CHAPTER ONE – THE PRICE OF BREATH
Ikorodu Road, Lagos — Midmorning
The sun hung like a merciless, white-hot coin in a bleached sky. Heat shimmered above cracked asphalt, heavy with the diesel breath of a thousand struggling engines. Yellow danfos and sleek SUVs crawled through Lagos's infamous go-slow—a metal river of impatience and survival.
Horns blared. Hawkers shouted. Afrobeats thumped from a broken speaker. The smell of roasted plantain mingled with exhaust, sweat, and survival thick enough to taste.
Inside a black SUV that barely moved an inch every five minutes, ADEBAYO "BAYO" ADENIRAN sat untouched by the madness. Cool air hummed through the vents, sealing him off from the city's humidity. His shirt was crisp, his wrist-watch gleamed, his expression unreadable.
He spoke into his earpiece, voice calm but absolute.
"The projections are non-negotiable, Tope. If their numbers don't align by close of business, we walk. My patience is a line of credit they've already spent."
A pause. Tope's voice crackled back through static.
"Bayo, that'll kill the deal. The commissioner's office won't take that kindly."
"Then they can choke on their inefficiency," he said. "You can't build clean air with dirty numbers."
He ended the call and stared into the side mirror. The reflection that stared back looked calm, composed—yet somewhere behind that calm lurked fatigue: the kind that came not from work but from watching rot dressed as reform.
Outside, street vendors tapped on the glass, waving phone chargers and bottled water. He waved them off gently. None of it touched him. None of it ever did.
This was his world—controlled, ordered, efficient. The illusion of progress inside tinted glass. Yet beneath that order, something restless stirred: a memory of fragility, of nights when his own breath came shallow. He knew how precious air could be.
His phone vibrated: a soft ping from his environmental-monitoring app.
AIR QUALITY: HAZARDOUS.
He dismissed it absently. Lagos had stopped listening to warnings long ago.
The lane ahead cleared slightly. He smiled.
Then it stopped again.
---
Surulere — Late Morning
Traffic spilled into every side street. The horns became an orchestra of impatience. Up ahead, chaos brewed at a supermarket gate. A black Corolla was trapped between three LASTMA officers and a growing crowd.
A middle-aged man pleaded, shirt soaked through.
"Please! My son's not even moving anymore. I just ran in to get his medicine!"
One officer smirked.
"You people always have stories. ₦70,000 or we tow it. From the yard? ₦400,000 to release."
Laughter followed. The boy inside the car gasped for air—small chest rising and falling, eyes fluttering. The wet wheeze of collapsing lungs.
Something inside Bayo cracked.
He opened his door and stepped into the heat.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked.
"Asthma," the man said, shaking. "Please—help us."
"You tow a car with a dying child inside?" Bayo's voice cut the air.
The smirk vanished.
"Get his things. I'll take him to the hospital."
The man hesitated.
"You're a stranger."
"I am," Bayo said. "But your son is dying."
Together they lifted the boy into Bayo's SUV. The officers watched but said nothing. Perhaps shame. Perhaps fear. Perhaps neither.
---
Faithview Hospital, Surulere — Late Morning
The ward smelled of disinfectant and stale fear. Nurses rushed the boy onto a gurney. Oxygen hissed to life. The doctor barked orders—nebulizer, IV, steroids.
Minutes stretched into forever.
Bayo stood outside the glass door, arms folded, helpless before something as simple as breath.
At last the doctor emerged.
"He's stable. You brought him just in time."
Bayo exhaled slowly. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath.
₦89,000 later—medication, oxygen, emergency fees—he called the boy's father.
"He's safe. Still on oxygen."
The man sobbed over the line.
"God bless you, sir. They've taken the car… ₦385,000 to release it. That car feeds my family."
Bayo's jaw tightened.
"I'm coming."
---
LASTMA Office, Iponri — Early Afternoon
The compound was a gray sprawl of impounded vehicles, heat, and hostility. Officers lounged under trees, laughter mixing with generator drone. The father waited by the gate, shoulders slumped.
Bayo strode straight in.
"Your men towed a car with a dying child inside," he told the officer-in-charge. "The father was buying medicine. The child nearly died."
The man frowned.
"Who authorized that?"
The junior officers avoided his gaze.
"Release the vehicle," the officer snapped. "No fines."
The father broke down, tears flooding.
"You saved my son—and my life."
"Your son is breathing," Bayo said quietly. "That's enough."
When the man tried to kneel, Bayo lifted him by the shoulders.
"Stand tall. You've done nothing wrong."
---
Outside — Afternoon Sun
Lagos roared on—danfos speeding, markets pulsing—yet for a heartbeat the city seemed to pause and breathe again.
The father stood beside his reclaimed car, eyes shining.
"How can I repay you?"
"Teach him to keep breathing," Bayo said. "That's all."
He turned to leave. His phone vibrated—another alert, another crisis. But as he reached the SUV, he looked back.
The boy was awake now, small fingers waving weakly through the window.
Their eyes met. The boy smiled.
And for the first time that day, so did Bayo.
---
Evening — Bayo's Apartment, Surulere
The sun bled over the skyline, painting the smog orange and gold. Bayo's apartment was minimalist—clean lines, quiet order, the sanctuary of a man who fought chaos for a living.
He loosened his tie, poured a glass of water, and stared out as the city glittered with false peace. Below, a generator hummed while children splashed in puddles from a broken pipe.
He opened his laptop. The Lagos North Environmental Contract blinked back—numbers, projections, promises. Somewhere inside those figures, he smelled the same rot he'd seen on the road.
A child's struggle for air, a father's desperation, an entire city suffocating under its own rules.
He rubbed his temples and whispered,
"Maybe air was never free after all."
His phone buzzed again—a message from Tope:
Chief Balogun wants to meet. Tonight. Private.
Balogun—his mentor, his father's old friend—now a man too comfortable in the system he once vowed to cleanse.
Bayo looked out the window. The city breathed, shallow and strained, like the boy on that gurney.
Thunder rolled across the mainland.
He straightened his shirt, grabbed his keys, and murmured,
"Let's see who's really choking Lagos."
He stepped into the night.
He didn't know that by morning, the city would be choking on something far worse.