The Waiting Game

chapter twenty

Happy New Year, friends. Amongst other things, my new year resolution includes finishing this book. We're already 67k words into it and nowhere done, I promise there's still plenty of thrilling, good stuff to come. Oh, you have no idea.

Anyways, there's still no steady update plan. I write exams this month so hopefully in February, everything will be settled. Thank you for sticking around.

*****

Amina Khalid might have resigned from being The Orion Project’s beta but sadly, she was still very much an Orion member with plenty of duties too. She was reminded of that fact upon her arrival to the Dome, there hadn’t been any use sticking around Kaduna when she’d killed two birds with one stone – reaffirmed her intention to become Orion’s leader and tricked Nafisat Khalid into doing her a favor. As far as wins went, those two were. She should have stuck around her mother’s mansion a little while longer. Even though her childhood was tainted with bad memories, she still had some fondness for the state she’d grown up in, plus her mother’s house was big enough that she could stick around and avoid the bad cloud that was Nafisat’s presence.

She’d been planning to stay a day or two when she’d received the summons.

Now, she gritted her teeth, trying and failing to keep her ire in check as she realized she might be working with Iremidayo Lawal. For a brief, miniscule second, she regretted resigning. As Orion’s beta, she’d been above summons from everybody in the organization save Joshua. Now she was answering summons from Vivian Kehinde who was the co-director of Orion’s Espionage department.

Amina and Vivian had a little bit of history. The latter had been relegated to the third party during the years of Joshua and Amina’s rivalry while they trained for Orion. To give her some credit, Vivian was one of the best, third after Amina and Joshua but she hadn’t been given any of the spotlight because the organization had been more interested in Joshua and Amina.

When Joshua had become Orion’s president, Amina had had no choice but to retake their final exams the following year because she’d been brutally injured. While Amina was away, Vivian should have shone, she did finish second to Joshua. If not for Nafisat’s interference, claiming foul, Vivian might have become Joshua’s vice instead.

Instead, she’d ended up the co-director of the espionage department, sole director at first until Artemis merged with Orion two years ago and she shared the position with Tope Adebiyi now. The position of co-director of the Espionage department was no easy feat but Vivian nursed a grudge like people raised babies. She still hated Amina and now, she had all the chance to show it because for once, Amina was beneath her in rank.

Normally, Amina wouldn’t care, in the past; she’d in not so subtle terms reminded Vivian that she was better than she would ever be. She couldn’t exactly do that now, Vivian would cry insubordination and Amina would be punished. So she’d heeded the summons, was even prepared to take all orders quietly. That was until she found out she was working with Ire.

She knew he was in the espionage department and she expected to see him so smug, there were rumors that followed her resignation; that Joshua had cast her aside and favored Ire. It was rumored that he’d announce Ire as her successor any moment from now. Amina was sure Joshua would take any chance to spite her, what she couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t signed her resignation notice yet.

It had been days. She didn’t understand what kind of game he was playing. That and Vivian’s summons was making her cranky.

“What?” She bit out when she noticed that Ire was still staring at her. She’d been ignoring his probing eyes for the past three minutes. Predictably, Vivian was being petty by reminding her of her place; she’d been waiting for the girl to call them into her office for the past ten minutes.