Nobody slept.
So people tried. They found corners, folded jackets under their heads, closed their eyes. But sleep requires a certain surrender that none of them had available right now, and after twenty minutes of lying still and listening to the city, most of them gave up and just sat.
Tobi sat near the gate with the machete across his knees.
Festus had found a second bolt for the gate, an old one from a storage room, and they’d rigged it alongside the first. It wouldn’t stop anything serious. It would slow things down, which was the most you could ask for tonight.
The sounds outside had changed over the last hour.
Early on it had been human sounds mostly. Screaming. Cars. Alarms. The specific percussion of a city coming apart.
Now it was quieter. And the quiet was worse because it was occasionally broken by the clicking, or by that deep vibration sound, or once by sothing that made no sound at all but caused every person in the hall to look up at the sa mont without knowing why.
Chike ca and sat next to him.
He’d cleaned up the cut on his forearm from one of the small creatures. Tobi’s mother had done it with supplies from a first aid kit soone had in a bag. Chike had not made a sound during the cleaning which Tobi respected.
They sat in silence for a while.
"You knew what to do out there," Chike said eventually. Not accusatory. Just observational.
"I didn’t."
"You acted like you did."
"I acted like soone who had no choice." Tobi looked at the gate. "That’s different."
Chike considered that. "The way you moved. When the big one ca at you. You went toward it."
"Running wasn’t an option."
"Most people’s bodies don’t understand that even when their brain does."
Tobi didn’t answer that. He was thinking about the fluid absorbing into his skin. The way the system had blazed white. Pressure resistance, minor. He could still feel the faint echo of that headache the creature had been pushing at him, and underneath the echo was sothing new, like scar tissue forming over a bruise. Subtle. Structural.
He wasn’t going to tell Chike about that.
"What’s your ability?" Chike asked.
Tobi looked at him.
"Everyone’s talking about it," Chike said, nodding toward the hall behind them. "The awakening. Half the people in there have figured out they have sothing. Mrs. Adeyinka apparently made a light appear in her palm for three seconds and then fainted." He paused. "I haven’t figured out mine yet. Maybe I don’t have one."
"You picked up a fire extinguisher and walked toward monsters."
"That’s not an ability. That’s just stupidity."
"Sotis they look the sa."
Chike almost smiled. It didn’t quite make it. "So what’s yours."
Tobi was quiet for a mont. Outside sothing clicked, far away, moving away from them. He tracked the sound until it faded.
"I don’t know yet," he said. Which was technically true.
Chike accepted that.
They sat quietly for another while. The battery lantern in the center of the room was dimming. Soone had found candles and lit three of them along the back wall, and the people clustered there looked like sothing from an older century, faces half-lit, shadows moving behind them.
His mother was in the middle of it. She’d been moving continuously for the last two hours. Water distribution, wound checks, talking to the crying children, arguing quietly but firmly with the two n who kept wanting to make loud decisions. She hadn’t stopped.
He watched her and felt sothing that sat between pride and fear in approximately equal asure.
Around two in the morning, the man who’d been arguing about the gate ca and stood over Tobi. His na was apparently Vincent. He was maybe forty, well-dressed in a way that ant he’d been sowhere important when the sky broke open, and he had the specific energy of a person used to being listened to.
"We need to talk about tomorrow," Vincent said.
"Okay," Tobi said.
"Not just you. Everyone."
"So talk to everyone."
Vincent’s jaw tightened slightly. "I’m talking to you first because you seem to be the one people are looking at."
Tobi looked around the hall. A few people were watching them. He hadn’t noticed that. He didn’t particularly want it.
"I’m listening," he said.
Vincent crouched down to eye level, which Tobi appreciated at least. "When it gets light we need to move. This hall isn’t defensible long term. No food, limited water, one entrance. We should go to the university campus. Thick walls. Multiple buildings. Room for more people."
"How far?"
"Two kiloters."
"Through what?"
"Through whatever’s out there." Vincent held his gaze. "Which is why we need people who can handle it. Like you."
Tobi looked at him for a long mont. "You don’t know what I can handle."
"I know what I saw through that gate." He paused. "And I know what the alternative is. We stay here and hope nothing stronger cos along."
It was a reasonable argunt. Tobi hated that it was a reasonable argunt.
"We wait for full light," Tobi said. "We don’t move in the dark. And we don’t leave anyone behind."
"Agreed."
"And you stop making unilateral announcents to the group without talking to Festus first. This is his hall."
Vincent looked at him for a mont. Then he nodded once and stood and walked away.
Festus appeared from sowhere to Tobi’s left. He’d clearly heard the whole thing. He said nothing, just raised his chin slightly in acknowledgnt and went back to his post.
The night ground forward.
Tobi dozed twice, both tis jerking awake at sounds that turned out to be nothing. His body wasn’t shutting down fully, keeping so part of itself on, monitoring. He didn’t know if that was the system or just adrenaline that hadn’t found an exit yet.
At around four in the morning the pregnant woman went into early labor.
Her na was Folake. She was eight months, not seven, she clarified through gritted teeth, and this was not how this was supposed to go, which felt like an understatent. His mother was there in thirty seconds with two other won who’d had children and between them they managed it, with clean towels soone had in a bag and the three candles brought over for light.
Tobi stayed at the gate.
He listened to the city and he listened to what was happening in the back of the hall and he kept his hands on the machete and tried not to think too hard about any of it.
The baby arrived just before five.
It cried.
The sound of it moved through the hall and sothing changed in the room. Tobi felt it. The way everyone straightened slightly, or exhaled, or looked at each other. Sothing human and undeniable cutting through the fear for exactly one mont.
Chike was crying silently two ters away. He noticed Tobi looking and shrugged one shoulder. "I’m a nurse," he said. "Babies do it every ti."
"You’re a good nurse," Tobi said.
"Don’t tell anyone."
The sky outside was beginning to lighten. Not much. Just the first suggestion of it at the edges.
Tobi stood up from the gate and looked at the hall. At the people inside it. Forty three of them now, technically. He thought about two kiloters of open city between here and the university walls.
The system pulsed quietly.
[DAWN APPROACHING]
[HOST ASSESSNT: PHYSICAL CONDITION — ADEQUATE]
[EVOLUTION POINTS: 15/100]
[RECOMNDATION: CONSU. ADAPT. SURVIVE.]
He looked at that last line.
Consu. Adapt. Survive.
Not protect. Not lead. Not keep everyone alive.
Just survive.
He closed the prompt and picked up the machete.
He’d worry about what the system wanted later. Right now he had forty three people, two kiloters of broken city, and about an hour before full light.
He went to wake up Festus.
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