Chapter 2: Anthony Richard

Tony's eyes snapped open.

Darkness. Thick. Suffocating.

For three heartbeats, he hung suspended between dream and reality—falling through that obsidian sky, numbers burning behind his eyelids. *4:44*. The digital clock on his nightstand confirmed it, frozen in glowing crimson. No hum from the ceiling fan. No distant rumble of traffic on the Kubwa Expressway. Just… *silence*. A void so profound it pressed against his eardrums.

He sat up, sheets damp with cold sweat.

*Something's wrong.*

Not the power outage—Abuja knew those like old acquaintances. This was different. The air itself felt… *thin*. Stretched. As if the world were a drumskin tightened to the point of tearing.

He stumbled to the window, bare feet silent on the cool tile. Outside, Abuja lay entombed. Streetlights stood like dead sentinels. The neighbor's security lamp cast a feeble halo that seemed to collapse inward, devoured by a darkness thicker than any night. Above it all, the sky…

*Void-Blue.*

The term surfaced in his mind, unbidden. Not black. Not indigo. A *living* absence, deeper than space, swallowing the stars, the moon, the horizon. Ribbons of corrupted light—neon-green, sickly crimson—snaked through it like veins. For a dizzying second, he saw *shapes* shifting in the depths: impossible geometries, vast as mountains, cold as code.

*`> STRUCTURE DETECTED: NON-TERRESTRIAL`*

The words flickered behind his eyes, sharp and digital.

He blinked. Gone.

A low **hum** vibrated in his bones. Not sound. *Pressure.* It resonated in his molars, his ribs, the marrow of his spine. The same hum from his dream.

"Tony?"

His mother's voice—**Doris**—drifted up from downstairs, muffled but jarringly normal. The scent of frying yam and sharp pepper cut through the ozone-tinged air. Life, stubbornly persisting.

He turned from the window. His reflection in the dresser mirror caught him—but *lagged*. Half a second behind. His hand raised; the reflection's hand lifted a fraction too late. A ghostly afterimage.

*`> REALITY INDEX: DESYNCHRONIZED`*

The words scrolled, cold and clinical, behind his pupils.

---

Downstairs, the world was fractured.

His father, **Ken**, sat rigid on the living room sofa, remote control clutched like a weapon. The television screen hissed static—a blizzard of gray and white noise that seemed to writhe with half-formed shapes. Flickers of distorted faces, fragments of emergency broadcasts:

*"—GLOBAL EVENT—"*

*"—REMAIN INDOORS—"*

*"—SEEK SHE—"*

Then swallowed by the hungry static.

"The radio's dead," Ken said, voice tight. He didn't look away from the screen. "Phones too. Generator's out. Everything's just… *gone*."

Doris stood in the kitchen doorway. Her apron was dusted with garri flour, her hands gripping the frame. Her eyes, wide and dark, flicked between the static-filled screen and the window where the Void-Blue pressed against the glass. Fear warred with practicality. "The yam is almost ready," she said, her voice unnervingly steady. "Sit. Eat."

The domesticity felt surreal. A ritual against the apocalypse.

Tony's younger sister, Emmanuella, was curled into the corner of the worn sofa, knees drawn to her chest. Fourteen years old, usually vibrating with restless energy or lost in her phone, now she seemed smaller. Fragile. Her eyes were fixed not on the static, but on the space *above* the television. Her fingers twisted the hem of her pajama top.

"You saw it, Tony," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hiss. "The sky."

He nodded, sinking into the armchair opposite her. The hum was louder down here. It vibrated in the floorboards, the metal legs of the chair. "It didn't look real," he managed.

"It wasn't." She finally looked at him, and the depth in her eyes startled him. Not just fear. *Awareness.* "It was… *alive*. Breathing. Thinking." She shivered. "And it saw us."

Ken made a dismissive sound. "Nonsense, Emmy. Some kind of atmospheric disturbance. Solar flare, maybe. The news will sort it out." But his knuckles were white on the remote.

Doris returned from the kitchen, balancing plates. Fried yam, golden and crisp, alongside steaming pepper soup rich with goat meat and scent-leaf. The aroma, usually comforting, now felt like an intrusion. Tony took a plate. The ceramic was warm, solid. Real. He forced himself to bite into the yam. It tasted like ash.

*`> BIOMETRIC ANOMALY DETECTED`*

*`> NEUROLOGICAL ADAPTATION: 12%`*

The words pulsed in his vision.

He dropped the yam.

"Tony?" Doris's voice sharpened.

"Just… tired," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. When he looked again, the words were gone. But the sensation lingered—a coiled presence low in his gut. Cold. Electric. Watching.

---

Tony retreated to the kitchen under the pretense of water. He needed space. Needed to *think*. The hum was a physical thing now, a thrumming wire stretched taut inside his skull. He leaned against the sink, staring at the faucet.

*Turn it on.*

He willed it.

Nothing.

*`> ENERGY SIGNATURE: NULL`*

*`> PROTOCOL INACTIVE`*

Frustration bit at him. He gripped the cool metal. *Focus.*

For a split second, the hum intensified, sharpening to a needle-point behind his eyes. The faucet handle… *shimmered*. Like heat haze off asphalt. A ghostly overlay of numbers flickered over it:

`00FAC901`

`VALVE STATUS: LOCKED`

He gasped, snatching his hand back. The shimmer vanished. The numbers dissolved.

*What is happening to me?*

A soft sound made him turn. Emmanuella stood in the doorway, her gaze fixed on his hand.

"You felt it too," she said, no longer a question. "Not just the sky. Inside." She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a thread. "When Daddy turned on the TV… and the static screamed…" She swallowed. "I made it quiet. Inside my head. I just… *pushed*."

Tony stared at her. "Pushed?"

"Like when you tell a dog to sit. But… in my thoughts." She touched her temple, her eyes wide and scared. "It listened."

Before he could respond, a sharp *crack* echoed from the living room.

They rushed back.

Ken stood before the television, the remote shattered on the floor at his feet. The static screen now showed a single, pulsing line of text, blood-red against the gray snow:

**`> SINGULARITY PULSE CONFIRMED.`**

**`> STANDBY FOR DIRECTIVES.`**

"Government broadcast," Ken breathed, a mix of relief and dread in his voice. "Finally. See? They're calling it a pulse. Some kind of… event."

But Tony barely heard him. His eyes were locked on the text. It wasn't just on the screen. It pulsed, identical, in the corner of his own vision. A notification. A confirmation.

*`> HOST: ANTHONY RICHARD`*

*`> STATUS: SYNCHRONIZING`*

Emmanuella moved closer to him, her small hand finding his. It was ice-cold. Her eyes met his, filled with a knowledge far beyond her years.

"I think we're different now, Tony," she whispered, the words only for him. "Not just us. But… us *more*."

Tony looked down at their joined hands. Then back at the frozen clock on the wall, still stubbornly reading 4:44. The hum inside him vibrated in harmony with the static's hiss. The coiled thing in his gut shifted, tasting the charged air.

Outside, the Void-Blue sky was fading, retreating like a tide. Stars pricked through the thinning darkness. The world was returning.

But Tony Richard knew, with chilling certainty, that the boy who went to bed last night was gone.

Something new had woken up inside his skin.

And it was hungry.