“Hi, mum.” Joshua greeted, he let himself be drawn into a hug and he caught a whiff of her signature flowery perfume. Despite his resolve to remain unfazed throughout his visit, he found himself being comforted by his mother’s hug.

She let him go a few seconds later than she usually did, her eyes roamed his form, something like concern in the pinch of her forehead and Joshua did the same assessment. Dinah Phillips looked well, beautiful even in her off-shoulder, flowing gown.

He took after her in looks, he had her dark, smooth skin, gap-teeth smile and build – she was taller than Remilekun had been – but Joshua had never for once felt like he knew the person his mother was. That in part might have been because he’d been raised by nannies being the last child. He’d never formed a bond with her, didn’t know if he loved her. He wasn’t even sure what she thought of him either, she was distant but she called him thrice a month, she had no expectations of him. She just received him as he was which Joshua thought was very strange.

“Korede, how are you?” She always referred to him by his Yoruba name.

“I’m fine.” He answered, shrugging off his jacket as he strode past her into the lounge-room. Unsurprisingly, the room was different from the last time he saw it. Dinah was one for spontaneity, she was always redecorating. The last time he’d been home, the walls had been a robin egg blue, now it was beige. The walls and the rugs, the sofas were brown.

He slung his jacket over his shoulder. “I’m sorry I’m late, I had a bit of business keeping me.” He had the habit of calling The Orion Project business, it was a poor disguise of the truth but his mother would rather ignore that Orion existed.

Dinah gave an elegant shrug of her shoulder. “I see.” She didn’t care, unsurprisingly. She liked to pretend The Orion Project didn’t exist; it was one thing he’d always wondered about. His mother had once been Orion affiliated; it was how she’d met his father. But she’d left the organization when she had her first child.

Joshua took a seat; she stood watching him until he felt uncomfortable.

“Is anything the matter?” He asked, raising his brows.

Dinah laughed. “It feels like forever since I’ve seen you.”

He blinked. “You saw me a few months ago.”

Joshua was instantly wary, his mother wasn’t cold by any means but she wasn’t like normal mothers, she didn’t tell him how much she missed him. She never even told him she loved him.

“Are you sick?” He blurted out.

There was a beat of silence, then laughter. His mother was laughing.

“Korede, only you. I’m allowed to miss you,” She said when she calmed down.

“We don’t have that kind of relationship,” He reminded her.

“What kind of relationship do we have?” She asked him.

“Why are we talking about this?” He asked, he was trying and failing to keep his impatience in check. He was tired and he needed to sleep more than anything.

There were phases to every visit to his mother since Remilekun died, he spent the many hours he could sleeping, then came the awkward dinner – his sisters spent the hour glaring at him. They knew he’d killed their father and they hated him.

Dinah didn’t care, she and Remilekun had been privately separated for twenty one years. In public they acted the perfect couple because of Remilekun’s political career. She had no love lost for her now dead husband.

“I’m going to sleep, I’m jetlagged.” Joshua stood, he walked to his mother and gave her cheek a kiss; a silent apology. He didn’t despise her and he hated to be rude. “See you at dinner tonight, happy birthday.”

*****

There was a lone car parked carelessly beside the Lady Justice statue, it was a red sports car and Amina knew the owner.

“What are you doing here?” Tope asked.

“Took the words right out of my mouth, Artemis sent you?” Amina asked coolly. She didn’t have a valid reason to dislike Tope who had practically grown up in Artemis like Amina had been groomed for Orion. There was the fact that for a long time, Artemis and Orion were rivals but Amina and Tope’s paths hadn’t crossed until Grace Ilori – now Kingston – entered the picture.

Amina didn’t dislike Tope; she even respected the other girl. The both of them did their organization’s dirty work, the secrets that could never get out. But she was wary of Tope.

“I presume Victoria finally told you.” Tope said, avoiding the question.

“Something like that.” Amina answered distractedly, she was scanning their environment with narrowed eyes, she’d been on campus hours past closing hours more times than she cared to count but she didn’t like how it always looked sinister in the dark, the security always put off the street lights when it was 11pm but they were lit now.

No doubt Tope had something to do with it. Amina shook her head; she’d changed her mind about hating Tope. She did hate her, for being so stupid.

“Why are the lights on?” It was Ire who asked. Amina had tried to ditch him back at the Dome but Joshua knew her too well. He must have called Ire and told him everything. Ire had caught Amina leaving the Dome without him.

Tope shrugged, she oozed calm through her clothes too. She was wearing black; black leather jacket and leggings. The only color on her was her ginger colored hair that looked a deep copper under the dim lights.

“I met them the way they are. I just did a sweep of the surroundings, there’s nobody around, and there hasn’t been anyone around in an hour. All the heat signatures are almost gone.”  Tope said, she waved the scanner in her hand. It looked like a slab of glass but it translated human presence to heat; red meant recent presence but dull yellow meant fading heat signatures.

The scanner was a recent technology and still being perfected but that was one of the purposes of The Orion Project and its sister organization: handling technology and possibly help perfect it before they were released to the army or the government.

“Why?” Ire asked. Amina was quickly finding that he was inquisitive and it annoyed her to no ends. Or maybe she was looking for reasons to be constantly annoyed with him. Amina didn’t particularly like liking people; especially people who might be competition.

But Ire’s questions always led to interesting theories so she didn’t shut him down every time he asked.

“Why does the universe exist? Why do we breathe air? There’s a lot of whys out here, be specific.” Amina drawled. Tope cast curious look at her. Ire was undeterred as always.

“Why are the lights on?” He repeated her question.

Amina deflated, there would be no interesting theory.

“I don’t know, someone needs to be sacked though.”

“You think one of the security guards or whoever is on shift forgot to do switch them off. If they did forget, don’t you think they’d remember as they walked home, the lights illuminating their path?” Ire asked.

“You think whoever is baiting us with Victor’s phone put them back on?” Tope asked, she was leaning against her car, seemingly in no hurry to get inside the Library where Victor’s phone was waiting to be taken.

“Why would they do that?” Amina hated being the one asking the questions.

“Maybe they did us a favor; it would be pitch black if they weren’t on. Maybe they want us to find something.”

Tope stretched. “In that case, let’s get to it.”

The two of them began to walk towards the three storey library.

“Tope, I’m sure you realize that just because the scanner cannot detect anyone outside here doesn’t mean somebody isn’t inside the library, waiting for us.” Ire warned. His steps came to a staggering halt when he heard the simultaneous cocking of guns; his eyes followed the first sound – beside him, Tope flashed her gun at him in a salute.

To his credit, he didn’t look behind him. It would be stupid not to know that Amina Khalid didn’t walk into anywhere well armed.

Tope had no care for quiet as she marched up the short stairway leading to the sliding front doors. She didn’t have to bother with trying to break in, the first attempt at opening it was successful. The doors had been left unlocked.

It was dark inside, the windows were open in the lobby, allowing dim moonlight from the end of the room to stream in, casting jagged shadows of the window on the floor.

“There was someone in here not too long ago, thirty minutes tops.” Tope said, she was waving the scanner around.

“There must be another way out,” Ire’s voice came. Surprisingly, his voice was calm, not a hint of worry in the steady timbre of it. Amina was a bit suspicious of it, new legacy members – no matter how aware they were of The Orion Project – was never this wary.

She remembered her own first mission; she’d had to infiltrate the house of a very important delegate from the United States because Orion was suspicious of the man’s intentions. She’d almost ruined the mission when she forgot to disable cameras in the penthouse and had triggered the alarm system on her way out.

She frowned in the dark thinking of it. She made a mental note to investigate Iremidayo Lawal more than the surface information she knew.

“I’m picking up the same heat signature in several places here, whoever was here was here a long time, and there was a lot of pacing.”

“Trying to find the perfect place to hide the phone.” Ire mused aloud.

Amina saw Tope tilt her head to the side, observing Ire.

“I’m going to call Victor’s phone,” Amina announced. She dialed Victor’s phone number on her own phone. His grinning phone flashed on her screen and Amina inhaled a sharp breath, she didn’t have too many people she called friends but Victor had been close to it. She would find his killer.

The room was deathly quiet.

“It’s not on this floor,” Tope said.

Ire shrugged. “Or it’s on silent.”

“Very helpful, Lawal.” Amina snapped, her glove clad hands shook as she switched on the flashlight setting on her phone. She brushed past him to the staircase. Even in the dark, she knew the law library like the back of her hand, it was Joshua’s favorite place on campus and he could almost always been found there if he wasn’t in a class.

She padded quietly up the stairs that led to a new hallway, the doors on both sides were labeled; each room was dedicated to different legal topics.

“Wait, Amina.” Ire called. He matched her hurried stride until he was walking side by side. “It might a long while to get into each room to search for this phone. We need to narrow down our options.”

“Let’s hear it, genius,” She said coldly.

Ire sighed. “I’m sorry.”

She barked a stiff laugh, breaking the fragile peace of the dark. “For what now?”

“That you have to do this. You kill people, but you constantly have to put yourself in the headspace of this person who murdered your friend, it must be exhausting.”

Amina didn’t blink. “I’m fine, stop psychoanalyzing me. In case you forgot your place, we are not friends and I don’t need your opinion except when I ask for it.”

“Is there a section dedicated to serial killers?” Ire asked instead.

“I don’t know, why would there be?”

For the first time, Ire looked close to impatience. “Because this is symbolic, the methods, the clues; our killer is trying to communicate something but not outrightly.”

“You read a lot of crime fiction.” Tope said mildly.

“I told him the same thing,” Amina muttered. She took out her phone and started to dial Victor’s phone again. She heard nothing.

“Or we could try what room isn’t locked. We met the library front doors opened.” Tope said. The sound of her footsteps receded to the beginning of the hallway; she began to twist each door knob. Amina and Ire followed suit.

On the fourth door, one knob twisted open under Amina’s grip. She flashed her phone at the door label: Islamic Law, it read.

“I guess the killer is Muslim,” Amina mocked Ire who stood beside her.

He only shrugged in response.

She entered the room first, then Ire followed. Tope last and she stood at the door, a second later, the room was bathed in bright, white electricity.

Amina walked in the middle of an aisle of shelves, Ire had planted that seed of doubt in her head. Why the Islamic Law section?

“The scanner is picking up the same heat signature; it’s all over this room.”

“More pacing,” Ire added. Amina turned her head in time to catch Ire and Tope share a little smile. An inside joke formed between the two of them.

She made a noise of irritation in her throat as she dialed Victor’s phone again. A muffled upbeat tune broke the silence. Amina’s heart skipped a beat. The phone was in here.

Amina followed the sound, her footsteps clicking on the tiled floor. The sound drew closer and then it was cut off by the call ending. She dialed it again.

She came to the end of the aisle before realizing that the sound was coming from the bookshelf to her left. Her fingers roamed the spine of each book, tracing them until she came to the middle and found Victor’s phone wedged between the middle of a hardback book like a bookmark. She frowned at the chapter it was in – an in depth paragraph on the punishment to be given to a rapist convicted by Sharia Law – castration. She wasn’t stupid, this was a message from the killer.

Fear slithered down her spine. So far, none of the killer’s victims had been castrated. Amina wasn’t sure if the message was a prediction or a warning.

“You found it.” Tope’s voice came from behind her. Amina barely contained the impulse to flinch.

“Yeah,” She answered, turning around to face the other girl. She found that the password that had been on the phone while Victor had been alive was now gone, allowing her to unlock the phone easily. “It seems that his iPhone has been wiped clean, all his downloaded apps are gone.”

“Other data?” Ire asked just as Amina tapped on the photos icon. All of them were gone too, except for one lone image.

She tapped on it and grimaced when the picture of a smirking woman filled the screen. She was topless, huge breasts bared in front of the camera. Amina squinted at the screen, there was just a hint of nervousness in the too wide smirk, it seemed like it was the first time the mysterious girl took a topless photo.

“Astaghfirullah, that was not what I was expecting to see.” Ire spluttered over her shoulder. Amina was too shocked to tease him about being a prude.

“Who is that?” Tope asked.

“I don’t know.” Amina wasn’t sure she could keep up with the twists anymore. “I mean -- maybe Victor got nudes from girls. Maybe he even sent a few, I don’t know. I didn’t keep track of his sex life.”

Ire made a sound but Tope cut him off.

“If you ask a why question, Amina might shoot you.” Tope said. “Come on; let’s get back to the Dome. Maybe Victoria might know who she is.”

Amina was grateful when Ire didn’t say anything else, she might have actually shot him if he did. It wasn’t hard to jump into conclusions: the phone being found in the middle of a chapter about castrating rapists, the topless photo. She was beginning to feel like maybe she didn’t know Victor anymore. Or maybe she never had in the first place.

Maybe Ire was right, she should be trying to understand whatever game the murderer was playing. She was tired of asking the questions that nobody had answers to.