Ayotundun had never believed in coincidence.Patterns were his religion. Order his obsession. He trusted numbers more than people, silence more than explanations. If something happened once, it was chance. Twice, coincidence. Three times, intention.
By the fifth body, he was certain. The deaths were spread across cities, across classes, across genders. Politicians, business owners, activists, criminals—no single ideology connected them. But the method did. The precision. The absence of panic. The lack of excess. Whoever was doing this did not enjoy killing and that disturbed him.
Ayotundun looked nothing like the men who chased monsters. He had the kind of face that encouraged trust—soft eyes, an easy smile, an almost apologetic presence. People talked around him freely, mistaking warmth for weakness, they always regretted it later. He had joined the force late, older than most recruits, already carrying a quiet discipline that had nothing to do with training. An orphan raised by systems, not people. He understood institutions—and how they failed, his colleagues laughed when he requested the cold cases. "Trying to be a hero?" one asked.
Ayotundun smiled. "Trying to understand."
He started with timelines, victims who had benefited from silence. From corruption. From blood buried under paperwork, he overlaid dates, travel records, security failures, slowly, a shape emerged.
A single hand could not have done all this,
but one mind could have designed it.
Ayotundun labeled the file BALANCE.
Not justice. Balance.
Justice implied morality. Balance implied correction.
Five years down the line, the investigation having aged him, leads dried up, superiors warned him off, files disappeared, witnesses recanted—or died. Some colleagues were demoted. Some were fired. Some were found in wrong places at wrong times.
Ayotundun adjusted, he stopped talking,
stopped trusting, he began studying psychology at night, then formally enrolled, earning degrees quietly while working the field by day. Profiling became his language. Temperaments. Attachments. Love languages. Trauma responses.That was when he noticed her, one operative appeared in the margins—never photographed clearly, never caught on camera long enough to identify, but every operation involving her succeeded cleanly.
No collateral. No mistakes.
Ayotundun narrowed his search.
Female. Melancholycholeric. INTJ. Passive Communicator. Emotionally Avoidant.
Trained. Detached. High intelligence. Likely abused. Likely imprisoned young. Dangerous
He didn't name her yet, naming made things real.
Ayotundun stood across the street from a café in Abuja, watching through tinted glass.
She sat alone. Elegant. Still. Unremarkable to the untrained eye. But Ayotundun felt it immediately—the pressure of something lethal wrapped in calm, she didn't scan the room like nervous people did, she already knew where everything was.
Ajifa.
The name surfaced from sealed records, expunged files, a juvenile case that should not have ended the way it did. Ayotundun's chest tightened, not fear, recognition. He didn't approach her, that was not his way.
Instead, he learned her rhythms. Her pauses. The way she never overindulged—food, alcohol, people. The way she vanished between operations, she had no social media footprint, no close relationships, no indulgences, she lived like someone waiting.
Ayotundun told himself it was professional curiosity. He lied, falling in love with Ajifa felt like standing too close to a fire you weren't sure you wanted to escape, he admired her discipline. Her restraint. Her refusal to perform femininity or brutality for anyone.
But more than that—he admired what she had survived and that scared him, because love, he knew was leverage and leverage could get him killed.
With help from a few honest colleagues, Ayotundun built a quiet task force. They moved slowly. Carefully. Every step triple-checked, when the raid finally came, it came everywhere at once.
Gunfire.
Shouting.
Blood.
The organization fought back viciously.
Many died.
Many were arrested.
Ajifa did not run, she didn't resist, she waited.
Ayotundun found her in a corridor, bodies cooling around them. No words.They moved at the same time.The fight was brutal, close, desperate. Fists. Elbows. Breath torn from lungs. Ayotundun barely held his own—his advantage was not strength, but anticipation.
She was faster. He was smarter.
They broke apart, both bleeding.
Ayotundun raised his gun.
Ajifa looked at him calmly. "You're good," she said quietly. "You don't enjoy this."
His hand trembled. She stepped closer.
"You see people," she continued. "That's your weakness." She paused.
"But it's also why you matter."
"I'll disappear," she said. "But let me end him." Her boss.
Ayotundun searched her face.
"No more killing," he said finally. "Therapy. Real help. You don't go back to this life."
Ajifa considered, then nodded.
"Agreed."
She walked away while the sirens screamed.
Ayotundun let her go, not because he was weak—but because balance, he had learned, sometimes meant letting a storm choose where it would finally break.
MONOLOGUE
AJIFA
I have lived too many lives for one body,some were taken from me, some I gave away, some I buried because they screamed too loudly in the dark. When people say monster, they imagine hunger, rage, pleasure in blood, but
they are wrong.
Monsters are born from arithmetic—
loss plus silence, multiplied by time.
I learned early that crying did not bring the dead back, that begging only entertained power, that love, when offered carelessly, was something men used to collect debts.
So I stopped offering it.
In prison, I learned the value of space—
how to make my presence heavy without raising my voice, how to become sharp without moving.
In the organization, I learned efficiency.
How to remove a heartbeat without disturbing the air around it. How to disappear while still standing in the room.
People think cruelty is loud.
It isn't.
It's calm.
Deliberate.
Ayotundun was the first man who did not try to own my silence, he looked at me and did not ask why.
He asked how much I had carried, that was dangerous, because the moment someone sees the weight you carry, you begin to feel it again.
I asked him for one last kill—not because I wanted blood, but because some doors must be closed by the hand that fosters them.
When I pulled the trigger that final time,
I didn't feel victory, i felt finality.
Now they tell me to sit in rooms with soft lights and speak words that have never saved anyone I loved, but am trying.
Not because I believe in redemption—
but because for the first time, I am not running. I do not know how to be gentle nor
how to love without strategy, but I am alive.
And for someone who was never meant to survive, that feels like a beginning.
AYOTUNDUN
Justice is the word we use when we are afraid to say mercy. I joined the force believing the system could be corrected from inside, that corruption could be reasoned with, that balance could be enforced with enough evidence and patience, i was wrong.
Balance does not come from laws, it comes from choices.
Ajifa was not the problem I was hunting.
She was the proof.
Proof that when institutions fail children,
children grow into consequences. I profiled her like a threat. Measured her like a weapon.
Told myself admiration was not affection. I lied. Loving her was not about desire, it was recognition—seeing a mind sharpened by pain and refusing to look away, letting her go was the hardest decision I have ever made.
Balance is not punishment. It's proportion.
She had paid more than most men ever would, if she ever returns to the darkness,
I will stop her, that is my duty.
But if she doesn't—
if she learns to live without killing—then perhaps justice did not fail after all.
Perhaps it only took a longer road. And perhaps, in choosing mercy once, I finally understood what balance truly meant.
Some wars end with surrender.
Others with survival.
Ajifa chose the harder one.