The entrance to the multi-story car park was a dark, gaping maw that smelled of cold concrete, stale urine, and old, leaked oil. Adekunle pushed the wheelchair over the threshold, and the sounds of the street were instantly swallowed by the cavernous, echoing silence of the structure. They were inside. The watcher, the silent prophet on the rooftop, could no longer see them. But Adekunle could still feel the man's gaze on his back, a phantom pressure, a question mark burned into his soul.
He did not stop on the ground floor. It was too accessible, too vulnerable. He found the ramp, a wide, curving strip of concrete that spiraled upwards into the gloom. The climb was grueling. The incline was gentle, but with the combined weight of his aunt and their supplies, every foot of progress was a battle. He dug in, his own human muscles screaming with the effort, the alien strength a slumbering giant he refused to wake. He needed to feel this burn. He needed to feel the familiar, grounding pain of his own physical limits. It was a penance, a way to prove to himself that he was still the boy who had pushed the chair out of the tailor's shop, not the creature who had flown across an alley.
Funke remained silent during the ascent, her hands gripping the armrests of the chair. She had seen the figure on the roof. She had seen the rigid terror that had seized Adekunle. She knew something fundamental had changed, but she did not press him. She waited, her patience a quiet, steady presence that was both a comfort and a burden.
They climbed past the second floor, then the third. The higher they went, the more the city unfolded below them, a silent, sprawling panorama of ruin visible through the open sides of the car park. The sickly yellow light of the sky washed over the scene, painting everything in a flat, disease-coloured monochrome. It was the view from a vulture's perch, a god's eye view of a world that had been forsaken.
They finally stopped on the fourth floor. It was high enough to be defensible and offer a commanding view, but not so high as to be completely exposed on the roof. The floor was a vast, empty expanse of concrete, marked with faded white lines that delineated parking spaces for cars that would never return. A forest of thick, round concrete pillars supported the level above, offering a multitude of hiding places. And in the far corner, tucked away from the main ramps, was a small, windowless security office, its door hanging ajar. It was a room within a fortress. It was perfect.
Adekunle pushed the wheelchair into the small office. The room was no bigger than their storeroom back at the shop, containing only a broken chair, a desk with a disconnected telephone, and a thick layer of ashy dust. He gently helped his aunt from the wheelchair, making her as comfortable as possible on the floor with a pile of blankets from their supplies.
"We rest here," he said, his voice a low, exhausted rasp.
He braced the office door shut with the tyre iron, then returned to the main floor to set up their true defense. He took two empty glass bottles from their rubbish sack and placed them on the ground at the top of the ramp leading up from the third floor. He did the same at the ramp leading down from the fifth. Another crude alarm system. It would not stop an army, but it would wake a sleeping survivor.
His tasks complete, he finally allowed himself to stop. He sank to the floor in the main parking area, just outside the security office, his back against a thick concrete pillar. He looked out at the dead city. The silence was absolute, broken only by the faint, mournful whistle of wind moving through the open levels of the structure.
"He saw it, Auntie," Adekunle said, his voice quiet, directed at the open doorway of the office. He didn't need to explain who 'he' was. "The man from the shop. He was on the roof. He saw me jump."
He heard a soft rustle as Funke shifted her position. "I saw him too," she replied, her voice calm and steady from the darkness of the office. "A scarecrow on a roof. What did he do?"
"He just… watched. Then he pointed. At me. At himself. At the sky." The memory made his skin crawl. It was not the threat of a man with a machete. It was a deeper, more intimate threat, the threat of being known, of being understood in a way he did not understand himself. "He knew. He knows what I am."
"And what are you, Kunle?" she asked, her question gentle but piercing.
"I don't know," he confessed, the words a profound relief to finally speak aloud. "A monster. A miracle. A mistake." He ran his raw, scraped hands through his hair. "When the Fall happened, when everyone vanished… it felt like a question. Like God was asking the world a question. Now I feel like I am the question. And that man on the roof… he looked like he knew the answer."
"Perhaps he is a question, too," Funke suggested. Her voice was thoughtful, analytical, the voice of a woman piecing together a new theology from the ruins of the old one. "Perhaps the Fall was not a simple subtraction. Perhaps it was an exchange. Millions of souls taken away, and a few returned… changed. Saturated with some strange new power. You. And maybe… him."
Her words painted a terrifying picture. A world not just of demons and human survivors, but of a new, third category of being. A handful of demigods, waking up in the ruins of their old lives, each one a walking, talking violation of the laws of nature. Was he part of a new, lonely pantheon? Were they all destined to be solitary, wandering miracles? Or were they rivals in a game whose rules had not yet been written?
"He set a trap," Adekunle remembered, the detail clicking into place with a new significance. "The tripwire in the alley. It wasn't a killer's trap. It was just an alarm. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to know they were there. He was… fishing."
"Fishing for what?"
"For people like me," Adekunle whispered, the terrible truth of it settling over him. The man wasn't hunting him. He was recruiting. Or at least, he was searching. He was another lonely god, looking for proof that he wasn't the only one.
The thought was both terrifying and strangely comforting. He was not alone in his monstrousness. But if this man was like him, what did that mean? Was his power the same? Was his purpose the same? The watcher hadn't seemed like a killer. He had been still, patient, observant. A prophet, not a warrior.
"We cannot trust him," Adekunle said, more to convince himself than his aunt. "We know nothing about him."
"No," Funke agreed. "Trust is a currency of the old world, and we are bankrupt. But knowledge… knowledge is something else. He knows something about you. And that makes him the most important person in the world right now." She paused. "What is our plan? Does this change our destination?"
Adekunle considered this. The university. The promise of a walled city, of resources, of a place to build a new life. It was a good plan, a logical plan. But it was a plan made in a world that he had thought contained only humans and demons. Now there was a third, unknown variable. A wild card.
"No," he said finally, his voice firm with a newfound resolve. "The plan doesn't change. It becomes more urgent. The university is not just a sanctuary anymore. It's a laboratory. If there are others like me out there, I need to understand what this power is. How to control it. The campus will have libraries, science departments… information. It is the only place we might find answers."
His fear was slowly being replaced by a cold, academic curiosity, a return to his old, philosophical self. The problem of his own existence was the ultimate intellectual puzzle, and he would solve it, or die trying.
"And him?" Funke asked. "The man on the roof?"
"We avoid him," Adekunle said. "We are mice, and he is a cat. We do not engage. We just get to our destination. Whatever he is, whatever he wants, we cannot face it until we are stronger. Until I am stronger." He looked down at his hands. "Until I understand what this strength even is."
He would spend the day resting, recovering. They would eat. They would tend to Funke's leg. And when night fell again, they would continue their journey. But a new weight had been added to his burden. He was not just fleeing the dangers of the city. He was now, in a way, fleeing himself, or at least the reflection of himself he had seen on that rooftop.
He lay back against the concrete pillar, the cool stone a comfort against his aching back. He closed his eyes, but he did not sleep. He listened to the echo of his own frantic heartbeat in the vast, empty cathedral of concrete. He had come here seeking sanctuary, a place to hide. But there was no hiding from a question. And he, and the silent man on the rooftop, were a question that the dead world had not yet answered.