The dawn that broke over Lagos after the Limestone Resurrection was unlike any the city had seen since 1960. The air was still thick with the residue of the harmattan, but the atmosphere had shifted. The Lugard Ledger had bypassed every state-controlled radio station and television network, flowing directly into the hands of international media and, subsequently, the burgeoning internet cafes of Victoria Island and the mainland. By 8:00 am, the secrets that had sustained the WATCHMEN for eighty-four years were being discussed in the open air of the bus stops and markets.
Inside the limestone basement, the silence was heavy. Major Hamza was gone, his body draped in a colonial-era Union Jack found in a cedar chest a final irony for a man who died defending the sovereignty of a shadow. Silas and Amaka sat amidst the wreckage of the laboratory and the printing press, their faces etched with the fatigue of a century's worth of secrets. The NSDI forces above had retreated, not because they were defeated in combat, but because their mandate had evaporated. An intelligence agency cannot exist when its every sin is a headline.
[SCENE START]
INTERIOR: LIMESTONE HEADQUARTERS - MORNING
The morning light filters through high, narrow vents near the ceiling, casting beams of dust-filled light onto the floor. SILAS is burning the remaining scraps of the 1914 ciphers in a metal bin. AMAKA is monitoring a small transistor radio.
RADIO ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
...unprecedented documents detailing decades of shadow governance. The Transition Council has announced the immediate arrest of the NSDI leadership. General Abdulsalami Abubakar has called for a national day of mourning and a total restructuring of the state security apparatus...
AMAKA: (Turning the volume down)
They're calling it the Watchmen Uprising. They think we're a movement, Silas. They think there are thousands of us.
SILAS: (Stirring the ashes)
There were never thousands. Just a few men and women who believed that the only way to save a country was to be its conscience in the dark. Now the lights are on. There's no place left for us to stand.
AMAKA: The Transition Council wants to meet you. They've sent a neutral envoy to the warehouse gates. They want the physical Ledger. They say it's the only way to ensure the trials are legitimate.
SILAS: (Looking at the iron chest)
If I give them the Ledger, I'm giving them a weapon. They'll use it to purge their enemies just like Abacha did. They'll just call it justice this time.
AMAKA: We can't keep it, Silas. We've already killed the organization. If we hold onto the Ledger, we're just becoming the new New Guard.
[SCENE END]
The envoy arrived at 10:00 am. It wasn't a soldier or a spy, but a soft-spoken jurist named Justice Olatunji, a man known for his incorruptibility during the dark years of the military decrees. He descended the limestone stairs with a mix of awe and trepidation, his eyes taking in the Victorian technology and the maps of a Nigeria that no longer existed.
Silas met him at the base of the elevator. He looked like a ghost of the colonial era blood-stained, soot-covered, but standing with a posture that commanded the room.
[SCENE START]
INTERIOR: LIMESTONE HEADQUARTERS - THE HANDOVER
JUSTICE OLATUNJI (60s, wearing a simple dashiki) stands across from SILAS. AMAKA stands by the iron chest.
JUSTICE OLATUNJI: I was told this place was a myth. My father was a clerk in the 1940s; he used to whisper about 'The Men of the Docks.' I never believed him until I saw the broadcast this morning.
SILAS: Your father was right to whisper, Justice. Silence was our primary currency. But we've gone bankrupt.
JUSTICE OLATUNJI: The Council is offering you amnesty. For everything. The 1976 business, the '93 leak, the... airport incident. They want you to help them build the new Intelligence Bureau. They want the Watchmen to become official.
SILAS: (A hollow laugh)
An official Watchman is a contradiction in terms. Lugard founded us to watch the elite because he knew the law would be too slow or too crooked to catch them. If you make us official, you make us part of the bureaucracy. You make us targets for the next capitalist with a big enough checkbook.
JUSTICE OLATUNJI: Then what do you propose? We cannot have these secrets floating in the void. We need the Ledger to heal the nation.
SILAS: (Placing his hand on the chest)
You take the Ledger. Use it to prosecute the men who sold the oil, the men who bought the votes, and the men who ordered the killings. But you do not build a new organization. You let the Watchmen die here, today.
JUSTICE OLATUNJI: And who will watch the watchers in the new Nigeria?
SILAS: (Gesturing to the vents above)
The people. You've seen them this morning. They have the truth now. That's a far more dangerous weapon than a few men in a limestone basement.
[SCENE END]
The handover was a somber affair. Justice Olatunji's aides hauled the iron chest up the elevator. As the Ledger left the basement, Silas felt a physical weight lift from his shoulders, but it was replaced by a profound emptiness. For thirty years, his identity had been defined by what he knew and what he hid. Now, he was just a man in an old warehouse.
Amaka stayed behind as the envoys left. She looked at Silas, who was staring at the empty space where the chest had sat for decades.
"What now?" she asked.
"Now," Silas said, "we see if the Iroko tree can grow without the iron around its roots."
Silas and Amaka walks out of the warehouse and into the blinding Lagos sun. They didn't take the armored cars or the government escorts. They simply walked into the crowd at the bus stop, two anonymous faces in a sea of millions. The NSDI was being dismantled by the hour, and the Original Watchmen were officially disbanded. But as Silas boarded a yellow danfo bus, he noticed a young man reading a newspaper with the headline: THE TRUTH SHALL SET US FREE.
Silas touched the pocket of his jacket, where he still kept the small, silver whistle from 1914. He hadn't given everything to the Council. He knew that while the Ledger was gone, the intent of Lugard remained. Power would always seek to corrupt, and someone would always need to be in the shadows, watching.