The ORION Project | ✔

chapter 39

Low on self esteem so you run on gasoline.  . .

Grace didn't care too much for American pop culture or its music industry. In fact, apart from Rihanna — who was a boss ass woman — she didn't really listen to their songs, hell, music even wasn't her thing but Tope always took that indifference as a challenge, when she'd tried and failed to convert Grace to the Swiftie fandom, she'd spent yesterday trying to force her Halsey obsession on Grace, in the end, she'd failed again but she did succeed in high jacking Grace's new phone and changing the ringtone to Gasoline by Halsey and now, Grace had never related to a song more.

There were times when her anxiety hit the peaks, there were days when she didn't even want to get out of bed. Today was one of those days and every glance at the calender sent her heart galloping.

In six days, Remilekun Phillips would be coming for her. There was the big chance that all their well thought plans would fail and there was an even bigger chance that The ORION Project was onto their plans already.

There was so much what ifs that it made her head spin to think of it. Although they couldn't afford doubtful thinking, in a matter of hours, she'd be meeting with Dayo Kingston, who'd reached out yesterday and declared that she would be coming over to the house on the same day Tolu was meeting with the rest of the ARTEMIS council. Nobody knew what to think of Firepemi's mother, Tolu had told her the brief story of how his younger sister had been the first to join ORION, naive like he'd been, apparently she was the bait to lure him to joining the organization. There seemed to be a lot of simmering resentment when Tolu spoke of his sister, he said in the end, Dayo had picked her side when Tolu and Tamika had needed her help.

Grace remembered meeting the woman briefly, the first time at the Dome, she hadn't been quite cold but she remembered how Dayo Kingston seemed to look everywhere at her. In fact, she'd struck Grace as a docile woman, now she wondered if Dayo Kingston was another person that was more than she appeared.

She kicked the covers away and sat up. She reached for her phone on the nightstand, there were several message alerts on the screen, most of them were from network providers, one of them was from Sanmi, telling her that he wasn't coming home, it was from seven hours ago, three am. Grace bit down her lip.

It wasn't unusual for Sanmi to spend the night out, but as far as she knew, he didn't have a job that kept him out late, the only time he did stay out was because he was high out of his mind and didn't want her to know, Sanmi usually hid when he was ashamed. Now, she wasn't sure if it was the same case, since she'd returned from Abuja, they hadn't really spoken but when they did, he always seemed sober — even if he was distant.

It shamed her to think that she was so distant from her family that she didn't even know how they were doing. She swiped on the message and fired a quick message at him.

You coming later?

There was a blue tick almost immediately after she sent it, telling her that he'd read it. The bubble appeared soon after.

Yeah.

Just one word, granted, Sanmi wasn't much of a texter. She considered calling him, but there was a part of her that didn't want to know, didn't want to consider that he wasn't clean like she thought. So she sent another message.

I want you there, Sanmi.

His message came a minute later as she was deleting the messages from Glo and 9mobile.

I know.

That was that, she didn't text back and he didn't send another message. Grace was scrolling mindlessly through instagram when a new message came in. She frowned when she saw it, pretending like her heart wasn't going into overdrive because of it.