the beauty of heaven and Mozart effortlessly does this with contrasting male and female vocal lines and marvelous orchestration that accompanies them. The male voices depict the evil of hell and its flames and the lines come in forcefully lasting for six measures…”

Princess touched her head, portraying a faint state. “I pray you, stop please. You’ll give me a tumor. I wish Sammy was here to shut you up with his tactless jokes. Left on your own, Loche, you murder with your bourgeois sensibilities.”

Judith and Segun laughed but Oloche continued, heedlessly. “Measure seven to ten present a dramatic switch when the female voices come in…”

He was silenced by the distinctive ringing of an immobile phone that rested on a glass table in the middle of the room. They all turned to it but it was Judith that moved forward and pressed a button beside a blinking red light. The light immediately went green and ceased blinking as the call connected.

“Judith, here.” Judith cleared her throat and waited. A male voice, foreign and firm in tone replied her.

“Bloodbath continues, with or without Luke. A whole week has been lost. We have a schedule and we’re running out of time.”

“But sir…”

“No objections, Judith. You’re in charge. Continue what we started and make up for lost time. You have only three days.”

The line went dead and the green light died.

“Well, you heard the man,” Segun said, rising up. “I have matters to attend to.”

“And so do I.” Oloche also stood. “This…was a waste of my time. Millions literally escaped my grip as I sat here waiting for a few lines in a phone conversation.”

He blessed Princess and Judith with kisses on their cheeks and left the house with Segun.

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

The news hit Igwe’s ears first before any other family member’s. Leonel was the last to hear of it. Just concluding a series of psyche evaluations and declared mentally stable by a team of three doctors, he was en route to León Hotels when a phone call came in, informing him that Captain was dead.

“He was transferred to Germany early this morning for better treatment but he didn’t make it,” the person on the line added.

“Okay. Thank you.”

Leonel ended the call himself and had his driver turn in a different direction. His driving privileges had been denied him alongside other liberties pending the conclusion of his mental evaluation. He had a good mind to ditch his driver but it was important that his family members saw him keeping to the doctors’ instructions.

He allowed himself no thought as his car spent forty-something minutes on the road. It wasn’t until after he got to the villa and noted the presence of family members gathered that he let the weight of the bad news sink in. Eyes judged him as he walked past Igwe’s sitting room straight into his bedroom. Igwe was not alone; Jamila, Maxwell, David, Jacan and Igwe’s last wife, Dooshima were also present.

“You dare to show your face here?” Jamila lifted her head from a hanky soaked with tears when she spotted Leonel. “You’re a murderer, Leo! You killed your own father! You killed him! What type of person are you?! You’re evil! A murderer!”

Jacan held her but she freed herself from him and rained curses on Leonel in Hausa until Igwe ordered her to be quiet.

“First it was Ishi and then your own father?! What is wrong with you?!”

Leonel leaned on the doorpost and remained silent. He looked into Igwe’s eyes but they were unreadable; same as Maxwell’s and Jacan’s. Following a whisper from Igwe, Dooshima led Jamila outside and Leonel was asked to shut the door.

“Captain’s not dead,” Leonel told them.

“We know,” Igwe replied. “The Cabal is looking for reason to continue with their terror attacks.”

“And the only way they can accomplish that is to declare Captain dead.” David stressed out. “Sources inform us that he’s in an induced coma because he has refused to give any instructions concerning Bloodbath. They fear that he’s in an unstable form. They say he speaks to someone he alone sees.”

“So he is physically okay?” Jacan asked.

“Yes, but not mentally.”

“We need him awake from that coma.” Igwe looked at Maxwell. “Locate where they are hiding him presently.”

“I’m on that, sir.”

“What if we can stop Bloodbath?” Jacan threw in.

“You can’t,” David replied.

“I know what Bloodbath is and all about its soldiers. I trained some of them.” Jacan sat on his father’s bed. “Bloodbath is run by three marshals, each handling a faction. In the event of Captain’s demise, all marshals must agree before they commence their retribution on the government. If one of them refuses, nothing happens. He cannot be forced. Instead, he will kill himself and render his faction useless. The other duo will then decide if they want to continue without him. If they choose to, then they go ahead. If they don’t, they take their dead comrade’s money which runs in millions and both disappear, completely disabling Bloodbath.”

“That easy?” David asked.

“Not really. The three marshals I speak of are ready to die for Captain and his cause. They’ve been promised better things in the coming of a new Nigeria. They’ll be made automatic generals in charge of the country’s new military. And they absolutely believe they are invincible, having the necessary required weaponry in their possession needed to bring Nigeria down. These men lack nothing and cannot be swayed by anyone or bullied into doing anything. We’re talking about people who have faced death over and over again and can withstand the worst type of torture…”

David interjected. “But you said we can stop them.”

“We can stop only one of them.”

“Who?”

Everyone in the room looked at Jacan as his eyes displayed revulsion. “Akin.”

“And the others?” Igwe asked.

“We kill them both,” David responded flatly.

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

MALLAM AMINU KANO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, KANO

The plane was packed full with security operatives having just concluded a two-day meeting behind closed doors. The Joint Security Force they were called – men and women, special agents from their respective organizations. They were a noisy lot; the flight attendants were having a hard time settling them into their seats. A particularly skinny police officer brandishing his handgun, scared one of the attendants away as he tried to recount an encounter with a group of armed robbers to his counterparts from the NSS.

Lanre sat quietly in his seat behind, seemingly paying no mind to what was going on around him but he had taken succinct details of everyone aboard the flight, especially a lady seated up front. She had a low-cut hairstyle, cheap studded earrings and the dress sense that was masculine. But she was all feminine and Lanre couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was forced to, however, when his phone vibrated, alerting him of an incoming message. It was an SMS from David with letters in bold:

DON’T LEAVE KANO! EXPECT AN EMAIL FROM ME

Lanre deleted the SMS and stared at his wristwatch. It was just a few minutes past twelve. The plane bound for Abuja was supposed to have left nineteen minutes ago. It was a good thing they hadn’t. Rising up from his seat, he picked his bag from the carry-on compartment overhead. His phone vibrated again and this time an email came in. Lanre took a moment and went through it, picking important details. It had good and not-so good news.

First, he was informed that Captain had gone into a coma. 43 were suspecting it was induced by the Cabal, considering Captain had been in a somewhat stable state. It was clear someone wanted him incapacitated and incapable of running Bloodbath. Fortunately 43 hit a break in their investigations and discovered that Bloodbath was handled by three heads or lieutenants who had no affiliation with the military but were trained just as well. Discovering the identities of these men had been almost impossible but an inside top mole for a good sum revealed information on two of the lieutenants. Details came in the night before and 43 were only able to trace the individuals just as Lanre got on the plane.

Now he studied the faces of the men on his phone screen. Apart from Akin, whom he already knew, the other men were strangers. They looked normal and could pass for average Joes. Neither of them had any habits or regimental way of living. They existed like nobodies on the streets, men who had no connection to family or a normal lifestyle. Yet each of them wielded lethal power and together with Akin, they could initiate Bloodbath without the command of Captain. It had been his agreement with them, that upon his death, disappearance or incarceration, they were to come together, all three of them and give the order for mayhem to begin. One of them stayed in Kano on the occasion. The other two were coming in later in the day. Lanre’s instruction was to get rid of them. Their meeting was not to hold.

Lanre forwarded the email to a contact on his phone and deleted it afterwards, storing the images. He hung his bag across his shoulders and headed down the aisle with no one paying any attention, not even the noisy policeman who absent-mindedly blocked his path as he bragged about how he once worked with a CIA agent. Now close to the exit of the plane, Lanre let his eyes rest on the lady with the low-cut. She was engrossed in a foreign magazine, Soldier of Fortunes; it was all about the military, police and weaponry. There was a slight, deliberate bump on her shoulder as Lanre walked past but she showed no reaction.

He exited the plane and found his way back into town.

SABON GARI

Lanre stared at his strange reflection in the small mirror before him. He looked like a different version of himself with the absence of his locks. They were now lying in a waste bin by his feet in the stinky restroom he was in. The weightlessness he felt on his shoulders from their absence was soon going to be replaced by a different kind of burden. Waiting out there was his worst enemy, a nature of himself that had been suppressed by a vow not to kill until the locks were departed. There was no excitement in him to revive the killer he once was.

He scratched over what was left of his hair. The end result wasn’t a neat sight but it was what he needed. A pair of scissors, some liquid soap and a shaving stick had done their work. No one was going to care about another dirty-looking man with unkempt hair on the busy streets of Kano.

Lanre worked on the rest of his appearance, scrubbing off the fresh of his skin with a face towel to create a dry, Harmattan look. He changed into a dirty kaftan, stained his teeth with raw coffee, dirtied his nails and stuck a darkened half pea-sized bubble gum on a full eyebrow and twisted it to lock it in, creating a large mole over his left eye.

He was satisfied with his appearance. Just one last adjustment was left. He took off his wristwatch, extracted the back plate, held it steady with a scissors over the burning flame of a lighter until it was hot enough. Subsequently, he brought the plate to his forehead, putting it so close it almost touched his skin. The heat left a faint burn, creating a prayer mark on his forehead. Now he could easily pass for a just another regular pious Muslim out on the streets of Kano.

Done with his work, he packed the tools used and discarded them into a black polythene bag and exited the restroom. No one took notice of him in the fast food joint he walked through. He got outside and dumped the bag over a dirt heap nearby and became one with the street.

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

Lanre blended with the crowd, hurrying to the Juma’at mosque for the evening prayers. Nothing in his brown kaftan and worn-out bathroom slippers gave him away. In his hand was a buta containing water for his ablution, for he had already spied the mosque earlier and noted that the ablution fountain was always crowded. He found a slab, sat down just as the other men did and began a ritual wash to cleanse himself. Above them rang the call for prayer. Lanre looked up at the sky; the night was in a hurry to come. A full moon was out. As his eyes lowered, he spotted his first target, one of the Bloodbath lieutenants, walking into the mosque premises. The man seemed to be in his late thirties. Tall and unassuming but with squinty eyes that were vigilant. It seemed he knew the regulars in the mosque and he took his time soaking in details of the newcomers. Lanre also got his scrutiny as he gave him a full eye workup from his head to his feet. If he found anything worth noting, he didn’t show it. But Lanre’s disguise was tight. His perfect muscled form was hidden in his dirty worn-out Kaftan which was stained in the armpits and torn at the sleeves. He was a far cry from the fresh and well-kept Dada Holmes who came in from Lagos two days ago.

The lieutenant produced a phone from his pocket and stared at its screen. He lifted his eyes and did another sweep of the area. The prayers had begun. Lanre needed to get into the mosque to ward off all suspicion but his target was yet to move from where he stood. People bumped into him as they rushed in for prayers, yet he remained standing. Someone stopped before him for a brief word. Lanre looked at the person; he was just another man rushing in to pray and, having dropped a greeting, he entered the mosque. Lanre’s target walked in at last but not before leaving a nod in the direction of the gates. Allowing his buta fall off his hands to the floor and going for it, Lanre furtively spied the gates. He saw nothing at first but when he rose up, the face of the second Bloodbath lieutenant came into view and disappeared. But Lanre had already taken in his features and stamped them in his memory before he went into the mosque.

Finding a spot close to the door, Lanre positioned himself and kept his eyes on the first lieutenant who was standing by one of the side doors. They both went through the first motions of prayer but the moment their foreheads hit the floor, the lieutenant disappeared through the door beside him. Lanre lifted his body immediately and made his exit as well, crouching over in a body-racking cough. He didn’t spot either of his prey in the area but he was certain the first lieutenant was still on the premises.

Still coughing, he went round the mosque, to the back where the urinals were located and there he caught the disappearing kaftan of the first lieutenant. Lanre became silent and stealthily followed. Inside the urinals he heard the man speaking. But there was no one responding. Lanre deducted that he was on his phone.

He had to move in quick. The element of sudden attack was going to be his most potent weapon. This wasn’t one of those assignments he had been given ample time to prepare for. All he had was a dagger and his hands.

He took silent steps, keeping his back to a tiled wall. The urinal entrance lay open before him and he peeped in. The lieutenant had his back to the door—his first, most fatal and final mistake. Lanre drew in a quick breath, withdrew his double-edged Fairbairn-Sykes dagger and approached him with two quick steps.

He grasped his mouth and nose in a clamped palm, driving the dagger into his neck at the same time. It was a swift and smooth stab four inches below the ear that jutted out from the opposite side. Then the blade was slashed outwards through the throat. Both arteries and the wind pipe were severed in one cut.

A gurgling sound Lanre knew so well followed. And he shut tight his eyes and mouth to avoid being sprayed by the gush of blood spurting from his victim. The man’s bowels were let loose as well and a foul stench filled the relatively new urinal.

The lieutenant gave a weak jerk and his phone clattered to the floor the same time his muscles went lax. His entire body fell into Lanre’s hold, turning into dead weight. Lanre wasted not a second in dragging him into one of the toilet stalls. Time was of the essence. He was working on sheer luck. Anyone could come in, discover him and raise alarm. Or even worse, the second lieutenant could be the one barging in through the entrance. Lanre had no idea whom the dead man had been speaking to over the phone. Whoever it was, they knew something had gone wrong and were probably going to react it.

Lanre took off his blood-stained kaftan and was left in a faded, grey t-shirt and brown trousers. He mopped the blood off the floor, sheathed his dagger and picked the dead man’s phone. There was no one on hold.

Shoving the kaftan into an empty water drum on his way out, he kept an alert eye around his environment as he rounded the mosque and waited in the shadows for the prayers to end.

He went through the man’s phone contacts and discovered no numbers were saved. There was no call history or text messages whatsoever. Even the last call had come in via an unknown contact. Lanre dialed his own phone to retrieve the number. Afterwards, he contacted the computer tech engineers of 43 and asked them to recover the dead man’s call logs before switching the phone off entirely.

Then he waited…

Not just for the prayers to end. But for something else… a different feeling he had been desiring to pounce on him from the day he executed his first target years ago. But he got the same old nothingness  that had shocked him that first time.

He recalled his apprehension that day as he walked in on his target while he was piecing together the dismembered parts of an old laptop in his sitting room. He was a young, fair-complexioned guy with a calm exterior. Lanre had gotten one look at him and almost chickened out. There wasn’t anything on his face that revealed why he needed to be executed and Lanre hadn’t been given any information about him. But orders were orders and they needed to be followed. It was best knowing nothing about one’s target. The whys and why nots were not important. An executioner was merely an executioner.

And so Lanre stood there, sweating from every pore in his body while the guy stared on. The scene might have gone on for longer if the guy had not moved his hand away from his laptop and brought Lanre back to his wits. The consequence was a series of shots fired with no precision but achieving the required result.

Lanre thought he had gone deaf at first. Even with a silencer, the shots had been deafening, different from what was depicted in the movies. But it wasn’t the deafness that bothered him. It was the nothingness that followed. The total silence.

He waited for remorse to come or maybe some form of sympathy in him for his victim but he got more silence. Walls that formerly closed in on him brought by fear began to move farther and farther away, taking everything else with them until he was left in a vacuum.

He felt immortal.

In the days that followed he stumbled through other different types of feelings but that vacuum remained. Even after other operations.

It weighed heavier than any type of guilt. It was his own definition of fear. Nothing stirred him anymore, not even the thought of facing his own death like his targets had. Emotions became tools, employed for use only at necessary times. They were never to be part of the executioner.

Lanre heard the voices of men leaving the mosque and he left his hiding to join them. It was a full crowd, one that he could easily get lost in and the idea was to move quickly before the body was discovered. He made sure he drew no one’s attention as he headed out the gates. The street was even busier as he walked on. He found a suya’s spot at the intersection of a busier, wider street that sloped upwards and there he stood and got a bird’s eye vision of his environment. The moon above was in its full state and he could pick out the faces of people on both streets. He looked out for the second lieutenant and Akin  or any other suspicious character in the area. He didn’t need to search for long, though. He spotted the lieutenant not far from the gates of the mosque. He was a lanky man, younger and darker than his colleague. Also dressed in a kaftan and a hula, he blended with his environment.

The man stopped a sugarcane hawker and pretended to busy himself in making a buy while he scanned around. But his surveillance was cut short as he pushed his hand into his pocket and retrieved a phone to answer a call. Lanre watched the look on his face change for a second. His eyes darted in the direction of the mosque and came back to normal. Without warning, he began to move, the sugarcane abandoned. He bumped into people as he walked and out of sheer coincidence, by a casual glance, his eyes found Lanre’s. Lanre did not move an inch. He held his stare and a silent understanding passed between them.

But Lanre was deliberately being a distraction. The lieutenant became sidetracked and didn’t notice a woman covered in a long robe and a hijab coming towards him. Her pace was slow, his was fast and they crossed each other without incidence. None of them broke their beat in the seconds that followed after.

Lanre held his breath as everything slowed in his view. The lieutenant’s speed began to decelerate, an expression of bafflement clouding his countenance. A few paces more and he stopped, fought against an unsteady posture and he failed. He grabbed the shoulder of a boy passing by to steady himself but the boy shoved him and he stumbled. His drop to the ground was slow and with a flair that brought Lanre’s lips to a quick, tilted smile.

Lanre turned his back to the chaos that was about to break in the street and disappeared. He didn’t need to see the serrated blade buried deep in the man’s right kidney. It was a signature death sentence only the woman in the hijab could employ so effortlessly.

The night was cool and the sky still bright. Lanre moved like one with no care but he was on double alert. He took a long walk and ended up in a rusty motel. The woman in her long robe and hijab was waiting for him. The receptionist at the motel charged Lanre extra for having a woman around, claiming Hisbah officials were in the area, picking up prostitutes. After a brief bargain, a negotiation was reached and Lanre settled in his room with his date. She took off her hijab, revealing a low-cut hairstyle.

“Next time you mistakenly bump my shoulder on a plane, keep your finger off my boob,” she said, undressing.

“I owe you, Abby,” Lanre replied. “I thought you’d ignore the email I forwarded to you just like you’ve ignored my calls for the past year or so.”

“We’re still on the topic of our past?” she asked and unclipped her bra, tossing it aside.

“No.” Lanre stretched out on the narrow bed in the middle of the room and it creaked beneath him. She climbed over him.

“You know my account details.”

“43 will pay you for today’s job, which was smooth, as usual.”

“Yeah.” She lay down on him and rested her head on his chest. She ran her fingers down his shoulder to the toned muscles on his arm.

“Thank you, again,” he whispered and wrapped his arms around her.

“The most important thing is that we both saved many lives, Dada Holmes.”

Lanre shut his eyes and tried to congratulate himself for a job well done but he found no satisfaction or pleasure. His thoughts came back vacant; the resultant effect was a numb sensation spread over him. Not even Abby’s presence gave him any form of contentment within. It was an eerie godlike feeling and it floated him above matter. The nothingness wasn’t going away any time soon.

^©Sally@moskedapages