Grace counted down the minutes until the meeting was over and while she did so, she stared ahead at nothing and she knew if she looked Joshua Phillips then she'd explode and say something worse. If there was anything she hated more than everything in the world, then it was being a puppet, it was being deprived of the right to write her own life.

So she sat, uncaring that she looked a mess, that they snuck glances in her direction, past caring about Joshua's speech, every wolf in the room wanted a piece of the sheep among them and every stare weighed heavily in her chest and she swore she'd make them pay.

Grace leaned forward, twisting her joints and savouring the satisfying pop of every bone, she imagined it as Phillips' bones cracking beneath her grip and she found out she felt better at the motion.

"Hey, calm down." She blinked at sound of Kendrick's low whisper. The fluorescent bulbs came into focus.

She leaned back, leaned back into him.

"You're scaring everyone," Kendrick murmured in her ears. "Breathe, Grace, breathe."

"Let them look." She said defiantly and proceeded to ignore Kendrick's slow touch on her palm, he was making little circles on her palm with his fingers and she hated that she liked it.

"I hate them, all of them." She breathe, blinking back tears. There was no venom in her voice, only tired resignation.

"And we will make them pay." He said, the words she wanted to hear and when she turned to look at him, he was staring back with intensity that shone in his multicolored eyes.

And it was then a smattering of applause broke out in the court and people began to leave their seats.

The meeting was over and she hadn't even caught a single word.

She rose when Kendrick did, latching to his side, half scared. The bravado from earlier was melting fast like ice, it was her greatest flaw, quick to get mad and equally quick to melt.

The girl in the hijab was fast approaching them, Grace noted that she was not smiling and she ignored the greetings she got as she passed. A girl like her looked like she bathed in attention. Grace looked to Kendrick, about to comment on her when she noticed that he was staring at the girl with something like wry admiration.

He seemed to know her and suddenly, she let the hand he gripped tight drop from his and he didn't even notice. Suddenly cold, Grace gathered her arms around herself.

How many people from ORION did Kendrick know? How many was he friends with?

"Grace, Kendrick." The girl said, nodding curtly. "Come with me."

"Why? I thought his royal bastard would want to see us and rub his power in our faces." Grace said snidely.

The girl narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

"Not now, Grace." Kendrick hissed.

"I didn't know you two were friends." Grace shot back. She looked at the girl with the most venomous glare she could summon, the stare that so famously made her family shrink back when they saw it, yet this girl stood.

Something like amusement made her lip tug slightly at the corner before fading, she crossed her hands beneath her chest, pushing up breasts that made Grace glance down at her almost flat chest. She chided herself internally for thinking such superficial things.

"Listen, girly," the girl began saying, she lifted up a finger. "There are two sides to me, the bitch plus boss side and the fairly nice side. You don't want to be on my third side."

"I thought there were only two." Grace snapped with a saccharine smile.

"There's always a third." She said sweetly. "And the third is the worst thing you'll ever see."

"Can we cut this out?" Kendrick's words went unanswered. The people in the hall were looking at them now, watching who would break into tears first. Grace was determined not to.

"Was that supposed to scare me?" Grace said, she was thankful Kendrick was standing between them, that way she was safe from a fight. It wasn't that she couldn't handle her own in a fight but right now she was functioning solely on her sarcasm.

The hijab girl threw back her head and let out a throaty chuckle. 

"Sweetheart, the third part of me sends grown men crumbling and begging for mercy. Twelve of you couldn't handle one of me." She said in a manner that suggested dark things. "Now that we have that out of the way, I've been assigned your mentor."

At Kendrick's questioning gaze, she added; "Yours too."

"You might be cute, Kendrick but I'm not going easy on you." She punctuated her words with a wink.

Grace narrowed her eyes at the light pink that stained Kendrick's cheeks. The girl looked pleased at the sight.

"I'm Amina Khalid." She said, holding out a hand to Grace and the look on her face told Grace that there was no option to take it and so she did, squeezing tight.

Realization dawned on Grace, this girl was twice the girl Grace would ever be, twice as rich and ten times stunning. Not that Grace didn't think herself pretty. She was also Joshua's childhood friend. She also seemed to be the girl who carried out his commands.

"Great," Amina clapped her manicured hands, startling Grace and almost everyone else in the room, she caught the impatient look Phillips sent their way. "I'm so glad we started on the right foot, now, follow me."

Kendrick did, Grace hesitated a second, opting to send one last infamous glare at Dr. Ireti who staring at them, he looked away quick and satisfaction curled in her belly as she hurried after them, bursting into the open air.

Firepemi was still leaning against the wall and he threw her a concerned glance, he seemed to relax when he saw her in one piece.

"See you next meeting, Grace." He hollered in the night. Grace rewarded him with a flip of her finger. She had no intention of another meeting, she wanted ORION gone now.

Who would have thought that innocent Grace would end up in a cult?

"Where are we going?" Grace called out. "It's past my bedtime, I thought you cult of stalkers would know that." She added bitterly.

Amina halted in her steps and when she turned, Grace almost shrunk back at the warning in her eyes.

"I am your mentor, and this means you treat me with the courtesy I treat you with. This is not a joke, Grace." She deadpanned. "ORION is not a joke."

Grace gritted her teeth but logic outweighed the urge to tear this girl to pieces.

"Fine, I still need to know where we're going." She stood her ground, refusing to heed Kendrick's subtle warnings.

He shook his head and rubbed a hand to his forehead.

After a moment, Amina nodded.

"My car is around the corner, we will not be gone for long." She said.

Then she resumed walking, Grace followed, batting away Kendrick's hand. Grace was hardly surprised to see the sleek BMW parked at the edge of the road, ORION brats were spoilt kids after all.

It was only when Amina was revving the car and driving past the moot court did Grace remember she never said where they were going to.

***

Sanmi had never been so glad to leave a car, he was practically stumbling out the door, ecstatic to leave the deafening silence. Tope hadn't glared at him during the ride, she hadn't even snuck him a glance as she drove, never muttered an insult under her breath. Instead, she had driven like there was no once else in the car but her, she hadn't even been bothered to put on the radio or hum under her breath.

While all he could do was stare at her, stare at every line on her face. The curve of the nose she had always said was too big for her face, the red painted lips that he had always liked to watch talk about anything, and those eyes that always shined were dead and blank, she hadn't even bat a lid when she caught him staring.

She made him hate himself, loathe himself. And she hadn't even lifted a finger. And God, he had missed her.

She pulled into a driveway of a mini mansion, and when she walked briskly, he followed. He tried to look around, checking for security guards, one would think a house in a wealthy estate like this would have security prowling the streets but apart from the ones Tope had spoken to at the entrance of the estate, there seemed to be no other.

He thought he heard the distinct sound of dogs barking and the sound almost made him topple into the hedges decorating the path leading up to the doors. He didn't dare ask any question as she climbed up the small steps that led to the door and when she opened, he just followed, like she used to do for him, never questioning, only obeying whatever lies he whispered in her ears.

He blinked at the bright light in the empty foyer and when she kicked off her shoes, he hesitated and shrugged.

He didn't owe ARTEMIS any courtesy, not until he knew what they wanted with him. There were two stairways on either side of the foyer, each leading to different places. Tope made no attempt to ascend any, instead she sauntered to the adjoining room in the foyer where he could hear the sound of low conversation.

He just followed.

The other room was dimly lit unlike the adjoining foyer and it looked to be an office, three men in suits sat on sofas around the spacious office, a tall girl whose face was hooded by the darkness stood at the corner of the room and the last man sat at the head of the table, writing something on some papers.

There was a fireplace behind the sofas wedged between some bookshelves and the only other source of light was the lamp on the desk.

Sanmi shivered despite the fact that the room was warm, here he was in a room of powerful people and here he was, the only fuck up among them.

"Here he is," Tope announced at their entry. "Sanmi Ilori in the flesh." He detected bitterness in her tone.

The man behind the desk looked up sharply and recognition hit Sanmi in the chest.

"You." He said. "I saw you at our father's house some days ago. What the fuck?"

The man sighed, pressing a hand to his head. Sanmi knew he was tall behind that desk, perhaps even taller than he was. He looked younger than their father was but his eyes were ancient looking, like he had endured a thousand storms and come out broken.

He was perhaps the only middle aged man Sanmi knew that still had hair, others usually had receding hair lines or no hair at all. This man's hair was a buzz cut.

Tope rested her back on the wall and looked all to pleased to leave him standing confused.

"Is my father in trouble? If this is what this whole meeting is about then count me out, I don't give a shit about him." Sanmi snapped.

"Wow, not surprising there, considering you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself." Tope said with a scathing laugh, it earned her a sharp rebuke from the man behind the desk.

"You and I know that this meeting is more than your father, in fact, it has little to nothing to do about him." The man spoke quietly. "This is about the ORION Project."

"Please, sit." He said, gesturing to the chair before him, Sanmi took it, jerking his knees nervously when nobody spoke for a long while.

"The ORION Project was created over fifty years ago for a good purpose." The man said.

At that, Sanmi snorted. The man shook his head persistently.

"It might be hard to believe it, but it did. It was created alongside with a sister society called the ARTEMIS Project, and many of the Nigerian giants and heroes you know today were once members."

"It was created in secret." The shorter man on the sofa added, on a closer look, Sanmi noticed he looked oldest among them, he had a head full of white hair and he reminded Sanmi a little of Wole Soyinka. "I was one of the original members, Nigeria was on the brink of revolution, and in the light of independence and other issues, the most powerful decided to rule from the backstage, controlling certain events and fighting for the greater good."

Sanmi was left speechless, he had no idea ORION had existed for long.

"The organization had a special force, much more competent than the police and some of the greatest crime cases this country had seen was solved by them. ORION and ARTEMIS became something of a legend, like the Illuminati."

"Wait, is the Illuminati real?" Sanmi asked. He ignored Tope's derisive snort.

The older man just smiled.

"We had so much power that the ordinary man would have exploded at the sight, and the power only grew as the years passed. And the thing about power is that it is so easy to get drunk on it." He said.

The man behind the desk continued. "ORION and ARTEMIS began using that power for personal gain, altering elections and favouring whoever they wanted and whoever they could control the most. They broke their own oath, sic semper tyrannis."

"Thus unto tyrants." The girl at the corner of the room said in a raspy voice, Sanmi had half forgotten about her.

"The split between ORION and ARTEMIS was not pretty, two societies who worked together clashed over the abuse of power. ORION continued it's dirty work and gathered whatever power it could. ARTEMIS just ceased to exist, choosing to function behind the scenes and knowing it didn't have enough power to take ORION down as it wanted to."

"So we waited, and bade our time." The man finished.

"Until now." Sanmi added, he looked candidly at the man and wondered why he looked so familiar, it was like he was staring at a mirror of someone he knew.

"Until now, you're our ace card and we need your help." He said.

"You will be handsomely rewarded." The man closest to the desk said, he was just speaking for the first time.

If Sanmi were honorable, he'd rant about how he wasn't an object they could buy but he needed the money. He wanted to destroy ORION, no doubt, the money on it would be an added bonus.

"Who am I to complain about rewards?"

He saw something like approval shine in Tope's eyes before she averted her gaze.

"What did ORION do to you?" Sanmi asked the man behind the desk, try hard as ARTEMIS might to act like they were honorable, perhaps they were but the reasons behind this man's revenge was personal, He could tell in the way he spat out ORION'S name like a curse.

"They have something I want, apart from the fact that they fucked up my life." He smiled blandly, leaning back against his chair.

"I don't work with people whose names I don't know." Sanmi said, he wasn't even aware that somewhere in the past hour he had stopped craving a fix. He had stopped itching his arm.

"Tolu Kingston and the only name here you need to know." The man said, he gestured to the girl by the wall and then to Tope. "You know Tope, and this is Eche."

Sanmi looked to the three mysterious men who had refused to give their names and wondered if he was about to get caught in the middle of a war he knew nothing about. Two powerful societies hell bent on destroying each other.

"Fine, what do you want me to do?"

***

Amina drove like a woman possessed and Grace was afraid her driving would kill them before ORION got the chance to.

"Please, I didn't plan on dying on my birthday." Kendrick said, his voice unusually loud, close to a scream as she swerved dangerously past a moving car on the highway. Grace could have sworn her life flashed past her eyes.

She couldn't even summon surprise at Kendrick's announcement.

Amina rolled her eyes and turned to flash her devil may care grin that Grace had become accustomed to in the past hour. She didn't care that that single glance might have led them to their early graves.

"C'mon, what's that saying? Die hard." She said.

"I'd rather not die at all." Came Kendrick's reply, Grace thought he was lucky, he wasn't the one at the front seat, watching as Amina cheated death at every swerve.

At the free highway in sight, The Muslim girl hit the gas, going at a speed that made Grace's stomach turn.

"Let's see how fast this baby can go." Amina said in a half scream, Grace quivered in her seat.

She was sure that after today, she'd never be comfortable in any type of vehicle. At one point, the devil in pink removed her hands from the steering to check her lipstick in the mirror and Grace heard the shrillest, girliest cry she had ever heard come from Kendrick's lips, she might have laughed if she wasn't shaking herself.

Twenty minutes later when the car pulled over, Grace hurried out of her seatbelt to spew the contents of her stomach on the road. She remained bent for a couple of minutes and only looked up to see Amina leaning against her car with a self satisfied look on her pretty face.

Kendrick didn't look in better shape than she did, clutching his stomach with one hand and the other on his mouth.

"The both of you are weaklings, you won't survive a day with us with this kind of attitude." Amina said. "We're here."

Whatever Grace wanted to say died on her lips as she looked up from the grass, she hadn't even noticed when Amina zoomed into a street with the sign saying 'ORION Estate' but now, she gazed in wonder at the domed building made entirely of glass, the other buildings surrounding it and across the street was nothing short of magnificent, some of them mini skyscrapers bearing names of popular companies and one of them was a popular TV station in Nigeria.

The domed building was the most magnificent among others, there was a fountain of a cupid in the middle of the maze-like path leading up to the entrance.

"Wow," She heard Kendrick exhale in wonder, and wow didn't cut it.

"Yeah, it's pretty amazing." Amina said with a hint of pride in her tone. "This is ORION'S Lagos headquarters."

She began to walk, abandoning her car on the side of the road. Still disoriented, Grace followed brushing past the hedge walls of the maze until they reached the cupid fountain, Amina stopped to drop something in the water and when Grace sneaked a glance at the rippling water --- Amina had dropped a single coin.

She moved past, quickening her steps to catch up with Amina and Kendrick who were stepping into the wide open glass doors of the building.

She stumbled as she entered, almost losing her footing at the slippery floor. Grace looked up and her jaw dropped.

She barely registered Amina's words, she was seeing the brightly lit lobby, the people in white suits who spoke into communication devices like something from a SciFi movie and the ceiling to floor length computer on the left wall displaying different places at different times.

When she looked up, it was like looking up at a night sky, the lights in the expansive lobby wasn't generated by bulbs, the lights twinkled like stars, they were stars, they were constellations on the domed roof and she could make out the Orion himself, and Gemini and a million others and they seemed to wink down at her.

"Welcome to the ORION Project." Amina was saying.

It was then she knew, the ORION Project wasn't a bunch of stupid kids playing god, it was so much more dangerous than that and the shared glance with Kendrick told her he was thinking the same thing.