The Colonel asked him twice.

First time was at the command table, after Tobi had explained the Herald, the possessed man, the message. The Colonel had listened to all of it with his hands behind his back and his face doing nothing, and at the end he’d said simply, "Your ability. What is it."

"Combat enhancement," Tobi said. "Instinct based. Still developing."

The Colonel looked at him the way experienced people look at technically true statements they don’t fully believe. "Combat enhancement."

"Yes sir."

"That’s what took down a vibration class entity that knocked three trained people off their feet."

"Good positioning helped."

The Colonel held his gaze for a long moment. Tobi held it back. There was a version of this conversation where he explained everything, the system, the absorption, the evolution points sitting at sixty four out of a hundred, and he could see the entrance to that version clearly and he walked past it without stopping.

"Fine," the Colonel said eventually. Not satisfied. Just moving forward. "You’re on the active response roster. Priority clearance for perimeter engagement. You report back after every engagement."

"Yes sir."

"And Vale." He waited until Tobi met his eyes. "Whatever those things want with you, it doesn’t leave this table. The last thing four hundred frightened people need is to know something divine has taken a personal interest in one of their own."

Tobi nodded. That suited him completely.

He left the command table and crossed the courtyard and found a relatively quiet corner near the library steps and sat down and let the morning catch up with him. His left arm had stiffened where the bipedal creature had gripped it. The road rash on his cheek had crusted over. The vibration resistance was still integrating, a low hum somewhere beneath his awareness, like a phone on silent in a pocket.

Sixty four points.

He needed thirty six more.

The campus had three reported gate sites within a kilometer. The Colonel had people monitoring all of them. Every engagement was an opportunity.

He was thinking about how to engineer those opportunities without making it obvious that he was engineering them when Chike sat down beside him.

"You lied to him," Chike said.

Tobi looked at him. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"Combat enhancement," Chike said. "That’s not what I watched you do this morning." He wasn’t accusing. Just stating. "You put your hand on that creature after it died. You stayed there for four seconds and then you stood up different."

"Different how."

Chike thought about it. "Like something had been added," he said finally. "Small. But there."

Tobi looked out across the courtyard. A group of students were distributing water from large containers near the science block. Two children were chasing each other between the cots in the open air medical extension, and a nurse was half-heartedly trying to stop them without actually wanting to stop them because the sound of it was the most normal thing that had happened in twelve hours.

"I’m not going to tell the Colonel," Chike said. "I’m telling you I noticed. That’s all."

"Why."

Chike was quiet for a moment. "Because you came back for us this morning. The two kilometers. You could have made the gate with your group and not gone back out." He paused. "So whatever you’re carrying, I’m not interested in making it harder."

Tobi didn’t say anything for a while. The water distribution continued. One of the children got caught by the nurse and laughed.

"Don’t tell Musa either," Tobi said finally.

"I haven’t told anyone."

"I know. Keep it that way."

Chike nodded and said nothing else, which was exactly right.

Musa found them ten minutes later, appearing around the corner of the library with his dark ability spinning above his palm bigger than it had been this morning. He sat on the step below without asking and said, "The Herald’s designation angle was wrong."

Tobi looked at him. "What."

"I’ve been reconstructing it in my head. The angle of the point." Musa held up his hand and traced a line through the air, wrist tilting. "It wasn’t aimed at you. It was lower. Ground level inside the medical building."

The thought arrived before he’d finished processing it.

Ada.

"You’re certain about the angle," Tobi said.

"I’ve traced it forty times. Yes."

Tobi stood up.

Chike looked up at him. Read something in his face. "What is it."

Tobi was already moving.

He went across the courtyard at a walk that took serious effort to keep from becoming a run and pushed through the faculty building door and down the corridor to the east wing. His mother was at the far end checking a patient’s blood pressure with the focused economy of someone who had normalized the chaos around her. Folake was asleep on a cot. Ada was asleep on Folake’s chest, one tiny fist closed, breathing in the small rapid way of newborns.

Normal. Everything looked normal.

His mother saw his face and came to him immediately. "What happened."

He kept his voice low. "The Herald’s point. Musa worked out the angle. It wasn’t at me."

His mother looked at him. Then at the room. Then back at him. He watched her arrive at the same place he had.

"Ada," she said. Almost no sound.

"She was born during an open gate," Tobi said. "During active divine assessment. Whatever was watching Earth last night was watching when she came into it."

His mother’s face went through several things in quick succession and settled on the expression she used when she needed to keep functioning and had filed the fear somewhere temporary.

"She’s a baby," his mother said.

"I know."

"She’s twelve hours old."

"I know." He looked at Ada. At the small closed fist. "I’m not going to let anything happen to her."

His mother looked at him for a long moment. "You don’t know what they want with her."

"No."

"So how do you protect her from something you don’t understand."

He didn’t have an answer for that. He stayed in the east wing for a while, sitting on an empty cot near the door, watching the room. His mother went back to work. Ada slept through everything with the complete indifference of someone who had not yet been informed about the state of the world.

He was still sitting there when the system updated.

[VIBRATION RESISTANCE INTEGRATION: 70%]

[EVOLUTION POINTS: 64/100]

[NOTE: HOST HAS NOT CONSUMED IN 3 HOURS]

[GATE ACTIVITY WITHIN 800 METERS: 2 SITES ACTIVE]

[RECOMMENDATION: ENGAGE.]

He looked at Ada one more time.

Then he stood up and picked up the machete and went to find the Colonel.

The first site was four hundred meters northeast, a minor gate that had been open since early morning according to the student monitoring it from a distance. Small creatures only, the spherical clicking type from last night, six or seven of them clustered near a collapsed shop front.

The Colonel had sent him with two others. A tall woman named Sade who had awakened enhanced speed, not dramatic, not superhuman, but enough that she moved through a space about thirty percent faster than she should and hit about twice as hard as her size suggested. And a quiet man named Ayo who generated a force barrier from his forearms, not large, roughly body-sized, but solid enough that the clicking creatures couldn’t get through it.

They worked well together. Sade moved fast and drew attention. Ayo held the line. Tobi moved through the gaps.

He killed four of them.

After each one he needed a reason to crouch down, to make contact, to absorb without it being obvious. After the first one he pretended to check if it was actually dead. After the second one he told Sade and Ayo he was looking for weaknesses, studying anatomy, which was technically not a lie. After the third and fourth he was quicker about it, a hand pressed to the body for two seconds, long enough.

The absorptions were small. The creatures were low tier. But they were consistent.

The system updated on the walk back.

[4 KILLS RECORDED]

[EVOLUTION POINTS EARNED: 16]

[TOTAL: 80/100]

[VIBRATION RESISTANCE INTEGRATION: COMPLETE]

[NEW RESISTANCE ACTIVE: MINOR SENSORY DISRUPTION NULLIFIED]

[NEXT EVOLUTION THRESHOLD: 20 POINTS REMAINING]

Eighty out of a hundred.

Twenty left.

He could feel the vibration resistance now that it had fully integrated. Not as a sensation exactly. More as an absence. The low background hum of the city, the generator noise, the distant gate sounds, all of it was cleaner. Sharper. Like his hearing had been recalibrated.

He reported back to the Colonel. Kept it brief. Six creatures, four eliminated, two retreated through the gate. No injuries.

"Sade?" the Colonel asked.

"Good. Fast and smart about it."

"Ayo?"

"Reliable."

The Colonel marked the gate site on his map. "Second site is reporting increased activity. Southern fence line." He looked at Tobi. "Give yourself an hour. Eat something. Then I need you back out."

Tobi nodded.

He found his mother in the courtyard eating rice with Folake, Ada awake now and apparently extremely interested in a spot on the ceiling of the covered walkway above them. He sat down and accepted the plate his mother handed him without comment.

Folake looked at him. She was exhausted in the specific way of someone who had given everything they had and was somehow still upright. "Amara told me you organized the transport for me this morning," she said. "From the hall."

"The Colonel organized it."

"Amara said it was your condition for taking the east wall position."

He ate his rice and said nothing.

Folake looked at Ada. Then back at him. "Thank you," she said quietly.

He nodded once.

Ada made a sound that was not quite a word and not quite not a word either, and all three of them looked at her, and Tobi thought about the Herald’s angle, about the deliberate point aimed at ground level, about something ancient assessing a child born into its assessment.

Twenty points.

One more engagement.

He ate faster.