Rebel Sisters

by Tochi Onyebuchi

Projected on the screen behind her from her tablet is page after page of the recent report from the Alabast Psychiatric Association done in collaboration with a number of political scientists hired by the government. It is a mess of hypothesis and conjecture, so much guesswork with no concrete proof, and no throughline or central argument. The medical epidemic that has overtaken the refugee children isn’t yet widespread knowledge. So far, it has only made noise in the government and medical communities. Ify shudders to think of what form popular feeling might take. Before she can arrest the visions, she sees white Alabastrines shouting that this is what those migrants deserve, that they should have never come here, and so on and so on.

  “Focus,” she hisses to herself.

  One theory explaining the epidemic is that what is happening is specific to the cultures of the afflicted children, that it is the body hacking the mind or the mind hacking the body or both. Some physiological mystery. But a quick scan of medical documentation from each of those countries—whether the Babylonian Republic or Australia—shows no widespread occurrence of these symptoms. There is no indication in these lands of origin that this is a problem. Not a Babylonian problem, not an Australian problem, not a specifically Pacific problem, not an indigenous American problem.

  Another theory, related to the first, is that the affected children were raised in cultures that prioritized community over the individual. These children, this theory says, are sacrificing themselves for their families. By now, it has been concluded that the majority of cases are from families that have received deportation notices. The children are literally throwing their bodies on the gears of an immigration machine bent on getting rid of them.

  “The solution is simple-ah,” Céline says from the other end of their connection. Ify has activated the camera function in her Whistle, and Céline’s face hovers in holographic projection next to hers so it looks as though they are both watching the anti-government demonstration below. At first, it looks as though there are only hundreds in the streets of Alabast’s main city, maglev cars ascending into higher levels of traffic to fly over them. But if Ify cranes her neck, she can see that the protesters may perhaps number in the thousands. Even in the distance, banners are being waved by people sitting on the shoulders of taller marchers. It is perhaps the sound-canceling coating of her walls that muffles the chanting and the singing, disguising their true volume. “Cancel the deportation orders.”

  Ify knows that her friend is trying to adopt a joking tone, but an electric current of concern runs through her words. And fatigue? “It’s not that simple,” Ify catches herself saying, and she knows it’s just another meaningless jumble of words, a sentence that people say to keep progress from happening or to keep from having to explain why a good thing can’t be done. Is this a medical issue or a political issue? She is a doctor. She is not trained in the workings of government. “I am not a politician-oh.”

  “Ify, arrête. You are already a high-ranking medical professional. Ne fais pas comme une bébé. You have a responsibility to these people.” Céline calms down. The more excited or agitated she gets, the more her native French starts to saturate her sentences. “They need security. It is not difficult to see. I am sure many of the children were already being treated for other things when this began to happen. But the news is saying that many of the new cases are from children who had integrated well into Alabast. They were pretty much Alabastrine.” When she says it, she makes it sound more refined than what it is. Alabastrine means sameness. It means being swallowed up by the bland majority culture. It means whiteness. But maybe that is security. “Freedom from danger,” Céline says, completing Ify’s thought.

  “So what are you saying I do? Secure residency permits for every patient in my ward?”

  “Précisement! In one month, they will all be cured.” Céline grins.

  Ify frowns at the procession. In her mind is a series of obstacles she would face were she to try something like that. Still, there seem to be too many missing pieces. Why now, when refugees were being deported since before she even arrived in Alabast? Why certain refugees and not others? Were refugees who had come alone to receive the same treatment as refugees with healthy families? Why weren’t adults being treated for this? What about Peter?

  Her Whistle chirps angrily. It’s Amy. The last person Ify wants to talk to. She cancels the call, but the Whistle chirps again. And chirps and chirps. “I’m sorry, Céline, I have to take this. It’s Amy. She won’t leave me alone.”

  “That’s fine. Family first.”

  “She’s not my fa—” But Céline has hung up, her projection gone with the suddenness of a wink or a thunderclap.

  Before Ify can get out a tired “Hello Amy,” the frantic voice on the other line bursts into her head. “It’s—it’s Peter,” Amy stutters. “He . . . he tried to hurt himself and we found him in his bedroom and the knife was on the floor and there was just blood all over the sheets and oh my God, what is going to happen? I’m so scared, why would he do this, Ify, please please please come home.”

  The rest of Amy’s words turn into a dull hum, a buzz, as though Ify’s ears have been stuffed with gauze. She knows it is foolish to think this, knows that she doesn’t possess this degree of power, knows that she wouldn’t have been as malicious in handling it even if she did, but she cannot help but whisper to herself, “What have I done?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Every day I am returning to Lagos to look for Xifeng.

  I am moving like thing that can only live in shadows. I am hiding in alleys between buildings, and is tough sometime because buildings in Lagos too close together. And there is being no order to the streets, so it is being easy to be lost. But in my head, I am mapping my way so I am knowing what streets I have search before. But is difficult because I am thinking that tomorrow Xifeng is standing on street I am walking on today, so I am looking and looking.

  I am thinking the best time to see her is being in daytime because one time I am looking for her at night and man is looking at me like something to eat, like suya wrapped in old piece of paper. And he is licking his lip and coming to me, and I am breaking his arm but I am not killing him because Xifeng is not wanting that and I am not child of war anymore. I am only doing bad thing to protect people. Sometime I am doing bad thing to protect me, but I am never killing to protect me because I am not as important as Xifeng. I am knowing that she is leader of army of rememberings and I am soldier, and something in my brain is telling me that soldier must do everything to finish mission even if everything is meaning I am dying.

  Sometime when I am thinking of Xifeng, I am also thinking of man who we are calling Commandant and who is being like father to us and who, when he is first giving me helmet and gun and making me to be carrying ammo crate, is knocking on it and saying, “I saved your life. I saved your life. I saved your life.” And, when we are preparing to storm bridge, me and other child of war, he is making us to be singing and dancing before, and as we are singing and dancing, he is pressing his ear to our chest to be hearing our heartbeat, and if he is liking what he is hearing he is choosing you to fight that day. And I am thinking of how he is always making me to be looking into his eyes and how there is silent pledge happening between us. I am making promise that I will be protecting him and killing enemy. So when I am looking in Xifeng eyes, I am making promise that I will be protecting her and killing enemy.

  I am also looking for Xifeng in daytime because police come at night and they cause bad thing to happen. They are stopping people for no reason and sometime they are shooting and sometime there are drone in sky watching all thing and is too many thing looking for me. So I am spending night under bridge where no police come.

  Under bridge is all shadow and people moving like me, from shadow to shadow. If there is drone, it is drone that is spraying the water with thing that is killing mosquito, then leaving. It is not drone that is shooting us.

&nb
sp; Many people here are sleeping in tent, and there is being drug in the air that they are putting in their face, and they are walking like thing that is dead and alive at the same time. I am not liking this because dead thing is supposed to be dead and alive thing is supposed to be being alive. But even though people are sometime being mean to each other, they are also being kind to each other. They are sharing blanket sometime and they are sharing tent sometime and sometime they are coming back wet because they are going to beach and splashing in water and laughing.

  I am seeing people leaning against pillar under bridge and closing eye to sleep, and I am doing the same and it is feeling familiar to me. In my brain I am seeing Enyemaka, and she is showing me how she is being given life and how it is because someone is spitting nanobots into her ear, and when I am seeing people who are looking dead, I am wanting to spit in their ear, but then I am remembering Xifeng telling me that this is not what I am supposed to be doing with people, and she is laughing when she is telling me this.

  I am remembering time when I am sleeping standing up, and when I am remembering that I am remembering crawling under razorwire and I am remembering holding gun as big as me and I am remembering climbing wall and running and saying YES, SAH very loudly to Big Man and this is me being soldier, I know.

  When I am pretending to be sleeping even though I am still standing, my mind is walking other places like it is finding rememberings on its own. And I am inside a mech that is rattling jagga-jagga all around me, because I am flying fast fast through the sky and this mech is old and is being rusty because of radiation in the air around me, and I am pulling trigger and bullet is coming from my mech’s gun like BUDUBUDUBUDUBUDU and stitching enemy mech I am chasing like TKTKTKTKTKTK. And is all katakata, but it is like I am not really seeing or hearing or smelling. My body is moving without me. It is pressing button on console and it is pulling gearshift, and it is like my mind is vanishing. It is feeling like lying in warm sand and letting water wash me, and it is feeling like being in womb and I am remembering Xifeng hugging me. That is what it is being like when I am remembering flying. It is feeling like I am being hugged by someone who is loving me.

  But I am remembering other thing too. I am remembering riding in jeep hovering above the ground like a bird flying low, and big leaf—too big—is poking through the windows SWISH SWISH against my face, and it is annoying the man driving and the man next to him but I am child and I am liking the feel of big leaf SWISH SWISH on my face. And I am remembering that I can make hologram out of my rememberings, and when other people under the bridge are sleeping, I am making hologram and I am watching and it is glowing blue and sometime red and sometime it is full of color, and I am knowing that this is my life. Leaf making SWISH SWISH against my face. Smelling beans and okra that commander is eating at table in command tent. Learning that I am not needing to eat or to sleep because I am not like normal child.

  Then, I am seeing white ceiling, and when I am getting up in vision I am seeing that I am lying on bed and I am asking what am I and I am being told that I am having all of her gifts and none of her pain and I am not knowing who “her” is, but I am seeing camp and I am seeing other girl who is looking like me and I am seeing one smiling at me and she is having small thing like bee come out of her hair and swim around her head like cloud of mosquito and she is smiling at me and I am thinking that I am smiling at her too, and then I am in spacecraft and I am floating and this girl is floating and we are touching and we are putting lip together and she is humming against me her whole body is humming against me and I am seeing camp again and I am seeing beach and I am seeing sun touch water and turn all around me to gold and I am looking down and I am seeing girl sitting next to me and she is pointing at tiny shiny things in the sky and I am following her finger and I think I am smiling again and I am calling her Ify.

  I am calling her Ify.

  CHAPTER

  15

  In the hall outside the operating room, Paige and Amy sit, Amy with her arm wrapped around Paige’s shoulder and Paige with her face buried in her hands. Amy looks up at Ify as she approaches. Her eyes are redder than Ify has ever seen them. Amy tries to get up from her seat to hug Ify, but Paige has fallen onto Amy’s lap. Her weeping has grown quieter, but her body shakes even more. So Amy just gives Ify a look of soft pleading. A look that says, Please help us. However you can, please help us.

  Ify’s resolve stiffens, and she looks through the window and into Peter’s hospital room. All white, even the cyberized nurse who attends to him. The door slides open, and the nurse looks up, golden hair in a bob framing an angular face that ends in a pointed chin. She looks like a cartoon drawing of a nurse.

  “May I help you?” The voice is too robotic for Ify’s tastes, like the voices announcing a rail line stop. Please mind the gap while descending from the train.

  “I am visiting the patient.” She presses a button at her waist, and out of her eyes beams a holographic projection of her name and medical credentials.

  “This is the trauma ward, not the neurology wing.” Rudeness or a mechanical lack of decorum, Ify can’t tell. The nurse stands before Ify and doesn’t move. It doesn’t help Ify give her the benefit of the doubt that this half-droid is coded as white. “Your pass does not permit you access to this patient.”

  “My pass?” Ify grits her teeth, clenches her fists. In that moment, she doesn’t want to dress down the cyberized nurse who’s refusing her, she wants to hit her in the face. But she calms herself. The last thing she needs prior to her graduation and official appointment as assistant director of neurology and chief of the Refugee Program at this very hospital is documentation of a physical altercation with a half-droid who doesn’t merit the effort. “I’m family,” Ify says at last with a sigh. And it sounds like a concession. Like admitting defeat. She calls up her biographical information, and the nurse’s eyes go blank as she, undoubtedly, scans a list of permitted visitors behind her retinas.

  “Very well,” the nurse says, before walking past Ify and leaving the room.

  Ify swallows the anger. It burns her throat and stomach on the way down. A younger, less acclimated Ify might have looked into how to get that nurse fired or transferred to more odious work or might even have attempted to hack the nurse herself, enter her braincase and wreak havoc in direct violation of not only hospital protocol but Alabastrine law. But now, she gives herself several deep, long breaths and lets her shoulders settle. Her fists unclench. She has already forgotten the nurse.

  When she gets to Peter’s bedside, she sees a boy without any visible wounds. MeTro sealant has healed the incisions running along his wrists. The blood has been cleaned from his body. Ify knows that were she to run her fingers through Peter’s hair, she wouldn’t even find red flecks along his scalp. The bullet scar remains, however. Like it is as natural a part of him as his fingers and toes and the hair under his armpits.

  There’s a chair beside his bed, but Ify refuses to take it. Nor does she sit on the ledge where visitors are supposed to put their gifts for patients. Ify imagines every room on this floor has one, as though it’s expected that patients here will have loving family and friends showering them with presents and well wishes. As though everyone on this floor has someone who cares for them. Ify doesn’t know why the assumption annoys her. Maybe it’s lingering anger at the nurse’s racism, algorithm-powered or not. Maybe it’s how much the problem of the refugee patients is needling the back of her mind. Maybe it’s that whenever she thinks of Peter, she’s assaulted by a basketful of emotions: anger at his attempts at manipulating Amy and Paige, anger at her own hesitation in getting rid of him, guilt at whatever role she’s played in putting him here. Still, she can’t quite get rid of the feeling that this too is part of his plan, that this is what he’s willing to do to stay in their home and on this Colony. That this is checkmate in the game between him and Ify.

  Her cramps have started again. She closes her eyes against
the pain, then exhales slowly until it shrinks into something she can handle.

  She pulls her Bonder from her coat pocket. Maybe if she can see what dreams he is dreaming while sedated, she can get a clue as to his motivations. Unlock more of the mystery of him. Were she cyberized, she’d be able to plug directly into Peter, but this visor-shaped device whose edges she slips over her ears has to do the job of an external link. She presses the button that lifts Peter’s bed into a slight incline, then searches the back of his bed for the opening that circles his outlet. When she finds it, she plugs her loose cord in, Bonding with him, and the world around her pixelates then falls apart block by block until darkness surrounds her.

  She hears murmurs. Faraway voices, then static, then they become clearer. Words. She can hear their words.

  “He says that when the militants came to his village, they took hostages. He also told us that his little sister was standing next to him and offered them five naira to let their mother go.” A snicker. “Apparently, it was all that she had.”

  Another voice: “What is a child from the bush doing with five naira? An Efik family north of the Redlands? Probably stolen.”

  The first voice drones as though the speaker is reading from a report. “During his initial interrogation, he claims the men were led to a room farther down the hall in a”—a pause while he scrolls through his notes—“a school building. The men were brought to the math room. Subject claims his father was led there with thirteen other men and shot. Allegedly, their bodies were dumped out of the window.” The speaker lets out a bureaucratic sigh. “This boy is the village’s only survivor.”

  “Unlucky for him,” the second voice says, chuckling. “I am betting that he claims that God spared him because he only spared those with a higher purpose. Well, we will show him his higher purpose.”