Alero – The Blade in the Dark
Port Harcourt Slums, 2072 – Age 13
Alero learned to stab before she learned to read.
Her first lesson came from a woman called Mama Ten — a retired enforcer of the White Flag syndicate turned street surgeon. She lived above a flooded generator house and taught kids how to cut without hesitation.
"You hesitate," she told Alero, "you die. Or worse — someone you love dies."
Alero never hesitated again.
She grew up in the choking heat of the oil zones, where the air shimmered with chemical ghosts and the rich watched from offshore cities behind mirrored glass. She ran messages for smugglers, flipped safes, stabbed two men before her 15th birthday. One tried to traffic her. The other wore a badge.
Both ended up face-down in the creek.
By 18, Alero was working freelance wetwork for border cartels — always silent, always clean. She refused to join any crew. She didn't trust hierarchy. Or promises.
Then NDLEC came knocking.
They wanted her not to kill, but to infiltrate. They said she had talent. Precision. Patience. She laughed in their face — until they showed her what Bako's agents did to girls like her who weren't recruited.
She joined.
Not out of loyalty.
Not out of duty.
But because she needed a weapon bigger than her knives.
Years later, after a failed mission in Maiduguri left her partner executed on a live feed by a foreign-backed drug lord, Alero vanished. Officially "killed in action." Unofficially? She went rogue. Off-grid. Waiting for a target worth the risk.
When she met Tunde in the Lagos Zone, she didn't trust him.
She still doesn't.
But for the first time in years, she feels something dangerous when they fight side-by-side:
Hope.
....
Major Arewa – The Broken Patriot
Abuja Central, 2060 – Age 30
Back when NDLEC was still a blunt tool with good intentions, Michael Arewa believed in the cause. He joined the Corps after losing his sister to a street trial gone wrong — a case of mistaken identity, twisted by cartel bribes and failed justice.
He rose quickly. Took down warlords in Maiduguri. Cleaned out a trafficking ring from Kaduna to Ghana. Led a raid on a floating lab in the Gulf that made international headlines.
He was a poster soldier.
Then, in 2077, he found something he wasn't supposed to.
During a bust in Sokoto, his unit intercepted encrypted files showing that several NDLEC high-command officers were funneling drugs back into the country — using the agency's own seizure routes. Not just small corruption.
A system.
When he brought it to his superiors, the report vanished.
Three days later, a "friendly fire accident" killed his team.
He survived with a broken rib and a bullet in the lung. The brass said he was compromised. Traumatized. Retired him with honors and buried the scandal.
Arewa didn't fight back.
Not openly.
He disappeared for two years, traveling the underbelly of the country, rebuilding trust with forgotten agents, radicals, rogue AIs. He built something slower than vengeance:
A mirror.
Something to show the world what NDLEC had become.
When he received word that a cadet he was handling named Tunde Ajayi Bako had gone deep undercover into the exact network he once uncovered — and was still breathing — he knew.
The wheel was turning again.
Now, in 2079, Alero the blade and Arewa the ghost have returned to the front.
One fights to finish the kill.
The other fights to expose the rot.
Together with Tunde — the watchful eye — they might just break the machine that broke them.