Lagoon

^Prologue Moom!

She slices through the water, imagining herself a deadly beam of black light. The current parts against her sleek, smooth skin. If any fish gets in her way, she will spear it and keep right on going. She is on a mission. She is angry. She will succeed and then they will leave for good. They brought the stench of dryness, then they brought the noise and made the world bleed black ooze that left poison rainbows on the water’s surface. She often sees these rainbows whenever she leaps over the water to touch the sun. Inhaling them stings and burns her gills.

The ones who bring the rainbows are burrowing and building creatures from the land and no one can do anything about them. Except her. She’s done it before and they stopped for many moons. They went away. She is doing it again.

She increases her speed.

She is the largest predator in these waters. Her waters. Even when she migrates, this particular place remains hers. Everyone knows it. She was not born here but after all her migrations, she is happiest here. She suspects that this is the birthplace of one of those who created her.

She swims even faster.

She is blue-grey and it is night. Though she cannot see, she doesn’t need to. She knows where she is going. She is aiming for the thing that looks like a giant dead snake. She remembers snakes; she’s seen plenty in her past life. In the sun, this dead snake is the color of decaying seaweed with skin rough like coral.

Any moment now.

She is nearly there.

She is closing in fast.

She stabs into it.

From the tip of her spear, down her spine, to the ends of all her fins, she experiences red-orange bursts of pain. The impact is so jarring that she can’t move. But there is victory; she feels the giant dead snake deflating. It blows its black blood. Her perfect body goes numb and she wonders if she has died. Then she wonders what new body she will find herself inhabiting. She remembers her last form, a yellow monkey; even while in that body, she loved to swim. The water has always called to her.

All goes black.

She awakens. Gently but quickly, she pulls her spear out. The black blood spews in her face from the hole she’s made. She turns away from the bittersweet tasting poison. Now they will leave soon. As she happily swims away in triumph, the loudest noise she’s ever heard vibrates through the water.

MOOM!

The noise ripples through the ocean with such intensity that she tumbles with it, sure that it will tear her apart.

Then the water calms. Deeply shaken, she slowly swims to the surface. Head above the water, she moves through the bodies that glisten in the moonlight. Several smaller fish, jellyfish, even crabs, float, belly up or dismembered. Many of the smaller creatures have probably simply been obliterated. But she has survived.

She swims back to the depths. She’s only gone down a few feet when she smells it. Clean, sweet, sweet, sweet! Her senses are flooded with sweetness, the sweetest water she’s ever breathed. She swims forward, tasting the water more as it moves through her gills. In the darkness, she feels others around her. Other fish. Large, like herself, and small… so some small ones have survived.

Now, she sees many. There are even several sharp-toothed ones and mass killers. She sees this clearly now because something large and glowing is down ahead. A great shifting bar of glimmering sand. This is what is giving off the sweet, clean water. She hopes the sweetness will drown out the foul blackness of the dead snake she pierced. She has a feeling it will. She has a very good feeling.

The sun is up now, sending its warm rays into the water. She can see everyone swimming, floating, wiggling right into the glowing thing below. There are sharks, sea cows, shrimps, octopus, tilapia, codfish, mackerel, flying fish, even seaweed. Creatures from the shallows, creatures from the shore, creatures from the deep, all here. A unique gathering. What is happening here?

But she remains where she is. Waiting. Hesitating. Watching. It is not deep but it is wide. About two hundred feet below the surface. Right before her eyes, it shifts. From blue to green to clear to purple-pink to glowing gold. But it is the size, profile and shape of it that draws her. Once, in her travels, she came across a giant world of food, beauty and activity. The coral reef was blue, pink, yellow and green, inhabited by sea creatures of every shape and size. The water was delicious and there was not a dry creature in sight. She lived in that place for many moons before finally returning to her favorite waters. When she traveled again, she was never able to find the paradise she’d left.

Now here in her home is something even wilder and more alive than her lost paradise. And like there, the water here is clean and clear. She can’t see the end of it. However, there is one thing she is certain of: what she is seeing isn’t from the sea’s greatest depths or the dry places. This is from far, far away.

More and more creatures swim down to it. As they draw closer, she sees the colors pulsate and embrace them. She notices an octopus with one missing tentacle descending toward it. Suddenly, the octopus grows brilliant pink-purple and straightens all its tentacles. Then right before her eyes, it grows its missing tentacle back and what looks like boney spokes erupt from its soft head. It spins and flips and then shoots off, down into one of the skeletal caves of the undulating coral-like thing below.

When a golden blob ascends to meet her, she doesn’t move to meet it. But she doesn’t flee either. The sweetness she smells and its gentle movements are soothing and non-threatening. When it communicates with her, asking question after question, she hesitates. It doesn’t take long for her apprehension to shift to delight. What good questions it asks. She tells it exactly what she wants.

Everything is changing.

She’s always loved her smooth, grey-blue skin but now it is impenetrable, its new color golden like the light the New People give off. The color that reminds her of another life when she could both enjoy the water and endure the sun and air.

Her sword-like spear is longer and so sharp at the tip that it sings. They made her eyes like the blackest stone and she can see deep into the ocean and high into the sky. And when she wants to, she can make spikes of cartilage jut out along her spine as if she is some ancestral creature from the deepest ocean caves of old. The last thing she requests is to be three times her size and twice her weight.

They make it so.

Now she is no longer a great swordfish. She is a monster.

Despite the FPSO Mystras’s loading hose leaking crude oil, the ocean water just outside Lagos, Nigeria, is now so clean that a cup of its salty-sweet goodness will heal the worst human illnesses and cause a hundred more illnesses not yet known to humankind. It is more alive than it has been in centuries and it is teeming with aliens and monsters.

^{Chapter 1} Fist

It was an eerie moment as Adaora and the two strange men arrived at that spot, right before it happened. Exactly three yards from the water at exactly 11.55 p.m., 8 January 2010. Adaora came from the north side of the beach. The tall veiled man came from the east. The bloodied man wearing army fatigues from the west. They ambled in their general directions, eyeing each other as it became clear that their paths would intersect.

Only Adaora hesitated. Then, like the others, she pressed on. She was a born and raised Lagosian and she was wearing nicely fitted jeans and a sensible blouse. She’d spent more time walking this beach than probably both of these two men combined.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and trained her eyes straight ahead. About a quarter of a mile away was open water where the Atlantic overflowed its banks. When bad things happened, her feet always brought her here, to Lagos’s Bar Beach.

In many ways, Bar Beach was a perfect sample of Nigerian society. It was a place of mixing. The ocean mixed with the land and the wealthy mixed with the poor. Bar Beach attracted drug dealers, squatters, various accents and languages, seagulls, garbage, biting flies, tourists, all kinds of religious zealots, hawkers, prostitutes, johns, water-loving children and their careless parents. The beachside bars and small restaurants were the most popular hangout spots. Bar Beach’s waters were too wild for any serious swimming. Even the best swimmers risked a watery death by its many rip currents.

Adaora had removed her sandals. It was deep night and this was probably a bad idea. So far, however, she hadn’t stepped on any pieces of wood, rusty nails, broken glass or sharp stones. Her need to feel the cool sand between her toes at this moment outweighed the risk. Despite its trash, there was still something sacred about Bar Beach.

On 12 June 1993, the day of the most democratic election in Nigeria’s history, she’d come here with her father and watched him shed tears of joy. On 23 June, her mother brought her here because her father and uncles were at home cursing and shouting over the military annulling those same elections.

She came here to escape the reality that her best friend was sleeping with her biology professor to earn a passing grade. On the day she received her PhD in marine biology from the University of Lagos, she came here to thank the Powers That Be for helping her stay sane enough to finish her degree (and for the fact that she hadn’t had to sleep with anyone to earn it).

Last year, she’d come here to weep when her father was killed along with thirty others during a botched robbery of a luxury bus on the Lagos–Benin Expressway, one of Nigeria’s many, many, many dangerous roads. The thieves had demanded that all the passengers get off the bus and lie in the momentarily empty road. In their stupidity, the thieves hadn’t anticipated the truck (speeding to avoid armed robbers) that would run over everyone including the thieves.

And now Adaora was here at Bar Beach because her loving perfect husband of ten years had hit her. Slapped her really hard. All because of a hip-hop concert and a priest. At first, she’d stood there stunned and hurt, cupping her cheek, praying the children hadn’t heard. Then she’d brought her hand up and slapped him right back. Shocked into rage, her husband leaped on her. But Adaora had been ready for him. By this time, she wasn’t thinking about the children.

She didn’t know how long she and her husband had scuffled like wild dogs on the floor. And the way the fight had ended, it wasn’t… normal. One minute they’d been brawling and then the next, her husband was mysteriously stuck to the floor, his wrists and ankles held down as though by powerful magnets. As he’d screamed and twisted, Adaora had got up, grabbed her keys and run out of the house. Thankfully, their Victoria Island home was only minutes from Bar Beach.

She rubbed her swollen cheek. Even on her dark skin, the redness would be visible. She set her jaw, and tried to ignore the two men coming from her right and left as she walked toward the ocean. After what she’d just dealt with, she wasn’t about to let any man get in her way. Still, as she got closer, she ventured a glance at the two of them.

She frowned.

The man in the military uniform looked like he’d already seen “plenty plenty pepper”. He reminded Adaora of a whipped lion. Blood dribbled from his nose and he wasn’t bothering to wipe it away. And half his face was swollen. Yet he had a hard, unshaken look in his eye. The other man was a tall, dark-skinned scarecrow of a fellow wearing a black and white veil. Maybe he was a Muslim. He was scrutinizing the approaching beat-up-looking soldier more than he was her.

Each of them walked in their respective straight lines. Each heading toward each other. Adaora squinted at the man in the veil. What is it about him? she thought, as she walked toward the sea. Something. But she didn’t slow her gait. And so the three of them met. The tall man was the first to speak, “Excuse—”

“Tell me this is a joke,” Adaora interrupted, as she realized what it was about the man. “Are… are you… can I ask you a…”

The tall man, looking deeply annoyed, removed his veil and sighed. “I am,” he said, cutting her off. “But don’t call me Anthony Dey Craze. I’m just out for a post-concert stroll. Tonight, just call me Edgar.”

“Na woa!” she exclaimed, laughing, reaching up to touch her throbbing cheek. “You wore that scarf on your album cover, didn’t you?” After what had happened at home, it was surprising and felt good to laugh. “I was supposed to be at your concert tonight!”

At some point, her husband Chris had changed his mind about “letting” her go to the Anthony Dey Craze concert with her best friend Yemi because he’d barred her way when she’d tried to leave. “Since when do I need your permission to do anything, anyway?” she’d said to her husband, taken aback. Then came the slap.

“Please,” the bloody military man said, snatching his green beret off his smoothly shaven head and squeezing it in his shaking hands. “Do either of you have a mobile phone? I must call my father. I will pay you well.”

Adaora barely registered his words; she was now really looking him over. Up close he looked not only injured but in deep, deep distress. The blood running from his nose glistened in the dim mix of street and moonlight. She took her hand from her burning cheek and reached out to him.

“Hey, buddy,” Anthony said, looking at the military man with concern. He’d brought out his mobile phone. “You’re bleeding, o! Do you need help? Are you all—”

“No!” he snapped.

Adaora jumped back, unconsciously bringing her fists up.

“I’m not all right! Do I LOOK all right?” He motioned for Anthony’s mobile phone. “I need to make this phone call right now! My fam—”

BOOM!

Anthony dropped his mobile phone as all three of them dropped to the ground, their hands over their heads. Adaora found herself looking from the bleeding military man to Anthony in terror. It was not the type of sound one heard on Bar Beach, or in any part of Lagos. On Bar Beach, the loudest thing was typically some woman shouting at a man or someone’s old car backfiring on a nearby road. This booming sound was so deep Adaora could feel it in her chest and it rattled her teeth. It left cotton in her ears. It was so wide that it seemed to have its own physical weight. Adaora glanced around and saw that the noise pushed everything to the ground. A few feet away, two seagulls dropped from the night sky to the sand, stunned. Something black bounced off Anthony’s head and fell beside him.

“Bat?” Adaora asked. Everything was muffled, as if she were speaking underwater.

Anthony looked at it closely. The bat was furry-bodied and beady-eyed with black wings. It wiggled a bit, still alive. He scooped up the poor creature and grabbed Adaora’s hand. He nudged the military man’s shoulder as he cradled the stunned animal.

“Come on!” he shouted. “That came from the water! We should get away from here!”

But something was happening to the ocean. The waves were roiling irregularly. Each time the waves broke on the beach, they reached further and further up the sand. Then a four-foot wave rose up. Adaora was so fascinated that she just stood there staring. Anthony stopped pulling her and pushing the military man. Blood ran into Agu’s eyes as he tried to focus his gaze on the darkness of the water. The wave was heading right for them. Fast and quiet as a whisper. It was closer to ten feet tall now. Finally, the three of them turned and ran. The fist of water was faster. Adaora grabbed the military man’s hand. Anthony threw the bat to what he hoped was safety, leaped and grabbed Adaora’s legs just as the water fell at them.

PLASH!

The salty water stung Adaora’s eyes and pulled at her garments as it sucked her toward the sea. Her hands scrambled at the sand as it collapsed beneath her, the pebbles raking at her skin, the sea sucking at her legs. She could still feel the desperate grasp of the military man’s hand and Anthony’s arms around her legs. She wasn’t alone. In the blackness, she could see some of the lights from the bars and the nearby buildings. They were flickering and growing smaller and smaller.

Bubbles tickled her ears as she tried to twist to the surface. But it was as if the ocean had opened its great maw and swallowed her and the two men. She couldn’t breathe. She heard bubbles and the roar and rush of water against her ears. And she could feel the tightness of her laboring lungs and the suction of the water. Aman iman, Adaora weakly thought. The phrase meant “water is life” in the Tuareg language of Tamashek. She’d once worked with a Tuareg man on a diving expedition. “Aman iman,” had been his answer when Adaora asked how a man of the Sahara Desert became an expert scuba diver. Despite the pain in her lungs now and the swallowing darkness, she smiled. Aman iman.

The three of them grasped each other. Down, down, down, they went.

^{Chapter 2} The Boy and the Lady

Only two people on the beach witnessed the watery abduction of Adaora and the two men. One was a young boy. Just before the boom, his guardian had been standing several feet away having a heated discussion with the owner of one of the shacks selling mineral, mainly orange Fanta and Coca-Cola. The boy was staring at something else. His stomach was growling, but he forgot about his hunger for the moment.

In the moonlight, he couldn’t clearly see the creature, but as it walked out of the water even he knew it was not human. All his mind would register was the word “smoke”. At least until the creature walked up the quiet beach and stepped into the flickering light from one of the restaurants. By then it had become a naked dark-skinned African woman with long black braids. She reminded the boy of a woman whose purse he’d once stolen.

She’d stood there for several moments, watching the three people who came from three different directions and ended up standing before each other. Then the strange woman creature silently ran back to the water and dove in like Mami Wata.

Rubbing his itchy head, the boy decided that he was seeing things, as he often did when he grew confused. He flared his nostrils and breathed through his mouth as he tried to focus back on reality. The great booming sound rattled his brain even more. Then came the wave that looked like the hand of a powerful water spirit. The boy saw it take the three people, one who was a woman and two who were men. And just before it did, he saw one of those people throw a black bird into the air that caught itself and flew into the night.

Nevertheless, he could not speak or even process any of this information for he was both mute and mentally handicapped. He stared at where the three people had been and now were not. Then he smiled, saliva glistening in the left corner of his mouth, because somewhere deep in his restrained brain, he had a profound understanding that things around him were about to change forever and he liked this idea very much.

The other witness of the abduction was a young woman named Fisayo. She was a hard-working, book-reading secretary by day and a prostitute by night. She, too, noticed the creature woman who emerged from the water. And she, too, thought the word “smoke”, but she also thought “shape-shifter”.

“I am seeing the devil,” she whispered to herself. She turned away and dropped to her knees. She was wearing a short tight skirt and the sand was warm and soft on her shins and kneecaps.

She prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive her for all her sins and take her to heaven, for surely the rapture was here. When the boom came, she shut her eyes and tried to pray harder. The pain of death would be her atonement. But deep down she knew she was a sinner and there was nothing that would ever wipe that away. She got to her feet and turned around just in time to see the woman and two men snatched up by a huge fist of water. Just before it happened, one of them had released something black and evil into the air like a poison.

She stood there, staring at the spot where they had been and no longer were. She waited for the water to take her, too. The fist had to be the hand of Satan, and she was one of the biggest sinners on earth. Oh the things she’d done, so many, many times. Sometimes it was just to fill her empty belly. She trembled and started sweating. Her armpits prickled. She hated her tiny skirt, tight tank top, red pumps, the itchy straight-haired brown wig on her head. When nothing else happened, she went to the nearest bar and ordered a cranberry and vodka. She would anxiously tell her next john, a businessman from the United States, what she had seen. But he wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He was more interested in filling her mouth than watching it flap with useless dumb words.

But she wouldn’t forget. And when it all started, she would become one of the loudest prophets of doom in Lagos.

^{Chapter 3} Miri

The breeze cooled Adaora’s wet back through her drying blouse. She heard people nervously talking, some in Yoruba, one in Igbo, two in Hausa, most in Pidgin English.

“Hurry, biko-nu! Make we go from here!” someone said.

“I don’ know. Maybe na suicide bomb, o!”

There were clicks and clacks from people packing and locking up, rushing to close shop and bar. And there was the sound of the surf. She seized up. For the first time in her life, that sound scared her. Someone touched her shoulder and she flinched.

“Awake,” a female voice said.

Adaora opened her eyes and sat up quickly. She tried to stand but fell back to the sand, dizzy and light-headed. “Don’t,” she muttered. “Don’t touch me.” Then she saw the other two lying in the sand, still sleeping or passed out or drugged, whatever they had done to them. Nearby, a dim streetlight flickered. Most of the other lights were completely out, leaving Bar Beach in darkness.

“I won’t,” it said. Adaora squinted at it in the flickering light… no, not “it”, “her”. The woman looked like someone from Adaora’s family – dark-skinned, broad-nosed, with dark brown thick lips. Her bushy hair was as long as Adaora’s, except where Adaora had many, many neat shoulder-length dreadlocks, this one had many, many neat brown braids that crept down her back.

Adaora turned to the water as the breeze blew in her face. She inhaled. The air smelled as it always smelled, fishy and salty with a hint of smoke from the city. But the water was way too high. Nearly ten feet up the beach! Only a foot from her toes. In the darkness, bar and restaurant owners and employees with battery-powered torches looked fearfully at the water as they rushed about closing up. All their customers must have fled. They should be more than a little afraid, Adaora thought, shutting her eyes and trying to gather her faculties. How much time has passed? Hours? A few minutes?

“What’s done is done,” the woman said. “We are here. Now…”

“Now you… you people should leave,” Adaora said, slurring her words.

“No. We stay.”

Adaora looked at the woman and couldn’t bring herself to feel irritated. She shut her eyes again, forcing herself to think analytically, calmly, rationally, like the scientist she was. Many things depended on how she reacted, she knew. But when she looked at the woman, an unscientific thought occurred to her.

There was something both attractive and repellent about the woman, and it addled Adaora’s senses. Her hair was long; her many braids perfect and shiny, yet clearly her own hair. She had piercing brown eyes that gave Adaora the same creepy feeling as when she looked at a large black spider. Her mannerisms were too calm, fluid and… alien. Adaora’s husband Chris would instantly hate this woman for all of these reasons. To him, this woman would be a “marine witch”. Her husband believed there were white witches, physical witches and marine witches. All were evil, but the marine witch was the most powerful because she could harness water, the very substance that made up 70 per cent of an adult’s body and 75 per cent of a child’s. Water is life, she thought, yet again.

Adaora grinned. She could easily pass the woman off as her cousin. Scaring the shit out of her husband was the perfect way to get back at him. And she had a lab in the basement. She could run some simple tests on this… “woman” there. It would be an easy, uncomplicated, private way to determine if what was happening was real and not just some stress-fueled bizarre hallucination.

“What should I call you?” Adaora asked, sighing and rubbing her forehead. She touched her cheek. Still swollen and sore.

The woman paused and then smiled knowingly. “I like the name Miri?”

Adaora blinked, surprised. She’d been thinking this exact name. It really could read her mind. The name “Miri” would surely drive her husband that much more insane; it would be the icing on the cake. Still, something in Adaora resisted. The name needed to be more subtle than the Igbo word for “water”.

“No,” Adaora said. “What of the name…” She paused as the name “Ayodele” came to mind. It was a Yoruba name and it would fill Chris with suspicion, since Adaora was Igbo. Also, Adaora had had a childhood friend named Ayodele who’d been killed while trying to cross a busy street when she was eight years old. She’d loved Ayodele. She frowned at the woman. “Do you know what name I’m thinking of right now?”

It… she smiled. “No.”

Adaora’s husband would remember her friend Ayodele from when they were kids, too. He’d cried just as much as Adaora when it happened. The name would trouble him more than “Miri”. Yes.

“You need a place to stay,” Adaora said.

“Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”

“Fine,” Adaora said, her voice hardening. “So you are Ayodele, then.”

^{Chapter 4} What Would You Do?

They all went. Adaora, Anthony, Ayodele and Agu… Adaora knew the soldier’s name now. She knew plenty about both Anthony and Agu, and they knew plenty about her. Adaora drove.

What would you do if this happened to you?

The soldier Agu had woken soon after Adaora had given the creature a name. His still swollen face was crusty with sea salt and blood that must have seeped from his wounds and dried after they’d been returned. All he could think about was his family who he said was in the village. “Please, do you have a mobile phone?” he’d asked Adaora again.

“It’s in my car,” she said. “Let’s wake Anthony up first.”

Agu had pressed his head with his big hands and shut his eyes. Images of being in that foreign place under the sea where for some reason he could breathe and had to answer a thousand questions… questions that made him laugh, cry and think, kept trying to cloud his thoughts. If you were Agu, would you return to your barracks where you’d encounter your fellow soldiers who had just beaten you up after you tried to stop their assault of a woman? When your superior had threatened to send hired thugs to kill the only family you had? He did not wish to return to his barracks, not right away.

Anthony woke as Adaora softly patted his cheek. In the dim, flickering light, he’d looked into her face and thought she was a fish woman because of her rope-like dreadlocks and intense eyes smeared with runny mascara. Then he’d remembered the music from under the sea in the reef-like place and how he could hear it too, and how they’d called him “brother”. He had several brothers, and being called one reminded him of home. And this woman looking at him now had been there with him and the beaten soldier. He was glad they were all alive. He was also glad to find his mobile phone in the sand a few feet away.

All three of them stayed together. All three of them were in. It was 9 January and approaching 1 a.m.

^{Chapter 5} The Lab

“Hurry,” Adaora said, flicking the light switch on and moving quickly down the stairs. “My husband sleeps heavily but my children wake up at the slightest noise.” She moved to the far side of the lab and flipped on the lights there, too. This was her personal space and she felt odd bringing strangers into it, especially one that was so… strange. Normally, no one but her eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son came down here. Of late, her husband avoided what he now called her ‘‘witch’s den’’ at all costs.

“Shut your eyes,” Chris had told her years ago on the evening Adaora returned home from her first day of teaching at the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research. Both of them giggled as he led her down the stairs. When she opened her eyes, she had to sit down right there on the steps. He’d transformed the place.

Chris was a wealthy, very busy, accountant for an international textile company. The job took him all over the world. For him to spend enough time at home to gather and work with his equally busy colleague friends to build her a lab was an act of the truest love. There were bookshelves packed with her textbooks, monographs and journals, a place for her to hang her diving gear, a brand new computer with a huge widescreen high-definition television as a monitor and a high-speed, generally reliable, internet connection; a large solid lab table and a powerful microscope, plenty of test tubes, racks and slides, and a giant flat screen television in the back for when she needed to relax. In the middle of the room, he’d even installed a 200-gallon tropical fish tank full of wiggling sea anemones, darting butterfly fish, busy shrimps, sneaky crabs, and three large confused-looking cowfish.

“The institute can’t give you everything you need,” he’d said that day. “But I can.”

Adaora had been speechless. Back then, he’d loved her so much. But that was a long time ago. Before the children. Before the stress. Before Chris’s traveling became too frequent, and took him overseas for more than a third of the year. Before his miserable mother started meddling in their marriage. Before the turbulence-plagued plane flight that scared Chris so profoundly that two days later when he was passing a prayer tent, he decided to become “born again” (something that made even his meddling mother frown). Before the fasting. Before the jealousy and accusations.

The woman Adaora had named Ayodele came slowly down the stairs, Anthony and Agu a few steps behind her.

“Please. Sit down,” Adaora said.

Ayodele went straight to the computer and sat in the black leather chair. Anthony and Agu looked at each other and cautiously followed Ayodele into the room, afraid to get too close.

“Nice crib,” Anthony said.

“Yeah,” Agu said. “What is it your husband does, again?”

“He’s an accountant,” she said, as she rummaged around in her equipment drawer. “I am a professor at UNILAG. So we do OK.”

Agu nodded as he looked at some of the books in the cases.

When Ayodele touched the computer’s flat screen monitor with a graceful finger, the background picture (of a menacing dragon-like lionfish in a blue ocean) flickered the slightest bit. “You people have your own…” – she giggled, a creepy dove-like sound that raised the hairs on Adaora’s arms – “little inventions.”

“Yes,” Adaora said. “That’s a computer. Your, eh, people don’t have them?”

Ayodele laughed at this.

“They don’t need them,” Anthony muttered, as he tiredly rubbed a hand over his face and put his veil over his head.

Adaora set a clean slide beside her microscope. She glanced at Ayodele and hesitated. Every time she looked at her, there was a disorienting moment where she was not sure what she was seeing. It lasted no more than a half-second, but it was there. Then she was seeing Ayodele the “woman” again.

Adaora cleared her throat and pushed these observations, along with thoughts of what she’d seen in the water, from her mind. “Come here, Ayodele,” she said. “I… I’d like to take a skin sample.” As she handed Ayodele a Q-tip, Adaora visualized the size, shape and color of magnified cheek cells. It had always been like this. When she was afraid, nervous or uncomfortable, all she had to do was focus on the science to feel balanced again. It was no different now.

“You don’t believe I am what I said I am?” Ayodele asked, scrutinizing the Q-tip. She held it up and touched the soft, white, cottony bud.

“I… I do. But I… it’s important that I see for myself,” she said. And make sure I am seeing what I know I’m seeing and know what I know I know, she thought frantically. “Then we can get you something to eat. Do… do you eat?” She cringed at how silly she sounded.

“Eat?” Ayodele paused, seeming to think it over. “OK.”

Adaora took a Q-tip, opened her mouth and rubbed the tip on the inside of her cheek. “Swab the inside of your mouth like this,” she said.

As soon as Ayodele did so and handed the Q-tip to Adaora, Ayodele went to the fish tank and stood beside Anthony.

“I should be back in the club, chale,” Anthony said, staring at a butterfly fish as it darted by. “I only went out for some fresh air. I had a headache.”

“Too much rhythm?” Ayodele asked.

He frowned, turning to look her in the eye. She smiled back, pleasantly. Always so pleasant.

“I know why the Elders like you,” she said.

Anthony held her gaze a bit longer, then turned back to the aquarium. “Can you change into one of those?” Anthony asked Ayodele, pointing at a red shrimp with white stripes.

“I can,” she said, pressing her face against the tank. “You know that.”

Anthony nodded. “You can change yourselves but you can change the fish, too, right?”

“Precisely,” Ayodele said. “We give them whatever they want.”

“Damn,” he said. Then he nodded with a small smile. “Respect.”

Adaora slipped the slide onto the microscope’s stage and took a look. It didn’t take long to see what she needed to see. She switched to the lens of the greatest magnification just to make sure. She chuckled, feeling an ache of excitement deep in her belly. “Shit!” she whispered.

Again she pushed away crowding memories of what she’d witnessed under the sea. How she’d been floating and breathing beneath the water in whatever contraption they’d built down there on the reef-like structure. How one of them had touched her arm and she watched as it became coated with lovely iridescent fish scales and her fingers webbed together. How the sensation of the changing felt more like rigorous vibration than pain. How they’d known that that was what she wanted so that she could horrify her husband. How easily they’d changed her back. She squeezed her eyes shut. Focus, focus, focus, she thought.

Agu sat on the stool beside her.

“So, what do you see?” Agu asked.

Adaora stepped aside. “You tell me,” she said, motioning to the microscope.

He put his eye to the lens.

“Do you know what cells normally look like?” Adaora asked.

“Yes. I remember from secondary school.”

As he looked, Adaora watched Ayodele gazing at the fish. She met Anthony’s eyes and she gave him a slight nod. He cocked his head and mouthed, “This is crazy.”

Adaora nodded in agreement. They both shifted their gazes to Ayodele, who was still looking at the fish.

“Well, Agu?” Adaora asked, after a minute. “What do you see?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, still looking.

“You… you see them, right?”

“Tiny balls? Moving around and sort of… vibrating?”

Adaora nodded vigorously. “Yes! That’s her skin… magnified.”

Agu’s battered face held a deeply uncertain expression. “But…”

“I don’t think it is cellular matter.” She leaned against the lab table.

Agu touched his bruised nose. “Does that mean…”

“One thousand times!” Adaora whispered loudly, ignoring Agu. “That’s how strong the magnification is. She’s made of tiny, tiny, tiny, metal-like balls. It’s got to be metal. Certain types of metal powders look like that at two hundred times. I think that’s why she can… change shape like that. You saw how… how… when we were…”

Agu wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. I saw.”

“The balls aren’t fixed together as our cells are,” Adaora said.

Agu just looked at her blankly.

“I always wondered,” Adaora continued. “Much of the world’s most famous extraterrestrial material, mainly meteorites, has fallen right here. In Nigeria.” She was speaking more to herself now. “Last year a big one fell in Tarkwa Bay. I was testing the water for pollution when it happened…” She started looking around. “I should write all this down!” She grabbed a pen and paper and started jotting down notes, focusing on each word she wrote. Not wanting to focus on Agu. If she focused on him, her world would fall apart. She could feel him looking at her. She took a deep breath, fighting down tears as she thought about the fight with her husband. “So… what happened to your face?” she asked.

“It was punched.”

“I see that, but by who?”

“By my ahoa,” he said. When Adaora looked at him questioningly, he said, “My ahoa… my comrades, my fellow soldiers.” He sucked his teeth. “Don’t act like you didn’t listen in during my phone call in the car.”

She had, all of them had. Agu had used her phone to call his parents in the small town of Arondizuogu. He’d told them to leave their home immediately and hide with relatives because hired thugs were going to descend on them. “Tell Kelechi and his wife, too. Leave the yams! You can grow those back but you cannot grow your life back, o!”

Adaora had felt embarrassed and sorry for Agu when he handed back her phone. And for minutes, no one in the car said a word, not even Ayodele.

“But what did you do?” Adaora asked now. “Why are they coming after your family?”

Agu looked at her with his fully open eye and squinted with his swollen right one. “I tried to stop one of my own ahoa from raping a woman.” He paused, a disgusted look on his face as he remembered. “We’d pulled her over on the Lagos–Benin Expressway. This fine woman; she was drunk. Lance Corporal Benson, my superior, he got out of hand with her. I… I punched him in the gut.” He paused, frowning. Then he looked into Adaora’s eyes. “He went flying like a sack of feathers!”

Adaora went cold. “What? What do you mean?”

Agu nodded. “Exactly! I’m not a weak man. I exercise, keep myself in shape. And I’ve had my share of fights. But… he went flying. Because I hit him. Then for a while, he didn’t move. The rest of my ahoa descended on me for that. They beat me like a dog and left me unconscious on the side of the road. I must have lost my mobile phone then, so—”

The sound of the television interrupted their conversation. Anthony had switched it on for Ayodele, who had moved to the sofa. She sighed softly when the picture appeared.

On the TV, as a breaking news banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen, a newscaster in fashionable dress pants and a white blouse stood on what could only have been Bar Beach. The wind was blowing and military personnel behind her were setting up barriers.

“Witnesses on Bar Beach are saying that just after 9 p.m. they heard an earth-shaking explosion that seemed to roll up from the water like a tidal wave,” the newscaster was saying. “People are reporting broken windows in cars and buildings. A few people say they’re even experiencing hearing loss. There’s no sign of terrorist activity yet, but here to discuss the issue is Lance Corporal Benson Shehu, who is on the scene.”

Beside her stood a stern-looking Hausa man in sharp military dress, his green beret perched on his head like a fixture. He rested a hand on his hip, as if he were working hard to stand up straight.

Agu pointed at the television. “That’s him! That’s my—”

“Shhh shhh shhh,” Anthony hissed, frowning.

“You also happen to be the President’s nephew,” the newscaster on TV added.

“Yes, but that is mere coincidence and irrelevant to the issue,” Benson snapped. He winced visibly, pressing below his ribs.

The newscaster nodded as Benson looked into the camera and squinted as if he were looking into the sun. “There is no destruction or, or anything like that. It was not a bomb. It seems to be some sort of sonic blast. Erm… noise from the breaking of the sound barrier. Something like that. This is not a suicide bomber. We have never had that nonsense in Lagos. But we are treating this as an attack,” he said.

“An attack? Against Nigeria?”

“Yes,” he said, turning to the newscaster.

“By who?”

“We don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know anything. But did the Americans know who destroyed their World Trade Towers when it first happened?”

The newscaster nodded. “Good point. But that brings me back to my question about the President. Where is he? Will he be giving—”

“By morning, we hope to know more,” Benson interrupted. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “In this case, where there is noise, there is a source. For now, we are advising people to continue going about their business. Act normal, no need for wahala…”

“They don’t know anything,” Adaora said with a wave of her hand, returning to her microscope.

“I agree,” Agu said, following her back to the counter. “And if Benson did, he’s too dumb to process it. The President needs to come back. The last person they want in charge of what’s happening on Bar Beach is Benson, trust me. Why is he the one they’re interviewing?”

Adaora shrugged. “Looks like you did his body some damage, though.”

“The man earned it.”

“At least you know you didn’t kill him.”

Agu looked into Adaora’s microscope as she scribbled more notes in her notebook.

“They can be anything and are nothing,” she said, as she wrote. “Basically, she’s a shape-shifter.” She smiled. “I wish my grandmother were alive to see this.”

“Why’s that?”

“She was always sure the markets were full of them, witches, shape-shifters, warlocks, things like that. This would blow her mind, sha.” She suddenly snapped her fingers, making Agu jump. “Ah-ah, what kind of technology must they have?”

“Do they even need it?” Agu asked. “I mean, in a way, they are technology. They can cha—”

Someone came running down the stairs.

“What is… Adaora, who are these people?” Adaora’s husband Chris demanded. He still wore the jeans and wrinkled dress shirt he’d been wearing when they’d fought. As he moved down the stairs, he cut an intimidating figure, despite the fact that he’d been eating nothing but bread and water for the last two weeks. He slipped on the bottom step, cursing as he grabbed the banister and caught himself. Adaora groaned, mortified and feeling ill. Anthony didn’t bother hiding his amusement as he laughed aloud and muttered, “Kwasiasem. Nonsense.”

Chris glared at Agu, who was standing beside Adaora. Agu stepped away from her and Adaora flinched.

“While I’m asleep?” Chris said, striding up to Adaora. “In my own house? With our children right upstairs?!”

Adaora spotted her five-year-old son Fred and eight-year-old daughter Kola peeking down from the top of the stairs. “Jesus,” Adaora whispered. She wanted to bring their presence to Chris’s attention but he was in too much of a rage. Adaora had managed to hide their physical altercation hours ago from the kids; she didn’t want to push her luck. Even if he didn’t hit her in front of them, he might bring the children into the argument. He’d done it a year ago, calling Kola into the room to ask her opinion about Adaora’s refusal to stop listening to “filthy types of music”. Poor Kola, who didn’t want to speak against her father or her mother, had begun to cry. No, Adaora thought now. Better he not notice the children.

Behind her children crouched Philomena, the house girl, who should have been keeping them upstairs. A soft-spoken, chubby girl in her twenties, Philo had less and less control over Fred and Kola these days. Adaora shelved this fact for another time.

“Chris,” Adaora pled. “It’s not…” She flinched as Chris raised his hand to slap her for the second time in three hours.

“You… you don’t want to do that,” Agu said, stepping in front of her. He sounded very unsure of himself.

Chris blinked, sizing Agu up. Agu may have had a raw face but he was wearing a military uniform, he was taller, and he looked stronger. But Agu’s demeanor clearly said that he didn’t want to fight Chris at all. Chris lunged at Agu.

“CHRIS! STOP IT!” Adaora shouted, jumping back.

Agu easily threw Chris aside. He raised his hands. “Please,” he begged. “Just listen. I don’t—” But Chris got up and went for Agu again, throwing a punch and missing completely. Agu stepped to the side and clocked him one in the back of the head. Chris stumbled to the lab table, knocking test tubes into the sink and onto the floor.

“Shit,” Agu hissed, distraught. “Not again, please not again!”

“Come on,” Philo said, grabbing the children’s hands and pulling them away.

“Na wetin dis?” Anthony said, stepping forward and hauling Chris to his feet. “Let it go, chale. Are you mad?!”

When Agu saw that Chris was still conscious, he sighed loudly with relief, bending forward to rest his hands on his knees.

Chris snatched his arm from Anthony and stood up on shaky legs, his nose bleeding. He glared at Adaora with that same hatred she’d seen hours ago just before he leaped on her. He opened his mouth to say something but instead cringed at the sound of metal balls on glass. “Eeeee!” he screeched. Adaora dug her nails into her thighs. Agu squeezed his face, pressing his hand to his mouth as he resisted the urge to grind his teeth. “Oooooh,” Anthony moaned, feeling nauseous. If any of them had turned to look at Adaora’s giant aquarium, they’d have seen the cowfish dart forward and smash into the glass, the shrimp fall to the aquarium floor, and several other fish swim in confused circles. It was a sound never heard on earth until this night.

When Chris turned around, he was staring at himself.

Adaora opened her mouth in utter astonishment, nearly forgetting to breathe.

“CHRIS!” Ayodele said. Her voice was identical to Chris’s, as was her physique. Not only did she look like him, she was even wearing the same wrinkled shorts and singlet.

“Jesus,” Adaora whispered. She stepped forward and grabbed Agu’s arm and pulled him away. Anthony sucked his teeth at the ridiculousness of it all.

Chris’s mouth hung open. He shook his head and blinked his eyes.

“Blame me,” Ayodele said. “Your wife is just trying to help. Calm yourself. Think.”

There was a long pause as Chris stared at Ayodele. Then deep in his chest, he moaned and touched his own face with a shaky hand. He stepped back, then snapped around, turning a wild gaze on Adaora. He jabbed a finger at her. “You’ve poisoned me! Witch! I knew it! I am hallucinating because you’ve poisoned my body, o!” He took more steps back. “I shower my wife with everything she wants, only to realize I’ve fed the devil!” He stumbled toward the stairs. “Marine witch, o!” he wailed, pointing and pointing at her. “Amusu! I knew it! I knew it! Jesus Christ will send you back to hell, o! God will punish you! In the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit!” He turned and fled up the stairs.

Adaora squeezed her eyes shut as she heard Ayodele change back. She’d heard the sound several times now, first in the water and now in her own home. In both places it somehow sounded the same. Absolutely foreign. So foreign, that hearing it made her feel like falling to the floor. She plopped down in the chair beside her computer.

“Your husband?” Agu asked, as he dabbed the cut on his forehead with his fingers. It had started bleeding again.

“He works too hard and he’s been fasting,” she said. “It makes him a little…”

“That man does not love you,” Anthony muttered.

Silence.

“You people are very interesting,” Ayodele said, smiling.

^{Chapter 6} Red Red Wine

Chris shut his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the warm night air. Dirty Lagos air. So different from the air he’d breathed during his three-year stay in Germany for his MBA. He coughed. Since he’d begun fasting, he had to admit, he just hadn’t felt right. He knew it was the witchcraft his wife had worked on him rebelling against his cleansing efforts. He had to keep fasting. Eventually it would all get better, he’d be free of her grasp and he’d be back in control of his life and his wife. Maybe.

He sat staring at the wrought-iron black gate that surrounded Father Oke’s home, waiting. It was a solid gate built into a solid thick white wall that surrounded a magnificent compound. The fence around Chris’s home was only wrought iron, so passers-by could see into the compound if they were nosy. He and his conniving wife Adaora did very well, but even they could not afford to build and maintain this kind of wall, not while building and maintaining the house itself.

On both sides of the wall were tiny houses where most likely ten times as many people lived. Poor people. These homes were surrounded by walls, too, though the walls were really just the walls of the much larger home boxing them in. Lagos is like a big zoo, Chris thought to himself. Everyone is contained by lots of walls and lots of gates, whether you like it or not. It’s secure but there is no security.

He rubbed his red eyes as Father Oke slowly opened the gate. The man looked tired but this was urgent. Such things warranted waking even a holy man in the middle of the night. Still, Chris was apologetic. “I’m so, so sorry to wake you, but…” He couldn’t hold it in any more. He wheezed and sobbed, leaning heavily on Father Oke’s shoulder. He was too taken by his own emotions to notice the look of deep annoyance pass over Father Oke’s face.

“My wife… my… my… I don’t know where else to go,” Chris moaned into Father Oke’s nightshirt.

Father Oke patted Chris’s back and firmly pushed him backwards. “What has happened?” he asked. He glanced with disgust at his shoulder, which was damp with Chris’s tears. “You… you haven’t done anything, have you?”

“No, no. Not me. I…”

Father Oke sighed with relief. “Come in, come in,” he said. “Let us talk inside.”

“Thank you, Father,” Chris said as they walked between Father Oke’s Mercedes and his BMW. Father Oke frowned as Chris passed a little too close to the BMW. He’d managed to keep the vehicle in perfect shape despite the Lagos roads and he was not about to let this desperate idiot scratch it.

Chris and Father Oke sat across from each other on leather chairs. A bleary-eyed young woman in sleepwear came into the room with a bottle of red wine. Chris eyed the glass she poured for him, wondering if this would interfere with his fasting/purging of his wife’s witchcraft.

“Relax, Chris,” Father Oke said, seeming to read his thoughts. They watched the woman leave the room. “It will affect nothing. Wine is the beverage of Jesus. It can only do good.”

Chris nodded, bringing the glass to his lips. His hand shook as he sipped.

“Well, Chris,” Father Oke said. “What did you expect when you married a woman ocean biologist?”

“But she and I have known each other since we were small children,” Chris said. “Our fathers were best friends…”

Father Oke shook his head, putting his wine down and leaning forward. He had a pained look on his face, as if he carried a great burden on his shoulders. “Look, Brother Chris, women are… weak vessels. It is identified in the Bible. Your Adaora is a highly educated biologist but she’s no different from the others. She could not change herself if she tried.” He chuckled and sipped his wine. Then he laughed loudly. “Kai! But your wife is a tough one, o!”

“You really think she’s a witch?” Chris asked.

“I do, Brother Chris,” he said. “A marine witch, the worst kind. Look at her knowledge of the water. But don’t worry, no shaking, o,” he said, chuckling. “My church is powerful. It is my job to handle such things.”

Chris sipped his wine, his hand still shaking. It left his mouth sour. “Good, because tonight she did something to me. I was trying to subdue her and suddenly I could not move! I was pinned to the floor like a goat for sacrifice!”

Father Oke frowned, but said nothing.

“Eh heh,” Chris said, nodding and taking Father Oke’s silence to mean he believed him. “And let me tell you what else. Only an hour ago, I came downstairs to her witch’s den and found my wife with two strange men!” he said. “TWO! And there was… there was another. Another witch! She changed right before my eyes!”

“Eh, Brother Chris, slow down,” Father Oke said, trying hard not to laugh at this sorry lamb of his flock. “It is imperative to fast, to purge your wife’s witchcraft from your body. But you’ve been fasting so much, of late, and… perhaps you are not seeing what you think you’re seeing?”

“I know what I saw, Father,” Chris insisted. “This woman changed into ME! I can take you there right now! I can—”

“Relax, Brother Chris,” Father Oke chuckled. “It’s late.” He sighed. “OK, if your wife has brought another witch into your household, best to wait for daylight. I will come tomorrow.”

“But…”

Father Oke made the sign of the cross. This always calmed his parishioners down. Now was no exception. Chris instantly quieted and relaxed. “Trust in the Lord, Brother Chris,” Father Oke said soothingly. “All will be well in due time, eh? Meantime, pursue peace with your wife. Avoid the appearance of contention; women thrive on that. Do not fall for her antics. Look to Jesu Kristi who asked us to turn the other cheek. Go home. Go to bed. I will see you tomorrow.”

Sufficiently opiated by the words of his beloved priest, Chris felt better. He even gave a shaky smile. “I will, Father. Thank you. Oh, thank you.”

^{Chapter 7} Interview

The digital video camera Adaora used when she went diving was old and its battery was dead. But it still worked when plugged in. She put the camera on a tripod and set a folding chair in front of the fish tank.

“Sit here,” she told Ayodele. Adaora felt thick and groggy. While Agu and Anthony had stayed up watching TV with Ayodele and talking, she’d curled up on the sofa and gotten a few hours of sleep.

Adaora peered into the camera’s window and was relieved when she could see Ayodele clearly. “OK, good,” she said. “Look this way.” She pointed at the camera’s lens. “Now, just talk, Ayodele, tell me about yourself.”

Ayodele smiled and nodded, gazing into the camera. Adaora shivered. If there was any strong hint of the alien in Ayodele’s appearance, it was in her eyes. When Adaora looked into them, she felt unsure… of everything. A college friend of hers used to say that everything human beings perceived as real was only a matter of the information their bodies recorded. “And that information isn’t always correct or complete,” he said. Back then, Adaora had dismissively rolled her eyes. Now, she understood.

“You have named me Ayodele. You people will call me an alien because I am from space, your outer heavens, beyond. I am what you all call an ambassador, the first to come and communicate with you people. I was sent. We landed in your waters and have been communicating with other people there and they’ve been good to us. Now we want your help.”

“What do you eat?” Adaora asked.

“We take in matter,” she said. “What we can find. Dust, stone, metal, elements. We alter whatever substance we find to suit us.”

Adaora smiled. “But you are most fond of my jollof rice and fried plantain.” Ayodele had eaten every scrap of food Adaora placed before her, and then several more platefuls, commenting the entire time about how enjoyable it all was. The only thing she hadn’t really liked was bread.

Ayodele smiled. “In this form, consuming your jollof rice and fried plantain gave me great pleasure. And what was it… garden eggs and yam.”

“You liked both of them raw… uncooked?” Adaora pressed.

“Yes, especially the garden eggs. The yam was nice, too, though. It heightened my senses.”

Adaora considered asking her for details of this but decided to move on instead. “Do you drink water?”

“In this form, yes.”

“Do you enjoy taking human form?”

Ayodele smiled. “Yes.”

“It’s easy?”

“After the first time, yes.”

“But it’s hard the first time?”

“It’s not easy.”

“How do you change?”

“We have control of all our parts, great and small, and the forces influencing them.”

“Can you die?” Adaora carefully asked.

Ayodele narrowed her eyes and looked at Adaora instead of at the camera. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because I’m a scientist,” Adaora said. “I just want to know, to understand.”

Ayodele turned back to the camera. “I prefer not to answer that.”

“Why?”

But Ayodele just looked at the camera and said nothing.

“OK, fine,” Adaora said, after a moment. “Did you bring me, Agu and Anthony together? Was that a coincidence? Why do all our names start with A?”

Across the room, Agu perked up.

“It was not a coincidence,” Ayodele said. “I am an ambassador. I know—”

“Wait a minute!” Agu jumped up and rushed over. “Did you make all that happen so we’d all be there at the same time? Did you make my superior and the others attack that girl? Did you make me—”

“We are change,” Ayodele calmly responded “The sentiments were already there. I know nothing about those other things.”

“But you pushed them over the edge!” Agu said, stepping into the camera’s view. “You hurt people! Do you understand that? You… I’ve seen what you can do, what you all are! You…”

“Agu,” Adaora said. “I’m filming.”

He shot Adaora a look that was way too similar to the one she’d seen in her husband’s eyes. “Let me do this,” she added quietly. “Please.”

“Your husband slapped you!” he shouted. “Has he ever done that before?”

“No. But my husband and I have some… serious problems that I wouldn’t blame Ayodele for in a million years. Would you really hold her responsible for your fellow soldiers, your ahoa, behaving that way? Think hard about it. They acted on impulses already present in their minds. And the other thing that happened… was it her fault? Maybe it was yours.”

Still breathing heavily, Agu shut his eyes, his shoulders slumping.

Adaora breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to Ayodele.

“So there are more of you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How many?”

“I don’t know. We don’t count ourselves.”

“Many?”

“You would think so.”

“And what do your people need?”

“Nothing. We have chosen to live here.”

“Here on… earth?”

“Here.”

“The land?”

“Your land.”

“Africa?”

“Yes.”

“So you are all over the continent?”

“No.”

“Part of it? Like West Africa? Nigeria?”

“The city, Lagos?” Anthony asked, walking over.

Ayodele looked at him and grinned. “And the waters.”

“Why Lagos? Why the water?” Adaora asked.

Ayodele shrugged. “These seemed good places for us.”

Agu and Adaora both frowned deeply but neither said a word.

Anthony laughed. “You bring in what you put out. Lagos…” He patted Agu and Adaora on the shoulders and dropped into Pidgin English. “‘Lasgidi’ you dey call am, right? Eko? Isn’t that what you people call Lagos? Place of belle-sweet, gidi gidi, kata kata, isu and wahala. Lagos is energy. It never stops. That’s why I like coming here, too.”

“We can work with you people,” Ayodele said. “And we will. We’re coming.”

Adaora stepped around and stood before the camera, looking into its eye. “Nine January, 6.39 a.m. You heard it directly from the horse’s mouth. One is here, the rest are coming.” She switched the camera off.

^{Chapter 8} Mama?

The gateman opened the gate in the back of the house to let in the shiny silver Mercedes. He watched admiringly as it pulled into the side driveway. The vehicle gleamed like a diamond. The gateman had dreamed of owning such a car since he was a boy. Now that he was thirty-five, it was a fading dream, but one that still made him smile.

When the bishop got out, the gateman frowned and blinked. He always experienced the same mild surprise when this man came over. His brain simply couldn’t hold the fact that a holy man could and wanted to afford such a vehicle. Ahmed Ubangiji was a Muslim and lived ten minutes away with his two wives and five children. He had nothing against Christians or any other people of the world. But a bishop displaying such extravagance seemed wrong. Then again, a lot of things seemed odd lately. He closed the gate and went back to his station to continue listening to the news of the flooding and strangeness on Bar Beach. If worse came to worst, he’d pack his family up and head north for a few days. Surely his boss would understand.

Father Oke stretched his arms and shut the car door. He’d been coming here too often, of late. Brother Chris was too needy. But he was one of Father Oke’s biggest supporters, donating an ever-increasing amount of money from year to year. Brother Chris had been blessed by God, who’d made him a wealthy accountant. Even though his wife was a problem, she too brought in good money as a professor and a scientist. Yes, they were good people to have in his congregation, so dealing with Chris more than he wanted to was worth it.

Father Oke dusted off his black suit and adjusted his immaculate white collar. His shiny shoes were spotless, which was just the way he liked them. He walked to the door where Chris was already standing. He must have been waiting for the last fifteen minutes.

“Good morning,” Chris said, smiling a bit too widely.

They shook hands and went inside.

Adaora was scribbling frantically in her journal. She’d gone upstairs to make breakfast for her husband, the children and Philomena. After assuring them that everything was OK, she’d run back to get her churning thoughts out of her mind. She had to remember every detail of the night’s events. Of Ayodele’s reactions, how they’d all met up, the sights, sounds, scents of the beach, everything. She was the scientist; the world would expect her to have the facts. Plus it kept her from dwelling on the memory of her husband squirming on the ground as though held by invisible restraints. Ayodele and Agu were watching the news as Anthony paced the room.

“The mystery deepens hours after a sonic boom sounded somewhere off the waters of Bar Beach,” the newscaster said. “The military cannot locate a source for the noise. Since the incident, however, and equally as mysterious, the sea level continues to rise. So far, it has risen over seven feet above its normal level. Lagos lagoon is filling up, and people’s homes, roads and the beaches have flooded. Neither the military nor scientists have any answers at the moment.”

Adaora rolled her eyes. Of course they don’t have any answers, she thought. And if they do, they’re not going to share them.

“What’s happening?” Agu asked Ayodele, who was happily munching on a raw garden egg.

She bit, chewed and swallowed the crunchy green and white tomato-like fruit for several moments before responding. “It’s the ship,” she said. “The size of it. The waters actually rose last night, not this morning, remember?”

“Yes, it was a big ship,” Adaora said, vaguely.

“It’s not just the size,” Ayodele said. “It is communicating with the water and the creatures in the water. We are communicative people.”

Anthony continued to pace. He wrung his hands and wished he had a big fat joint, the finest jamba. “I don’t know why I’m still here,” he muttered to no one. “I should have left early this morning.”

“It’s because you can’t,” Agu said.

Anthony stopped pacing, annoyed that Agu was paying any attention to him. He’d been talking to himself.

“You can go home but nothing will change,” Agu continued. “Who knows, they may have already overrun Accra.”

Anthony flared his nostrils at the mention of his country’s biggest city. “Don’t say that.”

Father Oke swept ceremoniously down the stairs followed by Adaora’s husband and Philomena, the house girl. Father Oke was all smiles and pleasantries. “Good gracious morning, everyone,” he said.

Chris said nothing, making a wide berth around Agu as he moved toward Adaora.

“This man again,” Anthony muttered, glaring at Chris.

Agu and Chris glared at each other and Adaora felt more than nervous. However, it wasn’t Agu she suddenly wanted to protect. She placed herself between Ayodele and Father Oke. If there was one thing she knew about Father Oke, it was that he was a smooth-talking predator. She couldn’t keep him from her husband, but she would keep him from her children… and Ayodele.

Philo sat on the stairs, took out her mobile phone and discreetly started recording with the phone’s camera.

“Adaora,” Father Oke said. “Please introduce me to your… new friends.”

“Good morning, Oke. What do you want?” Adaora asked. The man was a bishop yet he insisted that people call him “Father Oke”. This deeply annoyed Adaora, even before he’d sunken his claws into Chris.

“Greetings, my child,” he said. “I—”

“How can I be your ‘child’? You’re only a few years my senior,” Adaora snapped.

Father Oke didn’t miss a beat. “You’re a child of God.”

“And you are God?” she asked.

He chuckled. “God speaks through me.”

Adaora snorted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I am not here to fight,” he said. “You need to make peace with your husband.”

Adaora felt rage heat her face. She clenched her fists, aware that everyone in the room was watching her. Slowly and deliberately, she said, “And how can we make peace when you are constantly meddling? You instruct him to starve himself like someone who does not have food! You convince him of your twisted nonsense.” She stepped closer and Father Oke stepped back. “How does him slapping me in the face bring peace, Father? Eh? How can a man slap his wife ‘in the name of Jesus’? You instructed him to do so! You think I didn’t see your email to him a week ago? ‘Break her with your hands, then soften her with flowers.’”

Behind her, she saw Anthony shake his head in disgust. Agu glowered at Chris. Father Oke looked utterly flabbergasted. Chris looked shamefaced.

“You have little trust in your husband if you’re reading his emails,” Father Oke said coldly.

“Get OUT of my house!” Adaora screamed.

“My house, Adaora,” Chris said.

“Oh my God, I’m going to kill someone this day, o,” Adaora proclaimed. “Your house? Says who?”

“Seke, seke, seke,” Anthony muttered, still shaking his head.

Chris waved a dismissive hand at Adaora. “Father Oke is not here to speak with you, anyway,” he said.

As if on cue, Father Oke slipped around Adaora. “What is your name, child?” he asked Ayodele, who’d been watching with quiet interest.

“I don’t need a name,” she said. “My people know me. But you may call me Ayodele.”

“Are you a witch?” he asked.

“Will you slap her if she says yes?” Adaora snapped. She inhaled deeply, put her hands on her hips and walked to the other side of the room. If she didn’t step away she knew she’d do something she’d regret.

“Why does this matter so much to you?” Ayodele asked Oke.

“Because I can help you.” Father Oke stepped closer. “I’m trained to help you control your evil, to find grace and salvation and goodness.”

“See?” Chris insisted. “She doesn’t deny it. I saw her change. She—”

“You didn’t come here to ask me about witchcraft,” Ayodele said to Father Oke, ignoring Chris. “You have other things on your mind.”

“What do you want?” Adaora loudly asked Father Oke from across the room. “People like you always want something.”

“I want to help,” he said to Ayodele. “Can… can you show me?”

Ayodele cocked her head as though considering Oke’s offer.

“Don’t!” Adaora said, rushing back over. But everyone heard the sound of metal balls on glass. Ayodele’s skin was already rearranging itself. On the stairs, Philo gasped, still holding up her recording phone.

Ayodele had turned into an old woman with dark papery skin and runny blind eyes. Chris scrambled backwards, whimpering.

Father Oke’s face melted into something like grief and joy all at once. “Mama?” he whispered. He made the sign of the cross.

“I am not a witch, I am alien to your planet, I am an alien,” Ayodele said in the voice of Father Oke’s recently deceased mother. “We change. With our bodies, and we change everything around us.”

“Ewo!” Father Oke exclaimed. He made the sign of the cross again. Philomena clapped her phone shut and everyone turned to look up at her. “Sorry,” she said, shooting to her feet. She ran up the stairs.

Father Oke smiled shakily, trying to look serene and pious when he felt like tearing out of that basement screaming. He didn’t know if he believed in aliens or not. He’d never considered the question. If there were aliens, they certainly wouldn’t come to Nigeria. Or maybe they would. He spread his hands and addressed the creature who was and was not his mother. “I have seen the news,” he said. “I believe all that was caused by you, when… when you landed here, you coming here, it is all an act of God. I know you love God. Even if you are, ahem, from another place.” As he spoke, his confidence grew. Speaking publicly always had this effect on him. It was why he had become a preacher.

“See it as… a personal race,” he said, now truly smiling. “All of us have sinned! Human and… alien. No one on earth or in the cosmos is good or righteous. Hence God gave his only son to die for us!”

Adaora wanted to tell him to shove his nonsense up his ass. The man was the worst kind of charlatan. But Agu, now standing beside her, elbowed her to stay quiet.

“What?” Chris asked, perplexed. He’d come for a witch-hunt, not a baptism. “But that doesn’t—”

“Chris, can’t you see?” Father Oke said, now completely enthralled by the sound of his own voice. He was on a roll. “I have been chosen to bring this creature and all of her kind into the light!”

Ayodele watched him, blankly. Father Oke took her silence as affirmation. He was getting through to her. He had the gift of the gab. He could get through to anyone, even an extraterrestrial, such was the power of his faith. “Do you understand what I am saying?” he asked, certain that she did. His mission was clear; divine. “God, the Almighty, he is in control. Give yourself up to the Lord and any help you need to survive will be given to you. My church. My church is a good church. Come join my flock and we will be truly great.” He held his hands out to Ayodele. When she didn’t take them, he just kept talking. She was scared. Understandable. She was a blank slate, untilled alien soil. “You can shape-shift. That is a God-given ability,” he said. “Maybe you can become one of my sisters in God. Join me on the pulpit and you and I will pull in a flock to be reckoned with!”

“See this man,” Adaora said quietly to Anthony, “he’s just trying to use her. So one-track minded. Even in the face of an extraterrestrial, sha.”

“That was obvious to me from the start,” Anthony replied.

“If you join us, we can best protect you from the evil forces of these lands,” Father Oke continued. He smirked knowingly. “In this house, anyone can come for you. It is not safe.”

Ayodele opened her mouth to speak but Father Oke held up a hand. “Don’t,” he said. “Just think about it for now. We will come back to hear your answer later today.”

Ayodele shrugged and said, “OK.”

Father Oke nodded, slowly backing toward the stairs, grinning. He motioned for Chris to follow.

“Oh,” Chris said softly, as if waking from a dream. “OK.” He scurried past Father Oke, up the stairs.

“It was wonderful to meet with you, Ayodele,” Father Oke said. Then with a wave, he whirled around and followed Chris up the stairs.

Adaora let out a breath of relief. “Can you imagine?”

Ayodele was smiling. “This place is fascinating, o,” she said. “Na wao. That man, I could see all his ideas!”

Adaora noted how Ayodele was even picking up slang. She frowned as she said, “You’re not seriously—”

“We need to get her out of here,” Agu interrupted. “Soon.”

Anthony nodded vigorously. “My father was a preacher,” he said. “I know that man’s kind. He’ll return with his entire congregation. Oh chale, of all the people your husband could have brought…”

“I know,” Adaora replied darkly. “Once word gets out, the kidnappers will start arriving, too.”

^{Chapter 9} Moziz

“Mama?” they watched Father Oke slowly ask.

Despite what he had just seen, Moziz snickered. He knew Father Oke. The man sponged plenty of naira from his grandmother every Sunday, leaving her with barely enough to buy gari and bags of “pure water”. When the footage ended, Moziz clicked replay on Philo’s mobile phone to watch it again.

Philo smiled. Back at her employers’ house the children were still asleep and she’d chanced leaving for a half hour to come to see her boyfriend Moziz. It was worth the risk; she loved to see Moziz happy. She loved Moziz. She looked around his sparse one-bedroom flat. Nothing but a computer on a desk, a chair and the mattress they sat on. He didn’t have much, but he kept his flat spotless. Damn near sterile, from the smell of disinfectant it always carried. Moziz hated roaches and this “face me, I face you” building was full of them.

A struggling medical student forced to take the year off due to strikes, Moziz was the most educated guy she knew. He was quite dark-skinned and short (neither of which suited Philo’s tastes) but he was articulate, ambitious and crafty. At the moment, he was making most of his money from 419 scams on his computer, but Philo knew this was only temporary. She was certain that Moziz was meant to be somebody, just like his name implied. The actual spelling of his name was “Moses” but he’d changed it because he thought it sounded cooler.

“Eyyy!” Moziz exclaimed as he watched Ayodele change again. He laughed hard. “Look at Father Oke! De man wey dey do gragra before see as he dey shake like waterleaf! He don nearly shit for him pant!”

Philo smiled. She loved that he was an educated man and he spoke like a man of the streets.

“Baby, dis ting na real? Abi na film tricks?” he asked.

“I say I take my two naked eyes see de thing as e happen, just like two hours ago,” she assured him, dropping into Pidgin English, too.

He pinched his smooth chin pensively with his fingers. Philo could practically hear his brilliant mind working. He really was the smartest man she knew. She loved that about him.

“True true, you say dis woman na from space? You say she come from space?”

“Na so she talk. She say no be only her come, she come with many others wey still dey for inside dem ship wey land inside Bar Beach.”

“OK o,” Moziz said. “Well, if dem get flying ship, wetin again dem get wey we no sabi?” He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe we fit tell am to print original naira notes for us, o. Yes na, if she fit change herself, na him be say she fit do other things, too! Miracle! Heiyaaa! Na so na! Na so universe law be, o, no be mek de law.”

“Maybe,” Philo said.

“In fact sef, no be even naira we go ask am to make for us,” he said. “American dollars! Or even euro. Euro cost pass dollar, so na euro we go tell am to make for us!”

Philo shrugged and laughed. “If she fit do am na, dat one no be problem. But I no sabi if she fit do am, o.”

“Kai, dis one na something, o,” he said, now grinning with all his teeth. “Baby, dis one na something. You do well show me dis video.”

Philo giggled as he caressed her cheek. His hand slowly made its way to her left breast. “You fit get me inside dere?” he asked, his voice lusty in her ear.

“I go try, baby,” she whispered. She lay back and as he climbed on top of her, his computer beeped the arrival of a new email. He paused, looking at the monitor.

“Mek una wait! Mek una wait! Eh? All of una wey be email fit wait for now!” he said, turning back to Philo.

^{Chapter 10} The Plan

“Kola, Fred, out,” Adaora snapped, noticing them peeking into the room from the top of the stairs.

Philomena came rushing down, out of breath. “Sorry, Madame,” she said. She took Kola and Fred’s hands. “I was… I was in the bathroom. Kola, come. It’s time for lunch.”

“Mommy, we want to see the alien,” Kola demanded.

“How do you… ugh, Kola, go!” Adaora snapped. “Upstairs, now!”

The startled children snatched their hands from Philo’s and ran up the stairs. Philo followed.

Adaora shut her eyes and sighed, tired. Agu plopped on the sofa beside her, looking equally as exhausted and far more physically battered. It was around 2 p.m. and none of them had gotten even an hour of sleep. The television news droned on about the rising water, how the government still did not know who was attacking Nigeria, and how government offices and facilities were closed for the day.

“Please, all of you, come,” Ayodele said, sitting beside Adaora.

They couldn’t leave now. There would be checkpoints. And checkpoints were potential trouble; Agu knew this best. Ayodele didn’t seem bothered.

“You three were chosen,” Ayodele said. “You made sense. I know we’ve made the right choice.”

“Wharreva,” Anthony drawled. He was sitting on the coffee table, his long legs stretched before him. He seemed more interested in the chaos on the news than in Ayodele.

“Adaora, you understand water,” Ayodele said. “You’ll soon also understand something about yourself, and what’s to come. You can explain.”

“Myself? Meaning? And will you people affect the water?” Adaora asked. She remembered what she’d seen when they were under the sea. In the surrounding glowing water had been a riot of bright yellow butterfly fish, clown fish, sea bass, eels, shrimps, urchins, starfish, sharks, stingrays, swordfish, barracuda, a bit of everything local; some from the deep, some from the shallows. She’d never seen such a thriving coral community in any of her dives off the coast of Lagos. Would they come out of the water?

Ayodele took her hand and Adaora instantly stiffened. Ayodele’s hand felt warm and remarkably… human. “Agu, soldier,” Ayodele continued, looking into Agu’s eyes. “You come from a family of yam farmers, they are the salt of the earth to you. They represent the heart of Nigeria. You joined the army to protect them. Now you understand your army is corrupt. You need a people to join.”

The clear truth of her words warmed every part of his body and left him speechless.

She smiled. “And you have a direct connection to your country’s leader, your president. Your superior is his relation and can reach him quickly.”

Agu and Adaora looked at each other, uncomfortable. Agu wiped his eyes and began to explain. “Yes… but our president is…”

Adaora shook her head and Agu shut up. Ayodele didn’t seem to notice. “Anthony,” she said.

“What?” he snapped. “Haba, what about me?” He turned away.

Adaora almost chuckled, marveling at the fact that he was nothing like his public persona. He was actually rather reserved. He certainly hadn’t bulged his eyes and randomly screamed, “Anthony DEY CRAZE!” once since she’d met him.

“You are a communicator, like us,” Ayodele told Anthony. “You spent the most time with the Elders. You’ve heard their song. Even I can’t imagine what you’ve learned.”

Adaora and Agu both looked at Anthony, who backed away. Tears started to roll from his eyes. Helplessly, he held up his hands. “I… I don’t want any part of this,” he said, his voice quivering. “OK? I just want to leave.” His lower lip trembled. “But I can’t stop hearing it.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “Chale, it… it is beautiful. I was hearing it during my concert, too. That’s why I needed to go out for some air afterwards.” His wet eyes grew wide. “I was seeing trees grow between the crowds…”

He sat down hard on the sofa, breathing heavily. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“This house is a good location. You will draw a crowd here,” Ayodele said, smiling.

Anthony untied the veil from around his neck and wiped his face with it. Agu stood very stiff, gazing at the fish tank. And Adaora looked at Agu’s hands, wondering if they’d changed size when he’d punched his superior into unconsciousness.

“Anthony, you understand, correct? You must call the people to you,” Ayodele told him. “The way my people operate, we need a gathering, first.” She turned to Agu before Anthony could ask why. “Agu,” she said. “Go to your ahoa superior. Explain things to him. Take Adaora as your expert. You know what you must convince him to do.” And both Adaora and Agu knew very well.

It was time to find the President.

^{Chapter 11} Wahala

Moziz took a deep hit from the joint Troy handed to him. “Pass am give de others, e still plenty,” he croaked as he held in the smoke. Troy, Tolu and Jacobs, also students forced to “take time off” because of university strikes, had just arrived and he wanted them to be relaxed when they watched the footage on Philo’s phone. He let them smoke.

They were outside at the old table under the tree behind his apartment, a nice quiet spot. He squinted at them through dry red eyes, knowing that they were waiting for him to speak. He’d sent urgent texts to each of them saying it was a matter of lots of money. Still, right now, they knew not to rush him.

Philo looked at her watch. She could make it back to the house in about five minutes if she ran. And today Sir and Mistress were so preoccupied that they didn’t even notice when she was gone, and the children didn’t mind her absence. For now, she leaned against the tree, her arms around her chest. She was nicely sore from the early afternoon with Moziz. He’d made her a thousand and one promises in the dark, including marriage and a big, big house. All would come true once he got the creature to do what he knew it could do. She felt a tingle of arousal between her legs as she watched him eye his friends.

After they’d seen the footage, Tolu, Troy and Jacobs stared at the phone. None of them knew what the fuck to think. Moziz’ girl Philo wasn’t smart enough to make up something so extraordinary, and Moziz had no reason to. And that meant what they saw could only be real.

“E get anybody here wey no still believe wetin e don see with him own eye?” Moziz asked, after Tolu, Troy and Jacobs had watched the film another three times.

Tolu handed the phone back to Moziz. He held it out using only his thumb and index finger, as if it were contaminated.

“Lagos don scatter for confusion sake of say dem no fit know wetin dis kine wahala come mean,” Moziz said, getting up. Like Father Oke, Moziz knew when he had people wrapped around his finger and he reveled in it. He sat on the table before Troy, Tolu and Jacobs. “We know wetin e be. And one of them dey my girlfriend oga house. Una don see am unaself. Na from space dem come. Dem get ability to change dem shape and dem body as dem like. Now, na only imagine person fit imagine all de many many other things dem fit do.” He leaned forward. “Una know wetin we fit do if we kidnap them? Tink am well well!” He held up a fist for emphasis. He leaned back. “Ol’ boy! If we no act and move fast now, na our chance we don miss be dat, o.”

When none of them said a word, Moziz continued, “De first thing we go ask am to do na to print money for us. Naira, notes, American dollar notes, euro, even sef, pound sterling! My people, nobody go rich like us! We fit even tell am to enter online people bank accounts too. Fuck all de 419 rubbish, we go bypass dem middleman dem and go direct to the money.”

Troy asked, in a small but worried voice, “If danger come dey all this plan, nko?”

Jacobs and Tolu murmured agreement. Moziz gave Troy a very foul look. “No worry,” he said. “Na woman de ting be, o. Look am.”

Troy frowned at this. Something wasn’t right about what Moziz was saying but he wasn’t sure what it was. But he felt Moziz was right, what he’d seen in the video was just a woman. She looked like a slightly older version of his sister, even. She had to be harmless. She’d be easy to kidnap.

Tolu liked the idea of kidnapping the alien well enough, but more importantly, he didn’t want to cross Moziz when he was in one of his moods.

Jacobs didn’t like the idea at all. If the woman was an alien who could shape-shift, she wasn’t just a woman. And maybe that made her dangerous. However, Jacobs did like the idea of getting rich. It was about time. He’d been a struggling university student long enough. He took the phone from Moziz and watched the footage again. He glanced at Troy and Tolu. Both were looking intently at Moziz and Moziz was enjoying their attention. Discreetly, Jacobs sent the footage to his own phone.

“See,” Moziz said. “We catch am, carry am, come my place. We go rich before sun go down. Na who no ’gree? She just woman; she no dey harm.”

They were all in. Moziz glanced at Philomena, blew a kiss and then flicked his tongue at her. Philomena smiled shyly, glad that no one could see the ache between her legs and the hopeful dreams in her head.

^{Chapter 12} May the Lord Continue to Favor You

That afternoon, the church was packed, thanks to the television, newspaper and radio, though not so much the internet. According to the media, the water along all the beaches was “rising at an alarming rate!” and pushing into the lagoon. Government buildings and independent businesses were all “closed until further notice!” There had been an “excruciatingly loud racket tumbling off the ocean”. Something was amiss and everyone was getting ready for whatever would come next.

Some packed up and fled for the rural villages where they had built homes that they normally only stayed in during holidays. The wealthy and influential tried unsuccessfully to procure plane tickets to the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. Some even tried to fly to Ghana and Cameroon. But all planes everywhere were grounded indefinitely due to the unidentified sonic boom. Many flocked to mosques. And, in Lagos, hundreds flocked to the church of Father Oke. For many, Father Oke’s church was exactly the refuge they sought.

Father Oke smiled grandly as he moved away from his wooden pulpit towards the three kneeling women. Behind him stood his bodyguards, just to keep an eye on things; keep everyone safe. As he stepped before the women, he glanced down at his expensive gold-tipped white loafers. They peeked out from beneath his spotless white robe. He was looking sharp.

He moved his eyes from his shoes to the first kneeling woman. He had to work hard to keep his disgust from showing. He could almost smell her. Peasant, he thought. Rubbish. Filth. But he would take her money.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I’m a winch.”

The audience gasped.

He blinked, shocked. Her words pricked him like a needle. “What did you say?”

“I’m not a winch. I’m a winch… for Jesus,” she said.

Her voice was flat, her face slack as she looked up at him with stupid eyes. She wore an old white blouse and a long blue skirt. From what he could see, she was flat-chested and her coarse hair was untouched by refining chemicals. She might have been about twenty. This idiot must be one of those empty-headed girls who was dropped as a baby, he thought. A waste of a woman.

“What is ‘winch’? Do you know what that is? Can’t you speak English? Are you uneducated?”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said in her flat voice. “My English no be good, o.”

“Witch. You are a witch?”

“Yes, for Jesus.”

He felt the rage rise in him before he could control it. This… this common piece of female trash in his glorious church had the nerve to admit to the greatest sin! To his face! In front of his swollen congregation!

“You are a FOUL DEVIL! Do you know who you are speaking to? Foul devil!” He brought his hand back and slapped her across the face as hard as he could. The women beside her screeched.

“Praise Jesus,” several of the audience members shouted. Others applauded.

Still, as his hand connected to her face, he regretted his action. He’d gone too far, he knew it. He glanced to the side of the stage where the camera was recording everything today. And did he also spot a young man in the audience with his mobile phone open? Shit, he thought. But the woman had just made him so goddamn angry. How dare she? He started walking away from her but then walked back. He couldn’t leave it at that. He didn’t know what he would do, but he couldn’t leave it at that. He had to remain in control of the situation. Make it work for him.

“Where are you from?” he demanded. He couldn’t get the anger out of his voice.

“I’m from Imo State,” she said, tears in her eyes. But she stayed kneeling. Good, he thought.

“Where did you learn witchcraft from?”

“I’m not a winch…”

“Who are you?”

“…but I am a winch for Jesus.”

GODDAMMIT! he thought, the rage flaring up in him again. Again, she says it! What is wrong with this bitch of the devil? And look how she speaks so defiantly! Maybe she IS a witch! He stood up straight and looked out at his captivated audience. He smiled, taking a deep breath. Then he nodded to them, taking several more. Calm, he thought, his heart rate slowing. Steady.

“Jesus has no witches! You are a demon!” he roared. But he spoke with controlled passion now. Confident power. His audience jumped up and shouted and applauded. He looked at the kneeling woman and again felt his heart rate try to surge. He stifled the urge to slap her a second time as she mumbled something. He put his hand in her face, refusing to hear another word. “All of you, know this! Whoever speaks a lie shall be struck down! Now, foul devil, get out of here before God kills you right on my stage.” The other two women got up, and quickly dragged the woman he’d slapped offstage. He hoped that the audience beat up every single one of them. In the name of Jesus.

He dabbed his face with his handkerchief. He was riled up. He needed to calm down. Today was about something special, not about idiot peasant women. Before this stupidity, for three hours, spittle flying from his lips and sweat dripping from his face, he’d preached about change and opposites and progress. He’d hedged around the real matter at hand, building to the climax that would bring it home. He knew exactly how he’d broach the topic with his loyal followers. The energy was high already. His confrontation with the witch meant he had their undivided attention. This was the moment. He called on Chris to stand in his front pew and speak to Father Oke’s flock. The other man stumbled to the pulpit, looking ragged.

“My wife… she is troubled,” Chris said. He wrung his hands, desperate and stressed. He was so glad that Father Oke had finally let him say his piece. He needed help. Salvation.

The congregation murmured encouragement.

“Something has taken her,” he said, wrapping his arms around himself. There were sweat marks around the collar and the armpits of his white cotton shirt. He’d worn this same shirt two days in a row to work. “I don’t know how to say this…”

People shouted and clapped encouragingly.

“I’m sorry to say, my wife has become a marine witch, o!” he announced grandly.

The church exploded with indignation and Chris’s heart swelled. Tears gathered in his eyes. “I need help!” he shouted, clenching his fists.

“You will get am!” a man shouted back.

“Kai! God will help you, o!” a woman shouted.

“The Lord will favor you, o!” a child shouted.

Some condemned the heathens who did not go to church. Some shouted about how it was all coming to pass. Whatever “it” was, only they knew. They announced that the ocean would soon swallow them all up for the sins of these marine witches and warlocks, nonbelievers in Christ who’d taken over the country. Some blamed the Muslims of the north. Others blamed the Americans. Al-Qaeda. Sickness. The British. Bad luck. Devils. Poverty. Women. Fate. 419. Biafra. The bad roads. The Military. Corruption.

Father Oke raised his hands to quiet his flock of sheep. He had the answers for them. He was holy. They grew silent, including Chris, who looked at Father Oke in earnest. As much as he could love a man, in this moment, he loved Father Oke very much.

“Have no fear!” Father Oke told Chris. “I will save your wife.”

His sheep sighed with relief.

“Tell everyone about your wife’s friend, Brother Chris,” he said.

Chris nodded, but frowned. What did his wife’s cure have to do with that one? But he trusted Father Oke. “Last night,” Chris said, “my wife brought something home with her. A… a visitor. A true visitor. I saw—”

Father Oke quickly spoke up. “A visitor from outer space! An alien! An extraterrestrial!” he said, dramatically rolling his ‘‘r’’s. The entire church went silent. This was the shock Father Oke had hoped to cause. Perfect. “It is in Brother Chris’s home! It is only the first of many!” he continued. “You see the news, all these strange things happening. We are being visited, my friends.”

He paused as people started talking amongst themselves.

“Kai! I knew it!” a man exclaimed to the woman beside him. “Didn’t I tell you? There is no smoke without fire!”

“Why here? Why here?”

“I didn’t see a damn thing last night.”

“We all go die, o!”

When the chatter began to swell into panic, Father Oke shouted, “Calm down! Calm down! Listen!”

Near instant silence. He had these people eating out of his hand. It was beautiful. Thanks be to God, he thought. “You have seen today how I handle witches and their devilry. Have faith in my power to heal! Now, these visitors, my friends, they mean us no harm,” he said. He laughed confidently and leaned against the pulpit, holding his microphone to his lips. “I have seen the one at Brother Chris’s house. These are people who need to be saved! We will welcome them, enfold them into our flock. Wash them in the Blood of Christ! Make them immaculate.” He paused, smiling at their frightened faces.

“Who will join me? Who will come with me to Brother Chris’s home to enfold this intelligent creature into our flock? Who will make our church the first in all of Lagos, in the WORLD, to do such a thing? Who will come with me and do God’s will?”

There was only silence. Father Oke looked into the crowd of faces and what he saw made him feel a pinch of doubt. Cowards. All of them. Frail. Afraid. The Lord has given me weak vessels, he thought with despair. Then someone in the back started singing. The voice was shaky and panicked. Father Oke knew who it was: Memory Fulami, one of his craziest parishioners. She’d joined his flock four years ago and came to church twice a day. She sang too loudly, smelled like dirty sweat and was known for shouting at girls who wore tight jeans. She drove him crazy. She had a voice that would kill every cockroach in that filthy “face me, I face you” compound she lived in down the road. But at this moment, of his entire congregation, he loved her the most. Father Oke dug his nails into his leg as he fought to hold the pleasant smile on his face.

The others began to join her. Maybe it was to drown out her awful voice or maybe it was a show of true solidarity. It didn’t matter. Soon the entire church was singing their support for Father Oke.

Everyone except Chris.

^{Chapter 13} Chin Chin

They stood in Adaora’s living room, uneasy. The afternoon sun streamed in, bouncing off the white leather couches and chairs and the white carpet on the floor. The fans were on and Philo had set out a bowl of chin chin on the coffee table. It was a room for relaxing. Not for thinking about the end of the world as one knew it.

Adaora was beginning to see why Ayodele’s people had chosen the city of Lagos. If they’d landed in New York, Tokyo or London, the governments of these places would have quickly swooped in to hide, isolate and study the aliens. Here in Lagos, there was no such order.

Yet and still, the country had vigorous life. Everybody wants to leave Lagos, she thought. But nobody goes. Lagos is in the blood. We run back to Lagos the moment we step out, even though we may have vowed never to come back. Lagos is Lagos. There’s no city like it. Lagos is sweet. Even her husband Chris knew this. He’d returned from Germany as soon as he had his MBA in his hand, even though a German company had offered him a job.

It was the reason why, despite the fact that she was a highly sought-after marine biologist who’d taught for some years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she’d opted to return home. Lagos was riddled with corruption but she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. And its ocean life was fascinating. And problematic. It needed her. Lagos needed her. And Adaora had to go where she was needed.

There were aliens in the ocean and they were going to come out soon.

“Text me if there’s trouble,” Anthony said.

“I’ve memorized your phone number,” Agu said, tapping the side of his head. “Better up here than on a piece of paper.” Still, he’d written it down, folded the paper and placed it deep in his pocket, just in case something made him forget.

Adaora looked at Agu. “Will there be trouble?”

“Look at my face, o,” Agu said. “My commander might make some wahala. But I think he’ll be smart enough to focus on the crisis at hand.”

Adaora wasn’t so sure but she didn’t press the issue. It was worth a try. If they could reach the President, then things would go far more smoothly than if they did not. “Anthony, Philomena is upstairs with the children,” she said. When she was teaching and Chris was working, Philomena stayed with the children, but today she didn’t like the idea of being away from them. She’d get back as soon as possible and she hoped Chris would, too. “Stay close to Ayodele, OK?” Ayodele was downstairs in the lab reading an issue of National Geographic.

“Of course I will,” Anthony said.

“Call if Adaora’s husband comes home with more wahala,” Agu said.

“I sent him a text, warning him to leave you alone,” Adaora added. “But he didn’t respond.”

“I can handle the man,” Anthony said.

“And if you can’t, Ayodele can, eh?” Agu said, winking.

“Ibi so,” Anthony assured her, slapping hands with Agu and giving Adaora a brief hug.

As soon as they left, Anthony took out his mobile phone and dialed. “Festus,” he said, smiling. He could always reach Festus, the one person in the entire Ghanaian music industry that he trusted.

“Where the hell are you?” Festus yelled.

“Relax. I’m fine.”

“You should have called to let me know that,” Festus growled. “You disappeared from your own after-party!”

“Sorry, o. Trust me, I have a good excuse.”

“I thought you’d been kidnapped.”

“I wasn’t,” Anthony said. “Listen, Festus, I have a job for you and the boys.”

As he told Festus an abbreviated version of all that had happened since he’d left the club where he’d performed, he strolled to the window. The gate in front was high, but flimsy. People could see the entire house but someone would have to open the gate to get to the front door. A good space for a crowd. As long as it stayed polite.

Festus reacted just the way Anthony had hoped. He exclaimed with surprise and asked a thousand questions. Then Festus came up with the perfect way to alert Anthony’s fans about the “Mad mad Anthony Dey Craze free concert” that would take place on the lawn of a small Victoria Island home. “Through radio, social networks and word of mouth,” he said. “Everybody go know!” Anthony could hear Festus grin his toothy grin. At heart, Festus was an instigator, so he didn’t feel guilty about the fact that it was all a ruse to bring people together for something outlandish.

“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” Festus said.

Anthony pulled at his short beard and bit his lip. He did… sort of. “I do.”

While Anthony planned with Festus, Adaora’s children, Kola and Fred, peeked into the room from the hallway. When Anthony didn’t notice them, they oh-so-quietly tiptoed across the room to the stairs leading down to their mother’s lab.

Kola had to work hard not to burst out laughing. Fred wasn’t helping. He always started giggling uncontrollably whenever they sneaked past adults. Kola had to stop for a moment; her belly was cramping from holding in all her laughter. It was funny but also really annoying. Somehow, they made it to the lab entrance.

Bellies aching, they descended the stairs and peeked in on the alien. Preoccupied with her book, Ayodele didn’t seem to notice as the two cautiously crept into the lab and hid behind the fish tank. All was silent except the tank’s bubbling filter. Kola softly tapped on the glass to get a yellow butterfly fish to swim out of her line of vision. She was about to sneak closer when Fred grabbed her arm.

“What?” she hissed.

“Scared!” Fred whispered.

“Don’t you want to speak to a real live alien?” Kola asked. “Like the ones in the movies?”

Fred vigorously shook his head. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Well, I do,” Kola said. She stood up straight and nervously grabbed a handful of her long braids. “Hello.”

Ayodele smiled, though her eyes didn’t leave her book. “Greetings, children.”

“I’m… Kola and that’s my little brother, Fred.”

Still cowering behind the fish tank, Fred waved a feeble hello.

“Are you really an alien?” Kola asked.

Ayodele closed her book and looked at Kola. “By your definition, yes.”

“Well, how come you look human?”

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

“Why not appear as yourself?”

“Human beings have a hard time relating to that which does not resemble them. It’s your greatest flaw.”

Kola liked this answer very much because it made sense. In cartoons, even the animals who could talk also had to look human. That had always annoyed her brother. She stepped closer.

“How come you speak English?” Kola asked.

“So you will understand me.”

“Can you speak Hausa?”

“Ii,” she said, with a nod.

“Igbo?”

“E-eh,” Ayodele said, nodding again.

“Russian?”

“I can if I get close to someone who can, yes. You cannot, so I cannot.”

Kola had to agree. She could indeed speak Igbo and Hausa and not Russian. “Do you like it here?”

“I do.”

“You might have liked the United States more,” she said. “They’ve got more stuff. And if your spaceship is broken, they can probably fix it better.”

“Our ship is not broken.”

“My mother says the waters are all dirty and dead because of the oil companies,” Kola said. “Will you all be all right in there?”

Ayodele laughed in a knowing way that made a thousand more questions germinate in Kola’s head. “Yes,” Ayodele said.

“Can you die?”

“Maybe. Probably not.”

“Na wao,” Kola whispered with awe. She leaned against the sofa, now only a foot from Ayodele. This was the most interesting person/thing/whatever she’d ever met. “So, how old are you?”

Philomena came running down the stairs. “Kola! Get away from her… get up here! Fred!”

His fear for his sister, and of the strange woman who looked like his aunt in Asaba, finally exploded and Fred went running to Philomena, the only person other than his parents who could get his sister Kola to behave. Kola reluctantly left Ayodele’s side. “We just wanted to ask some questions,” Kola said, when she reached Philo.

“I’d never hurt them,” Ayodele said.

Philomena pushed Kola up the stairs. “Why would I believe anything you say? I don’t even know what you look like, let alone what you will do to us.” She rudely sucked her teeth and over her shoulder muttered, “Nonsense.”

“Maybe you should try asking me, then,” Ayodele said flatly.

Philomena was halfway up the stairs. “Stay away from the children.”

“School will bring you more success than marriage,” Ayodele said, raising her voice.

Philomena turned and glared at Ayodele.

“I know what your boyfriend is planning and I know why you told him about me,” Ayodele said. “In the end, only you can make yourself happy. Finish school. Forget him.”

Philomena dug her nails into the wooden banister. Then she ran up the stairs.

^{Chapter 14} The Black Nexus

No matter how carefully Jacobs walked, his heels made too much noise. Click, click, click. The hallway of the abandoned secondary school amplified the sound. It was afternoon and the sun shone brightly outside, and he was wearing his favorite long black dress and high heels. They’d parked right beside the building and quickly run inside. Right now was a terrible time to draw attention to himself, but he couldn’t show up to this meeting speaking the Pidgin English he spoke with the guys, nor could he arrive dressed like a “guy”. He needed to present this new development to his friends as himself. He needed to show he was serious and unafraid.

“Walk faster,” Jacobs instructed, wincing at the sound of his footsteps as they picked up speed.

“It’s been such a weird day,” said Fisayo, her heels clicking just as loudly. “Everything being closed, all the checkpoints… the wahala at Bar Beach. My God, Jacobs, I don’t know what I saw last night, but whatever’s going on is not over.”

“Trust me, I know,” he said, putting a strong arm around his sister’s shoulder and giving her a squeeze of reassurance. He was glad she was OK. He’d hated leaving her to walk Bar Beach looking for work alone. Usually he stayed around to at least make sure she was OK, but last night he had eaten some bad soup and thus had a bad case of indigestion. And look what had happened to her.

Worse yet, she’d probably want to return to Bar Beach when they finished here. She’d go home, change and get herself ready and arrive at Bar Beach in the evening. Right now was the best time to pick up the safest johns. Late-afternoon johns were looking for a girl to spend an evening with and this usually included fine treatment and a meal. Evening johns were crueler and looking for something less companionable.

Jacobs needed to spend more time with his younger sister. In the last month, he hadn’t even had the time to stop by her apartment. Not that she’d have been home. Fisayo was rarely home. After all the crazy events in Lagos, today was the first chance he’d gotten to see her.

He’d met with Moziz, Tolu and Troy earlier, so he’d only briefly heard Fisayo’s bizarre story about what she’d seen on Bar Beach when the boom hit. And that conversation was via mobile phone. He’d said nothing about the footage Moziz had shown him and the others, or the plan to kidnap the alien. Not yet.

“Yes, I think things are going to get weirder, too,” he said. “That’s why I don’t want you on the streets.”

“Bar Beach is closed anyway,” she shrugged. “My regular guys won’t even know where to find me.”

The executive members of the Black Nexus, Rome and Seven, stood up when Jacobs and his sister entered the empty classroom. Rome was immaculate, as always. Tall, lean and as statuesque as a runway model, he wore dark blue skinny jeans and a loose white blouse. His tiny gold hoop earrings perfectly accented his closely cut hair. Even without make-up, he passed as a beautiful woman. Though he never outright said he was one, most people on campus just assumed. Seven was only an inch shorter than Rome. She had the curves of Osun the Yoruba goddess, a shiny bald head, and eyes so expressive she barely had to speak.

The two were the presidents of one of the only LGBT student organizations in Nigeria, the Black Nexus. Though most of its members were out or semi-out, the group still only met secretly once a month, in the dead of night. This was not one of those meetings. It was the afternoon and this meeting’s purpose was more specific.

“Hi there,” Rome said, giving them each a hug.

“It’s good to see you,” Seven added, her voice low and husky. The hug she gave Fisayo lasted much longer than the one she gave Jacobs. Fisayo shyly stepped back. She was in no way attracted to women, yet Seven always made her want to giggle like a schoolgirl.

Seven didn’t have to invite Jacobs and Fisayo to have a seat. They could read it in her eyes. Seven and Rome sat on desks across from them.

“OK, man, what’s so important that you dragged us out when Lagos is on lockdown?” Seven said, leaning forward. Her eyes added, And it better be a good reason.

“It’s a good reason,” Jacobs said, bringing out his mobile phone. “Come close. It’s better if we all see it at the same time.”

Jacobs had a nice phone, so the footage was even clearer than it had been on Moziz’ cheap disposable one. Jacobs had watched it at least fifty times and it still blew his mind. She was a young woman, then she seemed to turn inside herself to become a smoky, metallic-looking cloud, then she turned inside out again to become a completely different woman who was old and bent. She’d even spoken with an ancient sounding voice. And Jacobs knew the man the shape-shifting thing was talking to; he was the bishop of his mother’s diocese. His mother had gotten Jacobs to attend service with her once, three years earlier.

That day, Father Oke happened to be giving a sermon on the “evils and filth of homosexuality”. Jacobs had had to sit there beside his mother in his suit and tie, itchy and miserable with embarrassment and sweat as the bishop equated homosexual activity with bestiality. Afterwards, the bishop had come up to him and said that Jacobs’ mother had told him all about Jacobs’… habits. Jacobs experienced a moment of complete panic.

He had seen Father Oke slapping the hell out of those he disapproved of and calling them “the foulest devil”. And when the bishop slapped, he slapped you hard. The receivers of the front or back of his hand were usually women but, once in a while, he slapped a man, too. Jacobs knew that if the bishop “slap delivered” him, he’d punch the bishop in the face. But he also knew that, if he did, the bishop would never forgive him; he would out Jacobs and run him out of the city, or worse.

To his relief, the bishop only shook his hand and congratulated Jacobs for taking the first step toward “healing his soul in the name of Jesus”. But Jacobs felt so humiliated that he couldn’t bring himself to tell the bishop (or his mother) that he wasn’t gay at all. He just liked wearing women’s clothes.

He loved the colors, the feel, the material, the creativity, and, oooh, the fit. A year later, he joined the Black Nexus because they were the only people who accepted his ways. If anyone needed the help of the Lord, it was his sister Fisayo, who was too smart and sweet to be out hustling her body.

“Whaaaat?” Rome whispered, bringing his face close to the high-definition images on Jacobs’ mobile phone.

“Play it again,” Seven said, grinning. “Is this for real? Even if it’s not, that’s a person changing into another person! Would’ve been better if it changed from a woman to a man but this will do. We could have some fun sending this around.”

Fisayo was quiet, biting her nails.

Jacobs replayed it. “My boy Moziz got this from his girlfriend Philo,” he said. “It’s real. No Photoshop or anything.” He turned off his phone. “Philo says that this woman… man… whatever is an alien who is at the house of the people she works for.” He thought about mentioning the kidnapping plan but held off. He needed to get out of his parents’ house and he needed money for tuition when the university reopened. Kidnapping an alien would solve all of that. Yet…

“Hey! We should go see her. Get her on our side,” Rome said. “The Black Nexus can come out of secrecy for this. Who better to understand than a shape-shifter?”

“My exact thought!” Seven agreed, breathless with excitement. “This is what we’ve been waiting for, o.”

Fisayo raised an index finger and frowned. “Wait… wait just a minute,” she whispered. “Last night, I saw…” She looked at Jacobs. “Did you tell them?”

Jacobs shook his head. “Thought it would be better if you did.”

Fisayo got up. “I was on the beach talking to a guy when I heard the loud booming noise.”

“The one they are all talking about on the news?” Rome asked. “You were there?”

Fisayo nodded. “Everyone was looking around, all scared. The guy I was with ran off to check his car. A lot of windows shattered from the noise.”

“That man left you alone?” Seven said, looking disgusted. “Anuofia!”

“He wasn’t gone for long,” Fisayo replied uncomfortably. “Anyway, before he returned, I was just standing there looking at the water. It looked… it was moving strangely. The waves had kind of lost their rhythm and the water was rising. I saw what I am sure was one of the creatures come out of the water! It looked like smoke at first, like smoke that bubbled out of the sea.” She paused, bothered by her own recollection. “Then it was a woman. That same woman in the video. She dove back in the water and seconds later I saw a huge wave go after these three people on the beach, one woman and two men, I think. I couldn’t see them that well. They ran, but the water…”

Fisayo frowned and pressed her lips together. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. “There… there weren’t any other waves, just that one. It splashed over them and pulled back into the sea… with them. They were gone! Stolen. If you’re saying this woman-thing is an alien, then that must have been what took them! They’re taking people! Maybe eating them or something!” Tears squeezed from her eyes. “Like in that old American movie… I forget the name. When are aliens ever not evil?”

“E.T.?” Rome said.

Jacobs put his arm around Fisayo. “Relax. It’s—”

“No,” she said, throwing his arm off. She sat down on one of the desks and began to sob. Jacobs put his arm back around her and looked at Seven and Rome.

“She’s just upset and tired,” he said.

“No I’m not, I know what I saw.”

“Well, how do you know they didn’t bring them back?” Seven said carefully.

“I heard that noise and I saw those people get taken. That’s all I needed to see.”

“Let me see it again,” said Rome.

All of them watched the footage, even Fisayo. After it finished, none of them said a word, yet in their minds, they saw plenty. Jacobs saw an end to living with parents who refused to accept him. His sister Fisayo saw all of Lagos in flames. Seven saw infinite possibilities and a people from outer space that could make the world embrace and love everyone. Rome saw the rise of Rome.

“Let’s get the Black Nexus together tomorrow,” Rome said. “We’ve been hiding for too long. Tell me you don’t feel it. This is it. This is revolution.”

Jacobs did feel it. And if there were more of these aliens, then the Black Nexus could definitely come out of hiding, whether they came out to meet the one at the girl’s house or some other one. Jacobs could see it clearly. He could be a part of the money-making kidnapping scheme and the Black Nexus revolution. He’d have his cake and eat it, too.

^{Chapter 15} Alcohol, My Nyash

The drive to Agu’s barracks should have taken a mere half hour, but extreme Lagos traffic stretched it to two. Agu couldn’t believe it was already four o’clock. Everyone was trying to get somewhere, be it a church, a bar, home, or out of Lagos. Then there was the exodus of people from Lagos Island, Ikoyi and Victoria Island to the parts of the city that had the least chance of flooding if the water rose too high. Almost all the lanes in both directions were packed with people moving inland, which was in the opposite direction to the one in which Adaora and Agu were going. In the one lane they had, they were forced to constantly swerve around people using it to bypass the traffic heading out of the city. By the time they arrived at the building for Lagos military personnel, they were exhausted, sweaty, hungry and nervous.

Adaora turned the engine off and sat back.

“You don’t have to go in with me,” Agu said.

“Oh, I’m going,” Adaora told him. She smiled and held up her notebook. “I brought my notes, too.”

Agu sighed and shut his eyes. “How will I face the man after punching him into unconsciousness?”

Adaora frowned. “He was going to rape someone.”

“You don’t know the army.” He rubbed the side of his forehead that didn’t have a Band-Aid on it. “Adaora, is this really happening?”

Adaora slowly took his hand from his forehead. It was rough, and there were tan scars on two of his knuckles. She wondered if they were from fighting. He did say he’d been in a lot of fights. “You don’t want to start that cut bleeding again,” she said quietly. She looked into his dark brown eyes. “Thank you for stepping in front of my husband.”

Agu smiled tiredly. “I was already beaten up. I had nothing to lose.”

Adaora laughed, still holding his hand. “Is that the only reason?”

He grasped hers now. “Thank you for cleaning the cut on my face,” he said. He leaned forward and she did not lean away. It was a sweet kiss. So sweet that neither of them noticed the car that slowly drove by on Agu’s side.

Chris’s window was open as he passed. He’d been following them on a hunch since they’d left the house and now his suspicions had been proven. He gazed at his wife as she proved to him what he’d suspected for over two years. Somehow he managed to stay quiet and keep driving instead of jumping from the car, dragging his wife out and beating her senseless right there in the street. This time, his rage would certainly have overpowered any black magic she might have practiced on him. But instead, he decided to wait, to tell Father Oke about what he had seen. Chris was sure Father Oke would agree – Adaora needed harsh punishment. Witches needed to be vanquished and cheating wives needed to be beaten down. So Chris drove on. And when Adaora pulled away from Agu, the road beside them was empty.

“Oh my God, what have I done?” Adaora gasped. She grabbed the handle and opened the door.

“I’m sorry,” Agu said quickly. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Adaora paused, the door half open, as dread washed over her. “I’m a married woman.” She was crying now. She hated how the tears came but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t an adulterer. Even during the worst moments, it had never crossed her mind to cheat on Chris.

Agu reached out and touched her face. She slapped his hand away and sniffed. “Don’t.” She pushed the door wider but didn’t leave. “In less than twenty-four hours my life has fallen apart,” she whispered.

“It’s the alien’s fault,” Agu said softly.

Adaora tried but couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. She shut the door again. “Maybe my husband is right,” she said. “Maybe I am a witch.”

When Agu took her hand, she didn’t snatch it away.

“Your husband is a fool,” he said. “You’re stronger than this. Got your notes?”

“Yes.”

“Then come on,” he said, opening his door.

Lance Corporal Benson was a large, middle-aged hulk of a man in need of a vacation. He wanted time away from his wife, away from his three young children, and away from his job. And then there was the madness yesterday. He didn’t know why smoking weed always made him get crazy, but it did. The first time he’d tried it, he’d run wild in the streets for five hours, harassing women and talking shit to anyone who’d listen. Then he’d passed out and wound up in the hospital with an IV in his arm. Yesterday, he’d smoked with some of the younger privates. He’d been bored and annoyed with his life. He needed excitement. He hadn’t meant to attack that girl. He felt horrible about it… and not just because the left side of his head was swollen and his belly felt like it had been crushed with a hundred-pound weight. Thankfully, the medics said his ribs were merely bruised, praise Allah.

The last thing he wanted to see right now was the self-righteous mug of Private Agu. Benson watched intensely as Agu entered his office. He glanced at Agu’s hands. They looked normal enough. A curvy woman with a notepad followed behind him. Agu saluted Benson. Benson didn’t salute back.

The moment she entered the office, Adaora knew they’d made a mistake. She and Agu stood in awkward silence as Benson stared them down. Angry energy radiated from the burly, swollen-faced man behind the desk. He looked ready to wring Agu’s neck. Despite the large fan blowing right behind him, he was glistening with sweat.

Benson sat back in his leather chair, twiddling a pencil in his hands. The silence stretched out between them.

“I didn’t come here to talk about yesterday, sir,” Agu finally said.

Benson chuckled deep in his throat. “Are you sure?”

“This is Adaora,” Agu said. Adaora gave him a quick nod. “She is a professor of marine biology I met last night after the… I met her on Bar Beach.”

Benson’s eyes grew wide before he gained control of himself. “You were there? When it happened?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sit.”

Agu and Adaora sat.

“Sir, we know what caused the sonic boom and what is causing the water to rise. We… we met one and…”

Benson frowned. “One what?”

Silence. Adaora looked at Agu after no one said anything for several seconds. Agu and Benson were staring at each other.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning, Agu?” Adaora ventured. But Benson and Agu just glared at one another.

“Um… Please, sir,” Adaora tried again. “Just listen to him, sir. Please. Sir?”

Silence. Adaora could practically hear the anger that flowed between Agu and Benson.

“Look,” Adaora said, desperate. “I met Agu last night. We were both walking on Bar Beach. We and one other man were in the same place when we heard the boom. It was painfully loud. Then… something…” She bit her lip. No, she didn’t think this was a good person to tell about them being taken. “This woman came… from the water.”

Slowly, Benson dragged his eyes from Agu and set them on Adaora. Adaora spoke louder and faster. “She… she told us she was from outer space,” she said. “She can change. Into many things! The three of us have seen her do it twice now.”

“We took her to my home. I’ve examined her skin cells under a microscope. Again, sir, I am a marine biologist. I have a lab in my house.” Adaora leaned forward, excited despite herself. “I’ve never seen anything like it. She isn’t made of cellular matter. And she’s not the only one. There are more of them… in the water. That’s why the water is rising.”

Finally Agu spoke. “Sir, your uncle, the President, needs to take control of what’s happening. I know no one knows where he is but you can reach him, can’t you? It’s an opportunity for Nigeria to—”

“My uncle is very ill.”

“But he is still the President, sir,” Agu said, trying to control himself. “He has not relinquished even one presidential responsibility, isn’t that true? Absurd as the idea of aliens in Lagos, in any part of Nigeria is, it’s real. It’s happened. He must get involved.” Peripherally, Agu could see Adaora, nodding.

“So you have one contained, private?” Benson asked.

“Yes, sir,” Agu said. “She’s not violent or—”

“Is it green?”

Agu frowned. “Well, sir, she’s—”

“Slimy? Does it have antennae and those big yanfuyanfu eyes?” Benson asked, a smirk on his face.

“They’re not evil like the ones in all the movies,” Adaora added.

Benson grunted, twirling his pencil in his hand. “You know, it was just alcohol.”

“What?” Agu snapped.

“At the checkpoint last night,” Benson said. “We were all drunk and tired. And you can’t tell me she didn’t want it.”

Agu and Adaora looked at each other. Agu’s face went dark. Alcohol, my nyash, he thought. He’d seen Benson with his own eyes smoking igbo last night. How stupid did this man think he was?

“I didn’t come here to discuss that, sir,” Agu said evenly.

“No one could argue that she was drunk and practically spreading her legs for me,” Benson said.

Agu clasped the arms of his chair, digging his fingers deep into the upholstery. Adaora grabbed Agu’s hand. He didn’t notice at all. “That’s it, I can’t do this! I’m going to make sure all the newspapers and all your superiors know what you did!” He jumped up out of his chair. “Women don’t scream, cry and fight if they ‘want’ it!” he shouted.

Adaora smacked her forehead, exasperated. “Can’t you two deal with this later?” she said to Benson. “This is an emergency! A national crisis! Call the damn president now! Tell him we need to see him! Tell—”

“I’ll do what’s necessary, miss!” Benson bellowed, standing up. He pointed at Agu. “I’ll see you tried for this insubordination, Private Agu! Private Julius, Private Akunna, get in here!”

The office door swung open as two beefy soldiers burst in. Adaora flinched at the smug expressions on their faces.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” the taller one said. He pointed at Agu. “I will kparoof you.”

“I guess he didn’t get enough last night,” the other one added.

Agu raised his fists, his unhurt eye bulging. He looked from one soldier to the other. “Come on then,” he said. “I will bring you both down.” He didn’t want to punch anyone. He didn’t want to kill anyone. But he could feel the potential in his fists. Without looking down at them, he quickly put his hands behind his back.

The two men hesitated. Then they moved forward and grabbed him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Adaora shouted, pressing away from the soldiers, her back against the wall.

They cuffed Agu. Then the short one held him and Benson nodded. The taller one smashed a fist into Agu’s belly, causing him to cough and gag.

“STOP IT!” Adaora screamed, tears in her eyes.

They punched Agu in the belly again and then in the face, opening up the cut on his forehead. Blood dribbled into his swollen eye.

Adaora launched herself away from the wall and toward the fight when Benson grabbed her arm. She gave him a vicious look and tried to snatch it away. She considered biting him but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Get him out of my sight,” Benson instructed his lackeys. “Put him somewhere where he can’t cause trouble.” As they dragged Agu out the door, Benson followed, pulling Adaora with him. “Come on, woman. After I make an important phone call, I’d like you to introduce me to your friend.”

Adaora finally tore her arm away, freeing herself from his grip. Benson looked amused.

“You can’t do this,” she said, shaking as she fought to control her outrage. “I won’t cooperate!”

Benson smirked. “This is a question of national security, prof. It’s not a good idea to get in the way of a military operation. People get thrown in jail for that kind of thing. And our jails are not so nice, especially for a woman like you.”

Adaora frowned, her mind racing. “What if we’re not telling the truth? What if this isn’t really an alien invasion? You’ll look like a fool in front of everyone.”

Benson smiled as he took her arm again. “Agu never lies. That’s his biggest problem.”

^{Chapter 16} Headless State

The President of Nigeria had been in the same place for over fifteen hours since waking from his heart surgery, staring and staring at the news on television. He still couldn’t believe his eyes. His nurse and his wife had assured him that his head was clear. They insisted that his pain medications were non-hallucinogenic. And because he could speak, though doing so was rather taxing, he knew he wasn’t in hell. Not yet. For the first time in months, he forgot about his pericarditis. He was free of the nightmarish images that haunted him, the images of his heart encased in a sack of vile yellow diseased fluid.

But this was worse.

Oh Allah, what am I going to do all the way from Saudi Arabia? he wondered. He wasn’t about to call on his VP. Handing things over to Wishwell Williams, indeed! There was no way he was delegating something so serious to a power-hungry, money-grubbing Christian blockhead with such a stupid name. Who would name their child “Wishwell”? The very idea of handing over the country to a man named Wishwell Williams made him want to spit. The man’s master’s degree was in zoology, for Allah’s sake! Williams knew more about governing lizards and birds than human beings.

“What are you going to do?” his first wife Zena asked. She was sitting on the edge of his bed watching the news with him. He wished she’d leave. Her cloying perfume was giving him a headache and her clicking porcelain bangles were making too much noise. He needed his advisors. He wouldn’t have minded his second wife Hawra’s presence, either. She had a better feel for policy, being a lawyer herself. The only good thing about Zena was that she preferred to speak to him in Hausa instead of English.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling his heart skip a bit in his chest. This situation was going to kill him. He wished he were at his home in Abuja with a glass of cool Guinness, watching Star Wars on his high-definition widescreen television. He loved Star Wars, especially the more recent installments. There was such honor in Star Wars. In another life, he’d have made a great Jedi knight. Being a vigilante loyal only to justice was always better than being any kind of head of state. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said in his dry voice. “We need to do proper research.”

Zena looked at him but did not speak her thoughts. His illness made her presence more important. She was his senior wife; she’d known him longest. Thus when he had fallen sick, she was the one he wanted around to care for him. Still, sometimes the sight of him made her want to spit. He looked so thin, so frail, so impotent in his white hospital gown. His skin was a blotchy mess. His eyes were rheumy and yellow. He was nothing like the lion of a man she’d married decades ago. And he wasn’t even thinking straight. How could he do “research” when he was a continent away? The slightest amount of stress made his heart do a death dance. Nevertheless, if he didn’t return to Nigeria soon, there would surely be a coup d’état.

The President wanted to shut the television off. He knew more than his wife, for he’d had a phone call that he’d sent her out of the room to take. It was from his good-for-nothing nephew, Benson. Of all people, why did he have to be the one handling this? Benson said he believed Lagos had been invaded by extraterrestrials. He’d sent a group of soldiers and two local oceanographers to patrol Bar Beach and those men reported that the waters were teeming with ocean life that had not been seen there in over thirty years, and some that had never been seen – whatever that meant. And they couldn’t explain the copious amount of seaweed washing ashore, either.

Most troublesome was the report of the woman in someone’s house in Lagos believed to be one of the space creatures. Benson said he’d been told that she could shape-shift and was potentially dangerous. And right now Benson was on his way to the house to either capture or kill her. Benson, his most foolish nephew.

I have to get back to Nigeria, the President thought, rubbing his stubbly chin.

^{Chapter 17} Cashews, Pure Water and Chin Chin

Anthony looked out the window at the crowd of fans gathering in the narrow residential street outside the house. Most were young people and they brought a festive air. Local hawkers had picked up the scent and were selling bottled soft drinks, bags of “pure water”, cashews, peanuts and chin chin, and packs of cigarettes. Many had probably been at last night’s concert. And all of them seemed to have some kind of mobile phone in their hands. They talked, texted, took photos and footage of Adaora’s house. His friend Festus said that the social networking sites were buzzing with news of the Ghanaian rapper’s whereabouts and that he would give a free concert if enough people showed up. Word was traveling fast.

Behind him, Ayodele sat on the sofa. Adaora’s children sat across from her, staring in fascination. Philo stood sulking on the other side of the room. She was preoccupied with looking at her silent phone.

“Your audience gathers,” Anthony said.

Ayodele smiled. “You’re well liked.”

“I’m loved,” Anthony said, turning back to the window. He hoped they’d still love him after they learned that he wouldn’t be giving a concert.

Impatient, Philo opened her phone, flipped it shut, then opened it again. She couldn’t stand being in the same room as this woman, thing, whatever she was. Philo was positive that the woman-thing was evil, with her pleasant demeanor and long, too tightly braided hair and wicked ways. God will punish her, Philo thought darkly.

^{Chapter 18} Smoking Igbo

Moziz was trying not to speed. With all the military and police out, he knew it was best to be as inconspicuous as possible. Especially since it was still late afternoon. But he had the feeling that time was short. He turned up his music – Anthony Dey Craze – and let the bass shake his well-traveled tan ’94 Nissan.

Troy was in the passenger seat, quieter than usual. Jacobs and Tolu were in the back, also quiet, as they smoked igbo. The smoke smelled especially sweet and Moziz inhaled deeply. All of them wore black masks and were dressed in black clothes as Moziz had instructed. It was broad daylight but Moziz didn’t care about being seen as much as putting fear into everyone in that house.

“We go be rich, oooo!” Jacobs shouted over the music, feeling very irie. He’d pushed thoughts of the Black Nexus out of his mind. Both Seven and Rome had been calling him all day. They could wait. Everything in his life was about to come together. He was sure of it. Once he had the money, he’d bring them in on things. He did wonder about Fisayo, who was supposed to have called him hours ago. But he was sure she was fine. And when he brought money to her, she’d be even finer.

Jacobs slapped hands with Tolu, who took a deep pull on the joint and handed it to Moziz. As Tolu spoke, he exhaled smoke: “Small time now, dem go trap all of them and we no go see chance take dem make money again. Moziz, na pot of gold your girl hand us so, o.”

Moziz took a pull on the joint and nodded. “We never begin eat cake yet. Mek we first pray say mek checkpoints no dey this road today.”

It was only Troy who was not caught up in the moment. “Nigerian police dey jump on top people motors and okada like say dem American ninja dem, and like say dem be Bruce Willis for Die Hard, abi?” Troy said. “Dem dey even chop women like groundnut.” He sucked his teeth with anger and muttered, “Nonsense.”

Moziz, Jacobs and Tolu burst out laughing but Troy only looked out the window, a dark expression on his face. He was thinking about the phone call he’d gotten a few hours earlier from his cousin Inno, saying his sweet pretty cousin Oregbemi had been raped last night by some soldiers or police, one of whom had had the nerve to be on television last night. Making appearances so soon after trying to kill Oregbemi. He, his cousins and friends would get all the details and handle that soon, after he did what he had to do here. Once he had some money, he could take down even the authorities.

“Listen, if we reach dere, we enter and we comot fast,” Moziz said.

They all agreed.

Anthony had his phone to his ear as he watched the festive crowd swell larger and larger outside of Adaora’s house. He frowned. “Why won’t either of them answer?” he muttered. He looked at his phone, pressed “end” and redialed.

Ayodele was showing Kola how to use Adaora’s old but reliable digital camera. Kola’s brother Fred looked on with great interest.

“So I just press this button, then?” Kola asked, holding it with both hands and extending her index finger to the red “record” button.

“Yes.”

“It’s so easy!” Kola proclaimed, looking down at the screen. “Mommy never lets me touch this.” She giggled. “Wait until she sees that I can use it better than she can.” She lowered it and fiddled with some of the buttons.

Philomena stood on the other side of the room, looking out the window anxiously. She hadn’t mentioned the growing crowd to Moziz, afraid that he might not come if he knew. She no longer cared if the damn kids wanted to play with the alien. Even she sensed the urgency in the air. Something was about to change and somehow this knowledge gave her the strength to take charge of her life. The first thing she’d do was not feel an ounce of guilt for what she was about to help happen.

Adaora was fuming. Why did we think the man would behave rationally? When had the Nigerian government and military done anything for its people? They were all about covering their asses and stuffing their own pockets. She wanted to slap her other cheek. She’d been an idiot. She and Agu, rare patriotic Nigerians trying to do the right thing. Stupid members of the populace. Insignificant, powerless civilians. She should have known better.

She leaned her head against the car window. Lance Corporal Benson was in the passenger seat, the shiny silver SUV driven by yet another of his stupid lackeys. Poor Agu. What would they do to him? She nearly jumped when her mobile phone went off.

Benson held the phone up, looking at the caller ID. He turned around and scowled at her. “Who is Anthony Dey Craze?”

Adaora gritted her teeth. Her phone was her personal property. And when had he even snatched it from her pocket? “He is the other man who was with Agu and me when we first met the woman on the beach.”

He grunted, looking at the phone. “Sounds like that mumu rapper my niece listens to who is always screaming that he is crazy,” he said, putting it in his pocket. “If it is, maybe we should arrest him, too.” Both he and the soldier driving the SUV laughed.

Adaora sullenly crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window as they passed the tall buildings of downtown Lagos, weaving madly through the dusty traffic. Two orange-yellow danfo so overstuffed with people that both had passengers hanging on to the outside swerved in front of them. Adaora pushed her hands against the back of Benson’s seat as they came to an abrupt stop. As they maneuvered around and passed one of the danfo, the solider driving the SUV leaned out the window, spat at it, and smacked its side, shouting, “Damn your mother! Mumu! Idiot! Go and die!”

Moziz parked the car on the far side of the busy street. He had to squeeze between a beat-up old Honda and a dusty Ford SUV. There were no other spaces. There had to be over two hundred people milling about. Most seemed to be around his age. They all removed their masks.

“Which kine fucking nonsense come be dis one, na?” Moziz said yet again, turning the engine off. The four of them just sat there. Philo had said nothing about a damn mob. “Jacobs, find out wetin dis people sabi.”

Jacobs nodded, got out, stood beside Moziz’ open window, shoved his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans and looked around. Moziz frowned as he watched people. Everyone seemed excited. “Na craze be dis,” he said.

“Maybe na people wey dey come from big party from person house,” Tolu said.

Moziz rolled his eyes, annoyed. “You no dey see,” was all he said, wishing Tolu would just shut up. Tolu never saw anything until it was explained to him in full. “Mek you no waste time, o,” Moziz said to Jacobs.

“I no go waste time,” Jacobs said. He walked into the crowd.

A few minutes later, he spotted several familiar faces from back when he had been in school. He was about to approach a guy he knew from his biology class when he saw bright flashes of color a few yards away. It took him several minutes to shove his way close enough. Then, he just stared. People were so taken aback that they gave the group enough space to wiggle through. The slow-moving procession brought music, confetti and a great big rainbow-colored sign with a giant Black Nexus painted in the center. Jacobs’ entire body went cold.

There were nine of them, the whole organization. Eze, Yinka and Michelle wore matching black suits and red lipstick. They walked slowly, aware of all the attention. Royal wore red platform thigh boots, red spandex pants and a tight pink T-shirt. He carried the boom box and was jumping about, shaking his backside for anyone who would watch. Royal would dance for his grandmother in the village, the man was so free. Okechukwu wore jeans and a white T-shirt but he was the same, dancing to the music and even joining in with a group of laughing women at the perimeter of the crowd. Chioma and Yemi held the Black Nexus sign. Both looked like they wanted to creep right back into their closets but they held their chins up. Seven was wearing tight jeans and an even tighter top as she smoked a cigar, ignored the leers of the men and blew kisses at the women.

And who better to lead the group than the greatest queen of them all? Rome was decked out in a breathtaking rapa and matching top that fit his body as if such clothes were indeed made for men, too. He looked like a Yoruba queen. All of them were wearing headbands with alien antennae bobbing from them. All Jacobs could think as he approached them was that they were going to get themselves killed.

Jacobs raised a hand. “Rome!”

Rome caught his eye, smiled confidently, came up to Jacobs and said, “The Black Nexus has come down to earth.”

Jacobs’ mouth was hanging open. Everyone was watching, too thrown off by the sight of the student organization to react. Yet.

Jacobs was having trouble finding words. “What… you guys… didn’t…”

“We’ve been calling you for hours.”

“Well… I…” He could feel a hundred eyes boring into him.

“Anyway,” Rome said, waving a dismissive hand, “we heard there was some commotion on this street and we assumed it had to do with what you showed us.”

Jacobs was having trouble deciding between doing what he had to do for Moziz and the others, and seeing the Black Nexus out in the open. He wanted to join them but he didn’t want Moziz, Troy and Tolu, who knew nothing about his cross-dressing, to see. For the first time in his entire life, he was immensely proud and intensely ashamed at the same time.

“But we were wrong. These people are here because of a damn celebrity!” Rome said. He snapped into a practiced pose as some women stopped to take his picture with a mobile phone. “Enjoy it,” Rome said to them, smirking. “That’s the closest you’ll come to looking this good.” The women laughed and scurried away.

“Celebrity?” Jacobs asked.

“That Ghanaian rapper Anthony Dey Craze is in there.” He pointed at the house.

Jacobs blinked and frowned, trying to mask his confusion. What did a rapper have to do with aliens? “I’ll… I’ll be right back,” was all he could think to say. He turned and pushed into the crowd. A few had begun to grumble about “adofuroo”, “fags” and “bottom power”. “Kai! Wetin dey do you?” Jacobs heard a guy ask. “Are you man or woman?” He moved faster toward the car, feeling like a deserter. The Black Nexus had to be crazy to come out in a place so public. Yet they were so brave to do so. They’d been hiding for such a long time. Not so much out of shame, but out of a need to stay safe. Now an alien had come to Lagos. It wasn’t just the Black Nexus who were unsafe or at least vulnerable now. It was everyone. In his heart, he knew that if that alien was in the house, it was time. It was time for a change.

“Jacobs don return!” Troy exclaimed. Jacobs jogged back to the car, a smile plastered on his face. With each step he took toward the car, the need for revolution left him like air from a leaky balloon. Not yet, but soon, he told himself, to stave off the guilt that replaced his hope for change. He resisted the urge to turn around when he heard people shout in surprise as something happened. He joined his other group of friends.

“Whoo!” Jacobs said, getting in the car. “You no go believe dis one, I swear.”

“Wetin?” Moziz snapped. “How people hear about her if na only Philo sabi about am?!”

“No be de winch ’tory I wan nack you,” Jacobs said, feigning excitement. “Na Anthony Dey Craze! Dem say e dey for here!”

“Eeey,” Tolu and Troy exclaimed, sitting straight up and looking out the window.

Jacobs took the moment to glance back into the crowd, but he couldn’t see Rome or any of the Black Nexus. Moziz just sat there scowling, arms crossed. Things had suddenly become far more complicated. Moziz sucked his teeth. “God forbid dis kine situation, o.”

^{Chapter 19} Offshore

For the third time in his life, Agu was somewhere that didn’t quite make sense. The first had been when he was ten years old, walking home with his fifteen-year-old brother. That evening, they stood out there on the road leading to their house, staring at the newspaper-wrapped bundle. Instead of going to the market, he and his brother had bought the meat a half hour before from a man selling it cheaply on the roadside. It was late in the evening and the sun had already set. They’d brought it home, given it to their mother and secretly kept the leftover money.

Agu would never forget the moment when their mother unwrapped the meat, expecting a slab of beef or haunches of goat. An arm with a tiny, human-like hand flopped from the package as if asking for a handout. The monkey was dead, its pink tongue lolled out, its tiny forehead smashed in and its dried eyes wide open. Agu nearly vomited. His mother beat them both and sent them out to get rid of it.

Then there was the time when he was twenty-seven and woke up in the Sahara Desert. He’d been visiting his brother up north in Katsina and boarded a bush taxi he thought would take him home. The driver spoke terrible English and Agu spoke terrible Hausa. Agu thought the driver said the destination was Lagos, but the driver had meant Agadez. Exhausted from a night of partying, he’d fallen asleep as soon as the bush taxi full of people started moving. He woke up two hours later to serious desert in a part of the world he never thought he’d see. They had stopped in a tiny town called Maradi and the driver was refueling for the drive across the Sahara!

Now he was on a goddamn speedboat in handcuffs. If something happened and they capsized, he would sink to his death; Private Akunna and Private Julius were too stupid to realize this, or maybe they did not care. Aside from the two idiots who’d beaten the hell out of him in Benson’s office, there was a worried-looking oil worker and an irritated engineer.

They were heading for an offshore oilfield where, he gathered, something had gone wrong with the hose attached to the supply vessel FPSO Mystras. The report had come that thousands of gallons of crude oil were spilling into the sea. Because of everything going on in Lagos, many oil workers, military personnel and police were abandoning their responsibilities and fleeing the city with their families to villages and towns east and north. Those who had stayed were dealing with the flooding, traffic and general panic of the city. There was no one except Akunna and Julius available to check out the malfunctioning hose, nor was there anyone to keep an eye on Agu. So Private Julius and Private Akunna had had to bring him along. Thankfully, the water was smooth, so the risk of Agu bouncing off the boat into it was relatively low. Still, it was not long until sunset. With all that was happening, Agu didn’t want to be on the water at night.

“Are you sure we should be out here?” Agu shouted.

“Shut up!” Private Akunna snapped over his shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the offshore oil rig and vessel and Akunna cut the engine. The rig was a spidery structure made of concrete and rusty steel. Anchored firmly to the seabed by steel beams, it was a decades-old monster, a hulking, unnatural contraption of production facilities, drilling rigs and crew quarters. Agu had circled it on boat patrols plenty of times. It was usually a place of noise and activity. Now it was deserted and quiet. The large vessel seemed unnaturally silent, too. Agu noticed that there was no pungent stench of crude oil from the reported spill. And there was an odd sweetness.

“Where is the oil?” Akunna asked, grabbing the shoulder of one of the oil workers. “I don’t see it. I don’t even smell it!”

“Ah-ah, we were all there,” the oil worker said, flinching away from Akunna’s grasp. His name was Biko, in homage to the South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. However, Biko the oil worker was not South African, he was Igbo, and in the Igbo language the word “biko” meant “please”. He hated his father for giving him such a stupid name. It seemed all his life he was stuck begging people to listen to him. “You don’t mistake spillage, o. Please, you have to believe us. Call the Mystras. People will still be there. They will tell you!”

“He’s right. We had to evacuate the place because of the boom but there was leakage here,” Rafiu the engineer said. His stomach lurched. He would never be able to dislodge the guilt he felt for abandoning the oil rig when the hose was spewing oil into the water. He’d become an engineer to save the environment. He swabbed his sweaty face with his handkerchief. “We flashed the light on the water. You could see it bubbling up. I was going to—”

Private Akunna held up a hand. “Shh, shh!”

They all listened, bobbing on the water about a hundred meters from the oil rig.

Silence.

“I think we should turn back,” Agu ventured again.

“Shut up!” all of them shouted.

“Take these cuffs off me, at least!” Agu insisted. “Where am I going to run?”

Akunna looked at Agu with disgust. Still, he reached for his pocket and Agu’s heart lifted.

Private Julius’s voice stilled Private Akunna’s hand. “You hear that?” he whispered.

Agu felt chills crawling up his spine. Of all of them on that boat, only he recognized it. The sound of metal on glass. The noise came from the water just over the side of the boat.

“Uncuff him,” Akunna said, giving the key to Biko. Akunna went to look over the edge with Julius.

“You see that?” Julius said, pointing at something in the water. Rafiu joined them to see. As soon as Biko got the cuffs off, Agu moved closer to the center of the boat. Biko stepped to the edge with the others.

Fwit!

It flew right past the four of them and grazed Agu’s arm before plunking into the water on the other side of the boat. Agu felt a wet sting, and looked down at his arm. It was dribbling blood from a cut three inches long near his elbow. It only took Agu a moment to realize what had happened. He threw himself down and managed to crane his neck around to see fifty more flying fish zip from the water like poison darts.

He shut his eyes and closed his ears. But he could still hear the meaty sound of fish slicing human flesh and the agonized screams of the others.

BUMP!

The entire speedboat shuddered and the floor cracked beneath Agu’s body. Something very big was ramming the boat. When it was hit again, the boat capsized and they were all dumped into the waters roiling with monstrous and alien ocean life. Opening his eyes, Agu found himself trapped in the water beneath the boat. He saw a huge swordfish-like creature stabbing the boat with its spear almost playfully. Then he saw something terrible. A shark was tearing Biko’s arm from his body. Then Private Agu ran out of breath, and saw no more.

^{Chapter 20} Siege

“When you arrive, wait for me,” Benson said.

They were still on their way to Adaora’s house. Benson was using her phone to speak with some of his men who were already there. Adaora’s hatred for the man had reached an all-time high. “What?” he shouted into the phone. Adaora imagined his spit spattering her phone’s mouthpiece. He turned in his seat and glared at her. “What did you people do?” he yelled. “Tell the whole goddamn world?”

She felt more than a pinch of pleasure at his anger. So Anthony had succeeded. “If you’d have listened to us instead of—”

Benson ignored her and continued to growl into the phone. “Won’t be a problem,” he said. “There’s only one. How hard can it be? Just be on standby. The President will be landing at Lagos Airport around 6 a.m.” He paused and looked at his watch. Adaora glanced at hers, too. It was 5.19 p.m. “We capture it, lock it down and transport it to Kirikiri Prison. No fuck-ups.” He slapped her mobile phone shut and said, with a malicious glint in his eye, “Private Agu’s going to be looking at some jail time for this.”

Ten minutes had passed and Moziz and the others were still in the car. Without the air conditioning, the car was becoming a sauna. Moziz wanted to bang his head on the steering wheel. He had a headache and his high was making him paranoid. Philo had texted him that indeed Anthony was in the house, but so was the goddamn money-making alien. How were they going to kidnap the alien with all these people around? With each minute, the crowd grew bigger. He even thought he saw a group of circus performers a few yards away.

Tolu wanted to forget the plan and go scope out women, but he didn’t want to cross Moziz.

Jacobs wanted his money. The Black Nexus could wait.

Troy was this close to getting out of the car, finding an okada motorbike and heading to his cousin’s house. He had things to do: a cousin’s honor to avenge, a military man to exterminate. His phone buzzed again with a text from his cousin’s brother, ready to join the hunt for her attacker.

“Focus!” Moziz said. “Forget Anthony Dey Craze. Na bigger fish!”

Outside the noise of the crowd increased. “Fuck. What now?” Moziz groaned. They turned to see about thirty people coming up the other end of the road. The newcomers were all dressed in white and singing a Christian hymn. A bishop carrying a giant metal cross led the way. Moziz shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he opened them, and started the car.

Jacobs felt nauseated as he watched. The Christian procession was moving right towards the Black Nexus. Rome, he knew, hated Christians and often got into violent arguments with anyone who wanted a piece of him. And Seven wasn’t any better. She would insult any priest, reverend, pastor, imam, rabbi who looked her way. As the Christian procession approached, members of the Black Nexus didn’t even notice because they were focused on arguing with a group of husky guys. Jacobs knew he should have gone to them, supported them. Still, he didn’t move, and he felt awful for it.

“We’re going to go around,” Moziz said as they slowly drove out. “We’ll sneak in from the back.” The bishop leading the pack looked a little crazy. Moziz noted that some of the people with him looked angry. He rolled his eyes. These kinds of people always showed up whenever the masses stopped “suffering and smiling”.

^{Chapter 21} The Sea’s Cow

Agu held on for dear life to the fattest animal he’d ever seen. The manatee smelled like ocean-soaked cedar wood. Its thick wet skin was wrinkly like an elephant’s, hard like the corky material of a bulletin board, and rough like sandpaper. It swam at a leisurely pace, close enough to the surface of the water that Agu was able to keep his head above it. Around and below him the clear ocean waters roiled with strange, impossible sea life. What looked like a giant, bright red and white flat snake undulated by not three feet below.

“What have you done to the ocean?” Agu asked the manatee. Were the monsters attacking the oil rig and the supply vessel, too? These were Ayodele’s people and earthly allies? Ayodele was not only a shape-shifter, she was a liar. She hadn’t come in peace at all.

He heard the sea cow’s response in his head, like a child’s voice through a mobile phone.

“You will see,” it said.

^{Chapter 22} Relax

Moziz parked the car in the narrow road that ran behind the house. Philomena was there waiting at the door.

“Put your masks back on!” Moziz instructed. All but Troy piled out of the car and ran inside. Troy climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for the others to come out with the alien. His mobile phone buzzed but, for the moment, he was not thinking about the rape of his cousin.

Kola was filming Ayodele as she stood by the window watching the crowd. Holding the camera as steadily as possible, Kola adjusted the contrast, faded out the scene then tilted the camera up so she could clean the lens with the hem of her shirt. She was having a wonderful time. She turned the camera back on to film the crowd outside, zooming in on the man in white standing before the gate with his arms spread.

“That’s Father Oke,” Kola whispered. She snickered. He looked silly and really sweaty. He was surrounded by other people who were also in white. Two of them were arguing with a tall tall woman who looked like a fashion model and a woman who was dressed like a man but still looked like a woman. One of the men in white slapped the tall woman and she responded by punching him in the face so hard that he fell into the crowd. Kola grinned and zoomed in on them. High drama, like in the Nollywood movies her mother loved so much and her father hated.

A car slowly pushed through the crowd, annoying the people around it. The car’s doors opened and five people, one well-dressed woman and four men in suits, got out. They had pads of paper in their hands and immediately started talking to people and snapping pictures of the people fighting. “Newspaper people!” Kola exclaimed. She zoomed in on one of the male journalists, who walked up to one of the people in white who was not fighting. The journalist said something and several people in white instantly started shouting at him until he stumbled away, shocked. “Oh, this is great!” Kola said, giggling.

Ayodele paid Kola no mind as she stood watching the crowd, a satisfied look on her face.

Anthony sat on the chair with Fred, calling and calling Adaora and Agu’s phone numbers. “Shit shit shit! What is going on? This is bullshit!” he hissed when he got no answer for what seemed like the twentieth time. He glanced at Fred. “Sorry, o,” he said, patting the boy on his head.

Fred smiled. “It is OK,” he said. “I’ve heard my mother and father say those words. Usually when they say it, there is a good reason.”

Anthony smiled back, patting the boy on the head. He looked up, his eyes falling on Philo. She was staring at the kitchen entrance with wide eyes. He slowly got up, his hand sliding off Fred’s head and pushing the boy behind him. “What are you—?”

The men in black burst in from the kitchen.

“A beg, mek everybody relax,” Philo said in a high-pitched voice, moving aside to let Moziz and the others forward.

“We no wan injure person!” Moziz and Troy were wielding guns. Philo pointed to Ayodele. “Na she!”

“Everybody lie down, now!” Moziz shouted, aiming at Ayodele.

Ayodele stared blankly at him and didn’t move. But Kola and Fred dropped to the floor as if their lives depended on it. Anthony held his hands up and asked as calmly as he could, “What is this?”

“Lie down!” Moziz commanded.

“Eii! Na Anthony Dey Craze, o!” Tolu exclaimed, lowering his gun and grinning.

Distracted, Moziz blinked and looked at Anthony again. “Shit,” he said, lowering his gun.

“I get all your album!” Tolu exclaimed.

Moziz smacked Tolu upside the head. “Ee remain mek you kukuma ask am for him autograph!” He looked at Anthony. “Sorry, Anthony. But you sef, you need to lie down for floor, too. We no mean any harm. We just want dat woman.” He pointed at Ayodele, who still hadn’t moved.

“Please,” Moziz said to her. “Mek you just follow us quietly.”

“What do you want with me?” Ayodele asked. She cocked her head and switched to Pidgin English, “Wetin una want with me?”

“We go talk dat one when we comot outside. Just—”

“I no dey go anywhere with una,” she snapped.

Moziz looked at Tolu and Jacobs, then gave a small nod. All three of them lunged at her. Then they immediately froze. To Moziz it sounded like the house was full of those noisy bugs in the trees, all screeching in terrible harmony. He clapped his hands over his ears, dropping his gun. His mouth hung open and his hearing was muffled as, right before his goddamn eyes, she… she… melted? Melted! Imploded? Disintegrated? Right before his eyes. Evaporated into something small on the floor. A green… He squinted. A green lizard.

Tolu stood there, gun in hand, ears uncovered, and shrieked like a little girl.

“You see dat?!” Jacobs shouted. He’d pulled off his mask and his face was wet with sweat.

“Catch am!” Moziz shouted.

Chaos ensued as all three went after the lizard. Moziz’ mind was blank, his world shrinking down to focus on the impossible thing before him, the lizard-that-was-once-a-woman. Retrieve her and get out. First she had been a woman. Now she was a lizard; he would catch the lizard.

Philomena just stood there watching Moziz scrambling around, chasing a lizard. Like a child. His legs looked so short and skinny and she realized how stocky he was, how graceless, how he had a bit of a gut that bounced when he ran. She sighed, her shoulders slouching and her stomach dropping. Moziz was just another young area boy.

They knocked over vases and threw aside the coffee table. They stepped on pillows and cushions. And they cursed the entire time. Anthony grabbed the children’s hands and ran to the front door. He threw it open only to be met with the excited cheers of his fans.

BLAM!

Kola screeched and Fred crouched at her feet. Anthony shoved the children behind him. “Stay low,” he said, frantically looking for the gunman. Near the sofa, Tolu was shooting at the scampering lizard.

“Biko! No shoot am! We want am alive!” Moziz shouted.

Tolu’s eyes were wild. “Na evil she be, o!” he babbled, waving the gun wildly as he tried to follow the lizard’s path with the barrel. “We suppose kill am! Kai! Kill am!” He pulled the trigger again. BLAM!

“What are you doing?!” Jacobs shouted. “Stop it!”

Anthony, Kola and Fred were still trying to figure out which way was safest to flee when the lizard ran out the door between Anthony’s legs.

The first thing Adaora thought as she got out of Benson’s car was that the street outside her house had turned into a carnival. The very air smelled deliciously festive. There were vendors selling suya, fried plantain, boiled eggs, Fanta, beer. One woman had even set up right across the street from her house. She was selling fufu and what looked like egusi soup, jollof rice and other hot food items. And she was making a killing, from the looks of it. She had no less than ten people waiting to be served.

There were young people milling about, laughing, conversing, smoking, drinking. Two clean-shaven men wearing white native clothes and matching caps stood side by side in the middle of the street, frowning in disgust. “We should return to the mosque,” one said. The other nodded, but neither of them moved.

Most everyone in the crowd kept one eye on her house. “Anthony DEY CRAAAZE! Anthony DEY CRAAAZE!” some people chanted, then they started laughing. But, despite the festive atmosphere, not all was well. On the far side of the gate was a colorful group of people who seemed to be in distress. A tall woman had a bloody nose. Had there been a fight? Adaora squinted. Some from the group were nervously holding up rainbow-colored signs with a large spinning black sphere drawn in the center. She remembered similar flags when she’d visited San Francisco, California, once. A gay pride group? In Lagos? There were women in suits and a man standing beside them was wearing a pink shirt and… leather thigh boots? Well, that’s both bold and stupid, Adaora thought to herself, frowning. They were going to get their asses kicked, or worse. She considered asking Benson to send some of his people to help them, but then realized that was an equally stupid idea. Better not to alert the military.

Father Oke and his parishioners were monopolizing the area directly in front of her house. They were singing, praying, swaying and clapping. Some were jeering at the group carrying the gay pride signs. More were pleading for “Ayodele the Extraterrestrial” to come out so that they could embrace her and welcome her into their church. But Adaora could have sworn she also heard a few of them calling for “the abomination” to “show its heathen face”. A bad sign.

Also a bad sign were the ten army trucks and cars parked nearby. And the soldiers walking toward Benson carrying AK-47s. Benson motioned for them to wait. He clutched Adaora’s arm. “Walk,” he said, dragging her toward her house.

“You don’t have to be so rough,” she snapped.

They were yards from the fence when the entire crowd suddenly sprang to life and started surging toward the gate.

“Anthony Dey Craaaaaaze! Anthony Dey Craaaaaaze!” people shouted.

“Hang on to me!” Benson yelled, pulling her toward the wrought-iron fence but away from the house’s front door. Thankfully, the gate was still closed or the front yard would have been overrun. They made it out of the crunch yet still had a good view of her yard. They watched as a tall, lanky, dark-skinned man, a little girl with braids and a small boy in pajamas stepped out of the house. Anthony, Kola and Fred. Kola was carrying Adaora’s camera, filming the chaos in spite of the danger. Anthony kept anxiously glancing behind him into the house.

“Fred! Kola!” Adaora shouted, trying to rush forward, but Benson kept hold of her arm.

“Those are my children,” Adaora yelled at him.

“Get us the creature and then you can get your children.”

“We love you, Anthony!” a woman yelled.

“Let me go to them!” Adaora snapped, trying to tug away from him. “I’ve brought you here, haven’t I?”

“I brought you here,” he said. But he let go of her arm. “I have soldiers surrounding this place. Don’t try to run; they all know what you look like.”

Adaora took a step toward the gate when somebody grabbed her arm yet again. She turned, prepared to dig her nails into Benson’s hand if she had to. It wasn’t Benson.

“Chris?”

His eyes were wild, staring. She noted that he wasn’t wearing white. He was wearing the same jeans and dress shirt he’d been wearing yesterday when he’d slapped her. “Fred and Kola are in danger! Let me go!”

“I’ve been following you,” he snarled. “Who is this man? Another of your boyfriends? How many of them do you have?”

Adaora glanced toward Fred and Kola. “Don’t you see the children in— Let go of me!” She threw a look at Benson, pleading for help. He smirked at her before moving to intercept Chris.

“Excuse me, sir, I need your wife to come with me,” Benson told her husband. “This is important business. Military business.”

Benson might as well have not spoken. “Nothing but a whoring witch!” her husband spat at her. “I saw you with him in the car, that other man…”

As Adaora braced herself for another slap across the face, she heard the sound of metal balls on glass coming from inside her front yard. Even from afar, the sound made her want to vomit. A few people around her actually did turn to the side and vomit. At the same time, Adaora felt relief. She knew exactly what was happening. The way things were going at the moment, something had to give. Something had to intervene. And something was about to.

“Ayodele,” she whispered. “Thank God.”

All around, people began to scream and press their hands to their ears as they stared into Adaora’s yard. There were the clicking sounds of guns being raised and aimed. But all Adaora saw was the creased, starved, unshaven, raging face of her husband as he swung her by the arm and slammed her against the fence.

Moziz looked out the open door at the surging crowd. “We need comot for here, jo!” he shouted. “Now!” At his words, Ayodele the lizard became Ayodele the woman. Tolu whimpered, still clutching his gun, and backed into the house. They all followed, including Philo, fleeing into the house and out the back door to Troy, who waited in Moziz’ car.

“Where she dey?” Troy asked, as they threw themselves into the Nissan.

“Drive!” Moziz shouted. They peeled out exactly one minute before soldiers and police flooded into the narrow road behind Adaora’s house like water flooding a beach.

^{Chapter 23} Greetings

This time when he attacked her, nothing magical happened. He wasn’t held down by some mysterious force or anything like that. Then again, this time she felt no fear, no desperation, no shock. And she wasn’t alone with him in their home, as she had been last night; there were soldiers and a mob around her. But still, she realized, she’d expected the strange force to have its effect, if necessary. She could make it happen.

Oh God, she thought.

It took two soldiers to pull Chris off Adaora. They wrestled him to the ground. Adaora grasped the gate for balance. She stared down at the man she’d lived with for over a decade who’d never ever laid a hand on her up until last night.

“Witch!” Chris sobbed, as a soldier pushed his head to the concrete.

Benson took her arm, more gently than before. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s move to the front. Maybe you can help.”

It was easy for them to get through the captivated crowd of fans, Christians, soldiers, Black Nexus members, curious passers-by and press people now. Even Father Oke was speechless, the metal cross in his hands forgotten.

Where a moment before there had been a tiny green lizard, a woman now stood. Ayodele, in the middle of the lawn, looking at the crowd.

“Mommy!” Fred shouted when he spotted Adaora through the fence. Anthony squinted then waved. Adaora waved back. At least she’s alive, Anthony thought. Before he could stop the child, Adaora’s son ran across the lawn to his mother. Anthony didn’t dare move. The crowd was bewildered, confused, frightened. Anything could set them off. They didn’t need to see him do anything but stay where he was.

As Fred ran towards Adaora, Ayodele looked down at Kola, who was still filming her. “You are doing a good job, Kola,” Ayodele said. Kola grinned and continued filming. “You see your mother?” She pointed and Kola looked.

“Mommy!” Kola said, waving.

Adaora waved back with her free hand. Fred had reached her and was holding her other hand through the gate.

“Keep the camera on me, Kola,” Ayodele instructed. Kola nodded, holding the camera up. She had about two hours of battery time left; she’d checked.

Ayodele looked over her captivated audience. She raised her chin and smiled.

“Greetings, people of Lagos,” she said.

^{Chapter 24} Greetings

The Lagos internet café was full of the usual suspects. There was the owner, Nonso Daouda, who sat behind his counter doing a poor job of not seeing what his customers did with his computers and internet connections. Then there were about twenty men between the ages of nineteen and forty – all were in the process of emailing, texting, chatting, researching. Some were legit, most were up to some sort of 419. There was also one woman chatting with her boyfriend overseas. There was not one person here who had not been here yesterday doing the exact same thing.

Suddenly all the screens blinked off. They came back on showing the face of a young woman, who called herself Ayodele. Everyone in the café sat back, watched and listened. One guy who’d been in the process of texting his sister was watching the beautiful woman with long braids on his mobile phone.

“We landed here in the night,” the woman said, her strange voice smooth and confident. The picture moved a bit. It was obvious that someone was holding the camera and trying his best to stay still. “From beyond earth. From space. You all will call us aliens. We are guests who wish to become citizens… here. We chose here. I am the first to come and I greet you.”

The Lagos restaurant served everything from Nigerian cuisine to Chinese food. Expats and locals alike frequented the place. That’s what gave The Tribe’s Calabash its reputation and popularity. Today it was full. But, now, all the eating and conversation had stopped. The eyes that weren’t watching the widescreen high-definition television on the wall were glued to mobile phones, computers, an iPad prototype, even e-readers, where the same slightly shaky footage aired.

“I apologize for the noise of our arrival and your rising waters from our landing,” Ayodele said. “Nobody is attacking you. And nobody will dare now. The winds of change are blowing. We are change. You will see.”

In a busy open-air market in the Central Nigerian city of Abuja, people crowded around a clunky television that was for sale in a used electronics booth.

“In less than twenty-four hours, I have seen love, hate, greed, ambition and obsession amongst you,” Ayodele said. “I have seen compassion, hope, sadness, insecurity, art, intelligence, ingenuity, corruption, curiosity and violence. This is life. We love life.”

Unoma was driving her old but wonderfully reliable off-white Peugeot down the Lagos Expressway listening to an Anthony Dey Craze song when her mobile phone buzzed. When she flipped it open to answer, the footage Kola was filming showed on the small screen.

Unoma worked hard to keep her eye on the road. “What the—?”

“Please, listen to me,” Ayodele was saying. “Consider me, consider us. As you have much to offer, so do we.”

Unoma pulled her car over to the side of the road to watch Ayodele on her phone. There were several cars in front of her that had also pulled over. Every single one was filled with people holding their mobile phones.

In Lagos, father, mother and boy child sat in their family room, watching the alien on their old television. The adults wondered if what they were witnessing was real. Or maybe this woman on TV claiming she was from outer space was some sort of elaborate hoax. The mother had flipped through the channels and the alien was speaking from every single one. But how hard could it be to take over Nigeria’s broadcasting networks?

The boy child soaked in every word. Why not? It was so cool, sha!

“We come to bring you together and refuel your future,” Ayodele said. “Your land is full of a fuel that is tearing you apart.”

In Saudi Arabia, the Nigerian president, the First Lady and two other officials, Yuusuf and Nicholas, were in the President’s hospital room watching Ayodele on Yuusuf’s mobile phone. It was a cheap phone he’d bought in Lagos. He hadn’t turned it on in weeks, since he’d arrived in Saudi Arabia with the President. Why would he, when his phone service didn’t reach outside of Nigeria? However, minutes ago, it had turned itself on and started communicating a most peculiar message from a strange woman.

“We do not seek your oil or your other resources,” she said. “We are here to nurture your world.”

A single thought went through the President’s mind: Benson was telling the truth.

Ayodele looked out at the people. Kola was directly in front of her with the camera and so it seemed that when Ayodele looked at the crowd before her, she looked out at all the people watching on large and small screens in Lagos. The expression on Ayodele’s face was serious, almost threatening. Intense.

“So, what will you do?” Ayodele asked.

Her captivated audience was completely silent.

Then… BOOM!

^{Chapter 25} The Barred Beach

Bar Beach was deserted. There were now barricades preventing anyone from coming onto it. A minute after the second great sound eruption, military men and police who’d been guarding the place had dropped or pocketed their mobile phones and run off. The noise was huge. It was bigger and richer than the one from the previous night. All the car and building windows in a one-mile radius shattered; birds, insects and bats fell to the ground, dogs barked, cats hid, lizards scurried, several forms of bacteria died and others germinated. The noise this time was so profound that many of the weaker multi-cellular organisms in parts of the ocean closest to the source were obliterated.

Only Private Agu sat on the beach, yards from the water, sopping wet. The cut on his forehead had begun bleeding again but the swelling on his face had gone down… some. The sea cow had left him about a fifth of a mile from the beach. As he’d started swimming to safety, a rip current nearly dragged him back out to sea to his death. Thankfully he knew to swim parallel to it and managed to make it to shore.

He’d crawled out of the water and turned to see if the sea cow was anywhere in sight. It was gone. It probably hadn’t even witnessed his brief struggle in the water. And that was when he’d heard the sonic boom. It knocked him off his feet, and he fell, face-first, into the sand where he lay for a long moment, his ears ringing. He didn’t cover them. He didn’t wipe the blood from his face. He forgot for the moment about finding his way back to Adaora’s house to find them: Adaora, Anthony and the possibly evil Ayodele. Instead he just sat there. For nearly twenty minutes, he sat there.

Gradually, he realized something was happening. He squinted at the sea. At first all he could see were tiny weaving lights against the darkening sky. Then he became aware that he was no longer alone on the beach. There were people with mobile phones and torches. He could hear voices raised in excitement.

A crash came from the street behind him, but his attention was drawn to something that was lying on the beach, huge and black against the city lights. Was it another monster? He’d seen plenty in the sea as the manatee had brought him to shore. But if it was, why would these people be here? It was black and nearly the size of a bus, and there was a crowd around it.

“A whale?” he whispered, squinting harder. It didn’t help. He got up and stumbled toward the huge lump but then his legs collapsed and he sat down hard on the sand.

There was a man running from the lump up the beach. He changed course and ran to Agu, a grin on his face. He was carrying a big whitish chunk in his arms. “Na from street you come?” he asked.

“No,” Agu said.

The man laughed. “You look like say na from de street you come. Anyway, sha, no wahala. People dey craze. Na only God fit provide. E get big fish for there wey from water come. De fish face be like autobus, but e get plenty meat for body.”

“What… ?”

“Go get your own before other people take am finish, o!” the man said. He took off with his meat before Agu could say more. Agu felt as if the world had turned upside down. Everything seemed dreamlike. He looked toward the street where the flames of a burning building lit up the area. He saw and heard people milling about vigorously in the streets and cars and trucks beeping as they tried to get through. It looked like a riot. Yet here were these people carving up what could only be a whale. Even in the midst of such chaos, people were still people. Still hungry and hoping to take advantage of a good situation.

As he sat he saw shapes in the water, illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun, moving toward the land. They grew, rising out of the waves, coalescing into recognizable shapes. Human shapes. They were people, hundreds of people, walking straight out of the ocean onto Bar Beach. First they were wet. Then they were dry. At least, that was how it looked to Agu in the waning light. Some passed by only a few steps from him. Others walked further up and down the beach. Several walked out of the water mere feet from the dead whale. The Lagosians were so preoccupied with securing their share of the bounty that they never looked twice at the space people walking out of the sea.

Some of them were dressed in various types of traditional garb, some in military attire, some in police uniforms, others in westernized civilian clothes. Most of them were African, a small few Asian, one white. All were completely dry and Agu could smell roses and seaweed as they drifted past him. All of them could pass for Lagosians.

They walked up the beach as an enormous object, all shifting oily black spires and spirals and brown and yellow lights, rose out of the water. It swallowed up the darkening horizon with its girth.

Only then did the people carving up the whale pause to look up. Then they took their meat and got out of that place as quickly as possible.