Ify banks wide to the right, just as the giant mech dips behind her.
Suddenly, the sun is shining and the land is red again.
Ify looks behind her to see the aerial mech bursting from the clouds with wind funnels lining its body and connecting to the red earth: swirling, dark fingers pulling at the sand. And around those funnels spin the vehicles and bodies of all the men who had been chasing them. Their weapons detonate to make a spiral of explosions, pirouetting until they hit the mech’s wings and body and face. It lets out a wail that loses its strength out in the red expanse. Then the mech turns to head back into the darkness.
Ify has never heard a mech scream before. The sound haunts her all the way to the border, from which they can both see forest, glistening and green before them. “We did it,” Ify says to Onyii. “We made it through the Redlands.”
Onyii coughs into the crook of her arm. A dark splotch stains the inside of her helmet. As she looks back the way they’ve come, her breath sounds like it’s rattling in her chest. “We did, didn’t we.”
She turns back to Ify and smiles from behind her visor. Then she pats her on the shoulder, and they’re off.
CHAPTER
65
The bike becomes too cumbersome to maneuver through the forest, so Onyii brings it over to a small patch of shoreline by a river. Then she gathers branches and leaves to toss over the thing. They decide to keep the fuel cells with them. In case they may need another bike. The two of them change out of their bodysuits and pull their dirt-covered clothes out to wash in the river nearby.
As they scrub, Onyii glances up at Ify and shakes her head in wonder at the person she’s staring at, the woman who maneuvered them through the Redlands, who outran bandits and sandstorms, who didn’t freeze in the face of monsters that had chilled the marrow in Onyii’s bones. She worries, though. She worries that the toughness has buried whatever it is that Onyii saw in Ify when she was figuring out equations on her tablet or when she was working her way through her stellar configurations. Whatever it is that ran through Ify when Onyii found her sneaking in video recordings of workers outside the Colony Stations, joking at the camera about the work they’d done to make this beautiful thing spin with such majestic slowness in space.
Ify looks up and then hides her face. “What?” she asks shyly.
“Nothing,” Onyii says.
They bathe, then change back into their clothes.
Onyii has the duffel bag slung over one shoulder, rifle slung over the other, and the shotgun in her hands. She moves them forward, while Ify takes stock of the rear in wide sweeps with her pistol. Every so often, the world buzzes, then sparks, and static fills Onyii’s vision. Her busted eye. She looks around with her good eye. They’re near shoreline. If they’re far enough along this coastline, then they should be near Lagos.
The beginnings of a plan swirl in her head. Make it to Lagos and hope it has reverted to its earlier form: a lawless, free-for-all kind of city filled with bounty hunters and bandits and smugglers. There, it should be easy enough to get someone to take them wherever they need to go.
They make their way as quietly as possible through the brush until Onyii stops. The setting sun has splashed purple and gold over the horizon and turned the underbellies of the clouds into red tongue-shaped things. And one of these rays, aimed into the forest, alights on the heaving form of an Agba bear. So near to them, it had looked like a boulder. But Onyii watches its hulking form, curled in on itself like a hedgehog, expand and contract with each sleepy breath it takes.
Throughout the forest, the sun’s rays illuminate other crea-tures. Goats whose coats turn iridescent and shimmer, their horns spiraling out for the whole length of their backs. Baby wulfu that tackle each other and roll around in the grass, each of them as big as Onyii. Lizards that slither up and down the trees around them. Everything is gilded. Onyii can’t help but lower her shotgun and stare at the sight. Even though static interrupts the vision from time to time, she can’t stop staring. They’ve all been touched by the Redlands.
Ify appears at her side and holds her free hand. They look at each other, then back at the forest. The animals slowly peel away. Onyii takes that as their cue to keep moving. Darkness is falling. While that might make it easier for them to hide from Biafran soldiers, it might make them easier targets for bandits. Onyii knows how some have been taught to move through darkness. She’s been taught that herself.
But when they take extra care to move as silently as possible, it’s not simply out of caution or a wish to keep from being seen. Onyii is thinking of that scene in the forest and knows that Ify is too. This is how they pay their respects to this place.
The sounds of Lagos reach them soon enough. A buzzing sound shot through with shouting and occasional gunfire and the general katakata of a place bursting at the seams with too many people. All of that makes its way through the air over the lagoon as though to say to them, Welcome to Lagos. Enter at your own peril.
Twice on their way through the crush of bodies and kabu-kabu to the Third Mainland Bridge, Onyii almost loses Ify and is seconds away from shooting into the air to disperse the crowd. People walk around with their weapons in plain sight, although none of them are as heavily armed as Onyii. Ify has her pistol tucked into her belt at the small of her back, her shirt hanging over it.
Keke Marwa tricycles and kabu-kabu clog the bridge. Residents and commuters and smugglers wind their way through the traffic on foot like sand moving through a jar filled with rocks. Past the docks is a string of islands, and on those islands, mansions, office buildings.
Past the main thoroughfare that the bridge bisects, young men stand at the docks with obsolete tech hanging like jewelry around their necks. Chinelo would have loved it here. One of them wears a belt on his head, curled hair, dyed blond, poking out in knots. He grins, revealing teeth that glimmer. His hands are filled with bands of money in at least four different currencies.
“Credit?” he sings to the bustle of people moving around him. “Credit? You got credit, come see me, I chop your dollar. Abeg, make big money bigger. You do not know, eh. Whatever you want, ask me, it’s yours. I have containers from Korea or Dubai.”
Ify smirks at the boy’s boasts. Tattoos cover his shirtless torso.
Onyii marches forward. “We need a boat.”
The boy takes in the two of them and how their clothes haven’t completely dried yet. He also doesn’t fail to notice the shotgun in Onyii’s hands. “Chai! Bank robbers, nah! Eh, if you are going to raid the presidential palace, ah, you will need more than just the two of you, especially with this one”—he flicks his wrist at Ify—“too skinny.”
Onyii steps up to him, blocking his view of Ify. “A boat.”
He frowns, and Onyii wonders for a second if he’s Augmented and scanning her face to see if there’s a bounty out on her. If it comes to it, Onyii can aim and fire her shotgun faster than most people on this platform. But then there’s Ify to worry about.
“You have coin? Dollah? If you want to sail the seven currenSEAS, I will need to see some currenCY.”
“You don’t even know where we wanna go yet.” This from Ify, who has stepped closer so they can all speak without being heard by prying ears. “Tell us your rates first.”
The boy looks at her with shock, like he can’t believe what she’s just done. Then he turns back to Onyii. “Is desperation tax. Does not matter where you are going. You have a shotgun, she has a pistol practically hanging out of her buttocks. And I know for a fact that there are more guns making clack-clack in that bag of yours. You no say, ‘I want boat to Abidjan’ or ‘I want boat to São Tomé.’ You just say, ‘I want boat,’ which means you do not care where you go to, only where you are coming from. Which means that you are desperate. And if you are desperate, then you are trouble. And for trouble, you must pay extra.”
Onyii grits her teeth.
&nbs
p; Behind the boy, the dock platform branches off, and by each separate platform running along the shoreline floats a submersible guarded by strongmen.
With ease, Onyii could toss this twig of a man over into the churning waters below. But, since the desert, they’ve managed to avoid bloodshed. And Onyii finds she actually prefers it this way.
Ify brings her face closer. Sweat beads her forehead, slides down her face.
Behind the boy, more and more submersibles descend into the water. After the next two, there won’t be any more until the next fleet arrives. Who knows when that will be?
“Okay,” Onyii hisses, “how much to Accra?”
“Ghana?” He flings his head back in astonishment. “Chai! Such a long trip. Or, at least, it used to be a long trip. I can get you there in no time round. You know how they used to say, ‘No time flat’? I say, ‘No time round.’ Why? Because I’m different.”
He’s stalling.
Ify puts a hand to Onyii’s shoulder. She feels it too.
Onyii tries to get her braids to fall over her face while her gaze runs over every set of eyes, trying to gauge their intentions.
Ify squeezes.
Onyii spins around just as four Augments storm the bridge. Bounty hunters! One of them sticks his massive metal arm out. His hand comes apart at the wrist to reveal a grenade launcher.
The boy smuggler wildly waves his hands, then dives out of the way when the projectile arcs straight for them. Onyii tears a chunk of concrete out of the bridge and hurls it at the grenade. The explosion hurls everyone down and throws taxicabs into the lagoon. Ify lies on her side, her pistol just out of reach, her eyes blinking lazily. There’s one submersible left.
Through the screaming, bullets strike the metal taxis and the concrete. Gunmen shoot wildly through the smoke.
Ify staggers to her feet.
Onyii grabs her, and they hobble forward through the smoke and gunfire. The last submersible is sinking. They dash straight for the end of the platform. The guard there turns and raises his rifle. But just as he’s about to shoot, three pistol shots ram into his chest. He topples over the edge of the railing. Ify’s gun hand drops. The pistol dangles from her fingers.
“We gotta jump,” Onyii pleads. “Stay with me.”
Ify nods her head.
The dark water bubbles as it swallows more and more of the submersible. More gunfire behind them.
Onyii hauls Ify forward, breaking into a sprint. Just as she leaps, a bullet clips her calf, and she flails. She can’t let go of Ify. No matter how sharp the pain in her leg, no matter how much she knows crashing into the top of the submersible’s hull will hurt, she can’t let go.
She lands on her stomach. Several ribs snap. But she holds on to Ify with every last bit of strength she can find. Swallowed by pain, she pulls Ify up to her chest and gets to one knee. With her human hand, she holds Ify still. With her other hand, she bangs on the door. “Let us in!” she screams. She bangs again. And again and again and again, pounding a dent into the hull while the water rises and bullets whizz past them. “Let us in!”
They’re sinking.
Onyii fits her fingers under a groove in the round entrance seal and pulls. A gear pops loose in her arm, but she keeps pulling and pulling. Wires snap. Their loose ends spark. Tears well in her eyes. Ify lies limp in her arm. She has to open it. Water pools around her knee, then rises above her ankle. She tries to hold Ify up as the water rises. Pain doubles her over.
“Let us in! Please!”
The water is up to her waist and getting higher. Now her chest. She struggles to keep Ify’s head above the waves that crash into her body. Ify slips out of her grasp and sinks. Her head vanishes below. Onyii’s losing strength. She pulls and pulls, but the seal won’t give. Then she’s completely submerged. Underwater, her head turns. That’s when she spots Ify’s body, drifting lower and lower into the blackness.
Onyii dives and kicks toward her. Shadows form at the edges of her world and close in. She kicks and kicks.
No. Not after everything they’ve survived. Not when they’re so close to freedom. Onyii can’t stop. Not yet.
But she feels fire in her lungs and fire in her legs and fire in her arms and fire in her head, and a light glows softly somewhere nearby, and Onyii has heard of this light, the thing you see just before you die, and Onyii wants to swim away, wants to find Ify and get away from the light, but it’s getting closer and closer and closer. Until it takes her completely.
Current sweeps her, grips her leg, and pulls her away while Ify drifts farther and farther out of reach until she’s gone, sucked suddenly into a space too dark for Onyii to see.
* * *
When she comes to, she vomits water. It splashes onto a metal floor. She’s alive. Wait. She’s alive. But as soon as she tries to push herself up, she falls, and her head hits the metal grating.
“Ify,” she mouths, no strength to even say her name out loud. “Ify . . .”
Footsteps pound on the metal. Hurrying. She hears voices. Speaking pidgin.
She remembers Lagos.
The boy.
The submersible.
Nothing but water around them. But where is she?
She hears an unfamiliar voice. A woman. Her pidgin is halting. Worse than a child’s. But her voice slackens the muscles in Onyii’s body.
Onyii tries again, and this time, she’s able to sit up. Thankfully, there’s a nearby wall for her to rest her back against.
The woman kneels before Onyii, wraps her in a blanket, and opens a small bag that has needles and vials of chemicals in it. Beside her, what looks like a fuel cell. She has her head bowed while she works, so that in the tornado of colors, it looks like her face is all black. But then the woman does something that sends steroidal energy into Onyii and wakes her up. She can see.
But right behind it is the pain. Pain so great, she feels like it will crush her. A moment later, it subsides. Her chest heaves from the effort of not crying out.
“Who . . .”
“Shhh,” the woman says, then packs up her tools. She looks off to the side.
Onyii follows her gaze. Her heart skips. Her first instinct is to leap up, but her body refuses to obey her. So she must sit still, paralyzed, as Ify rushes to her and wraps her arms around Onyii’s neck, sobbing into Onyii’s already sodden shirt.
Onyii tries to move her mouth. Not to ask any of the questions darting back and forth in her head, but to quiet Ify, to calm her.
Ify breaks away, tears streaking her face, and sobs a laugh. “Onyii,” she says, “this is Xifeng. She’s an aid worker. She escorted the caravans. And she works with . . . with children who’ve lived through the war. And, Xifeng, this is Onyii. My sister. Who I told you I was searching for.” Hope springs in Ify’s eyes. “Xifeng is going to take us to space.”
CHAPTER
66
Xifeng bandages Onyii’s wounded leg while she speaks. “There are a few shuttles operating out of Gabon. Libreville, mostly. But Franceville too. They can take people up into outer space, where they’ll be able to begin the asylum process in the Colonies. Libreville’s right along the coastline down into Central Africa.”
Ify has finally calmed herself enough to notice the other men, some of them bare-chested, others wearing vests with ammu-nition clips in them, stalking through the submersible. Some of them mutter to themselves while others joke loudly. Some of them reek of alcohol. But they all walk around with that certainty of step that shows they’ve spent much of their life on submersibles like this. They look like they know what they’re doing. Still, after their encounter with the boy smuggler in Lagos, Ify trusts no one. No one except Xifeng. And Onyii.
“Will I need identification?” Onyii asks. Then, at the question in Xifeng’s eyes, she says, “Ify and I are the two most wanted people in Nigeria. And we will be a problem for any co
untry that has us. They can’t know where we are. And they cannot see our faces.”
Ify jumps in. “There were bounty hunters in Lagos. They found out who we were. We’ve been on the run since . . .” Her heart drops.
“Your tracker,” Onyii says. And when Ify looks up, she can feel the color leak from her face. “The Nigerians put a tracker in you before they let you go.” Onyii coughs violently, then lets out a sigh and leans her head back. “That’s how I was able to find you in the camp. The Biafrans can track the signal too. That’s how they found us at Adaeze’s.”
Ify’s eyes widen in recognition. “We have to . . . we have to remove it.”
Xifeng puts her arms out, as though to stop the two. “But wait. The Biafrans and the Nigerians won’t cross international borders to catch you! That might start a war with other countries. Their mobile suits wouldn’t dare fly into foreign airspace.”
Onyii looks grimly to Xifeng. “That doesn’t mean they won’t tell other governments who we are. And those governments will chase us, capture us, then extradite us. They will send us back.”
Ify looks at her lap. “Nowhere on the continent is safe for us.” Determination hardens her features. “But first, we have to get rid of the tracker.” She starts to rip apart her shirt to expose her chest. “We have to take it out.” She grits her teeth. “Or else they’ll know exactly where we are.”
Xifeng sputters. “But I don’t have the right tools.”
Onyii pushes herself forward. “Just show me where it is. I’ll take it out.”
Xifeng’s eyes shoot open in shock. She looks from Onyii to Ify and back again. Onyii can tell she is seeing the silent communication happening between them, the worlds of information, the dialogue exchanged in their gazes, them coming to a grim agreement. She sighs. “Okay. But let’s prepare a room.”
War Girls Page 35