Creatures poured through the gap.

Taiwo hit the first one so hard it left the ground. Sade was moving through them, fast and brutal, hitting pressure points she’d apparently identified from the morning’s fights. Festus was swinging with a controlled fury that cleared space around him. Ayo had dropped the barrier and switched to close combat, using his forearms as battering rams, the force that had been in the barrier now concentrated into direct strikes.

Remi was screaming.

Not fear screaming. Rage screaming, which turned out to be different, short bursts of compressed air firing in rapid succession, each one punching through whatever it hit, and his face had gone somewhere past fear into the specific place people go when there’s no more room for it.

"Come on then," he was shouting. "Come on, come ON—"

Tobi moved through the chaos toward the corridor entrance. The machete in his right hand and the baton in his left and three creatures between him and the open entrance beyond which more were still coming.

He hit the first one.

The second one hit him back, a forearm across his left side that lifted him off the ground briefly, and he came down hard and rolled immediately because staying down was dying. His ribs sang with the impact. He came up and drove the machete into the junction of the creature’s neck and kept moving.

The entrance. He needed to reach the entrance. If he could get to the gate side of the corridor he could buy Musa time to—

A hand grabbed his ankle and brought him down.

The ground came up fast and he hit face first and tasted blood again, copper and sharp, and he rolled onto his back and a creature was above him and its too-small head was angled down at him and he had about a second before its weight came down.

"MUSA," he shouted.

The dark ability exploded.

That was the only word for it. Not expanded. Exploded outward from Musa’s hand in a disc three meters across, edges tearing at the air, and it hit the creature above Tobi and everything else within its radius simultaneously and every single thing it touched simply stopped.

Stopped.

Completely.

Eight creatures, frozen mid-motion, mid-strike, mid-scream, arrested in place like a photograph.

The corridor went silent except for the breathing of six people.

Musa was on his knees. Both hands on the ground. His nose was bleeding freely and his eyes were unfocused and the dark ability was completely gone, not reduced, gone entirely, and he was making small sounds that he probably didn’t know he was making.

Tobi got to his feet.

He looked at the frozen creatures. Then at the entrance. Then at Musa.

He had maybe thirty seconds before whatever Musa had done wore off.

"Everyone move," he said. "Taiwo, Festus, anything that’s frozen you hit it until it’s not a problem. Sade, Ayo, Remi, get to the gate and hold the entrance from the outside. Do not let anything else through."

Nobody argued.

They moved.

The frozen creatures lasted forty seconds. Long enough. By the time the first one twitched back into motion it was already over.

Tobi was the last one through the corridor. He crouched beside each frozen creature as he passed and pressed his hand to it for two seconds and the system absorbed what it could and the points ticked upward and he didn’t let himself look at the total until he was through.

He came out the other side into the evening air and stood with his hands on his knees and let his ribs remind him about the hit he’d taken.

Behind them the gate pulsed once, twice.

Then went dark.

The light died. The heat died. The tearing sound stopped. The gate collapsed inward on itself and was gone.

The southern fence line was quiet.

Tobi looked up.

The sky was turning orange at the edges. Actual sunset, the ordinary kind, the kind that had nothing to do with divine gates or open cracks in the atmosphere. For about thirty seconds it was just a sunset and the world had not entirely forgotten how to do that.

Remi sat down in the dirt. He was still breathing hard, still vibrating with the specific aftermath energy of someone who had gone somewhere primal and was slowly coming back. His hands were shaking.

"I was screaming," he said.

"Yes," Sade said.

"Was it loud."

"Extremely."

He nodded slowly. "Cool. That’s fine. That’s completely normal." He looked at his hands. "I’ve never done anything like that in my life."

"None of us have," Taiwo said. She’d de-hardened and she looked completely normal except for a crack in her lower lip where something had connected during the fight. She pressed two fingers to it and looked at the blood and seemed to reach a decision about caring that resolved in the direction of not caring.

Festus found Tobi and looked at his ribs. "How bad."

"Not broken. Bruised." He straightened up carefully. "I’ve had worse."

"You’re eighteen. When have you had worse."

Tobi didn’t answer that.

He went to Musa.

The boy was sitting up now, back against the wall, both hands in his lap. The nosebleed had slowed. His eyes were back in focus but there were shadows under them that hadn’t been there this morning and his hands still had a fine tremor running through them.

Tobi sat down next to him.

They didn’t say anything for a while.

"I didn’t know it would do that," Musa said finally.

"I know."

"When it went that big. I couldn’t." He stopped. Started again. "I couldn’t feel where I ended and it started. For a second." He looked at his empty palm. "That scared me more than any of the creatures."

Tobi looked at the sky. At the sunset that was just a sunset.

"Yeah," he said. "I know what that’s like."

He checked his system.

[COMBAT ENGAGEMENT COMPLETE]

[12 KILLS RECORDED]

[EVOLUTION POINTS EARNED: 28]

[TOTAL: 108/100]

[THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]

[FIRST EVOLUTION READY]

[WARNING: PROCESS WILL BE INVOLUNTARY ONCE INITIATED]

[INITIATE NOW OR DELAY UNTIL ISOLATED: YES / NO]

One hundred and eight.

He stared at it.

First evolution. Ready. Waiting on him.

He looked around. Six people, all of them battered and exhausted. The campus two hundred meters behind them. His mother in the east wing. Ada asleep on Folake’s chest.

Involuntary once initiated.

He needed to be alone for this.

He hit no.

The system held, patient, the threshold sitting there banked and waiting like a fire someone had carefully contained.

He stood up and helped Musa to his feet.

"Come on," he said. "Let’s go tell the Colonel we’re still alive."