The university had a commander.

That was the word people were using. Not leader, not organizer. Commander. Which told Tobi something about the last eight hours before he’d even met the man.

His name was Colonel Adisa Nwosu, retired, sixty years old, and he’d been visiting his daughter at the faculty of medicine 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 time Tobi arrived he had the grounds divided into sectors, a medical station running in the faculty building, a headcount system at the gates, and four awakened individuals he’d identified and positioned as perimeter guards.

Tobi found all this out from a student named Amara who intercepted him approximately thirty seconds after he came through the gate.

She was maybe twenty, short, with the fast economical movements of someone 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 documentation was the thing standing between order and collapse.

"Name," 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 comes through gets assessed. It’s not optional."

He thought about that for a second. "Unknown. Still developing."

She wrote something. "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 something else. "You came from the direction of Adeyemi Street. Did you pass a community hall about two kilometers south?"

"That’s where we came 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 armed?"

"One machete."

She nodded and walked away at speed, already talking to someone else.

Chike appeared at his shoulder. He’d recovered some color but his hands were still occasionally producing faint shimmer at the knuckles, involuntary, like a stutter. "She didn’t ask my name," 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." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"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 someone 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 me. 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 came 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 kilometer radius since last night. They tend to appear near concentrations of people." He paused. "Which means this campus is going to become a more attractive location as more survivors come 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 perimeter. Amara says your ability is unknown."

"Still developing."

The Colonel looked at him steadily. "Unknown or undisclosed."

Tobi met his gaze. "Still developing."

A moment passed between them. The Colonel let it go. "I need your honest assessment. Can you hold a section of perimeter?"

"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, something came through, two people were hurt before it was driven back. I need someone there who can handle what comes 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 came 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 moment. "You’re negotiating."

"I’m asking."

"There’s a difference?"

"Yes."

Something 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 moment. "Get some 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 someone 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 memory.

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 men 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 movements, 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 came through the gate fighting," the boy said.

"I came 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 comes in. Trying to figure out who’s actually useful."

Tobi looked at him sideways. "How many groups have come in."

"Eleven since I started counting at dawn." He was quiet for a moment. "My father hasn’t come 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 kilometers."

Three kilometers was a long way right now.

"What’s your name," 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 someone who already knows they have something and is trying to figure out where they fit."

Musa was quiet for a moment. 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 immediately 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 me." He closed his hand and it disappeared. "So something."

"Something 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 CONSUMED NO BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL IN LAST SIX HOURS]

[RECOMMENDATION: PRIORITIZE CONSUMPTION AT NEXT ENGAGEMENT]

He closed the prompt.

Across the courtyard, the gates opened and Kola and Sade came through.

His mother was with them.

She had the baby in her arms, wrapped in someone’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 kilometers he was going to be processing for a long time.

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 lifetime.

It was asleep.

"Two gates opened on the way," his mother said, already looking around, already assessing the medical setup across the grounds. "Festus handled one. Kola handled the other." She looked at the baby in Tobi’s arms. "Folake named her Ada."

He looked down at the sleeping face.

Ada.

"Colonel has space in the faculty building for you," he said. "Medical 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 something complicated.

"Eat something," 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 me," he said.

Tobi handed Ada carefully back to one of the women with Folake.

He picked up the machete.

Then from the east side of the campus came a sound that stopped everyone moving. Not clicking. Not the deep vibration. Something entirely new, a long low tone that the body registered before the ears did, felt in the chest and the stomach and somewhere deeper.

The ground trembled once.

Then went still.

Every awakened person on the campus turned toward the east wall at the same moment.

The system didn’t give him data this time. No assessment. No recommendation.

Just three words.

[SOMETHING IS COMING.]