She said her name was Abeni.
She wore the kind of sunglasses that made you forget the shape of her eyes and the kind of perfume that lingered in your memory longer than her voice.
I didn't trust her.
But trust wasn't a currency I dealt in anymore.
We met in an abandoned train station just outside Lagos — the kind of place where ghosts stretched their arms and walls whispered secrets if you listened long enough.
Abeni sat cross-legged on a rusted bench, reading a book with no title.
When I approached, she didn't look up.
"You're late," she said.
"You didn't give me a time."
"That was the test."
She closed the book, finally meeting my gaze. Her eyes were obsidian — sharp, ancient, and unsettlingly calm. She wasn't afraid of me.
That was her first mistake.
"You've been digging," she continued. "Too loud. Too fast."
"They left me no choice."
"There's always a choice," she said, tilting her head. "But you've already made yours, haven't you? Blood for blood."
"What do you want?"
She smiled.
"I want to help you kill them."
Silence.
Wind stirred dust between us. A train passed in the distance — long gone, but its echo still haunted the tracks.
"What's your stake in this?"
"They hurt someone I loved," she said simply. "Same as you. And I know things you don't."
I watched her carefully. "Like what?"
She reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph — creased, old. A girl, maybe seven years old, strapped to a hospital gurney. A barcode tattooed on her forearm.
Not me. But familiar.
"They called it Project Silhouette," Abeni whispered. "You were Subject 6A. She was 5F. There were thirty-eight of you."
My stomach turned.
"They told me it was fourteen."
"They lied."
Of course they did.
Abeni leaned in, voice low and surgical.
"The Colonel isn't the top. He's a gatekeeper. There's someone above him. A woman."
My blood chilled.
"Name?"
"We don't say her name," Abeni said. "But you'll know her when you see her. She was there the night the facility burned. She carried the match."
I stared at the photo again.
Thirty-eight children.
Thirty-eight nightmares.
I thought I'd been the only ghost walking.
But I was wrong.
There were others.
And maybe — just maybe — not all of them were dead.