Rebel Sisters

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  Ngozi packs up her rifle, hefts the shortened thing against her shoulder, and heads back in their direction. “Follow me,” she says, leading them deep into the forest. Fireflies blink their bodies at them. The sounds here have different texture. The crickets chirping, owls hooting, even the occasional faraway grunt of a shorthorn. Something subterranean in her stirs, and sensations swim back and forth behind her eyes: the smell of rain-turned soil, the lowing of half-mech beasts, the spray of water in a greenhouse. The camp. The camp where Onyii had raised her as a Biafran War Girl, where Onyii and the others had meticulously built the lie that Ify was one of them, that she belonged on their side of the war. Why does this place remind me of that camp?

  “Watch out for the wulfu,” Ngozi cautions without lowering her voice. “The babies may not have teeth, but their claws grow early. And they’ll tear their food apart with their paws just to make it chewable.”

  Grace blanches, but then Ify realizes why the sounds and smells of this place are so evocative. They’re real. She’d spent so long in Alabast, among false sounds and false light and false smells, that she’d forgotten what real animals sounded like, what real night felt like on your skin.

  A rusted van awaits them. At first, Ify doesn’t see it, blanketed as it is by giant red and dark green leaves. But Ngozi yanks open the back door and gestures for Ify and Grace to get in. Grace is first to head into the darkness, but she spares a tight, warning glance at Ngozi before climbing in. Ify follows. Then Ngozi enters, pulling the doors closed behind them.

  It feels like a different age, without the ever-present hum of always being connected. Without the hum against her body of her bodysuit at work, regulating her temperature, checking her vital signs, beaming her location to whoever needed to know. She winces at that last.

  “Don’t try connecting anywhere,” Ngozi says, lying on a bed of pillows with her rifle draped across her body, as though she’s reading Ify’s thoughts, even though she’s staring at Grace when she says it. “All your electronics have been deactivated. EMPs.” Electromagnetic pulses. “Otherwise, the government’s gonna be able to track you. Which gets us all in trouble.”

  A quick glance at Grace tells Ify that they’re both trying to figure out which question to ask first.

  Ngozi stares at Ify. Squints a little bit like she’s measuring the face before her against some old, fuzzy holograph. “She never told us about you,” Ngozi says suddenly.

  Breath leaves Ify’s lungs. “Sh-she?” Ify manages to say at last. But Ify knows there’s only one person Ngozi could be talking about. Onyii.

  Ngozi shakes her head. “Never told us a single thing. To be honest, I don’t know what she’d make of you now.” She gestures with her hand to indicate the entirety of Ify, not just her outfit, Ify feels, but her carriage, her voice, the way she takes up space. The fact that she is a Colonial official. “It’s clear that you are just as smart as others have said.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” Her patience is running thin. She welcomes the new hardness in her voice.

  “Like I told you in the hospital, they were going to erase your memory.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? And why would they perform an invasive operation on a Colonial official without consent?”

  Ngozi snorts. “Is that how they talk up there?” She raises a finger lazily, pointing at a place worlds away. And Ify realizes in that moment just how far she is from home. She wants to tell this woman to answer the question, but the memory of her minders dying is still fresh and she can’t bring herself to issue commands. So instead, she lets the emotion play on her face. Please, she asks with her eyes. So Ngozi says, “They deemed you a contagion risk. I’m sure they were tracking your movements as soon as you arrived in Nigeria. We found you only because they were looking. And they would have gotten to you had we not lucked into your location at that police station.”

  “You were there?”

  Ngozi nods. Then she asks, “What are you doing here?”

  Ify considers lying, but at this point she doesn’t know what she should hold back, so she sighs. “I’m a medical professional in Alabast Central. I oversee the refugee ward. Recently, the children under my care have become ill. Each of them has fallen into a coma. Identical symptoms. We tried to figure out what was wrong, but we found no answers.”

  “And why does that bring you here?”

  “The majority of those who took ill were Nigerian. My superiors thought it appropriate that I be sent to investigate.”

  Ngozi lets out another derisive snort. “Like we are bringing them plague.”

  No, not like that, Ify wants to tell her, but she knows Ngozi’s not entirely wrong in thinking that this was the reasoning of her supervisors. “I just want to find out what’s happening to them.”

  “It makes sense why the government is after you, then. You are breaking the law. Or you will be very soon.”

  “Why? What are you talking about?”

  “It is against the law to speak openly about the war. It is against the law to document it, to write about it, to reference it, even to think about it.” She pauses to let the notion sink into Ify and Grace.

  Grace stares at her hands, then looks up at Ify. “The police attack.”

  Ify nods grimly.

  “When you arrived, did you see any memorials? Any tombs or gravemarkers?”

  Ify shakes her head. “No.” Then she remembers how much it had unnerved her that she had seen no commemoration whatsoever of the war she had lived through. “No, there was . . .”

  “There was nothing.” Ngozi uses one bootheel to itch the other calf. “Just some story about a Nine-Year Storm, I bet.”

  “Yes,” Ify says, her voice drained of energy.

  Quiet fills the back of the van. Then the grunt of a large animal whose pelt fills the window, blocking their view of the fireflies and the leaves swaying in the night wind. The van rocks back and forth, and Grace scrambles for purchase, but Ngozi only closes her eyes like she’s being lulled to sleep. Eventually, the large animal stops nudging the van and trudges onward. Ify looks at Grace and almost wants to chuckle at her assistant’s terror. But she also wants to tell her it’ll be okay. An almost overwhelming urge bubbles up in her to gently run her finger over Grace’s wound and murmur something soft and loving into her hair.

  She turns to Ngozi and is ready to ask her question, except that when it finally comes to her lips, her throat closes up. Finally, she forces out, “How did you know her?”

  Ngozi raises an eyebrow at Ify. “We served in the war, Onyii and I. You could call it her second tour.” A morose smile spreads across Ngozi’s lips. “A couple of the other sisters I served with knew Onyii from before. She’d lived in a camp that was attacked. Eventually, she made her way to us. That camp was where she raised you, wasn’t it?”

  It all seems too much to Ify. After so long of having first denied Onyii, then searching for any trace of her in this country she bled for and finding nothing—after all of that, to be confronted with so stark a reminder of her sister, to be told of the life she lived without Ify . . . her heart doesn’t know what to do. “What was she like?” She has completely forgotten Grace.

  Ngozi shrugs. “We didn’t really like each other at first. She thought she’d lost more than anyone else in the war.” Ngozi pauses to look at Ify and sees something that makes her face soften. “But we all loved. And the war took everything we loved away from us.”

  “There was someone you loved?”

  Ngozi leans back, smiles at the memory. “A sister. Her name was Kesandu. Sacrificed herself so that the rest of us could escape at the end of an operation.” She shifts, as though her mind is leaving the memory and returning to her body. “It was just before the ceasefire.”

  Ify flinches and fears that Ngozi notices. “What happened . . . after the war?”

  Ngozi shifts her jaw like she’s
trying to stop tears. Then, for some reason, she glares at Grace before returning her gaze to Ify. “I tried to reconnect with my family. We tried to reintegrate, those of us who were left. Easier for some than for others. I was lucky. At least I had family left. But they were eager to move on. They thought they’d lost a daughter in the war. In some ways, they had. I couldn’t move on. Everyone wanted to. The government, employment agencies, human rights commissions, my parents. Then the government started phasing in forced cyberization. My parents happily submitted. They couldn’t wait to be a part of this new connected Nigeria.”

  “But you resisted.” This from Grace, who has kept a posture of attention this whole time, like she’s ready for Ngozi to attack her again at any moment.

  “At first, we could chat by way of app. But the government used those apps to track our locations.” Then a new deadness enters Ngozi’s voice. “The police came to my parents multiple times. We learned quickly that it was because they were communicating with a veteran of the war everyone was in such a rush to forget. Eventually, everyone cut me off. Friends, acquaintances, cousins. By the end, the police were harassing my family so much that I left. I disconnected from everything, forced them to delete me from their contacts. All of it. I even had to delete my recordings because of the metadata.” She turns her murderous look at Grace once again. “I haven’t heard my mother’s voice in almost five years.” Ngozi’s fingers curl around the barrel of her rifle. “All because of your Odoodo government.”

  Grace doesn’t flinch. How often has she heard the slur since coming here? Odoodo. Odo odo. Yellow. Often enough to take it without showing any hurt.

  “It wasn’t like this before the war. Being watched all the time. Everywhere. The Chinese did this when they came with their”—she uses air quotes—“‘foreign aid.’”

  “I’ve never been to Earthland China,” Grace says in a low, even voice. A voice Ify has never heard her use before.

  “It was like this before the ceasefire,” Ify tells Ngozi in an effort to relieve the tension. “Nigeria was already there. In Biafra, you had no clue.”

  Ngozi squints at Ify, as though a new piece of the puzzle has presented itself. But whatever it is that has occurred to her, she lets it go. “Because we were so backward in Biafra, of course.” Before Ify can reply, Ngozi says, “You should get some rest.” Without another word, she hefts the rifle, forces the back door open, then climbs out. The door slowly swings shut.

  Ify pulls the blankets up to her chin and doesn’t realize that she’s been asleep until the muffled sound of voices reaches her. Reflexively, she reaches for her temple where her Whistle would be, but there’s nothing but hair. She tries to grow as still as possible and listen.

  “She would remove her leg,” Ngozi is saying, her words gauzed by the van’s metal walls, “because it was connected and the government could track her through it. But we would drive into the desert, and she would take off her leg and I would remove my own Augment, and we’d leave them behind in the car and I would carry her. I would carry her until we’d reached our spot, and then we would sit in the sand together and watch the sun set.”

  Ify strains her ears to hear what follows, then she realizes no one is speaking.

  “Tell me what’s happening outside.” Ngozi again. “Do they know about us in the Colonies?”

  Ify looks around her and sees that Grace is gone.

  Then, Grace’s voice. Low and soft on the other side of the van’s walls. Too quiet for Ify to know what she’s saying, whether she’s lying to Ngozi or not.

  After a quarter of an hour, Grace climbs back in and buries herself beneath her own pile of blankets. Ify marvels at how easily her assistant is able to find sleep.

  CHAPTER

  30

  Xifeng is making us all to wear clothing that is dampening our signal. When I am putting on this thing that is tight on my skin, it is like shadow is falling over the world. I am not being able to talk to my siblings. And I am not having so much information buzzing like one million mosquitoes in my brain. But it is giving me relief to be not always hearing and seeing everything that is happening around me. When I am putting on the signal-dampening suit, it is like someone is shutting down the noise in my head so I am hearing with ear like red-blood and seeing with eye like red-blood and even smelling with nose like red-blood.

  “I am not liking this costume,” Oluwale is saying next to me. “I don’t like pretending to be a human.”

  One of the girls hears this and laughs, and this is the mood that everyone is having as Xifeng splits us into groups and sends us out on our mission. Before we are putting on suit, Xifeng sends us a map of the facility and its grid layout. There are also markings for where there is being crabtank and ground mech and even where aerial mech is patrolling. And we are having to memorize it because we cannot be accessing it in our braincases. But every child of war is being paired with one of the red-bloods who have more practice memorizing things. Girl in combat vest and with braids that is running down her back is moving close to me. My braincase is telling me that this girl is being named Binyelum, and I am knowing that this is Igbo for stay with me. Binyelum is fighting in war but only in later half after ceasefire and she is at first being separated from her family, but after war she is not reconnecting with them because she cannot forgive the people who ruined her family’s life, the same people her family must share a neighborhood with. I am knowing these thing because of Augment that is making her eye to sometime be shining yellow, because Augment is being connected to her nervous system and other part of her body. She is connected, and she is patting me on my head like I am being her little sister.

  Before we leave, Xifeng is giving us EMP and telling us where on map to go to place it, then to be moving far far from there.

  And I am trying to remember this thing, even as we are going aboveground and going deep into nearby forest and climbing into our mechs and flying low over forest and abandoned countryside to Borno State, which is being far away but which we are getting to just as the sky is nighting. I am trying to remember where I am supposed to go as mech is dropping us so far from facility that it is dark shape like bug in the distance, but I am having gun in my hand, and it is feeling good to be having gun in my hand. I am seeing mech drop off other members of Xifeng’s army far from us, but it is looking like we are all arriving safe, so when Binyelum is giving the signal, we are moving forward down cliff and into valley. And when we are getting closer, Binye is pulling small container from her packet and smearing cream on my face and on hers. We are doing this to be scrambling face-recognition technology. So that if cameras are seeing our faces or Augments or mechs are seeing our faces, they are not recognizing us. Our face is looking like someone else.

  We are having to rest some time because Binye is red-blood and is not having legs of metal like mine and synthetic lungs like mine. And I am waiting patiently every time. But as we are getting closer, sun is beginning to rise. We are losing time.

  Then I am hearing gunfire, and I am seeing one of our mech flying overhead, too close overhead, and it is taking bullet like PINGPINGPINGPING until it is bursting into flames. I am seeing it like it is moving in slow motion, and dread is building inside me until it crashes into building with curving glass ceiling and explodes, and suddenly everywhere is gunfire and explosion. Instantly, I am feeling more at home.

  “Oh no,” Binye murmurs next to me.

  Suddenly, she is finding new energy and we are running. She is in front and directing me, and we are both crouching low and moving fast while ground mech is shooting in every direction. I am hearing FWOOMP and knowing from my rememberings that this grenade is coming. I am holding Binye by her belt and then tugging her to the side, and we are both falling against wall of other building just before ground where we are running before is exploding in big big cloud of dirt and fire.

  I hold my hand out to her. “Give me the EMP.”

&n
bsp; “You know where to go?” she asks me.

  I nod.

  “Give me your gun,” she tells me, smiling. There is blood coming down her face from wounding in her forehead, but she is smiling. “I’ll cover you.”

  She jumps from shadow where we are both hiding and shoots at nearby soldier and is killing him instantly. Then she is moving forward and crabtank is turning toward her and firing big big bullet that is tearing apart the earth, and she is running fast fast until she is finding cover behind stone barrier.

  “Go!” she is shouting.

  And I am remembering that I am having EMP in my hands and then I am running. I am calling map up in my head, then remembering that I am wearing signal dampener. So I am trying to remember my step as I am tracing them on map. Left here, right. Down alley between big, long buildings with glass ceiling. But some thing is moved around and some of the mech are in different places because we are already attacking. And I am wishing that I could connect with my siblings so I can feel what they feel and see what they see and hear what they hear. I need to know where they are so I can be protecting.

  Explosion is throwing me into the air, and I am angering because I am letting myself get distracted. When I land on the ground, something inside me is snapping but it is not paining me. I raise my hand and it is covered in oil, but EMP is gone. It is on a timed release, and if I am not getting to where I need to be in time, whole plan is failing.

  I am turning and in front of me is stone barrier with dead guard draped over it and rifle hanging from his fingers. Behind me is pathway between two large building that is having special marking that I am recognizing from map. But on the other side is crabtank that is many many many times taller than me. I am glancing behind me and then hearing nothing but BUDUBUDUBUDUBUDUBUDUBUDU for long time until then I hear gun barrel rotating. Dead soldier is wearing helmet with visor, and I am quickly pulling body to me. But anytime I am making move, crabtank is shooting BUDUBUDUBUDUBUDU, but I am grabbing soldier and pulling visor off his helmet and wiping blood and soot and dirt from it so that it is shining my face back at me.