The first step Adekunle took onto the footbridge felt like a step into another world. The ground beneath his boot shifted from the gritty permanence of concrete to the groaning, hollow skin of rusted steel. The entire structure trembled with his weight, a low, guttural vibration that traveled up through the soles of his feet and settled in his bones. Below them, the canal wasn't water. It was a thick, black syrup of stagnation and chemical filth, its surface coated in a rainbow sheen of oil that swirled lazily around the bloated, unrecognizable shapes of submerged debris. The air itself seemed to change, growing heavier, laden with the metallic tang of rust and the deep, cloying rot of the dead water.
He stood frozen for a long moment, the architect of the silence that now surrounded them. The two steaming piles of ichor and dissolving flesh behind him were a testament to his new, terrifying efficiency. He could still feel the phantom sensation in his hands—not the kick of an impact or the strain of a struggle, but the horrifying ease of it all. It was the feeling of squeezing a sponge, of crushing dry leaves. A feeling of utter and absolute dominion that left him feeling hollowed out, as if the power he had summoned had taken a part of him as payment. His hands, still tingling with a pins-and-needles numbness, felt alien to him, like borrowed tools he no longer knew how to put down.
He forced himself to move, his muscles tight and jerky. He took the handles of Funke's wheelchair, his knuckles white. Her silence was a pressure all its own. She hadn't screamed or gasped during the encounter. She had simply watched, her face a stony mask, the shotgun resting across her lap a useless talisman against the kind of power she had just witnessed. As he began to push her forward, the wheels of her chair rumbled on the grated metal walkway, the sound deafeningly loud in the oppressive quiet. Each rotation was a drumbeat, counting down the seconds until their newfound notoriety brought something worse to their doorstep.
They were a quarter of the way across the arching span when she finally spoke, her voice quiet but cutting through the tension like a shard of glass.
"That was not strength, Adekunle."
He stopped, his gaze fixed on the far side of the canal. The skeletal husks of buildings over there looked like the teeth of a broken jawbone. "I did what I had to do, Funke. They were guarding the bridge."
"I know what you did," she replied, and he could hear the careful control in her tone, the deliberate effort to keep her voice from shaking. He finally turned to look at her. Her face was pale, but her eyes were clear and fiercely intelligent. She was not looking at him with fear, not in the way one would fear a monster. It was something more complex, more painful. It was the fear a shepherd might feel watching their prize sheep grow fangs.
"I have seen you fight since the beginning," she continued, her voice gaining a sliver of its usual strength. "I saw you struggle with the first one, in the market. I saw you bleed. I saw you hurt. What I saw back there… that was different. It was not a fight. It was erasure. You did not kill them. You… unmade them. There is a profound difference."
Her words hit him harder than any physical blow. Erasure. She had given a name to the sick, hollow feeling inside him. He had not simply ended a life; he had wiped it from existence, treated it with the same casual, horrifying finality as the padlock he had turned to dust. The power wasn't just a hammer he could wield; it was a solvent, a void he could command.
"The power," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "It… does what I picture in my head. I wanted them to stop. To not be a threat. And that… that is what happened."
"And what happens when you are angry?" Funke pressed, her eyes boring into him. "When you are afraid? When one of Kael's lieutenants puts a blade to my throat and you feel that rage, what will you picture then, Adekunle? What will you do to him? What will you do to the world around him?"
He had no answer. He looked away from her, down into the black, greasy water. The bloated shape of a car lay just beneath the surface, its frame wreathed in dark, slimy weeds. The reflection that stared back at him was a distorted, wavering stranger. Was she right? Was he just a vessel for this… thing? A glitch in reality, as he'd thought before, but one whose nature was inherently destructive? The thought was an icy dread that coiled in his gut. The power had saved them, yes. But each time he used it, he felt a little less like Adekunle, the boy who used to fix generators in his uncle's shop, and a little more like the force that had made the world this way in the first place. An apocalypse in human form.
"I don't know," he admitted, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "But I know that if we had not crossed this bridge, we would be trapped. I will control it. I have to."
"You must," she affirmed, her tone softening slightly. She reached out and placed her hand on his, which still gripped the wheelchair's handle. Her skin was warm and real against his own, which felt cold and numb. "Because that power, the thing that lets you unmake demons, also makes you the brightest light in this dead world. And everything with teeth and claws that lurks in the darkness will be drawn to it. The more you use it, the brighter you shine, and the faster they will come. What you did back there… it was not just a fight. It was a dinner bell."
As if on cue, a sound cut through the air.
It wasn't a demonic hiss or a guttural snarl. It was a high-pitched, piercing shriek, like the cry of a hawk made of tearing metal. It came from above.
They both looked up instantly.
Circling high above the canal, a black speck against the jaundiced, sickly sky, was a creature. It was too far to make out all the details, but its shape was unmistakable. It had wide, leathery wings like a bat, but its body was slender and whip-like, and a long, spear-like tail trailed behind it. It banked in the air, its movements unnervingly fluid, and shrieked again, the sound echoing off the skeletal buildings.
"A scout," Funke breathed, her hand instinctively tightening on the shotgun.
Adekunle felt a cold knot of dread tighten in his stomach. This wasn't a brutish Ash-Hound. This was different. This was military. Strategic. This was a response. It wasn't attacking. It was observing. Marking them. The creature's cry was not a threat; it was a report. Target acquired. Location confirmed.
They were exposed, standing on the apex of the bridge with no cover whatsoever. The creature was out of range of the shotgun, and Adekunle had no idea if his power could even reach that high, let alone what it would do. He felt a surge of helpless fury.
"We have to move. Now," he gritted out, pushing the wheelchair forward with renewed urgency. The far side of the bridge seemed a mile away. The scout circled above them, a patient, malevolent star in their private sky, its cry a repeating punctuation to their desperate flight. It was a new kind of terror, the certainty of being watched by an enemy you could not reach.
They finally clattered off the far end of the bridge, their feet hitting solid ground with a sense of profound relief. The scout shrieked one last time, a triumphant, hateful sound, before banking sharply and flying away, disappearing behind the jagged silhouette of a ruined office tower to the east. It wasn't retreating. It was going to file its report.
"It saw where we are," Funke stated the obvious, her voice grim. "It will bring others."
"I know." Adekunle scanned their new surroundings frantically. They were in what looked like a small, formerly green park that fronted the canal. A few skeletal, blackened trees stood like sentinels. To their left was a row of collapsed storefronts. To their right, the massive, broken facade of a concrete building that might have been a library or a community hall. A large section of its side had caved in, creating a dark, gaping hole filled with rubble and shadow.
"There," Adekunle said, pointing to the breach in the building. "It's cover. We need to get out of sight."
He didn't wait for a response, pushing Funke's chair over the cracked pavement and up a short, debris-strewn ramp toward the gaping maw in the wall. The sooner they were inside, the better. He half-expected a new horde of demons to pour out of the darkness, but there was nothing. Only silence and the smell of old, damp paper and decay.
He maneuvered the wheelchair over a pile of rubble and into the cavernous, shadowy interior. Light filtered in from the massive hole they'd entered and from high, grime-coated clerestory windows, illuminating a vast, debris-filled space. Toppled bookshelves lay like fallen giants, their contents spilled across the floor in a sea of rotting paper. It was a graveyard of stories. For now, it was a sanctuary.
He let go of the wheelchair, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his body trembling from the adrenaline. They were hidden. They were safe, for the moment. But the image of the flying scout was burned into his mind. They had crossed the bridge, but in doing so, they had stumbled from the frying pan into the fire. They were no longer just survivors hiding in the cracks. They were a target, marked for destruction by a thinking, strategic enemy.
Funke looked around the vast, dark space, her pragmatism already taking over, assessing the new shelter for its defensibility. Then she looked at him, her expression unreadable in the gloom.
"That thing saw us," she said, her voice echoing slightly in the huge, dead room. "It saw exactly where we went." She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in. "How long do you think we have?"