The sound of his own voice, ragged and commanding, echoed in the sudden, ringing silence of the room. From the floor above, Funke heard him. There was a faint scraping sound, and then her face appeared in the jagged hole in the ceiling. Her eyes, wide and luminous in the flickering candlelight from below, took in the scene of absolute carnage. She saw the men, groaning and broken on the floor. She saw the unmoving, crumpled form of Jago against the far wall. And she saw Adekunle, standing amidst it all, his chest rising and falling in deep, shuddering breaths, the tyre iron held loosely in his hand, his knuckles white. He was covered in a fine layer of grey dust, which gave his skin a ghostly, ethereal pallor. He looked like a vengeful spirit that had just finished its grim work. Her face was not one of fear, but of profound, sorrowful awe.
"It is done," she whispered, her voice carrying down to him.
"The way is clear," he called back up, his own voice sounding distant, disconnected. "We have to go. Now."
Getting her down was the next impossible task. He could not jump back up. He had to guide her from below. The mahogany dresser, the instrument of their attack, was their only ladder. He dragged it under the hole, the sound of its heavy legs scraping across the floor a jarring intrusion into the quiet. With a surge of the power he now reluctantly commanded, he lifted one end, propping it at a steep, precarious angle against the wall.
"Auntie, you have to slide," he instructed. "Use the dresser. I will catch you."
It was an act of supreme trust. For a woman with a shattered leg to entrust herself to a gravity-assisted slide onto a piece of fine furniture was absurd. But the old world, with its logic and its physics, was gone. She did not hesitate. She swung her good leg over the edge of the hole, her face a mask of grim determination, and began to slide down the polished, steep surface of the dresser.
Adekunle stood below, his arms outstretched. He caught her easily, the power in his limbs absorbing her weight as if she were a child. He held her for a moment, his face buried in her hair, her small, frail-feeling body a stark contrast to the terrible, destructive force he had just unleashed. She was the reason for it all. The justification and the burden.
He set her down gently, her good foot touching the floor. She leaned on him, her arm around his shoulder, and surveyed the room. Her gaze lingered on the moaning men, on the dark, still shape that was Jago. She made the sign of the cross over her chest, a gesture of profound pity and sorrow. "May God have mercy on their souls," she whispered.
"God has left this place, Auntie," Adekunle said, his voice flat and empty.
"But we have not," she replied, her gaze firm. "And we must not leave our humanity behind with them."
Her words were a quiet rebuke, a reminder of the man she had raised, the boy who still lived somewhere inside this new, terrifying shell. But that boy felt a million miles away.
They began the slow, painful journey out of the flat. Adekunle half-carried, half-supported his aunt, his tyre iron now serving its original purpose as her crutch. They had to step over the man with the broken ribs, his wheezing gasps loud in the quiet room. As they passed, the man's eyes fluttered open, and he looked at Adekunle with a primal, animal terror, as if seeing a force of nature that had inexplicably taken human form.
They reached the ruined doorway. Ikenna was a groaning heap at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, tangled in the wreckage of the door, his leg bent at an unnatural angle. He was alive, but he would not be following them. As they stepped past him, his eyes met Adekunle's. In them, Adekunle saw not hatred, but a dawning, horrified recognition. Ikenna, the rat, had always known how to spot the true predator in the room.
They did not look back. They descended the last two flights of stairs in a heavy, shared silence. Adekunle's mind was a maelstrom. The adrenaline was fading, and in its place, a cold, creeping numbness was spreading through him. He felt disconnected from his own actions, a spectator to his own life. He had brought a storm, just as his aunt had told him to. But the storm had swept away a part of him, too, leaving behind a hollowed-out landscape of guilt and confusion.
They reached the back door of the stairwell. He removed the tyre iron that had braced it shut and pushed it open. The cool night air felt like a slap in the face. The drizzle had stopped, and the clouds were beginning to break, revealing a sky of bruised purple and yellow, pricked with a few, lonely-looking stars.
The city was silent. Their escape from the building had not gone unnoticed, but no one had come to investigate. The sounds of their brief, brutal war had been just another scream in a city of screams, swallowed by the vast, indifferent quiet.
He helped his aunt through the yard and out through the bent iron fence into the alley. He retrieved his backpack, which he had left behind in his haste. He had the medicine. He had a little water. They were free. But they were also homeless, adrift in a dead city, with nowhere to go.
"We can't go far," he said, his voice low. The thought of carrying her across the city again was overwhelming. "We need to find somewhere close. Somewhere to rest. Just until morning."
Funke nodded, leaning heavily on him, her face pale and drawn with exhaustion. "The tailor's shop," she suggested. "The place you found. It is empty. It is close."
It was the only logical choice. They began the slow, painful trek back. Every step was an effort. The weight of his aunt, the weight of his actions, the weight of their uncertain future—it was all a crushing burden. The alien strength in his limbs had receded, leaving behind a deep, human ache that was as much spiritual as it was physical. He was just a tired, grieving boy again, trying to carry his broken family through the ruins of the world.
They reached the tailor's shop, its front gate still pulled aside, its door still unlocked. It felt like a sanctuary, a forgotten pocket of the old world. He helped his aunt inside, into the deep, musty darkness. He closed the door behind them and slid the security gate shut, the metallic screech a reassuring sound of closure. He didn't bother to chain it. He was too tired.
He guided her through the dark showroom, past the silent, headless mannequins, and into the back workshop. He helped her lie down on a pile of soft, vibrant ankara fabric, the bright patterns a shocking contrast to the gloom. The makeshift bed was a poor substitute for her sofa, but it was soft, and it was safe.
He sank to the floor beside her, his back against a workbench, every ounce of strength gone from his body. The silence of the workshop closed in around them. It was a different silence from their flat. It was the silence of forgotten things, of lives interrupted. It was peaceful.
Funke reached out and touched his arm. "Are you alright, Kunle?" she asked, her voice full of a gentle concern that he did not feel he deserved.
"I killed him, Auntie," he whispered into the darkness, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "Jago. I think… I think I killed him."
"You did what you had to do," she said, her voice firm, unwavering. "You protected your family. You opened the cage. There is no sin in that."
But he knew it wasn't that simple. The line between protector and destroyer felt terrifyingly thin. He thought of Jago's face in that last moment, the shock, the surprise. He had not just taken a life; he had erased a consciousness, a world of memories and experiences, however brutal they may have been. The finality of it was a weight he knew he would carry forever.
He looked at his hands in the gloom. They were the hands of a killer. He did not know how to reconcile that with the man he had been, the man his uncle had raised.
He felt his aunt's hand on his, her fingers cool and dry. "The first storm is always the most violent," she said softly, as if reading his thoughts. "You will learn. You will learn to control it. To be its master, not its vessel. This is your burden now, Kunle. To carry this fire and not be consumed by it."
He looked at her, at her tired, loving face, and felt a profound, aching gratitude. She was his anchor. His conscience. The moral compass in the storm of his own power.
He leaned his head back against the workbench and closed his eyes, the exhaustion finally pulling him under. He did not dream of monsters or violence. He dreamed of his uncle, standing in the shop in the old world, a soldering iron in his hand, smiling. He was telling him that some things, even when they are broken, can be fixed. It just takes a steady hand.
Adekunle slept, a deep and dreamless sleep, for the first time since the heavens fell. He was a killer. He was a monster. He was a hero. He was a survivor. And for now, in the dusty, silent sanctuary of the tailor's shop, that was enough.