CHAPTER 144: THE DIPLOMAT’S INVOICEThe "Lagos-grit" had taught me that real rain doesn’t fall in clean, vertical streams like the digital code of a simulator. It drops in thick, heavy sheets that smell of damp iron, rotting vegetation, and the sulfurous exhaust of a thousand idling diesel generators. It leaves a yellow stain on your skin if you stand under the eaves too long, a physical reminder that the sky above the Mainland has to clear its throat through a layer of industrial smoke before it can breathe.My bare feet sank four inches into the wet, dark mud of the Niger Delta bank. The texture was startling—cold, gritty, and filled with tiny fragments of river shells that bit into the soft skin of my arches. The pixelated gray that had threatened to dissolve my shins in Geneva was completely gone, replaced by the heavy, solid ache of real muscle and real bone. The skin of my knuckles was raw, bleeding a dark, thick red that didn't smoke or glow violet. It just dripped, the iron-ri
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