I arrive at the warehouse before three, parking two streets away and walking the rest. The building is tucked between an old mechanics yard and a low-income housing block, its once-blue metal siding now sun-bleached and corroded with rust. A place forgotten. Like I need it to be.
Fola isn't there yet. I step inside through a side entrance that groans on its hinges. The air smells like oil and rot. Sunlight leaks through cracked panels in thin, streaked lines, striping the dust in floating beams. I don't sit. I don't relax. I pace.
Every part of my body is on edge.
My hands are slick.
My breath is shallow.
Fola used to be loyal. A genius with code and forgery. But the kind of genius who never forgot being used. I owe him. And he knows it.
A door slams.
Footsteps.
He appears in the light like a ghost with sharp edges thinner now, with new lines carved into his face, but the same eyes. Cold. Calculating.
"You look like shit," he says.
"You don't look far off," I shoot back.
We don't hug. We never did.
He walks past me and pulls out a laptop from a weathered leather satchel. "You brought the drives?"
I hand over the two encrypted USBs. My entire digital life what's left of it compressed in two slim sticks.
He plugs one in. Waits. The screen flickers to life.
Then he frowns.
"What is this mess?"
"It's layered. I created false identities on top of the real ones. I need you to strip the shell without exposing what's underneath."
"You're a bigger idiot than I remember," he mutters. "You buried one corpse inside another."
"It worked. Until now."
He pauses. "And now?"
"My name's been flagged on the national database. BVN. NIN. Even the land registry."
Fola's hands still on the keyboard.
"Flagged how?"
"They know who I am. Not just Kolade. The real me. Deyemi. And they've linked it back to Alagbado. 2019."
Fola's face twitches. He remembers.
"That thing with Sunday?"
I nod.
He exhales through clenched teeth. "You told me you cleaned that."
"I did. Or I thought I did."
Fola mutters something under his breath. "You left too many fingerprints. And now someone's sweeping the room."
"Can you do it?"
He doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he pulls up several government interfaces on the screen VPN tunneling through Estonia, then Switzerland. He's still good. Maybe better.
Fifteen minutes pass. Then he leans back, eyes tired.
"Whoever triggered the red flag had weight. This isn't some random legal intern running background. It's high-level court prep. Cross-institutional access. The kind you only get if someone really wants to bury you legally."
My throat tightens. "So we have no chance?"
"I didn't say that." He unplugs the USBs and throws them back at me. "But whatever you're planning, it won't hold unless you re-frame the origin. You need a new first offense. Something more explainable. A fraud that can take the fall so the murder gets lost in the mess."
"You want me to fake a fraud conviction?"
"Better than a murder conviction. Get arrested for a white-collar crime. Plead guilty. Serve minimal time. Make the story clean."
"And if they keep digging?"
"Then we both burn."
He starts packing up. "You have two weeks, max. After that, I delete everything. We never met."
"Why are you helping me?" I ask.
Fola shrugs. "Because I remember who you were before the lie. And because you were right: if you fall, it won't be alone."
He walks out without another word.
The warehouse is silent again.
I'm left holding the flash drives like they're ticking bombs.
Outside, the sky is bruised with early dusk. I head back to the car. As I turn the ignition, my phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
I pick up.
"Kolade," the voice says.
I freeze.
No one should be calling me by that name anymore.
"Who is this?"
"You don't know me," the voice says, calm. Female. Precise. "But I know you. And I know what you did in 2019."
My breath leaves my lungs.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do."
She hangs up.
I stare at the screen. The number's already been deactivated.
Someone is pulling