Rebel Sisters

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  But I am saying, Protect them, and then I am realizing that this might be the last time I am seeing Uzodinma. I am having rememberings in me of people when they are to be parting and they are hugging, so I am going to Uzodinma and even though there is rifle and knife in my hands, I am hugging him. I am not caring that we are looking strange to the people watching, because I am feeling love for Uzodinma and I am wanting him to know I am feeling this thing.

  Then I am running away.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

  I am running, and while I am running I am aiming and shooting. And I am hitting tires of jeeps, and they are swerving back and forth and skidding and making screeching noise, and as they are toppling, I am leaping over them and climbing over them and running back to the police station. And in the beginning I am not knowing why I am doing this, but then I am seeing in my mind eye the last face I am seeing before they are putting me in van. I am seeing face of Ify.

  I am running into cloud of smoke that is covering everything and I am shooting and shooting and jumping, and immediately after I am jumping through hole in wall, I am falling falling falling onto railing and I am seeing that there is being prison underneath top floor of police station.

  There is being chaos all around me and I am hearing alarm bell wailing and there is being smoke everywhere and people are coughing but there is fighting so much fighting. All of the cell are being open, and the prisoner is fighting with the soldier and police who is guarding them, and there is water flooding into place because building is trying to put out fire inside itself.

  Rock is falling from above, and I am seeing hole in ceiling that is showing upper level of police station.

  I am finding soldier and police behind me and they are chasing me, but I am running to them and jumping and climbing on them so I am reaching up to catch wire that is hanging down from ceiling, and I am climbing fast fast because ceiling is cracking and piece are falling. I am swinging myself up onto main floor and is more blood and bodies here but there is light from sun, and I am in hallway and down hallway I am seeing pile of rubble, and under the rubble is being Ify. She is being covered in dust like snow and is not moving but I am seeing that her vital sign are still showing themself to me, even though they are being lower than normal.

  As I am beginning to be running to her, something is grabbing my arm and twirling me around. It is girl from forest with bandana wrapping around her face.

  “Come with me,” she is hissing.

  “No!” I try to break free, but she is not letting me, so I am hitting her wrist and trying to break it, then I am shifting my feet to be with my back to her, and I am flipping her over me and slamming her on the ground. Then I am leaping over her and running, but I am not getting far before something is wrapping around my leg, and I am flipping myself so rope is not catching both of my leg, and I am flinging elastic rope away from me and spinning and running to Ify, who is being trapped under big big stone.

  Just as I am reaching her, girl is landing in front of me. Same as last time.

  She is striking me, but I am blocking and escaping her striking and she is holding collar in her hand, and I am thinking that she is enemy who is pretending to be being friend because she was not waving collar before but now she is flicking wrist trying to get it onto me as I am hitting her and she is hitting me. Whenever I am nearly escaping her and running to Ify, she is grabbing me and twisting or throwing me away. I try to hit her, but she is grabbing me by my throat and she is too strong to be red-blood and she is raising me in the air then slamming me on the ground and I am seeing static, then Ify’s face, then static. And I am trying to move but something in me is broken. Then I am feeling cold metal of collar around my neck and I am angering and sadding more than I am ever doing in my life, and I am wanting to be killing this person who is disabling me and who is now tying my ankles and wrists with electric rope and is carrying me on her shoulder away from the police station and the katakata and the girl who is knowing the answer to every question inside me.

  “Ify!” I am screaming. My throat is paining me because I am not often using it, but I am not caring for how words and sounds are scratching like knives inside of it. “Ify!” I scream and it is paining me and I am screaming and screaming and water is falling from my eye.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

  When I am waking up, there is bag over my head. I am knowing that is darkness surrounding me but it is not darkness of room without light or darkness of night sky with few few star. I know this is different darkness because I am seeing through the cloth even though there is still being collar around my neck and it is keeping me from seeing with all of my eye.

  Then bag is coming off my face and I am seeing we are in cave and I am the only one that is being bound with metal.

  I am looking for my siblings and I am seeing them sitting or standing and some of them are crouching at the mouth of the cave we are in. And it is raining outside so that waterfall is coming over cave’s mouth, and I am blinking and trying to learn this place.

  What is happening?

  Girl who is kidnapping me and keeping me from Ify is appearing in front of me and kneeling and undoing the restraint on my wrist. Before I am even thinking, I am wrapping my fingers around her throat. Her leg is buckling beneath me, and she is going limp and she is not resisting me and blood is pumping in my ears so loud I am not hearing anything else.

  Until I am hearing footstep that is being soft and heavy at the same time. Like thing that is made of metal but is also light and playing in the grass and giggling sometime like child. I am turning and the others are coming through with girl from the forest who is telling girl I am now choking to shut up.

  They are passing through the water that is falling at the mouth of the cave so that when they are stepping inside the cave the sound is even more real to me. I forget the girl in my hands when I see Oluwale in the group. I count them and it is almost all of us. Then I see him.

  Uzodinma.

  But then I am seeing behind him another person. And I am saying no because I am not believing it. And water curtain is parting, and they walk in until they are filling much of the space near the cave’s mouth.

  “Xifeng,” I am saying.

  She is looking up at me. Her hair is being longer and it is shining more silver and it is coming in waves over her face, but when she is looking at me, her eyes thin with joy. “Uzo.” Then she is saying to me in Taishanese, “Welcome back, my daughter.”

  And I am running and jumping into Xifeng’s arms, and I am holding her with arms strong enough to crush her, but she is not worrying. She is holding me and knowing that even though I am once being child of war I am being gentle, and she is bringing me close and squeezing her arms around my neck, and I am wanting to tell her everything that is happening to me.

  I am wanting to tell her that Ify is alive.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Beeping. It seems as though that is the only sound in Ify’s universe. Like there was always beeping and there always will be beeping. The exact same note beating a metronome. Like background noise. The beeping is what she notices first. When her eyes open, they take in the pristine white ceiling, then the end of her bed, which, with tech she can only guess at, rests suspended above the ground. To her left is a bag filled with torn and dusty and burnt clothing. Including the bodysuit Ify had worn from space. Raising her arm reveals another black bodysuit beneath her hospital gown. It doesn’t have the familiar feel of her own, and it certainly won’t connect to her Augment and link with wireless networks so that her entire body is connected without her being cyberized, but it’s better than being naked. Barely.

  She tries to connect to the building’s network, out of habit, but finds her way blocked. This thing is just another piece of clothing. She feels her temple. Her Whistle is gone. It’s probably somewhere in the bag. Or maybe there’s a tabl
etop somewhere in this room with a tiny bag on it containing her Augment. When she tries to turn her body onto her side, she feels the helmet on her head. It holds her head in place for the most part, and when she feels around it with her hand, she can find no groove or button to disengage it. Which means she’s stuck until a nurse can come to free her.

  She relaxes, lets her muscles loosen and her body melt further into the depths of the mattress. If her clothing isn’t customized for her, then at least this bed seems to listen to her body.

  When she tries to remember what happened before she woke up here, she catches only snatches of memory. Like bursts of static. But each shard of memory reveals only chaos. Shouting, an explosion of colors . . .

  Explosion.

  She sees it in her head, the desk with its attendant and his bowl of chin-chin. She remembers him being rude. Or maybe she was simply impatient with him. She remembers they spoke and Ify had made a commotion. Everyone stops. That’s why she remembers that moment. Almost like the hush of calm before the storm hits. She’d embarrassed herself, everyone had turned to watch, then the sounds of warfare.

  Feeling her arms, her wrists, fingers, chest, ribs, she can find no holes. Even her face is without scars, from what her fingers tell her. They must have put her in a healing bath.

  Bit by bit, she pieces together what led her to here.

  But why was she in that police station? What was she doing there?

  Panic starts to rise like ocean water sweeping her under, but she closes her eyes tight and tries to reclaim that looseness she’d felt earlier, that calm, that assurance that wherever she was headed, she was facing the right direction. Panic won’t help her now.

  The door to her near-featureless room whisks open. Two men in slim black kaftans enter, moving with the efficient grace of cyberized law enforcement. Ify sees no weapons on them, but that likely means that their bodies have been outfitted for whatever they would need to do should they encounter a threat. Their faces aren’t too wrinkled or too smooth. Ify judges them safely middle-aged at first, but they carry an agelessness about them in the smoothness of their movements combined with the learned stare of practiced interrogators—so that Ify is no longer sure. They could be just a few years older than her. They could be almost a century older. In those bodies, wearing those uniforms with those manufactured faces, she can hardly tell the difference.

  They arrive at her bedside but stand in such a way that they block her view of the door. Hardly a mistake on their part. Certainly not an innocuous maneuver. They know what they’re doing.

  Ify remains alert, even as she settles deeper into the bed and adopts a pose of comfort. She fights to keep the wry grin from her face.

  First the police who came for Grace, now this. They always seem to come in twos. Grace! Ify’s heart rate spikes at the thought of her missing assistant. A man’s voice, however, snatches her back to the present.

  “Madame Diallo,” the first officer says in a deep, melodic voice. “We are pleased to see your recovery proceeding.”

  Ify arches an eyebrow at him, as though to say, Get on with it.

  “Your body was recovered at a police station in Kaduna State, the site of the terrorist attack. Your business at the police station in Zaria Local Government Area?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We would like to know what you were doing at the Zaria Local Government Area police station at the time of the explosion.”

  Ify snorts and looks away, pretending to be annoyed. Explosion. Terrorist attack. A few more puzzle pieces fit into place. “I was speaking with a desk attendant.”

  “We have attempted to recover the logs containing your conversation, but the material was damaged during the initial explosion. The contents of the desk attendant’s braincase have proven to be . . . irretrievable.”

  “He’s dead, then.” The weight of what Ify has survived begins to seep into her, begins to make her feel heavier in her bed. Questions swarm. Was she a target? What did this have to do with the little girl? The little girl she was looking for, the one who had called her Ify, who had been so sure that Ify was who she had been looking for. Even though Ify had never seen her before in her entire life. “And you could not recover the information from my logs?”

  The first officer speaks again. “You are not sufficiently cyberized for such an operation. And your Augments were damaged in the blast.”

  The second rushes in, more polite. “We would have needed your permission to access the logs, madame. Were we able to recover them in the first place.”

  After a beat, Ify says, “Certainly.”

  “Now,” continues the first, “your business at the police station in Zaria Local Government Area?”

  She searches for an answer until one lands squarely in her lap. “Part of my investigation.”

  When she doesn’t continue, they stare, both of them, with unrelenting expressionlessness.

  “I am on a fact-finding mission launched by Alabast Central Space Colony. Much of our refugee population is afflicted with an illness, and I am in the process of researching its causes and, hopefully, its potential cure. I was in the course of this investigation when the police station was attacked.” She realizes something. Her minders. Her eyes shoot open, and she looks to the men standing over her bed.

  They do not open their mouths, but Ify can tell from the expression on their faces that her minders are dead. They must have been standing right by the entrance when the bomb went off. They would have been caught in it immediately. Torn to shreds. No part of their form recoverable. She wishes she hadn’t been so dismissive of them, so intent on reminding them at every opportunity that she was their superior.

  “I was conducting field research in Kaduna State and thought I might find some of the information I was looking for at the police station. Perhaps there was someone there who could offer some insight into . . . into the problem I was facing.”

  “Did you speak to anyone other than the desk attendant?” the first asks.

  Ify shakes her head. “No. Only him.”

  A moment of silence passes between them before the second one says, “When you are released, please come and contact us regarding your stay in Nigeria. We want to make sure it is as smooth and pleasing as possible.” His words do not match his tone. He sounds like a tree trying to give a hug. Then they turn to leave.

  Ify is about to ask how she is to contact them, then thinks better of it. They have probably been following her since her arrival in Abuja. Every set of eyes in this country is capable of telling the government where she is at any given moment. If they need to find her, they will.

  It’s only now that she begins to let misgivings fill her. It was easy, when she was a Sentinel in another life and part of Nigeria’s security apparatus, to let herself be part of the country’s extensive surveillance network, to let herself be watched. Everyone was always being watched. If you were connected, your every thought or conversation or purchase was seen. The surveillance orbs that hung overhead tracked every citizen’s movements. At the time, Ify thought nothing of it. It had simply been a part of the world. It was understood that this meant peace. But as Ify sits in her hospital bed, thinking over this encounter with the Nigerian security service, she can’t help but think that all of this didn’t mean peace; it meant order—something else entirely.

  With the men gone, she turns her gaze to the ceiling. Her arms begin to tremble. Her bottom lip quivers. Only now that she has let her guard down does the severity of it all come crashing into her. The concussive wave from the explosion, the fear that had enveloped her, the pain that had wrapped itself around her entire body just before her world had gone black. All of it comes rushing back into her in a tsunami of sensation. She closes her eyes, but that just makes her see it all more clearly. The wood paneling of the desk in front of her, the scuff marks of boots on the tiled floor, the spiderweb in the arch abov
e a hallway, the face of the desk attendant in that moment when he was just starting to come out of his boredom. Then bedlam.

  Suddenly, she’s a little girl again. A refugee child in a new, faraway place, a glistening white Space Colony where she knows no one and the only thing she wants is to see her sister, Onyii, again. Tears stream down the sides of her face. She grips the bedsheet in her fists. This feeling she’s kept at bay for so long, smothered and bottled up and stored in a dark corner of her mind, out of sight, out of reach, it’s all back, and she lets herself swim in it because she knows that she can only build a wall so high. Eventually, the floodwaters will beat her and break the dam. She finds small comfort in the fact that she was able to hold out until the men left before shock from the attack melted away.

  The sobs slow and become softer. She sniffles. A mechanical arm from above descends, holding a bouquet of wipes, and she cleans her face, then tosses the tissues into a wastebucket that rises from the floor next to her.

  The door swings open, and a blur of white rushes to Ify’s bedside, burying her face in Ify’s bedsheets. “Ify, I found you!” says the muffled voice. Grace’s voice. “Thank God.” When Grace breaks away, Ify sees tears and snot over Grace’s face, and the mechanical arm descends from above Ify’s head to dangle wipes between them, insistent. To which both Ify and Grace laugh.

  Grace cleans her face but keeps her body close to Ify’s, as though to let any more distance come between them is to risk separation like the one they just endured. “I saw from the car. I saw you walk in. Then, when it seemed like you were taking a long time, the guards went in after you. Then the explosion, and . . .”

  “I’m all right,” Ify says quietly, smoothing the wrinkles out of Grace’s sleeves. She notes that her assistant’s face and part of her clothes are still marred with soot. And her eyes are bloodshot. Her hands tremble from adrenaline. She hasn’t slept. “When I get out of here—”