For the lipstick Aminat turns to her sister. “Matte or gloss?”
Tomi, on the bed, reading There Was a Country, shrugs without looking up.
She goes with matte, but then rubs it off and uses gloss. Since seeing Kaaro’s ghost, she has been more at peace, feeling closer to her old self. That yawning chasm of emotions is still there, but she is finding new ways to circumvent it daily. The pain is moving from sharp to dull, and life is worth living again.
She has her light armour on under the clothes. Her ankle strap has her backup gun, while her other holster is visible. The government-issue weapon sends pleasing pings to her ID, logged on her phone. She has protein bars–cricket, grasshopper, notroach–in her belt with a small processor to handle communication. If she had a uniform, she would be wearing it.
Today, in spite of all the problems Rosewater faces with protests and rioting, the gay community wishes to have their first Pride, and Layi is going to the march.
Yes, Aminat diverts public resources to cover the march just in case synners decide to take shots. Dahun says not, and believes he has imprisoned all of them. Guarantees are a thing she has heard before and been disappointed.
“Can’t you go with Layi? I’d really feel better if you did,” she says to Tomi.
“Nope.”
“You’re a bad sister.”
“Fuck you and nope.”
“If you love him—”
“If he loved me, he’d stay home like all sensible human beings.”
Aminat stops talking and tells the car to start. She knows Tomi will have a last-minute change of heart and follow their brother.
There have been sniper threats, bomb threats, cross-border threats from Nigeria, sabre-rattling from the president, all kinds of shit. Outside, she sees the car arrive. It barely misses a slouching reanimate with a bandaged head.
Rushing out, she passes Layi preening in front of a mirror, wearing a trilby of all things. She kisses the back of his neck. “I love you, be careful.”
The reanimate slips in a pool of palm oil and falls flat on his face. The impact is such that whatever wound he had reopens, and the bandages turn red, but only for a few seconds as the healing aether of Rosewater repairs the body. Small fragments of glass from the ground fall off the reanimate’s skin as he continues shambling towards a specific destination. He sweats through his clothes as the sun begins shining for real, but he does not stop for water or rest. He loses a shoe, but keeps going. His path can now be traced on the tarmac by the blood smear as the sole of his foot abrades.
He is jostled by protesters, and is knocked over now and again. Each time, with terrapene doggedness, he rises, reorients himself and keeps going. The noise and the chants do not deter him, although warnings of police cause a split second of hesitation that observers would miss. He is mostly ignored.
He is within view of the Honeycomb when a police jeep runs him down. Some observers might have noticed that he walked into the path of the vehicle. It doesn’t matter; the outcome is the same. He is dead. Again.
Koriko becomes aware of the bandaged man at a time when she is resting. She misses her pet serpentine, but the decay it created is still festering in Wormwood. Her irritation at Jacques burns as a hot coal in her heart, and she leaps at a chance to pick up even a single corpse.
The bandaged man has soiled himself, but this is not unusual. Koriko hauls the body over her shoulder and walks towards the Honeycomb. There is an abundance of staffers available to prep the body and help, since there has been a slowdown after the confrontation with Jacques.
There is something different about the corpse, more residual neurotransmitter activity than she would usually associate with human dead. As they take the body away, Koriko detects a surge that might be a thought, but it dies away just as quickly.
She casts it out from her mind.
In Arodan, poised at a keyboard, Bad Fish gets the message and says, “He’s in.”
The room is silent, all eyes on Femi.
“Execute,” she says.
Bad Fish’s fingers flit across the keys, then he pauses dramatically before bringing a hand down on the last one. “Gbo-sa!” Boom.
Just outside the city limits, to the west of Rosewater, the mine slows its extraction. It ignores the consternation among the on-site workers, instead giving off ominous sounds. An alarm activates and the site is evacuated while the engines appear to reconfigure themselves. The accumulated waste of Wormwood drains into hitherto empty chambers deep within the earth beneath the mine.
A monstrous pile-driver pushes through the soil, across the border and into the flesh of the alien. Through this channel, the mine, which is now acting like a jet injector, fires more than a year of waste back into Wormwood.
In the mayor’s mansion, Blessing, in taking inventory of his new work, stumbles upon Lora in her electromagnetic cell. They lock eyes.
They do not exchange any words.
In Arodan, Eric screams and falls convulsing to the floor. The tentacle swings about looking for an aggressor, preventing anyone from helping him. Each convulsion squeezes air from his lungs, forced through his vocal cords in a yelp that would sound comical under other circumstances. One of Bad Fish’s acolytes tries to help; the tentacle punctures her throat with a spike and flings her left, slamming her against the wall of the hangar.
Underground, Wormwood feels exquisite pain and erupts in every way it can, trying everything in desperation, wanting to get away from the liquid fire that plagues it. It finally pulls its pseudopodia in, contracting into a sphere, causing local shifts in the tectonic plate.
In Rosewater, Wormwood’s pain is felt everywhere, physically. There is a local earthquake as the ganglia are forcibly retracted, and the ground surges and heaves like the waves at a beach. Buildings sway, then break, never designed to withstand these kinds of forces in the first place. Thousands of people suffer ruptured blood vessels in their brains and have haemorrhagic strokes.
Layi has never done this before, but he has read up. Set a rendezvous point for the start and end of the march. Get the numbers right so that everyone makes it home. Keep it tight, keep eyes open and submit the route to the police beforehand. There are twelve of them, including a high-court judge and his husband, newly out.
Tomi, his sister, comes along “for the ride”, but Layi knows it’s to look after him. He knows and she knows, but they both pretend it’s about supporting the gay lifestyle. There are one or two motorcycle crash helmets by way of masking, but otherwise there are no costumes. There is still widespread disbelief. It’s a trick. They want to identify gay people so they can arrest and lynch them. There are no leaders. Layi suggests a simple rectangular route up Ransome Kuti Avenue, across Taribo West Way, down Odegbami, then back to Ransome Kuti by Broad Street. It would take maybe an hour. Even that would be historic.
They start from the ganglion. They do not play music, but they have a PA system reading out the names and year of execution or imprisonment of their fallen comrades. It is a sober celebration, but Layi thinks subsequent years will be more cheery. The march aims for the ganglion on Taribo.
Ransome Kuti is an arty district, with some bars, a few clubs, Remy’s Slam for poetry and some street food. They are halfway when the first earthquake hits. Tomi grabs his hand.
“Don’t panic,” she says.
“I’m not panicking,” says Layi.
But the ground is in distress. Layi has a headache like someone urinated on his brain then doused it in bleach. Something is happening that Kaaro would have understood better. A cherub statue cracks and falls from the angle of a building. The rending noise stops the names from being audible.
“Do we go back?” asks someone.
“I’m not going anywhere,” says the judge. “Do you know how many years I have waited for this? No. I’m going the full route, even if it kills me.”
Layi understands this, but does not wish to die.
“What do you think?” he asks Tomi.
“I have the wrong privilege for this,” she says. “Common sense is screaming for me to run. We don’t know what this is. It makes sense to be cautious. Yet I’ve not gone through the oppression that queer folks have. What do you want to do?”
“I want to make sure everyone’s safe. Besides, there’s a Filipino boy I’m trying to impress.”
“The one in the superhero T-shirt?”
“Gorgeous!”
“Okay. But we have to be careful.”
There is a crash of broken glass and four floaters take flight from an alley. The street vibrates, and manhole covers shift, but the march continues.
Water mains burst and spray the procession. Halfway, and three synners break out of a door. They are armed and spot the Pride group, green eyes blazing with evil intent. Layi elevates the temperature around the weapons to white heat, generating a terrifying crack with displaced air, melting the hardware and reducing the hands to powdered charcoal. The march does not stop, although Layi thinks he might need a rest. It is not obvious why the heating effect occurred, and Layi does not say.
“Jacques is meant to be here giving a speech,” says someone.
“Yeah, well, he knows how to look after himself. Did you see that new leg?”
“I heard it’s a prosthesis.”
“My cousin works at the mansion. It’s real.”
The march works its way through the dangers, and just as they are about to return, a swarm of new floaters descends to feed.
Tomi says, “Layi…?”
“Everybody,” says Layi, “get behind me.”
Koriko screams her rage into the air. “No, don’t you dare!”
The Honeycomb groans, but does not crumble like the blocks around it. Chief Scientist Lua puts a hand on Koriko. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s leaving,” says Koriko.
“What’s leaving?”
“The footholder! Wormwood is running away!”
“But… it can’t…”
“It can. It is.”
Wormwood breaks all the tethers to the city above, snatching back all strands of flesh, all neurological tissues and water conduits, diving even deeper into the Earth’s crust to avoid the toxins. It does what it was already doing slowly. It had intended to take the city away from Nigeria, to a place of safety, but now it is in pain and at risk of being killed. It is no longer a matter of compromise, but one of survival. The humans almost killed it once already. Wormwood will no longer wait patiently or try to convince its avatar.
It can feel the city above shear off, and it can hear the pain of millions of humans, but it cannot care. It cannot care now. Five hundred souls are wiped out in an instant when one of the caverns in Wormwood’s body collapses and they fall screaming through the earth.
It aims for water.
It aims for the sea.
Femi nods to Bad Fish. “The distraction worked. May whatever gods we worship forgive us.”
“I’m hearing reports of an earthquake,” says the professor. “There shouldn’t be earthquakes. We’re on a single tectonic plate.”
“That was Wormwood dying,” says Bad Fish.
“It’s not dying,” says Oyin Da.
“Can you feel Kaaro?” asks Femi.
The Bicycle Girl does not or cannot answer.
In the bunker under the mansion, Jack receives all the information. Beside him, Hannah holds his hand with a grip that seems to grow tighter every minute.
“It’s over,” says Jack. “We’re not coming back from this.”
The hologram they are watching shows floaters swarming, diving to grab citizens, churning in a feeding frenzy that rains blood on the burning city.
“It’s like a vision of hell,” says Hannah.
“Except it’s not a vision; it’s real.”
Dahun is on a radio somewhere. “Mr Mayor, you should leave with me. Now. There is widespread violence, and creatures we have never seen before are emerging from underground. Sir, we are food. Get to the helipad.”
“Where will we go?” asks Jacques.
“Away from here, to start with,” says Dahun.
“We’re coming,” says Jack. He turns to Hannah. “Go with the bodyguards. I’ll follow.”
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“I have to get Lora. I’m not leaving her here.”
Koriko is on her knees, unprepared for the kind of desolation she feels as the signal with Wormwood becomes fainter and fainter the further away it goes.
Come back.
Stop.
You and I are one. I cannot live without you, footholder.
Wormwood.
Stop moving, please.
We will die.
[I love you. This is what love is.]
From Wormwood, silence.
People move around her, but Koriko does not care. She falls, lying on the floor now.
She is not dead, but she might as well be.
She closes her eyes.
Jack should have asked one of his bodyguards to do this, but he wants Hannah to have maximum protection. He feels able to look after himself as he makes his way up past panicking staffers, one of them on fire, though from what is unclear. The building is not burning.
He has to get Lora clear. He feels guilty for what he has done, but there’s time to apologise later. He tries to tamp down the thought that tries to emerge from the depths: she is only a machine.
No.
He bursts into the chamber and is confused for a second. She isn’t…
“Good morning, sir,” says Lora from behind the door.
Jack turns right into a punch. It takes him off his feet and triggers ringing in his ears. The pain comes next, but he still opens his eyes to find Lora gone.
Shit.
That hurt, on several levels.
Lora can certainly punch. She obviously thinks Jack means her harm. His subdermal is going crazy with all manner of warnings. Messages from Hannah. Messages from Dahun. Messages from Tired Ones. The world wobbles and shakes; Jack knows the structure can take some stress, but not for much longer.
Get up, Jack.
He tries to phone Hannah or Dahun, but the phone doesn’t work, which means they are out of range of the peer-to-peer, which means they are gone. Good. He only has to think about himself. There are tunnels built after the war, but he worries about their integrity after all the earthquakes. He heads upstairs, concerned about roving thugs, but makes his way to his office. He is relieved to see the Orisha rows. He activates the emergency app on his subdermal and all the Orisha advance to his side as robotic guards.
“Lethal force,” he says.
In the office he has armour and weapons, which he kits himself out with. He leaves one robot in the office, just in case he has to come back. Then, accompanied by the others, he makes his way out.
The sight of Rosewater brings tears to his eyes.
What have they done to my city?
He charges into the night, hoping to find a way out, maybe. He can hole up in the Honeycomb, or the cathedral; the Anglican priest owes him. A part of his mind wants to make it right. A part of him thinks this can still be fixed.
And Jack Jacques is the man to do it.
Oh.
The bandaged man. The last Homian transfer. Koriko has been distracted, but now she understands its final transmission and she knows.
That was someone she has encountered before.
That was Kaaro.
And that last thought she deciphered is now clear to her.
Fuck you, Space Invaders!