Rebel Sisters

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  The child wraps her arms and legs around Ify like a restraint, like something made out of metal, and is shaking. The thought occurs to Ify that maybe she is being targeted. Maybe this is some odd assassination attempt and this child is carrying a bomb inside her body.

  She tosses away the thought. No, this is peacetime. No one would want to blow up a Colonial official in peacetime.

  The girl shivers against Ify even as the tableau of violence plays out before Ify and the children scurry, some of them vanishing into the forest, others unlucky enough to be caught in the electrified netting or shot down by paralyzing bullets. The minders grip the girl by her shoulders and arms and try to pry her loose, then the girl cries out in pain as electrical currents sizzle along her skin and she falls to the ground.

  “What did you do?” Ify shouts at one of the men as the girl writhes, then comes up onto her hands and knees. Ify sees a shockstick raised to strike the girl down and grabs the man’s arm to stop him. “What are you doing? Stop it.”

  The girl coughs, and a spattering of oil stains the grass. She comes up and stands too close to Ify, and there is beseeching in her eyes, and joy and fear and wonder. “Ify.”

  “What?” How does this girl know her name? Suddenly, the girl’s hands grip Ify’s face and pull it down and close so that her head is bowed before the girl’s. A small breeze, like a breath exhaled slowly, whispers against her forehead. Ify’s eyes shoot open. What is this? What is happening? Flashes of Onyii flit through her mind. She breaks free and can’t help but stare in horror at the child.

  “Ify, it’s me.”

  She backs away. “I . . . I don’t know you.” What just happened to her still rattles her, loosens every thought in her brain until she can’t think clearly anymore. “I don’t know you.”

  “But, Ify, it’s me! Telling you to get ready for school. It is me! Watching sunset with you and carrying you in my arm and waking you when you are sleeping, it is me! You are knowing me.” Then, strangely enough, the girl begins to cry. “Ify, please.”

  Police dressed in full black riot gear snatch the girl off the ground. She stretches her arms out to Ify, begging to be let back, begging Ify to take her, to hold her, screaming, “Ify! Ify, please! It is me!” She writhes and bites one of the hands holding her, falls into a crouch, then, just as she’s about to burst at Ify, a net appears from nowhere, wrapping around her and pressing her into the ground and sizzling her into submission.

  As volts of electricity run through her and sparks fly from the skin of her exposed legs, she keeps her gaze locked on Ify. Never looking away until her eyes go blank. Even then, it seems as though the girl sees Ify and nothing else.

  “Please,” says one of her minders, “we must get you to safety.”

  Too stunned to resist, Ify climbs back into the jeep and lets the door slam shut. Then they are moving again. The fog in her brain is too thick. She doesn’t even know where she is going.

  The driver is complaining about police operations and how there is never enough warning, about how much noise is made during these things, and something breaks through the mist clouding Ify’s thoughts.

  “Where are they being taken?” she asks.

  Grace is still catatonic.

  After a pause, the driver offers, “The police station, I think. There were military present, but it seems as though it was a state police operation. Yes, the police station is most likely.”

  The man in the passenger’s seat nods in agreement.

  “Take me there,” Ify says, with as much sternness as she can muster.

  “What? Are you mad?” asks the driver.

  “Take me there. I want to go to the police station, and you will take me there.”

  The passenger snorts. “She is not serious-oh,” he jokes to the driver.

  Ify leans forward, past Grace, sticking her head through the partition space. “Do you think you are irreplaceable? Both of you? It will not be an anonymous communiqué to your employer that you were derelict in your duty. It will be a report directly from me. So you will know it was me that ejected you from your place of employment like a space dinghy from a shuttle station. I am a Colonial official. You will take me where I say you will take me. Are we understood?”

  The driver and the other minder both look at each other before nodding. The driver takes the jeep into gear, and it hovers off the ground. Ify consults her tablet to give her hands something to do, though her fingers tremble too much to be of much use. The passenger mutters a joke beneath his breath.

  Without looking up from her tablet, Ify says, “I think I prefer you both silent.” After a beat to confirm their obedience, she says, “Thank you.”

  She stares sternly at Grace, sending in her direction as steely an expression as possible, so that when Grace does finally look up from her lap, she sees in Ify’s face the silent command to pull herself together.

  They have work to do.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

  “Grace, stay here,” Ify says as they pull up before the police compound.

  The officers who stand in the parking lot by their maglev jeeps and their hoverbikes, watching Ify walk straight for the front entrance with purpose and the confidence of an oyinbo, don’t have to know who she is to see that she has the bearing of someone with authority. One or two of them might snicker at the sight of that woman striding so far ahead of her minders, but others see her minders and the bulge of weapons beneath their jackets and the way every single door opens for Ify and their quiet laughter dies down. Whatever badge she wears or title she holds or uniform she has on, it has imbued her with power. She has spent nearly half a decade in the Space Colonies perfecting the use of that power, getting accustomed to wearing it, to wielding it, especially as someone who does not look like how many think the powerful should look. She has grown used to the tenor of her voice when she’s addressing authorities she needs something from, the way she must braid together compassion and command when speaking with her subordinates, the fact that she must treat every encounter as though she is talking to an equal or an inferior. She moves with the walk of someone who owns the land she sets foot on. She has to.

  There is something she wants ahead of her. Possible answers to questions she’s been asking herself ever since she landed in this country over a month ago. In the form of a girl whom she never recognized but who seemed to know who Ify was. With a certainty that unnerves her.

  So it is with the demeanor of an entitled Colonial oyinbo that she passes through the gated entrance, immediately traveling through the massive gray walls that surround the compound, then walking up the broad stone staircase to the front doors, on each side of which stand gendarmes with submachine guns in their hands, the metal of their wrists showing clearly that they are Augments.

  She pays them no mind as she nearly charges through the doors that whisk open and shut for her, a gust of air-conditioned breeze rushing straight into her face. Immediately, she notes a front desk, behind which sits a man in a short-sleeved officer’s uniform and a beret. The others who walk up and down halls wear the same thing, minus the golden rope over this man’s left shoulder. Ify strides directly to him.

  “Please take a ticket,” the man drones without looking up from his touchboard. “And fill out our online form describing your query or complaint, and we will be with you shortly.” He pops a piece of chin-chin into his mouth.

  “My name is—”

  His mouth full, he says, “Please take a ticket and fill out our online form describing your query or complaint—”

  “I am here on an urgent matter!”

  “—and we will be with you shortly.”

  “I don’t think you understand! I am a Colonial official representing Alabast. You will see to my matter immediately!”

  Most of the work in the police station continues. The officers walk by, the hum from videos
projected from tablets continues. But more than a few officers and administrative personnel stop what they’re doing to look at this woman who has turned herself into the center of their universe. Color rises in Ify’s cheeks, and she struggles to maintain her posture of authority. When they all see that it is a nineteen-year-old woman dressed like some oyinbo from space, they return to their tasks. By now, the desk attendant has his chin resting in the palm of his hand. He finishes chewing his chin-chin and makes a show of swallowing. The bored expression has not left his face.

  “I just need you to look someone up. I need to know where they’re being held.”

  “Please take a ti—”

  “Please, they’ve just arrived.” She lowers her voice. “I just need this one thing.” She realizes now that she has no idea how big or how small this compound is. Is there a jail attached, or do they merely process the people the police arrest here and transport them elsewhere? Ify doesn’t recall seeing transport vans in the parking lot, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t somewhere on these premises. So many things would have been prudent to know before making this play, and yet she has let emotion drive her. She has let herself be guided by the face of that girl. That girl they snatched away from her. That girl who would not stop staring at her. That girl whom Ify had refused.

  What will Ify say to the girl when she sees her again? Will she apologize? Will she tell her that, yes, she is the Ify the girl has been looking for? Even though she has never seen the girl before? Will she ask the girl where she learned to blow on Ify’s forehead like that? Or will she say nothing and let the child hold her, cling to her as though she’s the answer to whatever questions might have gripped her?

  “Do you have identification?” the man asks loudly, and, Ify realizes, for the second time.

  Ify scrambles to call up her information in a holographic projection on her palm.

  “No, not your identification. The detainee’s.”

  “Oh. Um.” Ify looks about, trying to figure out what to say, what to do. An idea occurs to her. She uses her Whistle to replay the last moments she spent with the girl, rewinding from the girl’s capture to the girl standing in front of her, just before she pulls Ify’s face down to blow on her forehead. The image freezes, and in the girl’s face is that mixture of emotions Ify remembers so clearly: gratitude and sorrow and fear and hope and love. Ify downloads that still and slips the image file into the projector that shoots the image in three dimensions from her palm.

  Surprise flickers over the attendant’s face, before that familiar expression of boredom returns. He looks up from time to time as he taps a key sequence into his touchboard. His fingers don’t detach, and Ify wonders if he’s a red-blood or if he’s merely being slow on purpose. It is beginning to irk her that she can no longer tell the difference.

  “I am cross-referencing the image you have sent me with every portrait that has been taken here within the past week.”

  “Oh, I don’t need the past week. It will have been within the past twelve hours.”

  He raises an eyebrow at Ify, perhaps on the verge of asking about matters he has no business asking about. But he thinks better of it and returns to his task. “Okay. The past twelve hours.” He stares at his monitor, then squints. “Hmm.” He inputs the same key sequence as last time, waits a moment, then lets out a quiet “Huh.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Are you sure this person was arrested within the past twelve hours?”

  Ify resists the temptation to lean over the counter and look at his screen. “Maybe they were brought to a different facility? In a different state? What if you checked with all the holding facilities in the country?”

  “That is the problem,” the attendant says, looking up at Ify. “I just did.”

  It is the last thing Ify hears before an explosion rips through the walls around her and brings the ceiling right down on top of her and the attendant.

  CHAPTER

  26

  We are sitting with our hands being bound in front of us between our legs. And there is chain looping through to connect to metal that is wrapping around our ankles. It is being wound tight so that we are always hunching over. We are being six of us in this van and there are being collars around our necks and they are being connected by thin glowing wire and I am feeling as they are putting this thing on me that my brain is shutting down and I am not hearing noise in it anymore and light is leaking out of the world like water from a lake or blood from the hole made by bullet. It is like they are putting shadow over everything when they are putting collar around my neck. And it is being impossible to talk to Oluwale or any of the other like I am wanting to be talking to them. I am not hearing them in my braincase and I don’t think they are hearing me either. Some of them are looking like they are trying to be finding peace but they are fidgeting and itching like ant is biting them all over their skin, and it is the first time I am seeing many of them like this and it is sadding me.

  I am hearing engine and moving, and I am knowing that we are rising and we are to be moving somewhere, and I am hoping that the others who are not being in this van with us are being in a van that is going to the same place because even though we are being many, like thirteen, we are all of us being close from so much time together sharing mind and sharing mystery.

  With collar that is squeezing my neck and with cord that is attaching all of us, I am not able to be seeing map in my head, so I am not knowing where we are going. I am just knowing that it is being small time between when we are moving and when there is explosion that is throwing all of us all over the place like shaking pepper on jollof rice.

  Instantly, I am hearing gunshot and everything is sounding like war again like in my rememberings. Part of me is wanting to move and be joining and my hand is aching for gun, but part of me is seeing cord connecting us and collar and knowing that if we are doing this thing something bad is happening to us. But then I am hearing sound like something is sticking to back door, then sparking and sizzling like something is burning, then all light inside van is shutting down with popping sound and everything is dark, and I am seeing that there is no longer cord connecting all of us. Our collar is no longer beeping.

  Back door is blowing open like someone is ripping it away, then someone is climbing in fast fast with light in one hand and shockblade in other hand and they are going up and down line and putting blade to the metal thing covering our hands and it is falling away and we are moving our fingers again.

  Now with door open I am hearing katakatakatakata of gunfire with puhBOOM of grenade, and as soon as I am no longer having metal on my hand or collar on my neck, I am running out of van where everything is smoke and there is being blood on the ground and it is wet under my feet and some people is coughing but I am not because all of this is feeling familiar to me. Like I am being here before. The world is coming to me again in lights and I am seeing everything, even map in my head of compound, and I am seeing even more than that. I am seeing from every camera in police station that is being behind me, and even though it is far away and there is long road between us and it and we are near to pathway in forest, I am seeing it clearly.

  Without looking, I am picking up gun that is being on the ground and I am taking cord from my neck and I am plugging it into police that is at my feet but who is being cut in half and his legs are being far away. Even as policeman is dying, I am hearing through his comms network everything his comrade is saying and shouting, and there is many shouting shouting and puhBOOM and katakata. I am disconnecting, and when I am looking up I am seeing all of my sibling but I am also seeing other girl. Some are being older and taller and they are having bandana wrapping around their faces and some are wearing masks and some are having painting on them, and they are looking at us with gun in their hand and not saying anything until one is stepping forward.

  “Go into the forest. There is a rescue vehicle waiting for you there. To take
you to safety,” this girl is saying.

  “Where is Ify?” I am asking, and some of my sibling is looking at me strange because they are never hearing me speak like red-blood before.

  “Come with us,” the first girl is saying.

  But another girl is stepping forward and pulling the bandana down from her face and saying, “I think who you are looking for is back at the compound, but—”

  “Shut up!” is screaming the first one. Then she is turning to me, but before she is saying any more thing, I am moving from corpse to corpse and picking up gun and knife and ammunition clips and putting them in my pocket. And this girl is saying thing like more people are coming to get us and that police compound is many kilometers away, but none of this is meaning anything to me.

  Then Uzodinma is seeing me, and I am stopping collecting weapons.

  I have to go back, I am telling him, and he is seeing not just Ify as I last saw her, at Kufena Hills, but Ify as she is always appearing in my rememberings. Ify as little girl, Ify as older girl, so many different Ifys, and I am feeling in my body that I am loving all of them, and I need to know why. All of this, I am saying to Uzo when I am saying, I have to go back.

  Instead of Uzodinma saying word to me, he is showing me image and recording of all of us being together in the forest. He is showing footage of some of us sitting down and finding peace or climbing tree or playing game and giggling or teaching each other thing. It is taking me several second before I am understanding what he is saying. I have to protect them, he is telling me. And it is not until now that I am looking at him like leader. But they are not calling him Commandant. They are calling him Uzo and sometime they are calling him Commandant, and I am wishing that when I am being child of war, I am having Uzodinma with me, because then maybe I am feeling less alone.