It was a week later, on a quiet Monday evening that felt no different from any other day in their sealed-off world. August 4th, 2025. Adekunle knew the date only because he had been marking the days with small, faint scratches on the wall behind his bunk, a silent testament to their continued existence. The ten litres of water he had retrieved from the roof had been a godsend, a miracle that had washed the immediate spectre of death from their small apartment. Under its life-giving grace, and with the steady application of the antibiotics, his aunt had rallied.
The fever was gone, replaced by a weary but lucid strength. The dark, angry swelling in her leg had receded, leaving behind the clean, hard line of a healing, albeit improperly set, fracture. She was a survivor, tough and resilient as the city that had birthed her. She spent her days now in quiet, purposeful activity, using the tyre iron as a crutch to hobble around the flat, her mind constantly taking inventory, planning, strategizing. She had become the general of their tiny, besieged kingdom. And Adekunle was her sole, terrifying, and untested weapon.
The power he possessed was a silent, third occupant in the flat. It was always there, a low, humming presence in the back of his mind, a coiled serpent sleeping in the marrow of his bones. After their conversation a week ago, he had stopped trying to deny its existence. His aunt's words had changed his perspective. It was not a curse to be hidden, but a tool to be understood. And a tool you do not understand is more dangerous to you than to your enemy.
The training began that night, after his aunt had fallen into a deep, healing sleep. The living room, lit by the feeble, flickering light of a single candle, became his laboratory. He needed to know the shape of this ghost that lived inside him. He needed to measure its weight.
He started small. He found a heavy, steel spanner in the red toolbox. In the old world, he knew he could not bend it. He had tried once, on a stubborn bolt, and had only succeeded in bruising his hands. He took it now, holding it in his two hands, the metal cool and solid. He closed his eyes and reached for the power.
It came easier this time, a familiar, tingling warmth that flowed from his chest into his arms. It was not a violent surge, but a quiet, deliberate filling of a vessel. He opened his eyes and looked at the spanner. He took a breath and squeezed.
There was no strain. No grunting effort. The hardened steel simply… yielded. It bent in his hands as if it were made of soft clay, the two ends folding toward each other with a soft, metallic sigh. He stared at the twisted piece of metal in his hands. It had not been an act of strength; it had been an act of will. He had willed the metal to bend, and his body had simply provided the means. The thought was profoundly unsettling.
He set the mangled spanner down as if it were a venomous snake. His hands were not trembling with fear this time, but with a strange, clinical curiosity. He needed to know more.
His next test was the tyre iron. His uncle's weapon. The one he now used as a crutch for his aunt. He took it from its place by the door. It was four pounds of solid, forged steel, designed to resist immense torque. He held it horizontally, one hand on each end. He closed his eyes again, calling on the power, letting it saturate his muscles until they felt dense and heavy as lead. He pushed with his right hand and pulled with his left.
For a moment, nothing happened. The steel resisted, its molecular structure holding firm. He felt the power inside him respond to the resistance, not by increasing in brute force, but by… focusing. It was like a lens bringing light to a single, sharp point. He felt a strange vibration in the bar, and then it began to give way. A long, S-shaped bend appeared in the center of the solid steel bar. It was not a dramatic, sudden break, but a slow, inexorable warping of reality. He had not just bent the bar; he had told it to be a different shape, and it had obeyed.
He opened his eyes and looked at the ruined tool. A wave of nausea washed over him. This was not human. It was something else entirely. He felt like a man who had just discovered he could breathe water. It was a miracle that felt like a mutation, a power that felt like a disease.
"It is not a disease."
Funke's voice, soft and steady, came from the doorway of the living room. He hadn't heard her approach. She was leaning on the doorframe, her eyes, full of a sad, proud wisdom, fixed on the bent tyre iron in his hands.
"How much did you see?" he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
"Enough," she said, hobbling into the room and sinking into her armchair. "I saw you talking to a ghost. And I saw the ghost answer."
"I'm scared, Auntie," he admitted, the confession a profound relief.
"Good," she replied, a faint, tired smile on her lips. "You should be. A man who is not afraid of this kind of power is a fool. And your uncle did not raise a fool." She leaned forward, her expression serious. "But fear cannot be your master. You must be the master of it. You must learn its language. What does it feel like?"
He struggled to find the words. "It's… quiet," he finally said. "It doesn't roar. It… listens. It waits for me to push, and then it gives me what I need. It feels… like it was always there, just… asleep."
"Then it is a part of you," she said simply. "Like your clever mind, or your kind heart. It is another tool. The most powerful one you have." She gestured around the dark, silent flat. "But a tool is useless without a purpose. And our purpose cannot be to sit in this room until we starve."
She was right. The training, the testing—it was not just an academic exercise. It had to be for something. The water had saved them from one crisis, but another was already on the horizon. Their food supply was dwindling to its last few tins. And Funke's leg, while healing, needed more than just bandages and hope. It needed a real doctor, a real clinic, supplies they did not have.
"Jago," Adekunle said, the name a hard, cold stone in his mouth. "We can't leave as long as he and his men are downstairs."
"Then they are the first obstacle," Funke said, her voice devoid of fear, replaced by a cold, pragmatic logic that reminded him so much of his uncle. "Not a wall to hide from, but a gate that must be opened. How would you do it?"
The question hung in the air. She was not just asking for a plan; she was asking him to finally, truly accept the power he wielded. To think not as a hider, but as a hunter.
He thought of the men downstairs. Five of them. Armed with machetes and pipes. Drunken, arrogant, and violent. A direct assault would be noisy, chaotic. It could draw unwanted attention from bigger predators like Blade. Their greatest advantages were stealth and surprise. And his own impossible strength.
"The floor," Adekunle said, the idea forming as he spoke it. He looked down at the solid concrete beneath their feet. "The floor of this room is the ceiling of the flat below. Jago's flat."
Funke's eyes widened as she understood his terrifying logic.
"I don't have to go through their door," he continued, his voice low and intense. He was thinking like a predator now, like a creature that did not recognize the normal rules of architecture. "I can make my own." He looked at his hands, at the bent tyre iron, and then at the heaviest object in the room—the massive, solid mahogany dresser that his aunt had once used to barricade her bedroom door. It must have weighed over two hundred kilograms.
He walked over to it. This would be the final test. He put his hands on the side of it, planted his feet, and reached for the power. He didn't just welcome it; he commanded it. He imagined the dresser being as light as a cardboard box. He felt the surge, clean and potent, and he lifted.
The heavy dresser rose from the floor with a soft groan of protesting wood, as if it were a toy. He held it a foot off the ground for a second, his muscles not even straining, before setting it down without a sound.
He turned to face his aunt. The fear in his gut was still there, a cold, hard knot. But for the first time, it was overshadowed by a chilling, absolute certainty.
He knew how to open the gate. He was going to fall on them from the sky.