THE MISSING FINGER
The rain had been falling for three days straight.
Not the kind that refreshes or redeems. This was the vengeful kind — angry, choking, relentless.
It turned gutters into rivers, alleys into death traps. By the third day, present-day Lagos no longer felt like a
city. It felt like a drowning memory.
From the outside, the funeral home on Redemption Street didn't look like much — a run-down,
single-story concrete slab wedged between a locked-down pharmacy and an abandoned
cinema. The white paint on its walls peeled like old bandages. Its neon sign blinked weakly:
"PEACEFUL DEPARTURES."
Inside, there was no peace.
Not upstairs.
Not where Ikenna waited.
He sat cross-legged in a concrete room lit by a single flickering bulb, the light stuttering like a
heart on the verge of failure. The air was heavy with incense, but its floral smoke failed to drown
the metallic tang of blood that clung to the walls.
Before him stood a steel table, cold and clinical. Upon it — a severed hand, carefully preserved.
Beside it, four detached fingers, each laid out with surgical precision.
Only four.
The middle finger was missing.
Ikenna stared at it like it was a riddle from the past.
Across from him, Silas sat on a plastic chair too small for comfort. A jittery informant with the
skittish demeanor of a cornered rat. His body language betrayed desperation. Hollow cheeks,
darting eyes, and a stained shirt sticking to his thin frame from the rain.
"You're telling me," Ikenna said at last, voice calm as still water, "that your boss sent this hand
as a message."
Silas swallowed. Adam's apple bobbed like he was trying not to drown in his own spit. "Y-yes,
Oga Ikenna. He said you'd understand. Said it was… personal. Ikenna didn't respond immediately. He took a long drag from the cigarette between his fingers.
The ash at the tip glowed red for a moment, then fell in a slow arc onto the table.
He studied Silas like one might study a defective weapon — wondering whether to repair it or
discard it.
"I understand that he just broke the rules," he said softly.
Silas flinched. "I swear—"
"You delivered a body part," Ikenna continued, his tone never rising. "You don't deliver body
parts. Not in my district. Not unless you want war."
"Oga—"
Ikenna raised one finger.
Silas fell silent.
There were rules in the underworld. Ancient, blood-written, smoke-enforced. The Syndicate
didn't trade in chaos. They dealt in order. And that order was enforced by very specific codes.
Sending a severed hand, real or fake, was a statement.
An opening shot.
"You remember the Accord of Shangisha?" Ikenna asked.
Silas blinked. "Y-yes. The truce?"
"The truce," Ikenna said, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. "That truce put an end to seven
years of territory wars. The Ekute family signed it. They haven't crossed Ajegunle since."
"That's what I told them!" Silas said quickly. "But they say it was all fake. That you forged the
Accord, that you never really signed—"
"They're lying."
Silas bit his lip. "They said… they're coming to collect."
Ikenna stood slowly.
The movement was smooth. No rush. No theatrics.
He picked up the severed hand with gloved fingers, turned it under the light. His eyes narrowed.
There was something… off.
The skin was pale, too pale — even under fluorescent light. The veins on the back of the hand
were a strange shade of green-blue. The wrist had clean surgical cuts, but no bone fragments,
no torn ligaments. The texture was off. The pores are too uniform.
"This isn't a real hand," he muttered.
Silas blinked. "What?"
"This is synthetic," Ikenna said. "Clone-grade. Grade 2 at best. See the seam lines along the
knuckles? And look — the fingernails are too smooth. No scratches. No irregular growth."
Silas leaned in, suddenly unsure of everything.
Ikenna dropped the hand. It landed with a flat metallic thud, not the wet smack of flesh.
"You said your boss gave this to you?"
"Yes—yes! In a sealed box! I didn't open it—"
"You didn't think to question why you were delivering a synthetic human hand?"
Silas's voice broke. "I just wanted to feed my sister. She's sick. I didn't know, Oga. I swear. I
didn't know."
Silas's desperation was real — the kind that could wring pity from a stone.
But not from Ikenna.
He wasn't built for pity. Not anymore.
From outside the door came a knock — three slow taps. Deliberate. Heavy.
Briggs entered.
He was massive — a man carved from battlefield trauma and shaped into loyalty. Worn military
boots. A coat that concealed more than it revealed. He stepped into the room like he owned the
air, and the shadows obeyed him.
He nodded to Ikenna. Then his eyes moved to the table."Confirmed," he said. "It's clone-grade. Not just synthetic skin. Entirely manufactured. And the
DNA print matches Adaka's project files. Someone recreated a hand from a classified archive."
Ikenna's expression didn't change. "The Fourth Man."
Briggs's jaw tightened. "They want us to think he's back."
Silas's voice was barely audible. "The Fourth Man?"
Briggs ignored him. "There's more," he said, pulling out a datapad. "We intercepted a comms
fragment. Encrypted packet routed through a ghost server in Tarkwa Bay. It included this
image."
He turned the pad to face Ikenna.
The image showed the same hand — before detachment — still attached to a body on a
morgue table. The file was timestamped three days ago. But there was no blood, no decay.
Which meant it had never been alive.
Ikenna narrowed his eyes. "This was staged."
Silas was shaking now.
"I just delivered it. I swear. I never asked—"
"You said a woman gave it to you?" Ikenna cut in. "Describe her."
"Mask on. Voice-filtered. Tall. Moved like she didn't belong on the street."
"And?"
"She said… she had a message for the Fog."
Briggs and Ikenna locked eyes.
That phrase hadn't been used in a decade.
The Fog.
Not the Syndicate. Not Black Fog.
Just… the Fog.Only old players used that term. And most of them were dead.
"The Breakroom Massacre," Briggs said softly.
Ikenna nodded. "Only six survivors."
"And only two are still breathing."
They both turned back to Silas.
But Silas was no longer answering.
He'd gone stiff.
His pupils dilated.
A shudder ran through his body.
Then came the convulsions — sharp, violent, final.
White foam spilled from his lips as he shook in the chair, limbs thrashing, then locking.
Briggs was across the room in seconds, tilting Silas's head back, checking for a pulse.
"Dead," he confirmed. "Triggered nanodose. Probably keyed to a voice phrase. Whoever sent
him built a failsafe."
Ikenna stared at the foam. "He was never meant to walk out."
Briggs pulled a small scanning rod and waved it over Silas's jaw. A faint ping. Then silence.
"Implanted dose. Chemical-based with quantum key. They planned this."
"They wanted us looking," Ikenna murmured. "Looking for someone that doesn't exist."
"Or does," Briggs added.
He
wiped the synthetic hand with a cloth, turning it in his large fingers.
"You think it's the Ghost?"
Ikenna was silent