Rebel Sisters Page 25
“So the government is right? The only way to bring warring tribes back together, living side by side as neighbors, is to make them forget what they did to each other?” Venom drips from Xifeng’s words.
“Warring tribes.” This time, Ify lets a touch of anger infect her voice. “That’s what we are to you. Just warring tribes who can’t think for themselves. Who can’t make decisions and govern their own lives. Just warring tribes who have no business running their own country.”
Xifeng sneers.
“You’re no different from the rest of the oyinbo. All throughout history, these people come in and try to tell us how to live, and all they do is create conflict. All they leave behind is death and destruction and dysfunction. What you’re proposing will rip this country apart. Millions will die.”
“And the country will move forward. Just like you did.”
“I am not a country!” The exclamation rings throughout the room. Ify is sure it can be heard in every corridor and every chamber in this sequence of tunnels. She takes a moment to settle herself, to slow her heart’s racing, to still her nerves. “I am a human being,” she says with a lower voice, a kinder one. “I am one human being. I was lucky.” As she speaks, she thinks of her patients. Their experiences fill her voice. “I’ve seen people who witnessed the torture of their family go blind. I’ve seen people so traumatized by their nightmares that they die in their sleep. Scared to death, Xifeng. Sacred. To. Death. So many others—deafness, impotence, suicidal ideations, children who take their own lives because they think it is the only relief from the trauma that haunts them every second of their day. That is not happening because people are holding it in. These people were seeking treatment. They were speaking to professionals. They were sharing their experiences. They were doing everything right, and they still didn’t survive. Xifeng, you’re going to kill these people.”
“Would you sacrifice your memories of Onyii for peace?”
The question stops whatever words Ify had left in her throat.
“Everyone who remembers Onyii is in these caves. You can count them on one hand. And two of those people are standing here right now. Think about that, Ify. The only people who ever knew Onyii existed. After all she did for her people. We are all that’s left of her. You would have us lose that.”
Ngozi enters the room and hurries to Xifeng. She puts a hand to her arm to turn her, and whispers briefly to her. The two exchange a meaningful look. Then Ngozi leaves.
Rage floods through Ify, but she holds it in her shaking fists. “You’re not doing this for Onyii. You’re doing this for you. And I won’t let you.”
Xifeng smirks. “You’re too late.” She crosses her arms. “It has already started.”
“No.” Whatever hard drives Xifeng and her group have already distributed, whatever memories have already been reawakened, it’s reached a critical mass. Enough people know of enough carnage that the reprisal attacks have begun.
“Yes, Ify. It’s begun.” Xifeng looks to two guards standing by one of the walls, and they reach Ify in three long strides.
Before Ify can fight back, they have her in restraints. “Stop this!”
Xifeng spreads her arms, as though to indicate the whole world and its burning. “This is the reckoning. This is how the healing happens.” Then she turns and leaves. The little girl Xifeng had held close to her side earlier has taken her place.
Ify lets out a wordless roar at Xifeng’s back. Words fail her. Sentences fall apart on her tongue. And all she has to contain the emotions roiling inside her, the feelings and thoughts storming through every fiber of her being, is that roar. Long and loud until all breath has left her lungs.
CHAPTER
36
I am smiling at the Chinese man who is calling me Onyii, then I am hearing, Get up! Get up! and it is snatching me out of the remembering, the first remembering I am ever having that is feeling like it is mine and like it is before Enyemaka are finding me under pile of corpses. But I am not having time to be thinking about this because I am hearing rumbling overhead and, in storage closet, Binye is pulling me to my feet and we are both rushing to the entrance, where we are seeing girl and synth run in all directions to assume battle formations.
I am running in direction of where I know Xifeng and Ify are, and my heart is thrilling because I am knowing that I can be protecting Xifeng in way that Ify cannot, and I am not caring that I am feeling this way toward Ify, even though when I am younger and it is just me and Xifeng and Enyemakas, I am loving Ify with all of my heart and wanting her to love me too.
I arrive at the room where Ify is being held. I am standing by the room’s only entrance and only moving so that some of the girls who remain can be bringing in Grace, who they are also binding to chair. That way, I am looking at the two of them. The swelling and bleeding is gone from Grace’s face, but the fear is remaining. And I am seeing how Ify is noticing how her friend is changed, how she shrinks when she is touched, how it is like her entire body is being exposed nerve endings, how she is looking no one—not even Ify—in the eye.
“What’d you do to her?” Ify growls at me.
But I am saying nothing in reply. Now that I am knowing what I am and where I am coming from, I am not needing her. I am already having answer to the questions that is making storm inside me, and I am getting them when I am being with Xifeng.
Being connected with my siblings, I am seeing what is going on outside. I am seeing the synths and the girls guarding Xifeng as they are heading to their destination. And I am seeing some of the others fanning out into the city in battle formation to deal with the police and the army when they are coming. I think some are expecting me to be jealousing them because they are outside with Xifeng and I am here guarding prisoners, but I am knowing that this is important work and if Xifeng is entrusting me with important work, then that is meaning that I am special.
“What is your name?” Ify is asking me, and I am realizing that in the whole time we are seeing each other, this is the first time she is asking my name.
“Uzoamaka.”
Ify is smiling. “That is a beautiful name.”
“You are thinking that if you are flattering me and saying good thing about me, I am letting you go. Is this correct?” It is not like me to be asking rhetorical question, but I am angering a little bit still, and I am thinking it is because of remembering that is mine of hanging from ceiling while boy is beating me and delighting in it.
Ify’s next words come out as a breath: “You speak like him too.”
This time Grace looks at Ify and so do I. “Speak like who?” we both ask at the same time.
“A boy I knew.” Ify bows her head. “He was a synth. His name was Agu. He had been militia before the ceasefire. Xifeng had rescued him. We met on a caravan heading toward a refugee intake station just outside of Enugu.” Her voice chokes on the city name. Then a slow smile spreads across her lips. “He was kind to me. I didn’t think a synth could be kind. But then . . . I’m sure many people said the same thing about Onyii. I’m sure there were people who didn’t think my sister could ever be kind.” She is talking to herself more than to me or Grace. “And I think you have her inside you.” Then she is raising her head to be looking at me and maybe she is seeing what Chinese doctor is seeing when he is looking at me. “That’s why we were drawn together.”
“My name is not Onyii,” I am telling her and trying to make my voice as hard as I can.
“I . . . I know. I just wonder.” She squints at me. “You don’t forget anything, do you?”
The question is surprising to me, and I am realizing I am never asking myself this question. “No,” I say back.
“So many memories. And they are all just as vivid and immediate to you as if they had happened yesterday. Even if they never happened to you.”
I am tensing, because she is speaking differently than before. She is speak
ing like doctor or scientist and not like prisoner.
“Your finger touches the floor and feels it. And it tells your brain that it is like that time your finger touched another surface, some experience your finger stores, then sends to your brain, and it gets tied up and cross-referenced to other experiences that you could have—holding a shovel or a gun or maybe the trunk of a tree—and that memory of the floor, of concrete, gets embedded there, so the two become linked. And there must be so much disorder. Without that human capacity for apophenia. For ordering these things, imposing a pattern on your memories, telling a story of self. I can’t imagine what that must feel like.”
“Is not your problem,” I am telling Ify in a low voice. I am angering because I am knowing that she is trying to confuse me and this is somehow supposed to be resulting in me letting her go and disobeying Xifeng.
But Ify is still talking like she is never hearing me, and I am wondering if this is all something she has been wanting to say for a long time and is not finding chance to say until now. “The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there are two kinds of memory in our heads. There’s the one kind that debates with itself as to whether the sky had clouds in it or whether it was clear the afternoon of the drone strike. The kind where, by force of will, you’re able to place the detail, to put the puzzle pieces together. Then there’s the other kind. The kind that sneaks up on you. Or the kind that you stumble upon when you open an unfamiliar door in a hallway and find yourself in an open field, crouched before a hibiscus blossom.” She pauses and looks as though she is remembering where she is. Her friend, Grace, is looking at her strangely, with sadness but also pride. “I thought you and Agu were only capable of one type of memory. But I know the other type lives in you as well.” She is stopping, then closing her eyes, and I am feeling gratitude that she is finally shutting up. But then she is swaying back and forth in her seat, and I am squinting at her. Then I am seeing that her vital sign is changing and her body temperature is falling fast fast and her heart rate is slowing and slowing and if it is keeping like this, it will soon be stopping.
Ify falls over in her chair, and her body begins to shake. She spasms, then all the data in my retinal scan is telling me that her heart has stopped beating.
Grace is screaming, but I am not hearing it. It is like her mouth is being covered by gauze or like cotton is being stuffed into my ears. I am hearing no thing, but people are running past me to see what is happening to Ify, and I am not being able to move, and I am wondering why I am not moving because I am often seeing dead body, but none of them are being Ify.
CHAPTER
37
Even though they are underground, Ify swears she can hear it. The crash of glass breaking, the whoosh of fires climbing up through the floors of office buildings, the shouting, the people falling from windows, the crying, homes collapsing into rubble, the fighting, the dying. She closes her eyes, bound to her chair, and can hear it all even louder, feel the heat of the fire on her face, smell the soot in the air, feel it choking her lungs. No. She’s remembering Enugu. The devastation that took that city hasn’t happened here yet. If Ify understands Xifeng’s plans properly, then the conflicts are in isolated pockets. Maybe specific neighborhoods, maybe in more than one city. But they should be small enough for the police to put down. But if Xifeng reaches the central nervous system running Nigeria’s net, the entire country will go up in flames.
Her bodysuit. Linked to her neural network.
She commands it to increase in temperature, and immediately, she begins to sweat. Her handcuffs, twisting her arms behind her chairback, grow slick over her wrists. An idea occurs to her. It could kill her, but she needs to get out of here, and she needs to disarm as many of these guards as possible. They may be hardened war veterans, trained to kill and maim and survive deprivation, but they won’t kill her. They can’t. She contains some of the last remaining memories of the Biafran War, and she’s not cyberized. If she dies, her memories die with her.
Her bodysuit’s temperature drops, and her body temperature follows suit. The plummet is precipitous, sudden, and sharp. Her heartbeat slows, slows even more, grows sluggish and soft. Her eyes roll back into her head, she pitches forward in her seat and grows limp.
The timing is everything. If they take too long to notice that her heart has stopped, it could damage her beyond repair. If she stops breathing completely for too long, the damage to her brain may be permanent. She drifts in and out of consciousness and makes a choking noise to draw their attention. Then her body lists sideways, and she and her chair topple loudly onto the ground. Puddle water splashes onto her face.
Her memory drifts back to Enugu. The taste and sound and smell of the world ending.
Everywhere, collapsed buildings. Food stalls, shopping malls, school halls. Fires rage. Bots fight to extinguish the blazes. People run, and traffic bots try to steer them. The katakata has disrupted the flight paths so that maglev cars and buses crash into each other, their burning shells littering the streets of Enugu.
Gritting her teeth, Ify pushes herself to her feet, and that’s when she notices her right arm hanging limp at her side.
A short distance down the way, flames lick the glass inside a fabrics store. The windows burst open. Ify skips into the front display and tears at a dress on a mannequin until she is able to rip off a long enough piece of cloth. Using her teeth, she ties a sling for her broken arm, then heads to the bus depot.
On the way, Ify sees the telltale marks of destruction. In open stretches of street, craters sit like perfectly formed half-circles in the concrete and metal. Towers stand with nearly entire spheres cut out of them. The bus depot is little more than shattered flexiglas and twisted metal.
Two guards rush over, and shouting fills the cave, but it reaches Ify’s ears as a muffled series of barking argument. The world begins to turn black. Shadows encroach from the corners of her vision. Hurry, hurry, hurry. She feels as though she’s swimming. It’s almost too late. She’ll lose control of her suit, and it will continue lowering her temperature until she’s an immovable block of ice, until the suit itself freezes its own controls. Fires rage in Enugu, but she feel so cold. Please hurry.
Her arms spring loose. Her cuffs are off. That’s it.
She lies on the ground, limp, tended to by the guards. One of them hauls her up by her shoulders, drapes one arm over her back, and begins to carry her forward while the other follows. Ify prays the guard won’t feel Ify’s body warming against her. Or that she’ll think it’s simply proximity to another person’s flesh and not the result of Ify manipulating the temperature of her bodysuit. Her fingers twitch, at first from reflex, then with her actual willpower. Strength is coming back.
When she’s ready, she slips from the grip of one of the guards, falls into a crouch, grabs the pistol at her waist, then shoots at one leg. When the guard screams and collapses, Ify pulls her body close, using it as a shield, then shooting the one behind her twice right in her bulletproof vest. The girl falls back, and Ify twists the girl she’s been using as a shield around and hits her once across the temple with her pistol, knocking her out. She crouches over the body, fishing through the pockets until she finds it: a small device, the size of her palm, like a bulubu ball cut in half. An EMP.
Just as she pulls it from the unconscious girl’s pocket, her eyes catch Uzo’s. Uzo, who has remained still this entire time. If Uzo hasn’t attacked them by now, maybe she’s willing to let them go. Maybe something Ify said made a difference, changed some of the synth’s thinking. Ify can’t take the chance. “I’m sorry,” Ify murmurs, cracking the device’s seal and slamming it onto the ground. The EMP detonates, and the blast hurls her and Grace backward, slams Uzo into the far wall, and sends the sound of frying circuits and breaking light bulbs echoing down each tunnel.
Lightning forks out of the ground, stitches up the walls, and strikes the ceiling overhead, then the sound of d
ozens of little puffs as machinery short-circuits and bursts apart. Cyberized shoulders, legs, eye sockets. Screams are cut off as quickly as they start. The rumbling and the popping and the screaming and the lightning’s shriek carry on through the tunnels until Ify hears a single large thunderclap followed by a rumbling that tells her something has collapsed.
Her bodysuit sparks, and pain pops to life on parts of her body—her stomach, her lower back, her thigh, her calf—as the EMP short-circuits her own machinery as well. But it’s a smaller hurt than what the others are going through. She’s only wearing her tech. It’s her clothing. But for the others—the synths and the rest of Xifeng’s footsoldiers—their tech is what makes them. It’s their bones and their organs. And suddenly those things are being turned off, all at once.
When the screams stop, their echoes bounce off the walls and fade, and the only sound is the hiss of fried tech and the dull rumbling of whatever is collapsing far away.
She goes back and undoes Grace’s restraints. Grace, who hasn’t said a word since screaming her grief at Ify’s faked death.
“I’m sorry,” Ify says, softly and hurriedly. “I didn’t have time to tell you what I had planned.” Then she pulls a pistol out of her pants and hands it, butt-first, to Grace. “Can you handle this?”
“I’m not saying no, Doctor,” Grace says, struggling to one knee. She keeps gently touching her face, and the memory of her wounding earlier hits Ify with enough force to leave her breathless. But then Grace’s grimace turns into a grin, and she takes the pistol. “Lead the way.”