Ngozi is in the middle of helping Ify out of bed and into a hovering stretcher when the door slides open and Grace, face buried in her tablet, walks back in. She breaks off mid-sentence when she sees what’s happening. But an instant later, Ngozi flicks a shockstick from out of the sleeve of her hospital blouse and cracks Grace across the face, knocking her unconscious.
Even though vertigo threatens to pitch her over, Ify is on her feet. “What did you do?” she shouts. It occurs to Ify that this woman is trying to kidnap her, not help her. She fishes around for anything she can use as a weapon. Finding nothing, she backs away. “Get out or I’ll shout.”
Suddenly, too fast for Ify to see, the woman is on her, hand clasped over Ify’s nose and mouth, shockstick sizzling perilously close to Ify’s eye. “Scream and I will blind you. I’m supposed to keep you alive, not in one piece. You are coming with me one way or another. You will not want to find out what happens when they come for you here.” A pause. “I’m going to lift my hand now. Make a sound, and I will knock you out and haul you out of here on my shoulder. Understood?”
Ify manages a nod.
Slowly, Ngozi pulls her hand away. Ify exhales. The sight of Grace’s prone form, with the wound on her head leaking onto the floor, pulls at Ify.
“We can’t leave her.”
“Why not.” It is a statement, not a question.
“Don’t leave her. Please.”
Ngozi glares at Ify, then peeks her head out into the hallway and says something Ify can’t hear. Another woman—this one dressed as some sort of lab technician in a blue jumpsuit—comes in and tosses Grace’s body over her shoulder, then vanishes. Ngozi looks back to Ify as if to say, Happy? Then she gestures at the stretcher. “Get on.”
Ify does as ordered, and a moment later, they’re out in the hallway, Grace in a hoverchair behind them, pushed forward by an attendant.
As soon as they leave the room, Ify notices the differences in the atmosphere. She notices which nurses and hospital personnel only try to look the part, those who don’t fit all the way into their disguises. She notices how they position themselves in the hallway, some of them ready to run interference should the need arise, some of them making sure every available entrance and exit is within their sightlines to take on enemies. There’s an operation under way, and she’s at the center of it.
Outside a back entrance, she and Grace are loaded into a MedTransport that only goes a short distance before, suddenly, the van stops and masked people with pistols at their hips snatch Ify from the stretcher. One of them fits cloth tightly around her eyes, then seals it with a tinted visor. Someone else attaches beads to her temple that instantly block out all sound. Another binds her wrists in front of her with zip ties that automatically slam her fists together. Then she’s bundled into what she thinks is the back of another van. Though she can see and hear nothing, she feels every bump in the road, every sharp turn, every time something thwacks against the vehicle’s frame. Unable to perceive her surroundings, she has no idea how much time has passed. A familiar feeling creeps into her, the claustrophobia that suffocated her when she was once a prisoner of war held in a cell she could walk across in three steps. She fights the feeling. These people aren’t going to kill her. They’ve rescued her. There’s the possibility that she’s been lied to, that the men in the black kaftans and with the false faces were there to protect her from exactly the kind of people that have Ify trussed up in the back of a van. But Ify has no choice now. She’s in the hands of this Ngozi. Who invoked Onyii’s name. A name Ify hasn’t heard in nearly five years. Once she’d adjusted and began her new life, Ify had hoped never to hear that name again. She realizes she still hasn’t forgiven Onyii for abandoning her all those years ago. She’s gone through every possible scenario in her head, tried to reason through every possible rationale that Onyii could have had for leaving her like that. And they’ve all failed in the face of Ify’s logic. Back then, she’d wanted nothing more than to see her sister again, to hear her voice, to be held in her arms. When it became clear to Ify that Onyii was never going to come, Ify had done everything in her power to purge Onyii from her mind, to leave her behind, to craft a new self that would never need someone as desperately as she had once needed Onyii.
Is this what Céline had meant? Are you avoiding a solution because you have to walk through some pain to get there? Céline had asked.
That’s when Ify determines that she will follow this path wherever it leads. If it means a cure for the refugee children in Alabast, then she will do this. Enough resisting. The detention center, that girl who had embraced her, Onyii. So far, Ify has been pushing all of these things apart in her mind, only willing to deal with each thing as it arose. But maybe they’re all connected.
The van stops. No one removes the sound blockers or the glasses or the bag from Ify. Instead, they pull her out of the vehicle. She stumbles over roots and giant leaves and nearly runs into the person leading her when they stop.
Through the bag, a breeze brushes Ify’s cheeks. Then, her wrists are freed. Bit by bit, her makeshift cage is dismantled. The sound blockers, the glasses, the bag.
When Ify’s eyes adjust, she finds herself near a cliff’s edge. Scrub dots the outcropping, which looks like a giant beak. Ngozi puts the retractable restraints in her knapsack, then turns to head toward the outcropping. Even from this distance, Ify can see a sniper rifle positioned near the cliff’s edge, along with padding to provide comfort for someone who expects to occupy that post for a very long time. If Ify squints, she thinks she even spots the leftover wrappers of used steroid packets. She’s about to ask where Grace is when her assistant emerges from the forest behind her.
“Bathroom,” Grace says before gingerly touching the sealed forehead wound. It looks like someone applied defective MeTro sealant, because a trace of the wound still remains, and it’s clear to Ify that the pain lingers too. “Where are we?”
Ify looks around, squinting. She feels her temple, but her Whistle isn’t there. And she has no way of connecting to her bodysuit to activate any of its functionality. It’s as though everything that allowed her contact with the outside world has been turned off. “I don’t know.”
Ngozi packs up her rifle, hefts the shortened thing against her shoulder, and heads back in their direction. “Follow me,” she says, leading them deep into the forest. Fireflies blink their bodies at them. The sounds here have different texture. The crickets chirping, owls hooting, even the occasional faraway grunt of a shorthorn. Something subterranean in her stirs, and sensations swim back and forth behind her eyes: the smell of rain-turned soil, the lowing of half-mech beasts, the spray of water in a greenhouse. The camp. The camp where Onyii had raised her as a Biafran War Girl, where Onyii and the others had meticulously built the lie that Ify was one of them, that she belonged on their side of the war. Why does this place remind me of that camp?
“Watch out for the wulfu,” Ngozi cautions without lowering her voice. “The babies may not have teeth, but their claws grow early. And they’ll tear their food apart with their paws just to make it chewable.”
Grace blanches, but then Ify realizes why the sounds and smells of this place are so evocative. They’re real. She’d spent so long in Alabast, among false sounds and false light and false smells, that she’d forgotten what real animals sounded like, what real night felt like on your skin.
A rusted van awaits them. At first, Ify doesn’t see it, blanketed as it is by giant red and dark green leaves. But Ngozi yanks open the back door and gestures for Ify and Grace to get in. Grace is first to head into the darkness, but she spares a tight, warning glance at Ngozi before climbing in. Ify follows. Then Ngozi enters, pulling the doors closed behind them.
It feels like a different age, without the ever-present hum of always being connected. Without the hum against her body of her bodysuit at work, regulating her temperature, checking her vital signs, beaming her location to whoever needed to know. She winces at that last.
“Don’t try connecting anywhere,” Ngozi says, lying on a bed of pillows with her rifle draped across her body, as though she’s reading Ify’s thoughts, even though she’s staring at Grace when she says it. “All your electronics have been deactivated. EMPs.” Electromagnetic pulses. “Otherwise, the government’s gonna be able to track you. Which gets us all in trouble.”
A quick glance at Grace tells Ify that they’re both trying to figure out which question to ask first.
Ngozi stares at Ify. Squints a little bit like she’s measuring the face before her against some old, fuzzy holograph. “She never told us about you,” Ngozi says suddenly.
Breath leaves Ify’s lungs. “Sh-she?” Ify manages to say at last. But Ify knows there’s only one person Ngozi could be talking about. Onyii.
Ngozi shakes her head. “Never told us a single thing. To be honest, I don’t know what she’d make of you now.” She gestures with her hand to indicate the entirety of Ify, not just her outfit, Ify feels, but her carriage, her voice, the way she takes up space. The fact that she is a Colonial official. “It’s clear that you are just as smart as others have said.”
“Why did you bring me here?” Her patience is running thin. She welcomes the new hardness in her voice.
“Like I told you in the hospital, they were going to erase your memory.”
“Who’s ‘they’? And why would they perform an invasive operation on a Colonial official without consent?”
Ngozi snorts. “Is that how they talk up there?” She raises a finger lazily, pointing at a place worlds away. And Ify realizes in that moment just how far she is from home. She wants to tell this woman to answer the question, but the memory of her minders dying is still fresh and she can’t bring herself to issue commands. So instead, she lets the emotion play on her face. Please, she asks with her eyes. So Ngozi says, “They deemed you a contagion risk. I’m sure they were tracking your movements as soon as you arrived in Nigeria. We found you only because they were looking. And they would have gotten to you had we not lucked into your location at that police station.”
“You were there?”
Ngozi nods. Then she asks, “What are you doing here?”
Ify considers lying, but at this point she doesn’t know what she should hold back, so she sighs. “I’m a medical professional in Alabast Central. I oversee the refugee ward. Recently, the children under my care have become ill. Each of them has fallen into a coma. Identical symptoms. We tried to figure out what was wrong, but we found no answers.”
“And why does that bring you here?”
“The majority of those who took ill were Nigerian. My superiors thought it appropriate that I be sent to investigate.”
Ngozi lets out another derisive snort. “Like we are bringing them plague.”
No, not like that, Ify wants to tell her, but she knows Ngozi’s not entirely wrong in thinking that this was the reasoning of her supervisors. “I just want to find out what’s happening to them.”
“It makes sense why the government is after you, then. You are breaking the law. Or you will be very soon.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“It is against the law to speak openly about the war. It is against the law to document it, to write about it, to reference it, even to think about it.” She pauses to let the notion sink into Ify and Grace.
Grace stares at her hands, then looks up at Ify. “The police attack.”
Ify nods grimly.
“When you arrived, did you see any memorials? Any tombs or gravemarkers?”
Ify shakes her head. “No.” Then she remembers how much it had unnerved her that she had seen no commemoration whatsoever of the war she had lived through. “No, there was . . .”
“There was nothing.” Ngozi uses one bootheel to itch the other calf. “Just some story about a Nine-Year Storm, I bet.”
“Yes,” Ify says, her voice drained of energy.
Quiet fills the back of the van. Then the grunt of a large animal whose pelt fills the window, blocking their view of the fireflies and the leaves swaying in the night wind. The van rocks back and forth, and Grace scrambles for purchase, but Ngozi only closes her eyes like she’s being lulled to sleep. Eventually, the large animal stops nudging the van and trudges onward. Ify looks at Grace and almost wants to chuckle at her assistant’s terror. But she also wants to tell her it’ll be okay. An almost overwhelming urge bubbles up in her to gently run her finger over Grace’s wound and murmur something soft and loving into her hair.
She turns to Ngozi and is ready to ask her question, except that when it finally comes to her lips, her throat closes up. Finally, she forces out, “How did you know her?”
Ngozi raises an eyebrow at Ify. “We served in the war, Onyii and I. You could call it her second tour.” A morose smile spreads across Ngozi’s lips. “A couple of the other sisters I served with knew Onyii from before. She’d lived in a camp that was attacked. Eventually, she made her way to us. That camp was where she raised you, wasn’t it?”
It all seems too much to Ify. After so long of having first denied Onyii, then searching for any trace of her in this country she bled for and finding nothing—after all of that, to be confronted with so stark a reminder of her sister, to be told of the life she lived without Ify . . . her heart doesn’t know what to do. “What was she like?” She has completely forgotten Grace.
Ngozi shrugs. “We didn’t really like each other at first. She thought she’d lost more than anyone else in the war.” Ngozi pauses to look at Ify and sees something that makes her face soften. “But we all loved. And the war took everything we loved away from us.”
“There was someone you loved?”
Ngozi leans back, smiles at the memory. “A sister. Her name was Kesandu. Sacrificed herself so that the rest of us could escape at the end of an operation.” She shifts, as though her mind is leaving the memory and returning to her body. “It was just before the ceasefire.”
Ify flinches and fears that Ngozi notices. “What happened . . . after the war?”
Ngozi shifts her jaw like she’s trying to stop tears. Then, for some reason, she glares at Grace before returning her gaze to Ify. “I tried to reconnect with my family. We tried to reintegrate, those of us who were left. Easier for some than for others. I was lucky. At least I had family left. But they were eager to move on. They thought they’d lost a daughter in the war. In some ways, they had. I couldn’t move on. Everyone wanted to. The government, employment agencies, human rights commissions, my parents. Then the government started phasing in forced cyberization. My parents happily submitted. They couldn’t wait to be a part of this new connected Nigeria.”
“But you resisted.” This from Grace, who has kept a posture of attention this whole time, like she’s ready for Ngozi to attack her again at any moment.
“At first, we could chat by way of app. But the government used those apps to track our locations.” Then a new deadness enters Ngozi’s voice. “The police came to my parents multiple times. We learned quickly that it was because they were communicating with a veteran of the war everyone was in such a rush to forget. Eventually, everyone cut me off. Friends, acquaintances, cousins. By the end, the police were harassing my family so much that I left. I disconnected from everything, forced them to delete me from their contacts. All of it. I even had to delete my recordings because of the metadata.” She turns her murderous look at Grace once again. “I haven’t heard my mother’s voice in almost five years.” Ngozi’s fingers curl around the barrel of her rifle. “All because of your Odoodo government.”
Grace doesn’t flinch. How often has she heard the slur since coming here? Odoodo. Odo odo. Yellow. Often enough to take it without showing any hurt.
“It wasn’t like this before the war. Being watched all the time. Everywhere. The Chinese did this when they came with their”—she uses air quotes—“‘foreign aid.’”
“I’ve never been to Earthland China,” Grace says in a low, even voice. A voice Ify has never heard her use before.
“It was like this before the ceasefire,” Ify tells Ngozi in an effort to relieve the tension. “Nigeria was already there. In Biafra, you had no clue.”
Ngozi squints at Ify, as though a new piece of the puzzle has presented itself. But whatever it is that has occurred to her, she lets it go. “Because we were so backward in Biafra, of course.” Before Ify can reply, Ngozi says, “You should get some rest.” Without another word, she hefts the rifle, forces the back door open, then climbs out. The door slowly swings shut.
Ify pulls the blankets up to her chin and doesn’t realize that she’s been asleep until the muffled sound of voices reaches her. Reflexively, she reaches for her temple where her Whistle would be, but there’s nothing but hair. She tries to grow as still as possible and listen.
“She would remove her leg,” Ngozi is saying, her words gauzed by the van’s metal walls, “because it was connected and the government could track her through it. But we would drive into the desert, and she would take off her leg and I would remove my own Augment, and we’d leave them behind in the car and I would carry her. I would carry her until we’d reached our spot, and then we would sit in the sand together and watch the sun set.”
Ify strains her ears to hear what follows, then she realizes no one is speaking.
“Tell me what’s happening outside.” Ngozi again. “Do they know about us in the Colonies?”
Ify looks around her and sees that Grace is gone.
Then, Grace’s voice. Low and soft on the other side of the van’s walls. Too quiet for Ify to know what she’s saying, whether she’s lying to Ngozi or not.
After a quarter of an hour, Grace climbs back in and buries herself beneath her own pile of blankets. Ify marvels at how easily her assistant is able to find sleep.