They had both heard it before, in whispered reports, in the undercurrent of conversations with rangers and rescue teams.

A name spoken with caution, with contempt. An enabler of poaching, a man whose influence threaded through black markets and backroom deals from Nairobi to Guangzhou. That he had now emerged from the shadows, no longer a rumour but a threat made flesh, filled both Bette and Tina with a cold, rising dread.

This wasn’t just a man. It was the machinery of an entire network. And it had just turned its eyes on them.

Tina stepped forward now, her voice tight. “Chang? You think he’d come here?”

“I think he and his crew will come wherever they need to send a message,” Nyah said simply. “Whether they come for Joseph or here, is anyone’s guess. Joseph is however sure of one thing… it won’t stop with him. And frankly, I agree.”

The silence that followed was heavy, pierced only by the distant bleating of a goat and the baby rhino’s huffs of breath.

Bette looked between Tina and Angelica, then around at the foundation’s compound, at this fragile peace they’d fought to maintain. And she knew, in her gut, that the storm wasn’t just coming.

It had already begun to gather.

***

Elijah gripped the wheel tighter as the battered van jolted over the uneven terrain, dust swirling in its wake. The sun was high in the sky now, shortening every shadow across the savannah. The vastness around him felt suffocating despite the open plains, a cruel paradox.

Behind him, in the dark, rattling space of the van’s cargo hold, the man wailed something; they were pleading words, barely audible over the engine. Elijah didn’t want to hear them. He turned up the radio, but the signal was weak, leaving only static and broken fragments of distant voices.

His hands were slick with sweat and his head pounded with the storm raging inside his mind. The situation, he was finding himself in, was altogether different that the life he had led so far. He had killed before, animals, yes. But a man? A man with a name, a family, maybe children waiting somewhere, clueless that their father was being driven to his end?

Elijah’s jaw clenched as he tried to silence the war in his head. Chang had given an order. A simple one. No hesitation. No complications.