The climb back up the concrete ramps of the car park was the longest journey of Adekunle's life. Each step was a conscious effort, his boots heavy on the gritty floor. The perfect, impossible mango was a solid, living weight in his hand; the memory of the disintegrated padlock was a burning, electric hum in his mind. The watcher. The fruit. The silent sermon from the rooftop. These three things had shattered the simple, brutal calculus of his existence. Before, the equation was straightforward: him and Funke against the world. Now, a new variable had been introduced, one so complex he couldn't begin to solve for it.
He found Funke where he had left her, outside the security office. She had finished the harness for the water containers and was now methodically cleaning the barrel of their scavenged shotgun with a small, oiled rag. Her focus was absolute, a small island of order in an ocean of chaos. She looked up as he approached, her eyes immediately assessing him. They didn't go to the mango in his hand, but to his face.
"You look like you have seen a ghost," she said, her voice low and even.
"Something like that," Adekunle breathed out, his voice hoarse. He stopped before her, the silence stretching between them, punctuated only by the soft scrape of her rag against steel. He didn't know where to begin. The gate? The lock? The man?
He chose the simplest truth first. He opened his hand and held out the mango.
Funke's hands stilled. Her gaze dropped from his face to the fruit. For the first time since he had known her in this new world, her composure cracked. Her eyes widened, her lips parting slightly. It wasn't just a fruit; it was a relic, a memory of a world that no longer existed. It was sunshine and sweetness and life, lying in the palm of his hand in the middle of a grey tomb.
"Where?" she whispered, the single word full of a thousand questions.
"The watcher," Adekunle said. "The man on the roof. He was there. He watched me at the gate. Then he… he dropped this."
Funke's brief moment of wonder vanished, replaced by a mask of deep suspicion. She looked from the mango back to Adekunle. "The gate?"
"I opened it." He gestured with his head toward the ground floor. "The lock… I didn't break it. I… touched it. And it turned to dust."
He watched her process the information. She didn't recoil. She didn't gasp. Her mind was too pragmatic for that. She simply absorbed the fact, filed it away as another piece of this new, terrifying reality. Her focus remained on the more immediate, more understandable mystery.
"He dropped it," she repeated, her eyes narrowed. "From the rooftop. And it did not break?"
"It fell slowly. Like it was floating," Adekunle confirmed, the memory making his skin crawl. "Funke… he's like me. Different, but… he has power."
Funke pushed herself back in her wheelchair slightly, putting a little more distance between them and the mango. "He has power, and he reveals himself only to give you a piece of fruit? After watching us like a vulture for days? No. I don't like it."
"It wasn't a threat," Adekunle insisted, though a part of him echoed her unease. "It felt like… a message. A demonstration. I'm here. I'm like you."
"Or it's a trap," Funke countered, her voice hardening. "A lure. What if it is poisoned? What if his power is illusion? He shows you a miracle to make you lower your guard. We know nothing about him, Adekunle. Nothing. We know he is real, and we know he is powerful. That makes him the most dangerous thing in this city, demon or not."
She was right, of course. Her logic was an anchor, pulling him back from the dizzying heights of revelation. He had been so stunned by the fact of the watcher's existence that he hadn't fully considered the implication.
"What do we do?" he asked, his voice betraying his confusion. He felt like a child again, lost and looking for guidance.
Funke pointed a firm finger at the mango. "First, we do not eat that. We do not touch it more than we have to. It is an unknown. We treat it as if it is poison until we know otherwise." She then met his eyes, her gaze steady and sharp. "Second, we stick to the plan. The gate is open. Tomorrow, at first light, we go for the footbridge. We cross the canal. We do not wait for this… watcher… to make the next move. We act. We move. We survive. His games are a distraction we cannot afford."
Adekunle looked down at the vibrant fruit, its perfect skin a stark contrast to his own grimy, calloused hand. It was an offering from another god, and they were rejecting it. He felt a strange pang of disappointment, but he knew she was right. Their survival depended on pragmatism, not on faith in unknown powers.
"Okay," he said, his voice firming with resolve. He walked over to their small supply stash and gently placed the mango on top of a crate, separate from their food. It sat there, a silent, brilliant splash of colour in the gloom, radiating a warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.
"Good," Funke nodded, turning back to her shotgun. "Now, get some rest. Opening gates with your mind seems like tiring work. Tomorrow will be a long day."
Adekunle nodded, but he knew sleep would not come easily. He looked from his aunt, so fiercely grounded in reality, to the impossible fruit, a symbol of a reality he was only just beginning to understand. The watcher was out there. An unknown power in a city of ruins. And tomorrow, they would walk through the gate he had opened, deeper into a world that grew stranger and more dangerous with every passing hour.