The video was everywhere by morning.
No introduction. No watermark. Just seventy-two seconds of tension and silence, leaked anonymously on a Telegram channel and re-uploaded on a dozen others before the first press outlet even touched it.
A girl. A stairwell. A confrontation. Then—
A fall.
A body.
And blood, dark as oil.
The footage was pixelated. Faces blurred. Audio distorted. But the shape of it , the rawness, was unmistakable.
Elara watched it in the safe house, alone. A fan buzzed overhead. Outside, dogs barked. Inside, time stopped.
She pressed pause.
Rewind.
Play again.
And again.
It was her. And it wasn't. The video had been scrubbed so clean of identity it could've been anyone. But she knew. It was her hand. Her scream. Her fear. It was Tife. That moment — unfiltered, inescapable — carved across the internet like a scar.
Kayra called three minutes later.
"Elara. It's out."
"I know."
"How did he get it?"
Elara didn't answer.
She was still staring at the frozen frame — the moment just before the fall. Her hand outstretched. Tife leaning back. The start of the end.
Kayra's voice cut through. "This isn't just a leak. It's a trap. He's not trying to expose you. Not yet. He's letting people guess. He's letting you sweat."
And sweat she did.
The world responded within hours. News anchors debated the "mysterious footage." Twitter spiraled into speculation.
"Is this the missing student?"
"This video needs forensic review."
"The girl in black looks like Elara Bello — just saying."
But no one could confirm. The original file had been stripped of metadata. The uploader was untraceable. It was a ghost drop, perfectly executed.
The only person who knew the full, uncensored truth — was Elara's father.
And now, he held it like a blade.
She didn't hear from him until nightfall.
The message came through a burner number: a single voice note.
"Withdraw. Or I show them the rest."
No name. No greeting.
But the voice was unmistakable.
Alhaji Ibrahim Bello didn't bluff. He baited.
Elara stared at the message. Her fingers trembled.
Not from fear.
From fury.
He wasn't fighting back. He was dragging her into the mud.
And this time, if she slipped, she wouldn't get up.
She shut the curtains, locked the door, and threw her phone across the bed.
Then she opened her laptop.
Search terms spilled from her fingers.
Deep trace metadata removal. How to remotely wipe leaked video. How to overwrite compromised footage.
She emailed Kayra.
Subject: I need a cleaner
Body: Not a literal one. A digital one. Someone who knows how to erase shadows.
Kayra responded in three words: "I know someone."
The next day, she met him in a cybercafé in Ikeja. His name was Kodar, and he looked like someone who hadn't slept in years. Greasy hoodie. Burn marks on his fingers. Eyes that flicked to every corner of the room before he spoke.
"You the girl with the dead sister?" he asked.
Elara's jaw tightened. "You the guy who cleans sins?"
He smirked. "Depends on the sin."
She handed him a drive. "There's a file in here — original footage. I need to trace where it came from. Who cleaned it. Who uploaded it. Then I need it gone. Permanently."
Faro plugged it into a sandboxed laptop.
"You're not trying to erase you, are you?"
Elara didn't answer.
Kodar stared at the screen, then back at her.
"Someone went deep with this. VPN tunnels across four countries. The original file was recorded with a timestamp overlay — stripped frame by frame."
"Can you get to the source?"
He smiled. "Not just that. I can find the cleaner who cleaned it."
Back in the safe house, Elara paced.
She had always known her father had people. Engineers. Analysts. Ghosts.
But this? This wasn't exposure.
This was strategy.
He'd leaked just enough to put her in the crosshairs of public opinion. Then he'd waited.
Now he wanted her scared.
Wanted her ashamed.
Wanted her silent.
Two days later, Kodar texted her: "I found the node."
She met him that night in an abandoned co-working space near Yaba.
"There's a server farm just outside Abuja," he said. "Private. Hidden behind a fake logistics company. They're hosting the full video there. The one with the uncensored audio and raw footage."
"And?"
"And they have backup copies. One on cold storage. One on chain-encrypted drive. This was built to last."
"Can you destroy it?"
He hesitated.
"Not remotely. Not without inside access."
She stared at him.
"You're saying I have to go to Abuja."
He shrugged. "You said you wanted it gone."
Kayra exploded when she told her.
"Are you insane? That's a trap."
"Probably."
"He wants you out in the open. You'll be followed the moment you land."
"Then I'll wear a bigger mask."
"Elara—"
"I won't let him finish me. Not like this."
Two nights later, under the name Irene Bello, she flew to Abuja.
Hair dyed. Sunglasses. A quiet room in a cheap guesthouse.
Kodar's contact gave her the building schematics. Security rotated every six hours. She had a fifteen-minute window — no alarms, no motion detection.
The file was stored in a vault server on Level B2. She knew where the physical drive sat.
What she didn't know ,what no one had predicted , was that her father would be waiting.
She saw him before he saw her.
He was in the lobby, speaking to a man in a suit. Calm. Smiling. Like he wasn't holding his daughter's ruin in a hard drive below ground.
She froze.
But then he turned.
And their eyes met.
Everything in her froze.
Then burned.
He didn't say a word.
He just gestured, almost playfully, like a father waving to a child across a park.
Elara turned and walked out.
Kodar's voice buzzed in her ear through the earpiece.
"Abort?"
"No."
She walked back in through the side.
Fifteen minutes later, she stood in front of the server vault.
Her hands shook as she pried the lid of the cold storage casing and pulled the drive.
It was heavier than it looked.
She could feel the weight of it.
Tife's scream.
Her fear.
Her failure.
Elara hesitated.
Then she smashed it.
Hard.
Twice.
Three times.
The hard drive cracked like bone.
Kodar's voice returned. "Status?"
"Gone."
She didn't wait.
She ran.
Out the building. Into a taxi. Straight to the airport.
Back to Lagos.
Two days later, her father issued a statement to the press.
He neither denied nor confirmed the video's origins.
But he made one promise:
"My daughter and I have our differences. But I have always taught her that some things must stay buried. For everyone's safety."
That night, Elara drafted the next article for Kayra's platform.
She stared at the publish button for an hour.
If she clicked it, there was no going back.
If she didn't, she was no better than him.
Her cursor blinked. Waiting.
Outside, the sky burned orange.
She whispered, "Amara. Tell me what to do."
No voice answered.
Only silence.
And the screen, glowing with possibility.