Following the events of the divination, N’Jadaka looks to the future and the Jabari.
-:- Indra -:-
They come at night. Indra leads a hunting squad of five through the undergrowth, their footsteps muffled by the thick foliage. Eventually, the heavy vegetation gives way to cleared flatland, and the first of the lowland agriculture equipment comes into view. They aren’t even locked down—that’s how brazen these lowlanders are. They’re expecting that, of course, but the audacity still irks her. Did they think no one would care how they encroached on highland territory? All that fancy technology, and they haven’t learned.
She makes a low sound, a command and signal for their scout to move forward. As team lead, she would be the lookout. First in, last out.
They work in silence, setting acid-tar canisters on the equipment, slashing the control units, and sowing the soil with quicklime for good measure. It takes hours, but they work diligently. When they finish, it’s early morning. They leave as cautiously as they arrived, and Indra takes notes on the number and type of equipment. They would have to return here soon—and no doubt next time, the machines would be locked. They’d need to research how to bypass the security features.
The trek up the mountain is less quiet once they’re back in uncontested Jabari territory. Her squad starts chattering and bickering amongst themselves. Jomari, a bulky M’Gunu-clan boy, complains about his sister’s upcoming naming day. Liyana, a slender but sharp-eyed K’Daka-clan warrior, offers mostly unsympathetic commentary. The other two either ignore the two or talk amongst themselves.
Indra is the oldest among them and a master warrior's apprentice, so she doesn’t engage more than necessary. Unlike the others, she knows why they were sent tonight. In the privacy of her mind, she admits to feeling fear.
The lowlands have a new king—someone no one seems to know. The previous king, the one their Great Gorilla lost to months ago, is no more. The omens aren’t clear yet on what it means. M’Baku had made a bold decision to challenge him. His loss was felt deeply, but his brothers-in-arms had spoken for his prowess in combat, and the mothers decided to honor his courage.
But with this new king and the troubling whispers reaching them, the Great Gorilla might be called to try again.
When they reach the guard outpost, she debriefs her squad and dismisses them before heading to the Council Hall.
There, the Great Gorilla, Elder N’Diza, and High Priest K’Daro wait. She recounts the mission first, then relays additional observations. When she’s done, M’Baku’s mother questions her on the lowlanders' defenses. She answers what she can and admits uncertainty where she must.
Their goal was to render the area temporarily unusable and sabotage the farming equipment. She’s confident they succeeded in the latter but not the former. The last time they had land disputes like this, it ended in the Battle of Broken Spears.
The Great Gorilla dismisses her once she’s answered all they ask. She wishes she could stay to hear their discussion, but it’s not her place.
She walks from the Council Hall to her family’s longhouse in the upper terraces. At nineteen, she could have her own dwelling, but she doesn’t feel ready to leave her mother’s home yet. Besides, she isn’t interested in taking a spouse—not when war might be on the horizon.
Inside the domed hut, her younger siblings practice fire-starting techniques.
"Indra! Did you see the lowlanders?" her youngest sister, Nala, asks, eyes wide.
"Only their machines," Indra replies, adjusting her brother Kofi’s crooked initiate sash. The four-year-old always tied it lopsided.
She watches them for a moment before retreating to her sleeping alcove. She’s been awake since late afternoon, and exhaustion weighs on her. Briefly, she checks the bone-carved message tablet at her bedside—no new orders—then closes her eyes.
-:- M’Baku -:- Accompaniment: advantages By KAMAUU
The delegation from the Lowlands was, as expected, a pitiful sight once the initial bravado of their formal introductions faded. The five civilians their General had escorted seemed to shrink inside their thermal wear, their courage spent on the perfectly recited phrases of Enkidu’s Heart. This doesn’t phase M’Baku, he knows that the lowlands were more ignorant of the Jabari than the Jabari were of them and thus he takes on the role of a gracious host. Settling their visitors is a matter of course and when he asks to speak with the General alone, he is not disappointed.
“General Okoye, your companions look as though they could use a moment to gather their spirits. Would you walk with me? There are matters better discussed without so many… anxious ears.”
Okoye did not even glance at her team for reassurance. She simply nodded, “Of course, Lord M’Baku.”
He led her away from the main hall, down a narrower corridor and brought her to a smaller chamber used for strategy meetings. It was sparsely furnished but one wall opened onto a small training yard, its packed earth floor cleared of snow.
“Before we speak of kings and disputes,” M’Baku began, a slow grin spreading across his face, “They say you are the best. I would like to see for myself.” He gestured to the training yard. “I would request a spar. No weapons.”
It was a provocation, but a respectful one. The General did not smile, but a new intensity settled in her posture.
“The Dora Milaje are always ready. The cold is merely an environment.”
The match ends in a draw. M’Baku manages to catch her arm and twist, but she uses the momentum to swing her legs around, locking them around his neck in a move that threatens to bring them both crashing down. They hold the position for a tense moment, M’Baku being first to release his grip. M’Baku is reminded of T’Challa and his curiosity at what all had been happening within the lowlands burns brighter.
They go several more rounds, with similar ends. It was a pleasure to trade blows with someone so evenly matched with him. At one point, between rounds, a soft, sequential chime emanated from the beads around her wrist. Her eyes flickered down for some brief seconds, reading the message that glowed on the tiny screen. Her posture grew more rigid after.
M’Baku noticed the subtle shift. "Is something wrong, General?" The message from the Mountain had been delivered early that morning, and it was only a matter of time till they discovered Indra’s handiwork. He wondered what the response would be. They were already here after all, a discussion to be had in peace.
Okoye’s gaze turned to his, perfectly composed once more. "No," she said, her tone dismissive. "There were just some reports of a disturbance at our shared border, someone tampered with some important agricultural equipment. But we suspect it's nothing more than youthful mischief."
M’Baku didn’t comment, letting the truth hang, acknowledged and unaddressed, between them. Youthful mischief was a generous fiction, an efficient evasion to avoid unpleasant confrontation so soon before their King’s ‘peace’ talks.
After a moment of silence, Okoye gestures to the mat, standing. “Another round?”
Shortly after, they sit together and he pours her a cup of water from a chilled pitcher.
“Now, you have seen some of our strength and I have seen some of yours. Let us speak plainly. Tell me: how did T’Challa fall?”
When she narrates the flow of events he’s left feeling that there was more to it. But there were other more pressing concerns.
“I must ask… this ‘agricultural expansion’ your surveyors are planning, does your new king not know that land is disputed? Or does he simply not care for the treaties his predecessors signed? My people do not sabotage for sport. We defend what is ours.”.
Okoye’s expression remained neutral, but he saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “Lord M’Baku, I was not briefed on any specific territorial disputes.”
M’Baku has no reason to distrust the statement. It wouldn’t be surprising either, the lowlands often forgot what the Jabari remembered.
They continue to discuss, moving from one topic to the next till they venture once more into discussion of the new king.
“Tell me, General Okoye. This N’Jadaka. He challenged T’Challa outside the sacred day. This is not our way, of course, but even by Lowland standards, it seems… irregular. What is the basis of his claim?”
“The traditions of the challenge are complex. N’Jadaka is of royal blood. He issued a challenge, it was accepted, and he prevailed. The throne is his by right of combat.”
“By combat, yes. But by the will of your Panther Goddess? You Lowlanders put such stock in Bast’s blessing. Can a king who took the throne in such a manner truly be said to have it?”
“Bast’s will is not for me to interpret,” Okoye deflected, though her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “My duty is to Wakanda. To the king who sits on the throne.”
So she was a loyal soldier. M’Baku could respect that, even if he believed her loyalty was misplaced. If the rumors he’s been hearing were anything to go by this kingship was more than a little contested. Even their Goddess had opinions per the omens some claimed to have witnessed at her namesake festivities several months ago.
“And what of you, General? The Dora are sworn to the throne, not the king. It must be a difficult adjustment. To go from serving T’Challa, whom you have known all your life, to serving a stranger.”
For the first time, a crack appeared in Okoye’s impeccable composure. It was just a slight softening around her eyes, a momentary stillness. “It is… a change. My husband, W’Kabi, finds it… stimulating.”
“W’Kabi. Of the Border Tribe,” M’Baku said. “A fierce people. You are a partnership of sharp edges. It must be an interesting household.”
This time, a genuine, small smile graced Okoye’s lips. “It is never dull.”
“And you have no children?” M’Baku asked, as was customary in Jabari conversation when discussing family. It was not considered prying, but a way to understand a person’s place in the great bundle of the community.
“No,” Okoye said. “My duty is my child. Perhaps one day. The future is long.”
“The future is long,” M’Baku echoed and on a whim decides to show a part of their home to her.
“Come. Let us walk. Your companions can have longer to warm themselves by the fire.”
He led her out a rear entrance and onto a winding path that climbed higher. The air grew even colder here and the view was breathtaking.
“You build with the mountain, not against it,” Okoye observed.
“We are part of the mountain,” M’Baku affirms softly.
The path ends at a massive natural stone archway leading into a misty valley. M’Baku stopped.
“The Preserve of Hanuman.” M’Baku’s voice is hushed with reverence.
As he spoke, the mist momentarily parted. A family of gorillas, larger than any lowland beast, their fur thick and silver-streaked, moved through a nearby grove of towering trees. They regarded the two without fear or aggression, seemingly accustomed to their human visitors. Then the mist swirled back, hiding them from view.
Okoye was silent for a long time. She had grown up amongst the war rhinos of the Border Tribe, but this was different.
“They are… magnificent,” she sounded awed.
M’Baku says nothing in return but a smile plays on his lips, happy in the moment to have shared a private part of his world with her.
-
The next day they receive word that King N’Jadaka himself would be coming up the mountain. What follows is a delicate dance of force. The number of guards, the timing of his arrival amongst other details are litigated for another day before leave is finally granted for him to come. The council of mothers being deeply agitated throughout. A Wakandan king coming up the mountain even in times of turmoil was unheard of. They did not want it, they did not like it.
M’Baku himself was unconvinced, but in consideration of the trouble that the lowlands had gone to—and their need to eventually meet with this new king—it was allowable.
Now, in the throne room, the atmosphere was charged. Three from the council of mothers—Anandani, Riswani, Chichima—stood as stern, silent sentinels near the dais. The Jabari warriors lining the hall were like statues of wood and fur. Okoye’s delegation had been gathered, their nervousness palpable.
“This king,” M’Baku said to her, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “You have stood beside him. You have seen him rule. Do you believe it? That Bast chose this man who arrived from nowhere?”
Okoye did not look at him, her eyes fixed on the great entrance to the hall. “I believe in the laws and traditions of Wakanda. The challenge was won. The throne was taken. The ‘why’ of the gods is not my domain.”
“A careful answer,” M’Baku mused. “But not an answer of faith. My people have never bowed to Bast. We respect her power, as we respect the power of the sun and the snow. But we give our devotion to Hanuman, the protector, the wise one. A god who values strength of community, not just strength of arm.” He paused. “This… omen they speak of. At the Festival of Bast.”
Okoye’s head turned a fraction of an inch towards him. “You know of this?”
“The mountains have ears, General. We hear that the sky darkened for him. That the statues of the Panther Goddess turned to sand. The Lowlands are calling it a curse.”
“Some are,” Okoye admitted cautiously.
“And you? What does the General of the Dora Milaje call it?” he asked, genuinely intrigued. This was the heart of it.
Was this king divinely sanctioned or divinely condemned?
Okoye was silent for a long moment, choosing her words with the utmost care. “I call it… an event. My role is to observe the actions of the king, not decipher omens. If Bast desires my action, she will make her displeasure known in ways a soldier can understand.”
M’Baku almost smiled. She would not betray her king, but she would not lie to herself either. He tried another angle.
“What is his goal, this N’Jadaka? Why poke the Jabari? We have left the Lowlands to their games for a century. Why now? What does he want from these mountains?”
“I cannot speak to the king’s ultimate intentions,” Okoye said, and this time, M’Baku sensed she was speaking the absolute truth. She truly did not know. “His vision for Wakanda is… expansive. It is different from what came before.”
“Expansive,” M’Baku repeated, the word tasting like a warning.
Before he could question her further, a sound echoed from outside the hall. Not the deep call of Jabari bone-horns, but the piercing shriek of a Border Tribe signal. Frost cracked under heavy boots as N’Jadaka strode into the throne room.
Flanked by four Dora Milaje and a few more Border Tribesmen, the cold light glinted off the stark white patterns marking his skin. Perhaps to lowlanders his blessed marks would be of wonder and attention but it was what he carried that stole the breath from every Jabari present.
Cradled in N’Jadaka’s hands, pulsing with a soft, rhythmic golden light that warmed the air around it, was the Sun Amulet of Hanuman. The vibranium core, a stylized gorilla face within a sunburst, cast powerful reflections on the ice walls. Gasps echoed. Raw, disbelieving shock rippling through the hall.
M’Baku felt the stone floor hum in resonance with the relic. His heart hammered.
N’Jadaka stopped ten paces from M’Baku and extended the Amulet, its light bathing his features in gold. His dark eyes, devoid of mockery but blazing with chilling pragmatism, locked onto M’Baku’s.
"This was unjustly taken, but now it is returned. The thief was Uli, son of M’Kono, then a River Elder, long dead," N’Jadaka's voice carried, clear and sharp spoken in Wakandan common. "His bloodline has been severed from their ill-gotten status and I showed them no mercy." He paused, "Consider this an apology."
The silence was absolute, thick with history and shock. M’Baku’s gaze swept from the radiant Amulet to N’Jadaka’s impassive face.
Slowly, deliberately, M’Baku approached. He stopped before N’Jadaka, the hum of the Amulet, a familiar song he’d only heard in ancient chants. He reached out, his large hands enveloping the artifact. The metal was warm, almost alive.
"You tread a razor's edge, King N’Jadaka," M’Baku rumbled, hefting the Amulet, feeling its immense spiritual weight.
"Why?"
N’Jadaka answers unhurriedly. His speech, while accented, is clear.
"Some people cling to the privileges of the past. They want me to continue to be a king of thieves. The Jabari, I’m told, value what’s earned. If that makes me enemies. Good." His gaze swept the assembly, “This," he nodded to the Amulet, "is proof of my word and the proof of my respect. Now… Can we have a discussion?"
M’Baku stared at the glowing artifact in his hands, then at the dangerous king before him. This was not an offer of peace. It was an offer of alliance from a force of nature. Who would be the one to bend?
"Perhaps. We will have this conversation."
-:- Linda -:- Accompaniment: Backstroke By Deffie
Linda leaves Ava’s safehouse under a different name. Her flight is paid in cash and it runs her through Bangkok then Addis, then Nairobi. By the end of the month she has a new laptop, a new set of accounts courtesy of Ava’s discretionary funding, and a routine. Wake up, check the alerts she’d set up, check the news, check the raw numbers, cross check anything strange, map what didn’t line up—repeat. Eat when she remembered, sleep when the screen started to double.
She didn’t try to contact Erik. If Wakanda was real—by now she’s accepted that some version of it must exist beyond the myth—she couldn’t get near it without getting herself killed or potentially endangering Erik. Therefore her value lay in observation. The best help she could provide was to become an unseen analyst, a historical playboard of the ripples and actions taking place across the world. Her mission became pattern recognition and maintaining a running analysis of potential threats and convertible assets.
In certain places the numbers were loud. For three months rare-earth mining outputs were underreported by the same precise margin. Her findings confirmed the mine shipped full loads but some of it was invisibly diverted from the rest. She traces it to a night-shift edit by a procurement clerk who didn’t usually work nights and whose brother’s trucks were crossing into the DRC empty. It made her think of Erik. They’d talked before and certainly studied even more about where—if resources, time and opportunity allowed—they would start. This was a start.
The more she looked the more she found. It was its own kind of elegant and systematic manipulation. Some things were louder than others. The sudden and quiet (no fanfare) replacement of corrupt officials. Perfectly timed micro-grants that seemed to only fund women’s co-operatives and in turn transformed microcosms of local economies.
Over time she begins to operate through a skeleton crew of contacts. A Ghanaian port clerk, a disgruntled Kenyan accountant, a Togolese fixer. They knew her under different names and she paid well—naturally in cash. Satellite imagery, the unguarded backends of government websites and the revisionist histories people often forgot to hide were her friends.
Sometimes when she allows herself to wallow a bit, she thinks about Erik. Their relationship didn’t have much sentiment. They were both pragmatists who understood real change often required dirty hands. She had seen his vision in Busan, his methods while ruthless were efficient and far seeing. He wasn’t some hero, he was simply a man who believed that things needed changing and there were effective and ineffective ways to do it. And from the evidence unfolding across the continent, she believes he’s been finding even more effective ways to go about things.
He likely believed she was dead, it was the only logical conclusion. A man like him could only move forward, sentiment lost to the mission that drove him and in turn her loyalty wasn’t conditional on his acknowledgment. They shared an ethos, they shared a common goal, and that was enough.
When she felt really fanciful, usually between the hours of 3 and 6 in the morning when sleep was nowhere to be found, she allowed herself to imagine a reunion. It was a professional fantasy, stripped of romance. Perhaps at some non-place, somewhere stupid and temporary. She would step out of the shadows and he would look shocked, or wary.
‘You’re supposed to be dead’ He might say, voice flat and mind already recalculating.
‘It was convenient’ she might have replied.
And if she somehow convinced him that this tiny impossibility wasn’t a hoax, he might ask: ‘What do you have for me?’
And then she would hand him a folder or a usb, something portable, something he could destroy after. Maps with circles and data points, lists of reliable assets and compromised ones. A concise report of what she believed to be his or his enemy’s progress, dangers she noticed on the horizon. As much pure, unvarnished intelligence as she could gather. Implied in this scenario was the fact that she had at no point considered going back to what she used to do, had at no point even thought of delineating the path he’d set out for her.
This fantasy (and it was very much a far-fetched fantasy) was one of her few indulgences and it served as both motivation and a way to structure the vast amounts of data she was collecting. Though the longer she worked the more she accepted this might be her permanent state, perhaps she might never get to hand him that folder. Her existence remained a paradox, utterly solitary yet entirely dedicated to a man who didn’t even know she was alive.
Her work was the only way to be close to him. By tracking his achievements—the new supply chains, new reformed courts, new clinics that never ran out of supplies, new youth initiatives that weren’t just shells for human trafficking and cesspools of abuse—she shared in his purpose. An unblinking eye on the periphery, a keeper of proof that his brutal yet beautiful vision was unfolding. If a reunion never came then this silent, meticulous chronicling of his revolution would have to be enough. She would be working until the job was done or she was dead. For real this time.
-:- Marion -:- Accompaniment: I’m Gone By Rome in Silver
Marion liked the morning hours when the building forgot it was a fortress. The guard at the inner entry checkpoint still had coffee breath and said her name with some fondness. The A.C. wasn’t as loud, not yet cranked up for the day of cooling the entire building and her chair hadn’t yet worn her down with its ‘ergonomic’ features.
During these quiet mornings her world narrowed, hyper focused on the work. Data flowed on one screen, the left one and a canvas lay to her front, the center screen. There anomalies, patterns, and ghosts were coaxed into some semblance of order and eventually confessed their secrets under her patient watch.
Her desk wasn’t the Africa desk. She was a generalist with a vaguely defined specialty for “non-traditional signal analysis” which in the bureaucracy she existed in meant no one complained when she ignored the day’s talking points to go hunting the strange. It was a permission slip she used liberally.
Her dashboard was her own creation, an amalgamation of public and semi-public data stitched together with custom scripts. It was here that her searches usually began.
Rwanda came first. The anomalies popped up one after another. Power consumption curves that spiked in patterns that didn’t match any known industrial or residential project. Bizarrely efficient energy allocations in rural districts that implied the sort of optimization that required a technological leap to source. University patents that shifted focus from the usual sundry, and finally import manifests. The beginnings of microchip manufacturing if one knew what the discount and generic brand components looked like. It all came together like a deliberately planted yet invisible garden.
Towards this Marion felt a professional awe followed by sharper suspicion.
Next came Nigeria. The change here was legal and social. A scraper fed her land title data from state-level officials. There was an identifiable surge particularly in the north, of deeds increasingly listing women as sole or primary owners. Domestic violence conviction rates were on the rise as was a conspicuous homogenization of noncontiguous judicial codes centering on child welfare and domestic disputes. It was seamless, efficient and too close together to not be coordinated. Yet there was no political credit, no public fanfare for it. It was simply happening.
After that came DRC. She like everyone else kept a folder labelled, ‘Cobalt’ the rare earth mineral was simply too pivotal to not be fiercely monitored. Now she kept a separate folder labelled ‘School Lunch.’ In district after mineral-rich district, local papers posted photos. Children lined up with tin plates, shy smiles, new uniforms. The captions were variations on a theme: Community school initiative, new roof funded by private donors. The donors were always unnamed. And at the mines nearest to these schools something else was happening. A curious and sharp drop in egregious labor violations, the thoroughness depriving NGOs of some of their most potent imagery.
Her cynicism fought a deeper, more human feeling of hope. However she knew good things, especially when they arrived out of nowhere, held a price, the bill just hadn’t arrived yet.
She worked for two hours, layering the maps. She filtered out the usual actors: Chinese state-owned enterprises with their Belt and Road initiative. Filtered out World Bank pilot projects and the splashy billionaires and wannabe Bill Gates. She even filtered for the ghost of loose ends—the kind that left assets like Everett Ross missing in Busan. There were no tangible recurring fingerprints. This was the kind of comprehensive, continent-scale development plan a UN task force might draft after a year of meetings and then abandon once the actual cost came calling and the usual hurdles popped up. Yet here it was, being implemented by a ghost.
By nine the Langley building starts to get more lively as doors opened and closed and more people filtered into the building. Her first brief of the day is a sanitized summary. It would get a green “read” dot from the deputy director who probably would not actually read it. With that duty done she opens her second project. Greece.
The first time she presented her findings of this latest focus to a room of other analysts it hadn’t gone well.
“It’s enhanced being nonsense,” another analyst had said, shooting her down.
“Loki’s in Marrakech. God of Mischief throws a tantrum, some skittish hedge fund gets spooked. It’s absolute chaos theory and the simplest model out there.”
At the time Marion had felt a profound desire to rest her forehead against the nearest table, instead she had painstakingly pointed out: “Even if Loki is redecorating a riad in Marrakech, he is not authorizing discreet term sheets for sovereign debt purchases in Zurich.”
The room had offered a round of smiles reserved for someone who didn’t get the joke. “Put it in the daily,” her supervisor would later say. “Flag your confidence level appropriately.”
She had, of course and it naturally got buried with the rest of the far fetched claims and weird trajectories that came out of their study.
It was easier to return to her Africa Dashboard and her current obsession: Lagos. Twice in the past month, the port had… hiccuped. For a precise several-hours window container movement flatlined and yet the usual digital noise of a frustrated port was absent, it was a pocket of unnatural silence. When she overlaid a DoD internal calendar on top of that timeline there was a thin, orange bar representing “Rhodes, J. Overwater training, Lagos AO.”
Colonel James Rhodes aka War Machine. What was he doing flying training loops over Lagos Bay while the continent’s busiest port held its breath below? There was a varied list of possibilities there that sounded plausible and there was also the possibility that pointed to him providing cover. A very loud, very visible distraction—while someone else walked unlogged containers onto specific untracked trucks? But she could only dismiss it. She’d seen enhanced individuals clean up their own messes and then seen them make even bigger messes and she refused to write a fan theory into an intelligence product.
“Walk me through Nigeria,” Her supervisor, Kelly said, materializing at her shoulder. “I have precisely ten minutes of the Deputy Director of Intelligence’s attention.”
Marion minimizes the debt charts and the consultants windows from the front of her screen, switching to what was solid and at least to some degree traceable. “The court reforms suggest centralized encouragement—funding, model legislation. But the messaging is deliberately decentralized and seems organic.”
“The actor?”
“Unclaimed. Doesn’t want public credit. Or is saving that credit for a very specific, larger claim later.”
“And Rwanda?”
“Technology transfer and not through any known channels. If it’s a black box project of ours then someone skipped a mile of procurement paperwork and if it’s Chinese then it’s operating in airspace they have no business being in.”
“So… your Greek friend.” There was a smile attached to that, that made Marion feel like a conspiracy theorist.
“I’m letting that thread go for now.” Marion is fine to give in, she needed more evidence then she could try again.
Kelly nodded and left.
The 11am inter-department meeting was it’s own special kind of hell. A guy from the Europe desk, on loan from the State Department, said ‘adversary actor’ at least nineteen times, someone recycled the Loki joke and for some reason everybody laughed. She didn’t bother bringing up her Lagos overlay, she didn’t want to hear more shut downs.
At lunch she barely tasted the food, brain churning over the newest information from the day. Back at her desk she typed with the same hyper focus of the morning.
> Appears to be a non-state network with state-like resources and coordination
She stared at the words then deleted non-state, it sounded too prejudiced. Then she tried again:
> Motive aligns with sentiments for decolonization developments; secondary effect undermines PRC footprint and
Western logistical convenience.
By four she had her report assembled. She titled it “The Phantom Benefactor Hypothesis”
Section I: Rwandan Technological Surge – Invisible Export of IP.
Section II: Nigerian Legal Harmonization – The Unseen Advocacy Spine.
Section III: DRC Cobalt Revenue – Redirection to Localized Social Programs.
Section IV: Coincidental DoD/Avengers-Active Overlays (Confidence: Low; Caution: High).
After which she hit send. The automated message, “Thank you for your contribution, product submitted to ODNI/CF-24-08B Queue.” blinked back at her.
On her way out the door she passes a conference room with the TV on mute, the current programming leads her to make a note to check another possible avenue and she wishes she could run back to her desk but restrains the urge. Work was work and for now it was done.
The drive home is long and the radio is terrible for covering the sound of her thoughts. She didn’t know what she wanted. Proof would mean she was right, and something vast and powerful had its hand on the African continent’s spine, reshaping it in the dark. Disproof would mean she’d built an intricate fantasy. She realized, with a sinking clarity, that she wanted to be wrong. She wanted a boring, human financier to be kind to Greece out of nostalgia. She wanted the Lagos port silence to be a glitch. She wanted the school roofs to have been paid for by a reclusive, shy philanthropist.
All she knew was that she had to have patience and that patience when faced with a benevolent and invisible earthquake turned into dread.
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