The warehouse was intact. Mostly. The loading bay door on the eastern side had been forced open, probably by people doing exactly what they were doing, but when Sade got inside and did a fast scan she turned back to the team with an expression that was the most purely happy Tobi had seen anyone look in thirty six hours.

"They didn’t know what to take," she said. "They grabbed the obvious stuff and left everything else. We’ve got canned goods, dry goods, cooking oil, salt." She was already moving toward the shelving. "We’ve got enough here to feed the campus for two weeks if we’re sensible about it."

Grace made a sound that was three quarters of a sob and covered her mouth and Emeka grabbed her shoulder and they stood like that for a moment.

"Alright." Sade was already pulling stock. "Emeka, Grace, start on the canned goods, far left section. Festus, dry goods in the center. Chike, Taiwo, cooking supplies near the loading bay. Remi, you’re on watch at the bay door." She looked at Tobi. "Perimeter walk. I want to know if anything’s nearby before we start moving volume."

He went.

He walked the exterior of the warehouse with his new senses running at full capacity and found two small clicking creatures in an alley behind the building that hadn’t noticed them yet and dispatched both of them quietly and absorbed them before they stopped moving. The absorption was fast now, practiced, nothing like the uncertain fumbling of the first time.

[2 KILLS RECORDED]

[EVOLUTION POINTS: 20/300]

He came back to the loading bay and told Sade the perimeter was clear and she nodded and the team moved into the real work of it.

Forty minutes later they had four large carts loaded.

It was the most normal forty minutes since the sky broke open. People arguing about the most efficient stacking method. Chike dropping a can of tomatoes and swearing loudly and everyone turning and then going back to work. Grace singing something softly under her breath while she worked, not quite audible, just the shape of a melody.

Tobi was lifting a crate of rice to a cart when his new hearing found something that made him put the crate down carefully and go completely still.

Outside. One hundred and fifty meters south.

Not a gate. Not the clicking of the small creatures. Something else. Footsteps, human, multiple, moving in a formation that wasn’t the loose scatter of scared survivors. Deliberate. Paced. Military almost, except the footfall weight distribution was wrong for standard combat movement.

He counted.

Twelve people.

Moving toward the warehouse.

He went to Sade. "We have company coming. Twelve people. One hundred and fifty meters south and closing."

She looked at him. "Survivors?"

"Maybe." He paused. "They’re moving like they know exactly where they’re going."

Her eyes sharpened. "How do you know how far away they are."

"Good ears." He was already scanning the loading bay. "How long to get the carts back to campus?"

"With everyone pushing. Eight minutes."

"We might have four."

She looked at the carts. At the team. At the bay door.

"Remi," she said. No panic in it. Just a gear shifting. "Close the bay door halfway. We see who they are before we show them what we have." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Smart.

The bay door came down halfway and the team pulled back into the shadows of the warehouse and Tobi stood at the gap and watched the road to the south.

They appeared at the corner sixty seconds later.

Twelve people. Mostly men, two women, all of them with improvised weapons, rebar and machetes and one actual firearm that Tobi clocked immediately, a pistol on the hip of the man at the front. They were wearing similar improvised armbands, same color, red fabric, which meant organization, which meant they’d had time to create a group identity in thirty six hours, which meant they’d been moving since almost the beginning.

The man with the pistol stopped in front of the warehouse.

He looked at the bay door.

He looked at the gap.

He looked, with an accuracy that felt deliberate, directly at where Tobi was standing in the shadow.

"I can see you," he said pleasantly. "You might as well open up."

Tobi didn’t move.

"We’re not here to cause problems," the man said. His voice was calm. Educated. Completely at ease in a way that was either genuine or a very good performance. "We’ve been watching this building since yesterday. We were going to move on it this morning and then your group arrived first." He spread his hands. "I’m a reasonable person. I believe in sharing."

"Generous," Sade said from the darkness beside Tobi.

"I have twelve people. You have." The man paused, counting, and the accuracy of what he arrived at after two seconds was another thing that felt deliberate. "Eight. And four full carts." He smiled. It reached his eyes which was somehow worse than if it hadn’t. "I’m suggesting we have a conversation before anyone does anything they regret."

Tobi’s new senses were running at full.

Twelve people. All awakened, or most of them, the biological hum of active abilities at varying intensities. The man with the pistol had something that Tobi’s senses registered differently from the others, not louder but deeper, like a sound at a frequency that bypassed the ears.

And behind the twelve of them, hanging back at the corner, watching, two more that he’d missed on the first count.

Fourteen.

His system pulsed.

[THREAT ASSESSMENT: UNKNOWN]

[NOTE: LEAD INDIVIDUAL — ABILITY SIGNATURE UNCLASSIFIED]

[NOTE: GROUP DISPLAYS ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE]

[NOTE: FIREARMS PRESENT]

[RECOMMENDATION: EXTREME CAUTION]

Tobi stepped into the light.

The man looked at him. Looked at the machete. Looked at Tobi’s face with those calm eyes and did the same fast cataloguing thing the Colonel did except it felt different. The Colonel catalogued people to figure out how to use them. This man catalogued people to figure out how to own them.

"You’re young," the man said.

"You’ve got two more at the corner," Tobi said. "Bring them forward or this conversation ends."

A beat.

Then the man smiled wider. "Sharp," he said, and waved two fingers and the two hanging back came forward.

Fourteen total.

The man extended one hand. "My name is Gabriel. We’re calling ourselves the Red Line. Four blocks south of here." He kept his hand out. "And you are?"

Tobi looked at the hand.

He looked at Gabriel.

He looked at the fourteen people behind him and the pistol on his hip and the red armbands and the two people he’d tried to hide at the corner.

He shook the hand.

"Tobi," he said.

Gabriel’s grip was firm and normal and his eyes were warm and Tobi’s new senses were screaming at a frequency that had no words in it, just a single sustained note of be careful be careful be careful.

"Tobi," Gabriel repeated pleasantly. "I have a feeling we’re going to know each other well."