📍 Bello's Provisions & Cyber, Surulere
🕡 6:47 AM
Surulere spoke in chaos, and Chiamaka Okoro understood it better than anyone.
The generator throbbed beneath the counter. Her phone trembled, buzzing nonstop. The air was thick with the familiar perfume of solder, warm wires, and hot plastic. Eighteen, sharp-witted, and stubborn as a rewired fuse, Maka's fingers danced across the open circuit board like she was coaxing a heartbeat back to life.
Her phone skittered across the glass counter again. Zara's messages flashed: THE LOTTERY IS ON! WHERE ARE YOU?!
Maka killed the noise with a thumb still smudged with thermal grease. This was her real world — the workbench, the humming charger clusters, the confidence of solving a problem no one else could.
Mr. Bello hovered behind her, holding his breath as if a wrong exhale could break something. Maka touched the final point, her soldering iron whispering a quick kiss of heat. The dead phone blinked, flickered, then came alive in a cool wash of blue light.
Mr. Bello sagged with relief. "You are a wizard, my daughter."
"Translator," she corrected with a soft grin. "Tech just speaks. I listen."
He tried to press crumpled naira notes into her palm. She gently refused and accepted instead a warm agege bread and a cold Maltina — a better reward than anything cash could buy in this small kingdom of hustle.
Stepping outside, she inhaled Lagos fully. The sun was already burning through the haze, kissing her forehead with a sticky morning heat. Danfos barked and grumbled at every corner. Afrobeat thumped from a kiosk. A woman yelled prices over the smell of frying puff-puff drifting across the street.
She took one long breath — drawn deep, as though she knew this was the last easy inhale of her old life.
---
📍 The Okoro Living Room, Surulere
🕢 7:15 AM
The moment she pushed open the door, the tension hit her like heat from an oven.
Her mother knelt on the rug, whispering frantic prayers that tangled with the television's blare. Her father stood rigid beside the window, cleaning his glasses over and over, polishing away a worry he'd carried for years. Zara perched on the sofa's edge, fingers strangling the remote.
On the TV, a host with a polished, expensive smile stood before a backdrop of Ikoyi skyscrapers.
"And now," he announced, "the moment you've all been waiting for. The single name that will change a life forever."
Maka's pulse stumbled.
Her eyes drifted to her laptop on the dining table — to KudiSync, her rebellion in twelve thousand lines of code. A simple app for market women to build instant digital esusu circles. 487 active users. Growing. That was her dream. Her real future.
"The winner of the Adebayo Foundation full-ride scholarship is…"
Everything in the room froze.
"CHIAMAKA OKORO FROM SURULERE!"
Chaos erupted.
Her mother launched upward, wailing with joy, pulling Maka into a bone-crushing hug. "Nne! God has done it! Our passport!" Tears soaked Maka's shirt in seconds.
Her father turned toward her, glasses forgotten. Relief — raw, overwhelming — cracked across his face. Zara screamed, jumped, grabbed Maka's hands, started spinning in circles.
But inside the storm of celebration, Maka stood still.
Her smile was automatic, brittle at the edges.
Her mind was still in the code running on her laptop.
This isn't a scholarship. It's an eviction notice from my own life.
As her mother cried into her neck, Zara suddenly paused, eyes fierce. She tugged Maka aside, voice barely above a whisper.
"Just don't become one of them, okay? Don't forget where you came from."
The words lodged deep, heavy and true.
A vow disguised as a plea.
---
📍 Adebayo Mansion Study, Ikoyi
🕢 7:16 AM
The same announcement played here — but muted. Behind glass, the Okoro family's celebration looked like a silent movie.
The study smelled of lemon polish and control. Dark wood. Cold air. Perfect order.
Alhaji Adewale Adebayo stared not at the screen, but at the tablet in his hands, its blue glow washing his face. His son, Bayo, stood before the massive desk, posture ruler-straight.
"They cheer her name in the streets," Alhaji murmured. "They see Cinderella."
He slid the tablet forward.
Bayo picked it up. Not a photo. Not a profile. Just data.
KudiSync:
User growth charts
Behavioral data models
Market disruption risk
Financial projections
SUBJECT: OKORO, CHIAMAKA
ASSESSMENT: HIGH-YIELD THREAT
DIRECTIVE: ASSIMILATE
Alhaji's voice stayed soft, deadly. "Her mind is the most dangerous unregulated asset in this state. You will secure it for us. Show her our world. Earn her trust. Make her innovation ours."
Bayo swallowed the words like hot metal.
"I understand, Father."
As he turned to leave, a silent buzz tickled his pocket. He glanced at his private phone.
75,000 NGN received — 'Third Mainland Nocturne' design.
He dismissed the notification quickly. His secret life — freelance underground architecture — thrummed like a small betrayal against the empire he was born to serve.
He looked again at Maka's profile. At the fierce intelligence in her eyes.
His father wanted him to cage her.
But all he could think was how she looked like she was built to run wild — and win.
---
📍 Adewale Academy Gates, Ikoyi
🕘 7:58 AM — One Week Later
The silence stunned her first.
Clean. Chilled. Heavy. The kind of silence money buys — the kind that smothers anything imperfect.
No generators.
No neighbors arguing.
No music.
Just a smooth fountain whispering like it belonged to another species.
Maka stood before the glass-and-steel fortress of Adewale Academy with one small suitcase at her feet — a declaration of how far she hadn't come compared to the children of this place.
Her phone buzzed. Her home-screen photo — her family laughing in the Surulere kitchen — anchored her.
She opened KudiSync.
ACTIVE USERS: 491.
Four new users.
Even while her life was being rearranged by strangers, her creation kept growing.
A smile — sharp, private, quietly victorious — crossed her lips.
She wasn't coming here empty-handed.
She was entering enemy territory armed.
A shadow rolled over her as a black G-Wagon glided to a stop. The tinted window dropped.
Bayo stepped out like someone accustomed to being the center of gravity. Sharp suit. Smooth presence. Eyes dark and watchful.
Their gazes collided — curiosity, challenge, something electric.
He smirked. Not cruel. Testing.
"Lost, scholarship student?" he asked, his baritone warm as velvet, dangerous as a bet. He flicked two fingers toward the servants' entrance. "That way."
The words were bait.
Maka didn't bite.
Her chin lifted. Her smile was a blade.
"I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be," she said. "But thanks. You might need those directions later."
His smirk deepened into a real smile — intrigued, almost impressed.
The game began.
Maka grabbed her suitcase and walked through the gates without looking back.
But she felt his eyes trailing her — curious, calculating, marking her like the beginning of a map.
The gates slid shut behind her with a muted click.
Not a trap.
A starting gun.
A new war — of wit, power, ambition, and something uncomfortably close to desire.
And Maka Okoro had just stepped in as the uninvited queen.