Aminat cannot feel anything. No, that’s not quite right. She cannot feel her heart. She thinks it is in her chest, as something must be pumping the blood that rings in her ears and powers her motion, but all she detects is an absence, a numbness. Which is odd, since she is running as fast as she can.
The man she is chasing thinks he is going to jump in the Yemaja before she can reach him. He is wrong. He has a head start, true, but Aminat is faster, and a trained sprinter. She doesn’t command him to stop, because she wants to be angry when she catches him. Gauging the distance, she slows down a little, giving him hope that he will reach the guard rail before Aminat reaches him.
She lets him touch the rail before kicking his feet out from under him. His face slams on the ground and he wheezes from exertion and the fact that his nose is pulped. She turns him over, finds his gun and throws it into the river, waiting to hear the pish before speaking.
“Do you want to run again?”
He does not answer, so she slaps him hard. He seems to be negotiating unconsciousness, but she doesn’t want him unconscious or dead just yet.
“Hey. Wake up, darling, we have business to attend to.”
Something bubbles through the blood and blocked nose.
“What? Speak up?”
“… please…”
“No, no, no, sir, there will be no please in this conversation. There will be me asking questions and you answering. But first… I need you to know that I’m serious.”
Aminat hears the car roll up behind her, but doesn’t bother to look. She knows it’s a police car from the sound of the engine, and she presumes whoever it is can read the back of her jacket, but she does not really care. She continues her work tying the man to the base of a raw ganglion. He chatters on and is saying something but the loud sound in Aminat’s ears drowns it out. No matter. She is not ready to listen yet. The door to the car opens and she hears footfalls, walking, not running.
“Aminat, what are you doing?” asks Dahun.
“I’m getting information out of this asshole.”
“He’s already talking,” says Dahun. “And what are you hoping to achieve here?”
“Sooner or later this ganglion will communicate with the next one. That’ll give this guy a shock. After that, he’ll tell me anything.”
“You do realise that electrocution causes amnesia, right?”
“That’s a myth.”
“It’s not a myth. I’ve done interrogations.”
“You mean torture.”
“Aminat, this will not help you. More likely it will kill you both. Is that what you want?”
Aminat is silent, and for a few seconds the only sound is the night breeze blowing through the canyons formed by the empty buildings on both sides of the boulevard.
“I heard about Kaaro.”
“Don’t tell me you’re here to take me in so that I don’t take the law into my own hands. Because I already do that, and I’m definitely doing it tonight.”
“No. I’m here to help.” He crouches so that his face is level with the injured man. “Tell us what we need.”
The man is Afam Akerele and he is supposed to know how to get into Taiwo’s fortress. This appears to have been an exaggeration. Sixteen architects designed the place, no single one knowing everything the others did. The result is a place of shifting certainties, the whole of which only Taiwo Sanni knows.
Thirteen of us are dead or disappeared, says Afam.
Now the car takes them to Taiwo’s place without a plan.
“Are you sure it was him?” asks Dahun.
“He always hated Kaaro, and you were there when he threatened him the last time. You drew my attention to it, remember?”
“Okay. How are we getting in?”
“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you must have ideas. You were here with me, you like to tinker with instruments of death and you damn well knew it might come to you-against-him at some point. You’ve thought of this problem. So. You tell me.”
Incoming urgent call from Mayor Jacques.
“Not available,” says Aminat.
Call for Dahun from Mayor Jacques.
“Not available,” says Dahun.
Incoming message from Mayor Jacques.
“Fuck you both, what if I was under attack? Aminat, I know what happened. Accept my condolences. That said, I need you to break off your current course of action and come in—”
“Terminate message,” says Aminat. She turns to Dahun. “Well? We don’t have all night and they will send someone to stop us sooner or later.”
“The problem is, we are the ones they would usually send,” says Dahun, voice tinged with dark laughter. “I thought maybe an electromagnetic pulse to start with, but it’s bound to be hardened against that. I’d go for the power supply.”
“Backup generators.”
“No. I’ve done the reading. There has been no fuel supply to Rosewater since the rebellion. It goes bad between six and twenty-four months.”
“Petrol goes bad?”
“It does. He won’t be using his genny.”
“But where do we find the supply transformers or vulnerable cabling? You heard Afam.”
Dahun smiles. “I was thinking to kill the three ganglia that supply the area.”
“Hmm. I like it.”
“You realise many of the bots will be charged and will not require mains?”
“Don’t worry about bots. I have killed those.”
“So I heard.” He fiddles with his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“He has drones patrolling. I just sent a few raptors of my own against them.”
“Won’t that warn him?”
“Heh, you don’t know Rosewater well at all, do you? Have you studied the skies recently? It’s a massive battle ground. Drones duel for supremacy. COBs get eaten by floaters. This goes on all the time. He won’t be suspicious.”
Dahun lays the first charge at the root of a ganglion to the west of Taiwo’s castle. This is much safer, as the ganglia supplying the grid are covered with Ocampo inverter technology. Aminat doesn’t like the sky. It is still dark, but there is a distant brightening of the horizon. She feels fatigue creeping at the edges of her rage, corroding her resolve. What is she doing?
“Fire in the hole,” says Dahun. It sounds strange coming from his mouth, with his strong accent, but she ducks.
She expects a loud bang and a fireball, but there is just a pop and some smoke as the inverter falls apart. Electricity arcs, smacks the ground, and shoots lightning at the nearest naked ganglion, which might be a mile away for all they know. The pillar of nerve tissue glows green and seems to vibrate the air molecules. This is not a safe place to loiter.
“Two to go,” says Dahun, packing his bag of tricks. “If we take one each—”
It is not to be. The ground before them ruptures like an asphalt pimple, and Koriko emerges. Aminat is not quite prepared to kill her. Not yet.
“What are you doing? You are not allowed to harm Wormwood. You can use the power, but not hurt it,” she says. She notices Aminat. “Where is my serpentine?”
Aminat strokes the bandages on her forearm. “My brother made life too hot for it, similar to how he did that for you. How’s the new body?”
Koriko emerges fully from the hole. She is unclothed, but this new body has aggregations of those green stones covering her nipples and genitals, which means she retains some human modesty. Alyssa is still part of her, then.
“Why are you here? You are not normally a vandal,” says Koriko.
Dahun points. “We are trying to get into yonder castle. There are only two of us and it’s too well defended.”
Koriko turns to Aminat. “We were friends once.”
“I was friends with Alyssa.”
“You never met Alyssa. It was always me. I told you so at the time.”
“Be that as it may, Alien Jesus, you were more like Alyssa back then than whatever you are now.”
“You are the law enforcement here, so I will take it that you are carrying out your duties. I will help you with the castle. But I want my snake back.”
“I’ll get you a bloody snake. It’s a moray, by the way. I’ll get you seven.” Aminat is unsure why she feels the necessity to bait the god so much.
“There are people in the castle. They are mine.”
“Except one,” says Aminat. “Except one. You can do what you want with the rest if they’re dead.”
“They will be.”
For a time nothing happens, then there is a hint of seismic activity, which multiplies and gathers force. The vibrations hurl Dahun and Aminat down, but the god is unaffected, as if her feet are stuck. One minute the castle is standing. The next, gargantuan roots burst through every part of it, bringing the structure crashing down from multiple points. The walls collapse, battlements fall, towers are demolished. The roots do not tarry, and sink back into the earth. The entire site is covered in dust and the screams of the dying.
“Emergency vehicles will come sooner or later,” says Aminat. “We have to find him.”
“I have a tracker that will lock on his chip and all the ghosts from the wartime at least,” says Dahun.
In the air above, defensive drones fight COBs in brief skirmishes. At times bots pop out of the rubble, but Dahun’s rifle makes short work of them. When they get to Taiwo, he has just about dug himself free. He’s wearing some kind of protective suit, which may have kept him safe but is now damaged. He is not smiling.
“Are you here to arrest me?” he asks. “Look at what they did to my house. They could have killed me.”
Aminat does not recall how the gun found its way to her hand, how the safety got off. She aims at his head. “Kaaro’s been murdered.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No, you are not. Don’t play games with me.”
“Miss Aminat, I know you are grieving for your lover, but you are about to make a mistake. I did not kill him.”
“But you wanted to,” says Aminat. “And eventually you would have. That’s enough for me.”
“The real murderer will walk free!”
“There is not one of us who will walk free, Taiwo. Goodbye.”
Her phone rings, and she shifts her aim a foot to the left, pointing at the ground. “Cover him,” she says to Dahun.
It’s Femi. “Don’t go after Taiwo.”
“Too late for that advice,” says Aminat. “I’m about to execute him.”
“You’re going to have to let him go.”
“I no longer work for you, Femi.”
“Aminat, please stop. He did not kill Kaaro. His brother, Kehinde, did. It’s manipulation. He can’t kill his blood brother, and if he orders the assassination it’s so taboo that his followers won’t obey him. So he has to get you to do it.”
“You think I’m doing this in a rage. I’m not. This guy has been to prison and he owned it. He and his kind are a plague on Rosewater, and thanks to that jackass in the government house, I can’t bring him to justice. I have to stop him.”
“You can, but don’t kill him.”
“Why? Because he’s your asset?”
“No, you idiot, because of you. This is not you. I could do it, but not you. You’re the nice one, the friendly one who cares about people. If you do this, you’ll die too.”
“You’ll kill me?”
“Metaphorically. You’ll die figuratively. God, how do you even survive without… Never mind. Don’t do it. I don’t want to lose you.”
Taiwo shivers in the rubble, cold in the early-morning air. Aminat already knows she is not going to kill him. Shit. Kaaro, how could you leave me in this by myself? What now?
“Aminat?” says Femi.
“I’m not going to kill him.” She almost hangs up, then she says, “Thank you.”
“Pele. I’m sorry for your loss. Iwo ati Kaaro, o’doju ala.” You and Kaaro will see each other again in dreams.
“Yes.” Aminat lowers the weapon and looks at Dahun. “Arrest him.”
“What charge?”
“I don’t know. Think of something. Just get him out of my sight before I pull the trigger.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” says Femi.
“Are you still there?” Aminat disconnects and sits down, idly watching Koriko search the ruins for dead folk like a carrion bird. Their eyes catch each other briefly, for seconds, then Koriko goes about her business.
Aminat allows herself to cry.