Ijeoma

  The table was silent now.

  Not the awkward, uncertain silence from before — this one was heavier. Suffocating.

  Whatever fragile thread of familiarity we had built through introductions had snapped completely. The air felt bruised. Disturbed. Like something sacred had been vioted and no one knew how to speak around it.

  I stared at the young man called Kamcy.

  What had just happened?

  Was that magic?

  I had expected weird technology when I was invited here. Advanced holograms, neural immersion systems, alien-grade hardware — I had mentally chalked everything up to extraterrestrial interference or some cssified bck-budget experiment. It was easier to assume aliens than to question reality itself.

  But that?

  That was not something you could wave off as tech.

  I had never felt that level of fear before.

  Not even during those horrible nights at the orphanage — nights filled with screaming, in closed rooms alone with that monster of a priest, with whispered threats and the quiet cruelty of older girls who learned early that power came from breaking someone weaker. Even then, fear had been specific. Localized.

  What Kamcy released had been… existential.

  It had crawled under my skin and squeezed.

  On one hand, I had been scared shitless.

  On the other?

  I was intrigued.

  What did he do?

  How did he do it?

  And why wasn’t Mr. Ads affected?

  No.

  Not unaffected.

  He had done something. I was sure of it. The way the pressure shifted — the way Kamcy had been forced down like an insect pinned beneath a god’s thumb — that wasn’t coincidence.

  That meant it was something that could be learned.

  Something that could be controlled.

  And I don’t know if it was my eyes malfunctioning or my brain deprived of oxygen, but I swear I saw it — a faint blue glow enveloping Kamcy’s body. Like heat distortion in the air, but tinted electric. Tiny sparks crawled along his skin, flickering like restless lightning searching for grounding.

  Everyone else still seemed to be reeling.

  Shock.

  Fear.

  Confusion.

  Turning my head, I looked at Orezi — the target.

  He was a mess.

  Blood smeared across the table where his face had smashed into it. Thick, dark red streaks still clung stubbornly to the polished wood despite the frantic cleaning. His lip was split wide open, flesh peeled back, exposing chipped enamel. One of his mors y on the floor nearby, cracked at the root, streaked with saliva and blood.

  He looked confused. Shocked. Humiliated.

  There was fear there too.

  And anger.

  It was almost comical, the cocktail of emotions fighting for dominance across his swollen face.

  Turning back to Kamcy, I felt something unexpected rising in my chest.

  Thrill.

  This was exactly what Mr. Ads had promised.

  Possibilities, a world beyond conventional limitations.

  I needed to learn that power.

  “Now the mood has been ruined, gosh Kamcy you seem to be hell bent on causing me trouble huh.”

  Mr. Ads joked.

  A few awkward chuckles followed, brittle and forced.

  No one was actually amused.

  Our minds were elsewhere.

  Mine especially.

  Kamcy

  I sighed internally.

  That had been childish.

  Flying off the handle because I was about to be called a bastard? Pathetic.

  Still, I didn’t feel compelled to apologize further. I was too preoccupied with the realization unfolding in my mind.

  I had instinctively tapped into the energy again.

  The same strange force from the simution.

  That meant I could access it here.

  Wherever here was.

  I focused inward, searching for that structure I had once built — the core. But I couldn’t feel one. No condensed nucleus of power. No stabilizing anchor.

  It seemed I would have to form it again.

  The thought reassured me briefly. If I could build it again, I could potentially use it to escape.

  But that pn dissolved the moment another memory surfaced.

  Mr. Adeyemi’s pressure.

  That overwhelming, surgical force.

  Of course I wasn’t the only one who could tap into this energy and imbue it with emotion.

  Meaning confrontation was likely suicide.

  I silently congratuted my past self for not attacking Ms. Destiny or Mr. Adeyemi during my earlier impulse. If this was the baseline of their strength, there was a strong likelihood I wouldn’t have survived five seconds.

  “Now the mood has been ruined, gosh Kamcy you seem to be hell bent on causing me trouble huh.”

  His attempt at levity fell ft.

  Only a few awkward chuckles answered him.

  I felt it then — Ijeoma’s gaze.

  Sharp. Piercing. Evaluating.

  It made my skin itch.

  “Alright, seems my gesture has been ruined. Let’s all try to eat so we can proceed with what we came here for, yeah?”

  As soon as he spoke, figures emerged from the shadows.

  Chefs.

  They moved like ghosts — silent, efficient, and expressionless.

  One knelt beside Orezi and began cleaning the blood. Thick cloths pressed against the wood, soaking up red until the fabric was heavy and dripping. Another wiped fragments of enamel and tissue into a silver tray. Someone else repced shattered utensils.

  The metallic scent of blood lingered briefly before being overpowered by disinfectant and fresh food.

  New ptes were set down.

  Steam rose from them.

  Everyone ate mechanically.

  Forks scraped against porcein in a slow, monotonous rhythm. No one spoke.

  I was starving.

  I hadn’t eaten proper food in what felt like forever.

  Despite the tension, I forced down a few bites.

  The food was incredible.

  Perfectly seasoned.

  It almost made me angry.

  After what felt like an eternity of forced chewing and silent gnces, Mr. Adeyemi cpped his hands once.

  “Alright, let’s get this over with then.”

  Lights flickered to life around us.

  One by one.

  Stage by stage.

  Darkness peeled back like a curtain.

  We weren’t in a dining hall.

  We were in something massive.

  An open industrial expanse that looked like an armory fused with a military hangar. The floor stretched endlessly in a color that was now becoming standard for these people: white.

  To the left stood about a hundred individuals dressed in bck armored uniforms. Helmets obscured their faces completely. Their posture was rigid. Professional.

  Soldiers, most likely.

  This definitely wasn’t a gaming company.

  Not even close.

  “So as you have all been told, you will all be undergoing a very special mission for us.”

  He left the table and walked toward the soldiers.

  An earlier theory of mine solidified.

  This was a form of super soldier program.

  Government-backed, maybe?

  But Nigeria?

  Did they have the funding? The infrastructure?

  Or was this bigger than national borders?

  “You all might have a lot of questions going through your mind right now, but I’ll start with this.”

  He paused.

  “Your mission summary is this: due to the backsh from the system shutdown — the attack from subject Kamcy invoked during his little stunt as he calls it — we have lost contact with a few sectors. And most importantly, we have our SSD fields shut down.”

  Confusion rippled across the group.

  “Synthesized Synaptic Disruption Field,” he crified. “With that down, we have left ourselves open to enemy attacks. And that is not good for anyone.”

  Enemy attacks.

  “So your mission objectives are simple. You will be divided into teams of five at random. You will be accompanied by a group of our brave soldiers as backup. You are to travel across our sectors — a distance of fifteen kilometers out. You will be given SSD field devices. You will have them installed and activated.”

  He continued calmly.

  “For your secondary mission, you are required to check all sectors for survivors. If there are none, you are required to retrieve all data from the databases those sectors have. Any questions?”

  Hands shot up instantly.

  Ms. Destiny had now joined him from somewhere.

  “Yes, Ms. Khadija.”

  “I’m sorry, what do you mean by enemies? This is all a bit confusing.”

  I nodded slightly.

  Everyone did.

  Though I had a feeling I knew the answer.

  “Well, of that, I’m speaking of the swarm.”

  The moment he said it, holographic projections erupted into existence around us.

  My stomach clenched.

  The creatures from my punishment simution.

  Towering fungal masses fused with bone. Insectoid forms with elongated limbs and distended torsos. Bloated sacs pulsating with bioluminescent veins. A grotesque feminine variant with a split jaw that opened vertically, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth slick with viscous fluid.

  Okay.

  So this isn’t reality then?

  Or maybe it was?

  “What you are looking at here are the enemies. Your enemies. They are an alien species of fungi-like lifeform that invade other species and take host, creating a variety of castes.”

  The holograms rotated slowly.

  One dispyed a human host mid-transformation.

  The skull cracked first — hairline fractures splintering outward as something pushed from within. Bone separated with wet snaps. Fungal growth burst through the eye sockets in fibrous tendrils, forcing the eyeballs to rupture and slide down the cheeks like getinous marbles. The jaw dislocated, skin tearing at the corners of the mouth as mandible extensions formed beneath.

  Ribs bent outward grotesquely, puncturing through muscle and skin. A ttice of fungal ptes grew over exposed organs, sealing them in a hardened shell.

  It was violent.

  Intimate.

  Horrifying.

  “I would advise against having one of these invade your nervous system,” he continued calmly, “as you would have a likelihood of being transformed into one of those.”

  He gestured to a slender caste I hadn’t encountered — tall, skeletal, its spine extended into whip-like protrusions twitching independently.

  “You’ll be given general information from our lead geneticist on your mission grounds through preinstalled transmitters. Just say or think the word status.”

  I did.

  [Name: Kamcy]

  [Age: 20]

  [State: Inert àse]

  [Tier: 9]

  [Mission]

  Several problems immediately surfaced.

  My age was wrong.

  Deliberate?

  And my state.

  Inert àse.

  So that was the name of the energy?

  Why inert, though?

  “You can all py with the tab you’re seeing all you want once you are out of here. But for now, how about some general info, huh?”

  Most of us were too busy staring at invisible interfaces like children discovering augmented reality for the first time.

  But my mind wasn’t on the HUD.

  It was on one thing.

  If my àse was inert…

  Then it could awaken. Was that by forming a core like I had done before?

  All that aside, though, having this power with me, I now knew I wasn’t completely powerless.