Femi can feel something is wrong, like a polarisation of the air before a thunderstorm. Every hair on her body is taut and her neck is so tight with stress that it aches and won’t turn properly, like she feels twelve hours before a period. How can something be wrong when everything is right? More than once Eric has caught her eye and raised one eyebrow in question. What is it?
She doesn’t know.
Her entire team is brainstorming. Tolu. The professor. Eric. They are watered and fed. They are sequestered.
She gets a message. Aminat.
RUN!
Before she can react, knocking at the door.
Femi shows her message to Eric.
“Pack up, we’re leaving,” he says.
From behind the door someone says, “Mrs Alaagomeji, can we come in, please?”
They sound like her regular bodyguards, but they would never knock except under extreme circumstances. She doesn’t have enough intel on the situation, but she has a shoot-first policy that serves her well in situations like this. She dashes into the bedroom and retrieves the compact SMG from underneath the bed. Muted whine as it locks on to her ID and charges. She arms it. Afterthought: she pockets her antique .22.
“Just a minute,” says Femi.
Back in the lounge, she positions Eric to the left of the door. She signals to Tolu that his job is to protect the professor. She feels the vibration of other messages arriving to the phone, but she can’t attend to that now.
“Mrs Alaagomeji, we’re here from the president. Please open the door.”
“I’m just putting on some clothes,” she says, absently. She cycles through a surveillance tap. The closest cameras she can access are a COB, but it’s flying too high to be useful, and a static street camera that doesn’t seem to have infrared settings but does show some activity that suggests the police are waiting. Three regular cars, maybe a dozen if you include the two outside the door. Not heavily armed because not expecting trouble.
She wishes she could find out what is going on in the corridor. She hears a click and thunk as the door unlocks. They must have a hotel employee…
Short bursts.
The first man comes in, a second right behind, both holding weapons, both with front-facing EM shields that shimmer. She doesn’t shoot because her weapon isn’t powerful enough, and ricochets will endanger the others. Eric’s tentacle reaches out, coils around an ankle and lifts the first man to slam him against the ceiling, then against the second man. The shields repel each other, sending the men to opposite walls. Femi shoots each of them in the centre mass. They have state-security ID, so they weren’t lying about being from the president.
She is about to head into the hallway, but Eric holds up a hand. The tentacle tracks along the floor like a snake, slithering outside the room. Eric’s eyes seem to lose focus, then return, even as the arm snaps back.
“This hall empty, but two hostiles at the landing beyond, one at each stairwell. They were talking to others in the lobby.”
Femi strokes the arm-tentacle. “I want one of those.” She turns to the others. “Follow tight in the corridor, but fan out in the lobby. Tolu, get your charge to the car, don’t worry about Eric and me.”
“Which car?” asks Tolu.
“Eric’s. They know mine and I’ve been pinging it, no response.”
A quick, silent sprint down the corridor. Eric leads this time, with Femi just behind. Some grenades would have been good, but she never truly thought of the hotel as a place of danger. The tentacle rounds the corner and Femi hears shouts with two gunshots, some thuds, then silence. Eric gives the all-clear.
She is tempted by the lift, but knows it’s a trap. They take the stairwell. As they soft-foot down, she checks the surveillance feeds again. Still the same number of cars, but a new four-by-four has arrived, tinted windows, parked away from the main fleet. More state security? They would be getting guys who had similar training to her.
The stairwells have an echo. Every sound is amplified. What really burns Femi’s intuition is that her bodyguards will have scouted this route along with all the service byways. She has looked at schematics as part of basic due diligence, but she has not walked the route. Eric clearly has, and takes point, using the appendage to probe ahead, then flit forward silently.
We are going to have to fight here, says Tolu. He has a Desert Eagle or something similar.
Hang back, says Femi to the professor. His eyes have become circles of terror. He lugs around his awkward brainoid storage system, clutching the refrigerated boxes like pearls.
There are two ways out of the ground floor. A door to the lobby area and a fire exit, alarmed of course. Femi places her ear against the lobby door, but it’s so thick she can hear nothing on the other side. Eric studies the fire door. As it is dark outside, he smashes the lights with the tentacle. There seem to be parked cars, but not much else. The feed does not contradict this. Femi nods.
The fire alarm goes off the moment they push the door. A recorded voice says, calmly, “There is a fire. Make your way to the exits. There is a fire. Make your way to the exits. There is…”
Arrows on the floor move in an outbound direction to direct hotel guests.
Outside, a semicircle of armed, uniformed people await, weapons pointed right at them.
“Orders?” asks Eric. He seems ready to do whatever Femi tells him, as if they are not outnumbered and trapped. Assholes faked the surveillance feed.
“Stand down,” she says. She drops the SMG. “Put your weapons down.”
“No,” says Tolu. He is behind her and to the right.
“Eleja, what the fuck? Mother says jump, you jump,” says Eric.
“I’m not going back into custody,” says Tolu. “You’ve never been in prison here. I have. I am not going back. You don’t know what they do to dissidents.”
“I do,” says Femi. Because I order a lot of the… tribulations.
A bullhorn scratches out a loud message. “SURRENDER, DROP YOUR WEAPONS, LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND.”
“All right,” says Femi.
“Complying,” says Eric.
“Fuck you!” says Tolu. He cocks his weapon, loud as a prophecy.
Oh shit, here we go. It’s not how Femi would have liked to die, but Tolu isn’t budging and this contingent of cops is a firing squad by any other name. They are not the most subtle of operatives. If the president has come this hard against her, he also wants her dead. She is wondering if she can kill any of them first when she sees something slouch into the line of fire where the light pools.
It is human-shaped, bulky and grey. The suit is full of deep folds, and spiny with projected wires and short antennae. The helmet has two circular eyes with blacked-out glass. There are no obvious guns or grenade-launchers. No flying object to suggest a satellite drone. Femi notes that even the police are surprised to see it.
“Police people,” it says. “You put your weapons down and nobody will get hurt.”
Eric looks at Femi, but she shrugs. “I have no idea. Don’t even ask.”
It’s difficult to tell from the voice whether the thing is male or female. It turns to capture everybody in its glance. One of the police guys takes a shot at it, misses, then shoots again. The force is absorbed in the folds of the suit, but there is no hole.
“All right, listen up: I have just deactivated your electric triggers. Your guns won’t work. Don’t bother trying because… I said, don’t try. Why are you pulling your triggers? Stop acting surprised. I’m trying to tell you what’s happening.”
Femi palms her little revolver. With no electronic parts, it can’t be manipulated this way.
“Put your weapons down now. Please. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but it’ll be up to you.”
None of the cops move. Someone shouts curses at the suit, and a machete appears out of nowhere.
“Listen, stupid, I have just uncoupled your ID chip from your gun. I’ve done that for all of you. You have five seconds before…”
There is a series of wet pops, contained explosions that split the people still holding weapons in half at the torso.
“… that.”
One man, spattered in the blood of his comrades, goes berserk and charges the suited person with a raised truncheon. Femi shoots him in the flak jacket and he goes down.
The suit turns. The design makes it difficult.
“Mrs Alaagomeji, my name is Bad Fish. Aminat sent me. Well, Kaaro sent me and Aminat said he’s dead and I called her and she… You and your people need to come with me.”
Okay.
This is a shit shower.
Femi hates her name being in the public domain, and hates it worse when it’s exposing indictable offences. Like shooting Ranti.
The shortlist of people who know about it can be counted on one hand. It would not be Jacques, because he comes off worse than he would like. Dahun would not, he’s a professional. Although Eric kidnapped him with relative ease, which can’t be good for the ego. And the swap was for Femi. Does he bear a grudge?
Regardless, Femi cannot see Dahun leaking the information. For one thing, he was the person who finally killed Ranti. Femi recalls shooting the battery salesman–the report got it wrong–in the head, knowing that wouldn’t kill him because the head was just for show. Ranti’s brain was in his torso. Jack, who was seated beside Ranti, became complicit when he helpfully suggested shooting the gut. Ranti scrambled around the floor like a crab, and Dahun entered the room and finally shot the man to shreds.
If Dahun had a grudge he would hunt Femi down and try to kill her himself. No fuss, no masquerade, no fanfare.
No, this has to be that strange, efficient assistant of Jacques’.
Lora Asiko.
Femi turns to Tolu. “Next time you think of going kamikaze like that again, think of me shooting you in the testicles. I don’t even know why I let you in the car with me.”
“I let him in the car,” says Bad Fish.
“If you say so,” says Femi. “I hope you have enough oxygen in that suit.”
“I do.”
“Where are you taking us?” asks Femi.
“An abandoned hangar just outside a place that used to be known as Arodan. By the time I’ve finished work on it, it’ll be as secure as Aso Rock.”
Femi reads the news again. There is no development to the story, so the cycle keeps rehashing what they know, plus digging up people who know her for sound bites.
There’s that asshole Mustafa that I kissed in secondary school.
The federal government must be avoiding discussion of the hotel, which for them was a fiasco.
“Is it true what they say you did?” asks Bad Fish. “Did you kill that man in cold blood?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Her job,” says Eric. “Why don’t you focus on driving?”
“If I’m going to help you, I need to know that you’re on the side of righteousness,” says Bad Fish.
“You’re the domkop wearing a pervert mask,” says Eric.
Bad Fish nods, an awkward motion in the suit. “I’d go back to South Africa soon if I were you, Eric Sunmola.”
“Is that… are you threatening me?”
“No. From her medical bills, I’d say your mother is very, very sick.”
“How did you…?”
“I know everything,” says Bad Fish. “Please don’t try to intimidate me. It won’t work and I’ll just have to hurt you back. I wouldn’t be here if I thought you could harm me, or if I didn’t know how to break you. All of you.”
“Go kiss a ganglion,” says Eric.
Femi puts her hand on his shoulder. “We are grateful for your help, Bad Fish. We owe you our lives.”
Headlights continue into the darkness, the road mercifully clear of checkpoints. Perhaps the police have already made their quota of bribes for the day.
Inside the car, silence, except for Femi repeating the newscast that speaks of her guilt in the murder of Ranti.