Night had settled over the facility completely.
The kind of night that arrives after a day that has asked too much of everyone — the noise gone, the energy spent, the corridors quiet in a way that felt less like peace and more like exhaustion finally winning. Candidates had retreated to their rooms. The cafeteria had emptied. Even the screens along the hallways had dimmed to their standby state, displaying nothing urgent, just the low ambient glow of a system that never fully switched off.
On the balcony overlooking the North Wing training field, Farouk stood alone.
He had come here without particularly deciding to — just walked until he found somewhere quiet and this had been it. The field below was dark and still, the simulation equipment powered down for the night, the space that had held so much tension during the day looking almost peaceful from up here.
He leaned on the railing and looked at it.
I wonder what mum is doing.
The thought arrived before he could stop it — quiet, uninvited, the kind of thought that surfaces when the noise of the day finally stops and leaves room for the things you've been not thinking about.
Probably in a meeting. She's always in a meeting.
"Worrying about your mum."
He turned sharply.
Daniel and Chinedu stood at the balcony entrance — not having announced themselves, just there, the way people appear when you've been alone long enough that you stopped listening for footsteps.
"That's new," Daniel added.
Farouk straightened. Something closed in his expression — the automatic response of someone who has learned to manage what they show. "What do you want?"
"Nothing specific." Chinedu moved toward the railing with the unhurried ease of someone who means exactly what he said. "Just came to clear our heads."
They settled on either side of him — not crowding, not making it a thing, just occupying the same space in the way that people do when they're not trying to start a conversation but aren't opposed to one happening.
For a moment nobody said anything.
The night was genuinely quiet. Below them the empty training field stretched out in the dark, and beyond the facility walls the world continued existing in whatever way it did — a fact that felt both obvious and strange from up here.
Then Daniel spoke.
"Farouk."
Farouk looked at him.
"Why do you despise me?"
The question was direct. Not aggressive — just honest in the specific way Daniel tended to be honest, without decoration or approach.
Farouk held his gaze for a moment. Then looked back out at the field.
He was quiet long enough that it might have been a refusal to answer. Then — slowly, like something being turned over and examined before being said:
"You know… when I think about it now — all the time I spent chasing revenge after losing to you, all the energy I put into being angry about it—" He paused. "I should have used that to improve. To actually get better." He exhaled through his nose. "I was rude and stupid. I know that." A pause. "But I'm different now. Everything that's happened since — it changed something."
Daniel looked at him. Nodded once. "Good. That's what this place is supposed to do."
Farouk almost smiled. Not quite. But almost.
Chinedu leaned on the railing beside him, looking at the field below. "The whole competition keeps shifting. Every time you think you've found your footing the ground moves again." He was quiet for a moment. "It's mentally draining in a way I didn't expect."
Daniel nodded. "Sometimes I just—" He stopped. Then said it anyway. "Sometimes I just want to hear my parents' voices."
The admission came out quieter than his usual register. Real in a way that didn't ask for a response.
Farouk looked at him sideways. "So the comeback king himself gets homesick."
It wasn't cruel. There was something almost warm in it — the specific warmth of someone who finds another person's vulnerability unexpectedly reassuring because it means they're not alone in theirs.
Chinedu glanced at Farouk. "Don't you miss home?"
The question landed differently than Chinedu probably intended.
Farouk was quiet for a long moment. He looked at the dark field below — at the empty space where simulation players had moved and competed and been directed all day — and when he spoke his voice had lost the guarded quality it usually carried.
"I don't know," he said. "Back home—" He paused. Started again. "My father died when I was young. I don't really remember him clearly. Just pieces." He looked at the railing. "And my mum—" He stopped again. The kind of stop that has weight behind it. "She's always busy. Always. There's always a meeting or a function or something that requires the Minister of Sport to be somewhere that isn't home." His voice was even but the evenness was doing work. "She makes up for it with things. Whatever I want — she finds a way to get it. New boots. The best equipment. Whatever." He shook his head slightly. "But things aren't the same as—"
He didn't finish that sentence.
Daniel and Chinedu said nothing. Which was the right thing.
"And my grandparents—" Something shifted in his expression. "Every time we visited, every single time, they compared me to my cousins. Called me spoilt. Said I had everything handed to me. That I hadn't earned anything." He exhaled. "My mum always defended me. Always stood up and said something. But—" He looked at the sky. "It still hurts when people say it. It stays."
He was quiet for a moment.
"The only thing I ever felt was actually mine was football. Not given to me. Not bought. Mine." He looked at his hands on the railing. "What made me want to be a coach—" He paused. "Jose Mourinho."
Daniel turned. "Mourinho?" Something lit up in his voice before he could manage it. "You know about—"
"Of course I know about him." Farouk almost laughed — a brief, genuine sound. "When he won the Champions League with Porto. A club nobody believed in, nobody respected, nobody put on the same level as the giants of Europe." He shook his head slowly. "He took that club — a club people had already decided the ceiling for — and made them champions of Europe. Unbeaten at home through that whole period. The whole world had to stop and look." Something in his voice had changed — warmer, more alive, the voice of someone talking about the thing that actually moved them. "Seeing that — seeing what a coach could do, what a real tactical mind could build — it sparked something. I thought — that's what I want. To build something people underestimated. To be the mind that makes the impossible happen."
He paused.
The warmth faded slightly.
"So my mum would finally look at me."
The words came out smaller than everything before them. Said almost to himself. The thing underneath all the other things.
Daniel looked at him. Really looked — not at the candidate who had caused problems, not at the cold face he'd seen in the arena. At a person.
"I know you can do it," he said. Simply. Directly. "I mean that."
Farouk looked at him. Something moved through his expression — brief, complicated, the specific look of someone receiving something they needed and don't entirely know what to do with.
"At first I thought you were just a bad person," Daniel continued. "The system breach. The way you acted. The coldness." He looked back at the field. "But watching you right now — hearing you talk about this — it changes what I thought I knew about you."
Chinedu nodded. "We all came here with reasons. Things that drove us here that aren't just about football. That's what makes us who we are." He paused. Then looked at the two of them. "Which brings me to something I've been carrying since this evening."
Both of them looked at him.
Chinedu exhaled — the exhale of someone preparing to say something they haven't said out loud yet.
"The six new candidates," he said. "The ones who came in today."
"Yeah," Farouk said. "What about them?"
Chinedu was quiet for a moment.
"One of them is my elder brother."
The balcony went very still.
Daniel stared at him. "Your brother?"
"Obinna Okafor."
"You have a family member here?" Farouk looked at him. "That should be — I mean that's—"
"I hate him." Chinedu said it quietly. Completely. With the specific flatness of someone who has sat with a feeling long enough that it no longer needs emphasis to carry weight. "With every part of me. I don't consider him family."
The silence that followed had texture to it.
Farouk looked at Chinedu — then at Daniel — and the three of them stood on that balcony with the particular shared quality of people who have just heard something true and private and don't know what to do with it except let it exist.
Daniel wanted to ask more. He could feel the question forming — about why, about what had happened between them, about the specific history that produced that kind of certainty in Chinedu's voice. But something stopped him. An awareness that some things aren't offered for discussion — they're just told, and the right response is to receive them without pulling at the edges.
He left it alone.
"We all have our things," Farouk said finally. Quietly. Not minimizing it — just acknowledging the shared condition of it.
Chinedu nodded once.
"It's late," Daniel said. "We should head back."
Chinedu pushed off the railing. "Yeah."
They moved toward the balcony exit. Daniel glanced back at Farouk. "Later, Farouk."
Farouk raised a hand. "Later."
He watched them go — their footsteps fading down the corridor, the balcony returning to its quiet — and stood there for a moment longer in the dark with the field below and the sky above and the specific feeling of having said things out loud that he usually kept entirely to himself.
Then the Philly vibrated in his pocket.
He pulled it out and looked at it. Looked around the balcony quickly — empty in both directions, the corridor beyond it dark and silent. Then he answered.
"How are you doing, sweetie?"
Maeve's voice. Warm. Light. The specific warmth of someone who knows exactly what effect they're having and has chosen it deliberately.
Farouk moved further along the balcony railing — instinctively creating more distance from anywhere someone might hear. "I'm fine."
"Good. I'll keep this brief." Her tone shifted — still pleasant but with something more precise underneath it now. "As you saw, your name wasn't on the elimination list. I did my part. Now it's your turn."
Farouk looked at the empty field below. "Yes. I understand."
"I have a task for you." A pause — the pause of someone giving information the weight it deserves. "I need you to get close to three people. Chinedu Okafor. Daniel Adebayo. And Fiona."
Farouk absorbed that. "Daniel and Chinedu — I can work with that." He thought about what had just happened on this balcony. About the conversation that had just ended. Something tightened in his chest briefly — there and gone. "Fiona is different. She keeps herself closed off. Getting close to her won't be quick."
Maeve hummed softly. "Alright. Just keep your eyes on her for now. Anything you notice — movements, conversations, anything that seems significant. Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Good boy." A pause. Then — almost casually, almost as an afterthought, the way the most pointed things are delivered: "Your mother looked wonderful on television today, by the way. She really does care so much about the masses." A brief, light laugh. "I'm sure she's working very hard."
Farouk said nothing.
"Take care of yourself. I'll be in touch."
The Philly went dark.
Farouk stood with it in his hand and looked at the screen for a moment. Then looked up at the sky — the same sky that was above the hospital somewhere in this city where his mother had stood at a podium today and answered questions about children who hadn't come home.
She will just shower me with gifts and anything I want so as to make up for lost time.
He put the Philly in his pocket.
Guess I was missing her for nothing.
He told himself that. Firmly. The way you tell yourself things when you need them to be true.
Then he pushed off the railing and walked back inside.
Below the balcony — in the shadows of the North Wing corridor that ran beneath it — a figure stood in the dark.
He had been there for a while. Long enough to have heard the tail end of the conversation above. Long enough to have watched Farouk take a call and move to the edge of the railing and speak quietly into something small.
He hadn't been trying to listen. He had simply been there — walking, thinking, taking in the facility at night the way he'd been taking in everything since he arrived. Observing. Filing.
The figure tilted his head slightly.
A slow smile formed — unhurried, private, the smile of someone who has walked into a room and immediately understood that it is more interesting than it appeared from the outside.
"Oh dear," Kai said softly.
To himself. To the dark. To whatever he'd just seen and was already turning over in that quiet mind of his.
"I've only just arrived and things are already this layered." He looked up at the balcony — at the empty railing where Farouk had been standing — then back at the corridor ahead of him. "Father was right to send me here."
He stood there for a moment longer.
Then walked away into the dark, still smiling.
Still watching.