The university had a commander.
That was the word people were using. Not leader, not organizer. Commander. Which told Tobi sothing about the last eight hours before he’d even t the man.
His na was Colonel Adisa Nwosu, retired, sixty years old, and he’d been visiting his daughter at the faculty of dicine when the sky broke open. He’d apparently spent the first twenty minutes of the apocalypse directing traffic through the campus gates and the next seven hours organizing everything else. By the ti Tobi arrived he had the grounds divided into sectors, a dical station running in the faculty building, a headcount system at the gates, and four awakened individuals he’d identified and positioned as periter guards.
Tobi found all this out from a student nad Amara who intercepted him approximately thirty seconds after he ca through the gate.
She was maybe twenty, short, with the fast economical movents of soone who hadn’t stopped since the night before. She had a tablet in her hand that still had thirty percent battery and she was using it to keep records of incoming survivors with the specific intensity of a person who had decided that docuntation was the thing standing between order and collapse.
"Na," she said, looking at her tablet.
"Tobi Vale."
"Age."
"Eighteen."
"Ability."
He looked at her. "Does that matter right now."
"The Colonel needs to know what resources we have." She looked up from the tablet. Her eyes were steady and a little red at the edges. "Everyone who cos through gets assessed. It’s not optional."
He thought about that for a second. "Unknown. Still developing."
She wrote sothing. "Combat capable?"
"Yes."
She looked at the machete, the baton, the road rash across his cheek, the bruising already darkening on his left forearm. "I can see that." She noted sothing else. "You ca from the direction of Adeyemi Street. Did you pass a community hall about two kiloters south?"
"That’s where we ca from."
Her expression shifted slightly. "There are people still there?"
"Four. One of them just had a baby. They’ll move when she can."
Amara wrote quickly. "I’ll tell the Colonel. He’s been sending out pairs to bring in isolated survivors when possible." She paused. "Your people there, are they ard?"
"One machete."
She nodded and walked away at speed, already talking to soone else.
Chike appeared at his shoulder. He’d recovered so color but his hands were still occasionally producing faint shimr at the knuckles, involuntary, like a stutter. "She didn’t ask my na," he said.
"You were sitting on the ground."
"I nearly died saving your life."
"You froze two monsters and couldn’t feel your hands for ten minutes."
"Heroically," Chike said.
Tobi almost smiled.
He found Colonel Nwosu in the central courtyard, which had been converted into a command point with two folding tables, a physical map of the surrounding area weighted down at the corners with water bottles, and four people around it in various states of exhaustion. The Colonel was a broad man gone slightly soft at the edges with age but with a posture that hadn’t compromised at all. He was speaking quietly and continuously and the people around him were listening and responding and the whole thing had a rhythm to it that felt like it had been running for years.
He looked at Tobi when he approached and assessed him in about two seconds with the eyes of soone who had spent decades doing exactly that.
"You brought in forty people from Adeyemi Street," he said. Not a question.
"Forty two. Two are still there with a newborn."
"Amara told . I’m sending Kola and Sade back for them." He nodded toward two people near the gate, both young, both with the slightly unfocused look of people whose abilities were new and unsteady. "They have abilities suited for retrieval. Your mother is a nurse?"
"Yes."
"Good. We need her here." He looked at the map. "You ca up the northeast road. What did you encounter?"
Tobi told him. The bipedal creatures, the gate location, the pharmacy creature eating the building. He kept it factual and brief and the Colonel listened without interrupting, marking locations on the map.
When Tobi finished the Colonel said, "The gates aren’t random."
"I didn’t think they were."
"They’re clustering. We’ve had seven reported in a four kiloter radius since last night. They tend to appear near concentrations of people." He paused. "Which ans this campus is going to beco a more attractive location as more survivors co in."
"How many people do you have?"
"Just under four hundred as of an hour ago. More arriving every hour." He looked up from the map. "I need capable people for the periter. Amara says your ability is unknown."
"Still developing."
The Colonel looked at him steadily. "Unknown or undisclosed."
Tobi t his gaze. "Still developing."
A mont passed between them. The Colonel let it go. "I need your honest assessnt. Can you hold a section of periter?"
"Yes."
"Good." He pointed at the map. "East wall. There’s a gap in the fence near the engineering block. A pipe broke through it during the night, sothing ca through, two people were hurt before it was driven back. I need soone there who can handle what cos through until we get it sealed."
Tobi looked at the location on the map. Then back at the Colonel. "I have a condition."
The Colonel raised an eyebrow.
"The people I ca in with. The nurse Chike. The others. They get housed in the faculty building, not the open camps. The woman who just had the baby needs a proper space when she arrives."
The Colonel studied him for a mont. "You’re negotiating."
"I’m asking."
"There’s a difference?"
"Yes."
Sothing shifted in the Colonel’s expression. Not quite a smile. A recognition. "Done," he said. "East wall. You have two hours before I need you there."
Tobi nodded and turned to go.
"Vale." The Colonel’s voice stopped him. "How old are you."
"Eighteen."
The Colonel looked at him for a long mont. "Get so food first," he said. "You look like you haven’t eaten since yesterday."
He hadn’t. He’d completely forgotten about that.
The food was rice and beans from a large pot soone had set up over a fire near the science block. It was underseasoned and slightly undercooked and the best thing Tobi had eaten in recent mory.
He sat on the steps of the science block and ate and let himself be still for ten minutes.
The campus around him was a compressed version of everything humanity did when it was frightened. People arguing. People helping each other. People sitting alone staring at nothing. A group of students had started organizing the children into a space near the library, keeping them together, keeping them occupied. Two n were already trading things, water for phone battery, battery for food. A woman was praying loudly in the center of the courtyard and nobody was stopping her.
A boy sat down next to Tobi without asking.
Maybe fifteen. Thin, with the kind of nervous energy that expressed itself as constant small movents, fingers tapping his knee, foot bouncing. He had a cut above his eyebrow that had been cleaned but not properly closed.
"You’re the one who ca through the gate fighting," the boy said.
"I ca through the gate," Tobi said.
"I saw from the wall. You took down two of the tall ones." He paused. "I’ve been watching every group that cos in. Trying to figure out who’s actually useful."
Tobi looked at him sideways. "How many groups have co in."
"Eleven since I started counting at dawn." He was quiet for a mont. "My father hasn’t co in."
Tobi didn’t say anything.
"He was at work when it started. Night shift at the hospital on Bello Road." The boy’s foot kept bouncing. "That’s three kiloters."
Three kiloters was a long way right now.
"What’s your na," Tobi said.
"Musa."
"What’s your ability, Musa."
The boy blinked. "How did you know I had one."
"You said you were watching every group trying to figure out who’s useful. That’s the thinking of soone who already knows they have sothing and is trying to figure out where they fit."
Musa was quiet for a mont. Then he held out his hand and a small dark shape appeared above his palm, roughly circular, the size of a coin. It rotated slowly. It had no light source but the area imdiately around it was slightly darker than it should have been, like it was absorbing.
"I don’t know what it is," Musa said. "It appears when I concentrate. I tried touching one of the creatures with it last night and the creature made a sound I’d never heard before and moved away from ." He closed his hand and it disappeared. "So sothing."
"Sothing is enough," Tobi said.
His system pulsed.
[NEW ENTITY REGISTERED: MUSA — ABILITY CLASS UNKNOWN]
[OBSERVATION: ABILITY APPEARS ANATHEMA TO REGISTERED MONSTER TYPES]
[EVOLUTION POINTS: 33/100]
[NOTE: HOST HAS CONSUD NO BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL IN LAST SIX HOURS]
[RECOMNDATION: PRIORITIZE CONSUMPTION AT NEXT ENGAGENT]
He closed the prompt.
Across the courtyard, the gates opened and Kola and Sade ca through.
His mother was with them.
She had the baby in her arms, wrapped in soone’s jacket, and Folake was beside her moving slowly with a woman supporting each arm, and Festus was at the back with his machete and the look of a man who had seen things on those two kiloters he was going to be processing for a long ti.
Tobi was across the courtyard before he’d decided to move.
His mother handed him the baby when he reached her. Just transferred it into his arms like it was the most natural thing. He stood there holding a newborn that was approximately twelve hours old and had already survived more than most people did in a lifeti.
It was asleep.
"Two gates opened on the way," his mother said, already looking around, already assessing the dical setup across the grounds. "Festus handled one. Kola handled the other." She looked at the baby in Tobi’s arms. "Folake nad her Ada."
He looked down at the sleeping face.
Ada.
"Colonel has space in the faculty building for you," he said. "dical setup near the east wing."
His mother was already moving toward it. "East wing is good, good light from those windows." She stopped and turned back and looked at him properly, at the road rash, the bruising, all of it. Her face did sothing complicated.
"Eat sothing," she said.
"I did."
"Eat more." She turned and kept walking.
Festus stopped next to Tobi. He looked at Ada. He looked at Tobi. He shook his head slowly in the way of a man who had run out of words for the situation.
"East wall needs covering," Tobi said. "Gap in the fence near the engineering block."
Festus cracked his neck to the left. Then the right. "Show ," he said.
Tobi handed Ada carefully back to one of the won with Folake.
He picked up the machete.
Then from the east side of the campus ca a sound that stopped everyone moving. Not clicking. Not the deep vibration. Sothing entirely new, a long low tone that the body registered before the ears did, felt in the chest and the stomach and sowhere deeper.
The ground trembled once.
Then went still.
Every awakened person on the campus turned toward the east wall at the sa mont.
The system didn’t give him data this ti. No assessnt. No recomndation.
Just three words.
[SOTHING IS COMING.]
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