War Girls

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Footsteps, then Chinelo’s voice. “The Obelisk is out. They bombed it. Took out the Terminal too. We have no more power.”

  “Amaka?” Onyii asks. “Chigozie?”

  Kesandu and Obioma look at the ground. Chinelo softly shakes her head at Onyii, then gestures at the ruins of the camp.

  In the distance, faint but growing louder, a rumbling.

  Something’s coming.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Ify can’t stop staring at the boy sitting across from her.

  He has his rifle upright between his knees, and as the aircraft hums around them, he leans on it like he’s tired, and suddenly, Ify recognizes him as human. A boy, like he said. He doesn’t seem like an irradiated monster come out of the bush like most Northerners are supposed to be. Like what Ify learned about in the holos from history class. Like what she’d seen in the vampire movies she and the other girls pirated on their tablets. It’s startling to see one up close. To see it having skin just like hers and eyes and hair and two hands and two feet.

  Her head throbs, and she squeezes it between her hands, as though she just needs to push hard enough to get the pain to leak out. She hadn’t noticed it during the battle, but now that there are no more explosions and peals of thunder around her, the thudding of her brain against her skull is all she can hear. It’s gotten worse since they dragged her onto the aircraft.

  The boy slings his rifle over his back and grabs onto a strap hanging from the craft’s ceiling. Almost like a monkey, he swings from one to the next until he arrives at Ify’s bench.

  Too exhausted to push him away or even to growl at him, Ify just lets her head hang between her knees. If she vomits, let it not be on herself.

  “What is the problem, Kadan?” His voice is smooth, even as it seems to dip, like it’s gliding just above the earth.

  “Don’t call me that,” Ify hisses. “I don’t even know what it means.”

  A pause from the boy. “Then tell me your name. So I can call you something else.”

  Ify wants to lie, but the hurt keeps her from thinking, so she just blurts out, “Ifeoma.”

  “That is a beautiful name, even if it is the name they gave you. In our language, kadan means little one, but you do not speak it yet, so I will call you Ifeoma until we can come up with a better name for you.”

  “A better name?”

  “A name fit for a Nigerian.”

  Ify swipes weakly at him.

  He doesn’t even bother to swat away her hand. “Now, let us see what is the problem.” He grabs Ify by her face. A gentle grip, but Ify knows this type of hold. She knows that with but a thought, the boy could snap her neck. She knows that he could gouge out her eyes or worse before she’d even be able to scream or blink. So she remains still.

  As he looks at her, Ify realizes that his left eye is not flesh and blood. It’s mechanized. It twitches one way, then another, scanning her head. It reminds Ify of the beasts that attacked the camp alongside the Nigerian soldiers. The beast that burst into her hiding space. The beast she was able to hack and control. And that’s when the thought hits her. All she needs to do is bide her time. They have not killed her yet, which means she is useful to them alive. Which means that they will continue to keep her alive, long enough for Ify to come up with a plan of escape. And maybe she can make sure this one is no longer around to chase her.

  The eye ends its scan. Then he shifts his grip, holding Ify by the back of her neck, tightening, and tilting her head up. He puts his free hand by Ify’s ear, and she hears—too loud—the whirr of machinery under the boy’s skin. Just like with Onyii’s arm.

  “This will take only a moment.”

  Before he finishes the sentence, his elongated fingers dive inside her ear, sending shock waves through her entire body. She seizes, but he holds her neck so tightly that she can’t even move her head. Her teeth chatter. Her fingers spasm. Inside her ear, she can feel nanobots swirling and hear metal spinning. And when her eyes close shut, she can imagine the boy’s tech digging into her brain and lobotomizing her, making her useless. She wants to fight back, tries to, but the boy has paralyzed her. Then, after what feels like forever, it ends.

  She slumps in his grip.

  He brings his re-formed hand back before his eyes, palm up, and squints at a tiny metal sphere resting in a groove on his glove. With a flick of his wrist, he bounces it so that sits between his thumb and index finger. Then he brings it to his Augmented eye.

  Ify gasps. Her Accent.

  She tries to reach for it. But the boy squeezes her neck, and she goes limp again.

  She struggles against him but can only turn her eyes to look at him. She’s completely powerless as he turns her Accent over in his fingers, scrutinizing its every millimeter.

  “So this is it,” he breathes. “This is the device that has been swimming on our connection.” He doesn’t bother to mask the awe in his voice. “An external ghost box. With a VPN enabled to mask its IP address, and SEIM capabilities to keep from being hacked itself. Nearly impregnable. Child, how did you do this?”

  He loosens his grip, but Ify refuses to answer.

  “We have this in Nigeria, but it takes a machine as tall as me and with enough server space to be noticeable by anyone with a second set of eyes. But here, you’ve turned it into a device that can be activated even by a red-blood.” He looks to her, then, without warning, lets her go. “That’s what you are, isn’t it? A red-blood.”

  Ify rubs the back of her neck. “Is that another Northern slur? Something you call Biafrans before you violate and kill them?”

  A look of disappointment whisks across his face before it’s gone. “It means only that you are zero percent machine. You are not an Augment. You are as Allah designed you.” He looks at her Accent. “Which makes this all the more remarkable. There’s no node or outlet on you. I discovered this when I scanned you. Nowhere on your body is there a place for a cord. But with this”—he holds up the Accent—“you have turned yourself into an invisible router.”

  “Not so invisible,” says a Nigerian soldier farther down on the bench. “That was the signal we followed to find this camp.” This one, Ify recognizes as the one who murdered Onyii. “You are sloppy, Kadan.” When the woman looks at Ify, rage erupts in Ify’s bones, and Ify knows that there is no bond between them and can never be. This woman would murder her as easily as the boy murdered Ify’s schoolmate. “Or maybe you wanted to be found.”

  “You’re lying!” Ify shoots back. Then she looks into the boy’s face. “Tell her she’s lying. You said yourself. This was invisible. I could not be detected. By anyone.”

  That familiar look of disappointment comes across his face, but this time doesn’t leave. “I’m sorry, Kada—Ifeoma. But there is no other way we could have found your camp. It was Masked. Daurama is correct. You were not the invisible one. You were the one calling for our help.”

  “I was not calling for your help! You are the enemy. You attacked us. You murdered my sisters.”

  The boy’s face scrunches in anger. “They are not your sisters. They are your kidnappers. For years, they have forced you to live in the dirt, to scavenge for supplies in the forest. To learn from outdated lesson downloads. They are backward, and they have forced you into their violent ways. And it is clear that they have brainwashed you.”

  “Don’t talk about Onyii like that! You are the murderers. You killed my friend right in front of me.”

  “Was she your friend?” The boy’s voice is soft, but the question rings between Ify’s ears. “Is that what she was?”

  Ify turns away. Tears burn her eyes, but she can’t tell who they are for. Are they for the girl? Are they for Onyii? Are they for something bigger? For the home she has just lost? The home where so few people had accepted her? The home where her truest friend was an android? She feels her heart begin to harden but s
tops it. No. They were her family. This boy is trying to trick her.

  “In Abuja, you will thrive, Ifeoma.” He holds up her Accent. “Before, this would have been considered magic. I’m sure the Biafrans would not have approved. They would have called this witchcraft. I’m sure you had to hide it from them.”

  How does he know? Is he reading my memories? But how? I’m not connected.

  “But in Abuja, this would have gotten you the highest marks on your final exams.”

  “What?”

  “I cannot even begin to imagine the algorithms you had to figure out in order to get multiple security-management platforms layered on top of each other in this tiny thing. And to have it not generate its own network but map itself to others to gain immediate access? Astounding. You will have us on the moon before the year is out.” He’s smiling. With his teeth. And to Ify, they shine bright enough to light up the darkened aircraft interior.

  Daurama scoffs behind him, but the boy’s smile doesn’t fade.

  He touches her shoulder. “Ifeoma, you are special. You are brilliant. Where you are going, you will be praised for it. And challenged. Nigerians are competitive. And our children learn from an early age how important is our technological advancement.” He raises the shield over one window, and light spills into the aircraft in a beam. “Look.”

  Ify peers out the window. They have left the forest and now, below them, is blighted wasteland. Animals skinny with radiation poisoning or thick with blight from polluted water roam hardened ground so red and brown it looks like a giant scab. A few humans walk the wasteland in baggy, patched-together radiation suits, breathing through old masks. But the only homes Ify can see are huts and occasional shacks sheltered beneath shimmering blue domes. Air-cleansing half-spheres, likely powered by the minerals beneath the soil. But this place looks ravaged. It looks like nearly every living thing has been snatched from it, so there are only the dead and the dying.

  “This is southern Nigeria. Our Middle Belt is where prosperity begins, but the seasons have grown more and more extreme with each year. And the tax on our land is already too great.” He leans into Ify. “We are working on technology to . . . reverse the tide, as they say.” He smirks at his joke. “The climate is changing, and we must change with it.” He pauses for a moment. “Is this a project that interests you?”

  Ify’s gaze roves over the landscape, trying to take it all in. It’s almost too much to process.

  “Ah, yes. You have likely never been beyond your camp. Well. There is so much more of Nigeria for me to show you.”

  And that’s when the hunger hits her. The same hunger that had her downloading pirated lesson plans on orbital physics. The same hunger that had her studying outside of class, in her bed with her tablet splayed before her and her stylus running back and forth over her screen as she scribbled equation after equation. That hunger to know.

  How are the Northerners like this?

  The boy puts his hand out. Ify’s Accent sits on his palm.

  Ify takes it. Suddenly, it seems like something different, bigger. It’s no longer some tiny sin she has to hide from everyone. It’s a technological achievement. It’s not a mistake. It’s a marvel. It’s something to be proud of.

  “What do I call you?”

  The boy smiles. “Daren. It means ‘born at night.’” He takes off a glove and shows Ify his light skin. Light like hers. “The sun was not shining when I was born, so I came out of my mother like this.” He laughs, and Ify is so shocked that she can’t help but join him.

  Ify catches herself. Guilt burns in her cheeks. How can she let this happen? She has betrayed Onyii. Even sitting next to this soldier and not trying to kill him, she has committed a sinful act. But she can’t bring herself to hate him. She can’t bring herself to scramble along the aircraft floor for a piece of shrapnel to jab into his neck. She can’t see herself strangling him, snapping his voicebox with her thumbs like Onyii taught her to.

  “You are not alone,” Daren says, as he puts his hand on Ify’s fist. Is he being kind, or is he restraining me? She can’t decide. “So many others whom we have rescued have the same battle rage inside them. So many others whom we have rescued, they believe their kidnappers loved them, cared for them. But that was not their tribe. That was not their family. I bet they told you all sorts of things about us. That we live in mud huts.” He leans toward Daurama. “Do we live in mud huts?”

  Daurama gives a thumbs-up sign and a rare smile. “My mud hut has wireless internet and wallpaper televisions. What does your mud hut have?”

  Daren laughs. “In Nigeria, we paper the walls of our mud huts with advanced engineering degrees.”

  Ify doesn’t have time to respond. An explosion thunders through the aircraft. The floor beneath her rocks and shudders, and she falls forward, barely able to brace herself in time. Daren grips the wall, then the straps hanging overhead. Daurama is up and moving about the hull. They shout to each other in a language Ify can’t understand. With her Accent disabled, she can’t translate the words. So she has to hold on to the ledge of the bench while smoke fills the cabin. Everyone presses a button on their suit, and their masks appear. She’s the only one without a mask, and she coughs so hard it feels like her lungs are coming through her throat. Through the smoke, Ify sees Daurama glare at her.

  Daren notices and says something to Daurama, and Daurama vanishes into another part of the aircraft. All the machinery beeps its distress. Wind rushes by them outside. They’re spinning. Daurama is yelling now. The smoke stings Ify’s eyes, and she squeezes them shut. Someone yanks her from the bench into the air. It’s Daurama, her fingers growing tighter and tighter around Ify’s neck.

  CHAPTER

  11

  It’s not long before the maglev Range Rovers, sparkling in the morning light, bulldoze their way out of the forest and into the camp. The headlights shine into the faces of the surviving girls. Onyii has one arm wrapped around her stomach. She aches all over and can barely stand. The Chukwu she took is wearing off. If not for Chinelo holding her upright, she’d be on the ground right now.

  The Rovers, for having gone through the forest, look pristine, covered in dewdrops that bead their black frames. Some of the girls have their hands up in front of their eyes to shield against the glare. Some of them stand with their fists at their sides or their fingers close to the trigger of their machine guns. The vehicles form a semicircle and sit for several near-silent seconds before shutting down and lowering to the ground. The camp has stopped burning. It lies dead, smoldering behind the girls, and Onyii wonders how much of it the people in the jeeps can see.

  As the lights continue to beam the girls blind, a door opens and out steps a man in an olive-green military uniform with red stripes on sleeves rolled all the way up to his biceps. He steps in front of one set of headlights so that he’s silhouetted, and Onyii can tell this is purely for dramatic effect. To make him seem greater than he is. But Onyii knows the uniform, knows the type of man who wears it, knows that this thing in front of her is just that. A man.

  She straightens and stares straight ahead into the lights. Mercifully, they turn off.

  By now, a number of soldiers have come out of their jeeps. Some of them have their assault rifles ready. Some of them sway anxiously from foot to foot. They are new. They’ve seen less combat than Onyii has. They’ve probably spent most of their careers in base camps, fetching this man’s water and making him coffee. Onyii wonders if they’ve ever even fired a gun before. Onyii knows their type.

  The one in the middle, with the rolled-up sleeves and the beret tilted to the side, the one with the single scars running like tear streaks down his cheeks, has his thumbs tucked into belt loops. His boots make little splashes in the ground now covered in blood and ash. And his gaze roves over them, scrutinizing. Trying to pick them apart.

  With the sight of this man comes a flood of memories. Onyii with a
high-powered rifle of her own, making her way through the bush on a raid. Onyii taking cover behind crates in enemy facilities before charging in and having the enemy soldiers fall before her onslaught. The flash of light that took her arm from her. Surgery. More combat. And all of it done in a deadened, unfeeling haze. That was another lifetime. That was someone else. Someone she can’t afford to become again.

  “So,” says the man. “This is the camp, then.” His accent is thick. It makes his consonants more vivid. Turns his short i’s into long e’s. He takes a few steps forward. “And you are the War Girls, eh?” He sneers.

  Some of the other soldiers behind him snicker.

  The commander walks over to Kesandu. Kesandu’s back straightens. She readies her fists, raises her chin. “And you,” the commander says. “What poor husband did you run away from?”

  Kesandu’s hands shake at her sides, and her bottom lip trembles. The man must remind her of someone. Someone who hurt her deeply.

  The commander smirks, then turns away from Kesandu, and Onyii worries that Kesandu will hit him in the back of the head, one good punch at the base of his neck, paralyzing him, then get them all killed.

  “They are disgusting,” one of the soldiers says loudly enough for Onyii and the others to hear. Some of the younger ones flinch as though they were hit in the chest. Onyii can’t keep herself from moving for the soldier, but instantly, the guns go up, the entire row of them aimed at the girls’ hearts.

  The commander chuckles. “They are dirtier than you, yes,” he says. “But that is only because they have killed more enemy soldiers than you.” He walks to the soldier, who begins to quake when the commander gets near enough. “Maybe I should throw you in the mud, so you can roll around a little, get yourself dirty like them.” He turns to face the girls. “Now. Who is your leader?”