The response came in eleven minutes.
Eleven minutes which meant Mr. Grey had been watching the dashboard. Waiting to see if I'd bite.
"Before we discuss the job I need to know you're worth my money. Anyone can claim capability. Prove yours."
I sat forward.
"There is a building. Zenith Corporate Tower. Victoria Island. Their power management system runs on a private network secured, monitored, and considered impenetrable by the firm that installed it. I want the lights off. Exactly sixty seconds. Midnight tonight. Then back on. Clean. No traces. No damage. No casualties."
A pause. Then the final line.
"You have twenty four hours. Fail or get caught and this conversation never happened."
I read it three times.
The system was already moving.
Zenith Corporate Tower, it said. Forty two floors. Private power management network Siemens BuildingOS. Military grade encryption on the external firewall. Internal network segmented into four independent zones.
"Can we get in?"
Possibly. A pause that felt like genuine calculation. The Siemens BuildingOS has one known vulnerability a legacy remote diagnostic port left active in older installations for maintenance access. Most firms patch it. Some don't.
"And Zenith?"
Checking. Another pause. Longer. Their system was installed six years ago. Updated twice. The diagnostic port the system almost sounded satisfied, was never closed.
"There's our door."
A very small door, the system cautioned. The diagnostic port has a detection threshold stay in too long and their security flags the intrusion. We get one clean window. Sixty seconds in. Execute. Sixty seconds out.
"Mirrors the job perfectly," I said.
Intentional on Mr. Grey's part I suspect. A beat. He's not just testing whether you can hack a system. He's testing whether you can do it with precision. Control. No collateral. Anyone reckless can break something. He wants to know if you can be surgical.
I leaned back. Looked at the ceiling.
₦4,500,000 sitting on the other side of a sixty second window at midnight.
"Walk me through the approach," I said.
We go in through the diagnostic port using a custom access script I'll build it while you sleep. At 11:58 we establish connection. At 11:59 we move through the internal network to the power management zone. At midnight exactly lights off. We hold for sixty seconds. Then restore and pull out before the detection threshold triggers.
"What's our margin for error?"
Approximately nine seconds on either side before their system flags unusual activity. A pause. Don't be late. Don't linger.
I nodded slowly.
"And if something goes wrong mid execution?"
Then we abort immediately, collapse the connection and leave nothing behind. The system's tone was flat and certain. The job dies. Mr. Grey disappears. We never speak of it.
"Understood."
I looked at the message on screen one more time. The cursor blinking patiently beside Mr. Grey's challenge.
Outside my window Lagos was doing what it always did alive and enormous and completely unaware of what was being planned inside a renovated apartment on a Thursday night.
I typed my reply.
"Midnight. Watch the lights."
Sent.
I pushed back from the desk.