Novels by Garry Odiase

Smoke still hung in the air when Bobby got back up.His knees wobbled, ribs burning with every breath. The explosion had knocked the wind out of him. He staggered, coughing rapidly before blinking through the haze that curled and danced like ghostly fingers around the wreckage.But there was no time to rest.His hands, scraped and trembling, moved on instinct—reconnecting wires, recalibrating what was left of the trap. He didn’t need to think anymore. The process lived in his fingers now, like muscle memory etched by desperation. Strip the copper. Twist the leads. Check polarity. Ground the coils.His heart thudded like a war drum. Too fast, too loud. He kept one ear tuned to the shadows, the other to the soft buzz of electricity.The woman was gone. Cross had vanished too. But Bobby wasn’t fooled. He hadn’t won anything. Not yet.This wasn’t over. It was only a pause in a longer game.He had one more trick. One last backup—one that didn’t rely on hope or chance or Future Bob’s warnin

Bobby pressed the trigger.The jammer in the lunchbox came alive with a low, vibrating hum—like a hornet trapped in a glass jar. A burst of compressed electromagnetic static filled the air, silent to the ear but deafening to anything even remotely electronic.Across the courtyard, Darius Cross jerked mid-step. His eyes widened—not in fear, but in surprise. His hand shot instinctively toward the device strapped to his wrist. The glowing symbols across its face flickered—then went dark.His body staggered as if gravity had shifted. One foot slid, unbalanced. He stumbled forward, caught himself, and looked up—straight at the library window where Bobby was watching.Bobby hid down immediately—his heart pounding.It worked.He didn’t know for how long. The pulse wasn’t strong—maybe five seconds of disruption, maybe less. But for the first time since this nightmare began, he had made Cross falter.He peeked back over the windowsill. The man was gone. Not teleported—vanished. No shimmer. No

For a moment, Bobby thought the trap had worked. Darius Cross stood frozen, one leg forward, arms locked mid-stride like a statue struck in motion. The crackling feedback of the EM coils buzzed through the tunnel, the glow from the device pulsing in sync with Bobby’s racing heart. And then—He moved. Just a twitch. A slight tilt of the head. Then the fingers on his right hand uncurled slowly, mechanically—like a puppet breaking free from invisible strings. “No…” Bobby whispered. “No, no, no.” Cross’s eyes flicked up. Locked onto Bobby’s. They were no longer cold—they were angry. He stepped forward, snapping the last of the trap’s restraint as if it were nothing but cobwebs. Sparks exploded from the makeshift rig. The copper wire turned black and melted. The bait phone died instantly, screen going dark like a blink. Bobby turned and ran. His legs moved on impulse, dodging broken bricks, going under low pipes, feet splashing through shallow water. His lungs burned while his mind scr

Bobby couldn't speak. The man’s grip on his hoodie was firm and unyielding, difficult for him to break free. It was not violent but it didn’t feel optional. His breath was shallow as if air couldn't help him further.“Stop running,” the man said again.His voice had a low, measured quality and a mysterious weight, as though it had been used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He didn’t shout. Didn’t move aggressively. Just held Bobby there, on the cold concrete floor of the storm tunnel, as if waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.“I’m… I’m not who...who you think,” Bobby stammered, throat sore.The man's eyes were steady, focused and calculating, but not vicious, his eyes shone in the tunnel's darkness.“You’re Bobby Stokes,” he said flatly.Bobby's jaw jerked. Before the man could say anything further, a faint voice echoed down the tunnel.“Who’s over there?”The man turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing.Upon hearing the voice, he released Bobby and stepped backwar

The phone vibrated again in Bobby’s trembling hand, as if impatient.“Took you long enough. We don’t have much time. – B”He read it three times. Four. Each time his throat grew tighter."Took you long enough."So Future Bob had been waiting."We don’t have much time."Which meant something worse was coming. Or maybe... it was already here. Bobby didn’t move. He gazed at the screen as if the text itself might transform into something with hands and strangle him.Then the screen flickered. Just once. Barely noticeable. Like a blink. And then—it was gone. The message disappeared. No notification. No history. No trace in the inbox. Gone, like a whisper in fog.---He spent the next hour trying to retrieve it—scanning system logs, poking through cache directories. But the phone was too old, too basic. It didn’t even keep temp files without root access. And Bobby wasn’t about to root his one working connection to the future and risk bricking it.He eventually gave up on the search and sat

Bobby ran until his legs gave out. Not metaphorically—literally. His lungs felt like they were on fire. His throat was sore from swallowing cold air. As he slowed down behind a dumpster near the old train station, his hoodie was saturated with sweat and his heart was straining to escape his chest.He collapsed behind the rusted metal, leaning against the brick wall. The image was still charred into his mind: the man standing at the bus stop, completely still. Neatly polished shoes. Tactical coat. Eyes sharp and cold as ice.And then… that step forward. Just one. That was all Bobby had needed.That, and the message from the shattered phone replaying in his skull like a warning bell:"A tall black man with a bald head, and a brown stylish mustache is coming after you. Please, avoid him at all costs"It didn’t feel real. None of it. The man’s presence had frozen time, like Bobby had stumbled into the middle of a movie scene—only this one was directed by panic and lit with dread. Was it a