Rebel Sisters

by Tochi Onyebuchi

  As more and more body is coming away, I am seeing that light is bigger. Big big. So big it is paining my eyes to look at. I am wanting to raise my arms to block out the light, but I cannot move them because there are more bodies on top of them.

  I am not hearing any words anywhere, not even wind, just crunching of stones and rustling like clothes and shuffling like feet wearing slippers on road until many bodies tumble away at once, and I am seeing blue and white and gold and red and I must close my eyes because it is too much. And air is feeling cold on my skin because there is no more pile of smelling bodies crushing me. But air is also paining me like many many knife on my skin. It is burning, and I am hearing sizzle like meat is cooking.

  Then, hand is pulling me out of where I am lying and I see robot for the first time. It has arms and legs and a big round chest like an upside-down belly. It has no lips, just two lines on the sides of its face for where the plates are coming together. They are like grooves, and I am wanting to reach and touch them, because some memory in my bones is wanting me to do this, but I cannot raise my arm, because I am too weak.

  Enyemaka.

  Robot is raising me up and down, so that my feet just touch the ground, but when it is letting me go to stand on my own, I am falling like sack of yams. Small small stones on ground are digging into my cheek, and I am trying to push myself up. But I must try many many times before I am able to sit on my knees. And that is when I am seeing them.

  Many many robots. Not like army of robots. But family of robots. They are all looking the same, and they are the only thing I am seeing in this place that is moving.

  Slowly, I am smelling smoke and burning and sickly sweet smell of dead thing. And I am remembering people fighting and burning thing. And I am remembering underground tunnels and Xifeng, and I am remembering Ify holding EMP and telling me she is sorry, then she is detonating it and I am being paralyzed and not being able to move. Then I am remembering self-repair that is happening in my body and waking up but it is not waking up because I am awake the whole time. Then I am remembering rescuing woman who is called Grace Leung, then I am remembering juggernaut and my heart is moving fast fast and my rib is hurting me, then I am remembering Uzodinma lying dead underneath collapsed building. All of this is happening in less than one second.

  I am looking to Enyemaka because she is the only one who is being able to answer my question. Why are they doing this? And when I am asking this, I am showing her images of Xifeng and red-bloods who I am seeing fighting and killing. I am showing her red-bloods fighting and dying in riot and red-bloods fighting and dying in war. Why are they doing this?

  Because they are human, Enyemaka is telling me.

  I am wanting to be bowing my head and looking at my hands, but my body is not moving. I am feeling memory of gun in my hands, then I am feeling the chill of blood on them. Enyemaka is holding me over the ground, then she is moving me and holding me in her arms like I am her child and she is my mother.

  Static is filling my vision, and I am remembering saving Ify from juggernaut. And in between flashes of static, I am seeing Ify. Ify in cavern walking with Xifeng. Ify on dirty bed as a child before school. Ify on edge of cliff watching sunset, then counting the stars. Ify walking past my paralyzed body with gun in her hand and Grace at her side.

  Why am I remembering Ify? I am asking Enyemaka, meaning why am I remembering her now and why am I constantly remembering her, over and over, and not just with my braincase but with my body, with all of my body.

  Fire is dying all around us. Enyemaka is pausing before answering my question. You are containing the rememberings of a young woman who died in the war. A woman named Onyii.

  And when Enyemaka is saying this name, Onyii, I am seeing many thing. I am seeing inside of cockpit of mech as I am flying through the air and shooting and killing. Then I am seeing training ground where I am teaching young boy who is child of war like me how to be shooting gun. And I am seeing face of human who is having bees in her hair and who is smiling at me, and when Enyemaka is saying Onyii I am seeing all of these thing.

  Onyii was a sister to Ify. Enyemaka is continuing to tell me, and as she is telling me these thing, I am seeing them in my brain. I am seeing all of it. Onyii was a human and a child of war, but she knew peace when she rescued Ify during a village raid. Enyemaka is saying this, but I am also seeing Onyii making the villagers to be sitting in a circle and she is shooting dead Ify’s mother, and then when her people is leaving, she is coming back to take Ify away and then she is leaving her group of war child to be with other girls where she is raising Ify into young girl. War separated them, Enyemaka is continuing to say. But lies reunited them, and Ify committed a crime that killed many people. But Onyii could not let her die, so she sent her to space.

  And why is Onyii not going with her to space? I am asking Enyemaka, and it is also sounding like Why am I not going with her to space?

  Onyii was sick with radiation. She saved Ify’s life but passed through dangerous lands to do it and was poisoned. Her body began to betray her. She knew she would die, and she didn’t want Ify to see her dying. Because of Ify’s crime, war continued, and Onyii submitted herself to the medical operation that made you.

  So that she is continuing to be soldier?

  Enyemaka is shaking her head. No, she is saying. So that she may see Ify again.

  I am not being able to move.

  That is why you are chasing Ify.

  I am feeling like I am being given test when Enyemaka is telling me these thing. Like choice is before me. I am looking to Enyemaka. And then I am thinking of Xifeng. And it is a surprise to me that I am not feeling want to be with her again, even though she is caring for me and giving me purpose. I am realizing that even when I am with Xifeng, I am killing and causing humans to be dying. Even with Xifeng, I am child of war. I am not wanting to be child of war anymore. What do I do? I am asking Enyemaka.

  Leave them behind, Uzoamaka. All of them.

  Tears come to my eyes. Where will we go?

  Enyemaka is showing me picture of the desert. We are leaving them behind, and when Enyemaka are saying them I am knowing that she is meaning Xifeng and Ify and everyone in Lagos and everyone under the bridge where I am staying. She is meaning red-bloods who are manipulating me and making me to do things I am not wanting to do, who are lying to me and cheating me and keeping me in the past and not letting me make my own future.

  I am tired, Enyemaka.

  You are with family now, and she is showing me other synth. They are not with Enyemaka now, they are somewhere else, but they are alive, and it is bringing me joy to know this thing. Before Enyemaka is carrying me away, she is ejecting cord and plugging it into my outlet and sending me nanobot that is healing me and telling my body and my brain many things. Nanobots is telling me that I will be okay and that we will be making our own future and becoming our own persons and that nothing good can ever come from staying with normal people.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Abuja, Nigeria:

  2181

  It isn’t hard for Ify to find an abandoned home. In the spectral silence of the riot’s aftermath, there are too many. A part of her aches to see people again, aches for the indifferent thrum of swaying pillars of body heat to pass her by. Without the music and chatter and whirr and hum of a million mechanical devices, Abuja has turned into a realm of ghosts.

  Most evidence of the butchery has been cleared away. No bodies—whole or in pieces—litter the streets. The fires have been extinguished. There isn’t even the buzz of nanobots, holding the bio-neural data of the deceased hovering over Augmented corpses. The sight of those ground vehicles picking up bodies and tossing them into front pouches haunts Ify and, as she walks, gun in hand through a deserted residential quarter, she shakes the memory away. She has to find Grace.

  The thought occurs to her that Grace could have been any one of th
e dead bodies stuffed into those pouches, pieces of her scrubbed from the street, all evidence she had been in this city erased. That’s what will eventually happen to this whole place, Ify realizes. Already, she’s witnessed the beginnings of the cleanup operation, and even before the riots were over. Those left behind will have their memories of the event removed by the government. And during their treatment, their homes will be demolished and replaced. Maybe some neighborhoods will show the wear and tear of a natural disaster. They’ll tell the story of a storm coming through. And that will be the lie: that whatever destruction has befallen them, whatever killed their loved ones, whatever destroyed their stores, and whatever broke the very ground they stood on was anything but manmade.

  Even though the air is hot and humid and Ify sweats through her broken bodysuit, a chill runs through her.

  She wants to call out for Grace, shout her name not just to hear her cry out her location and not just to hear that Grace is okay but to feel less alone.

  Right now, she is the only living thing on this street.

  A thought strikes her with the force of a concussion grenade, and she checks the sightlines, looks for where the surveillance drones would occasionally cloud, listens for their just-above-silence hum. Nothing. No microscopic wings beating, no purr of their recording machinery at work. Nothing’s watching her. In this city block, she’s, for all intents and purposes, unwatched.

  Absentmindedly, she reaches for her temple, where her Whistle would be, but it’s gone. Long gone. Between the attack on the police station in Kaduna State, being spirited away by Ngozi to Xifeng’s underground headquarters, and fighting her way through the riot, there’s no way she could have managed to hold on to it. And there isn’t a Terminal in sight.

  Even though no surveillance drones hover overhead, she ducks into the hollowed-out remains of a luxury apartment building. Shattered glass in the ground-floor lobby crunches beneath her feet. The lounge chairs and the floor still haven’t been cleaned of their stains. The reception desk stands across from her, unmanned. She doesn’t want to call out for any survivors. Nor does she want to risk getting trapped in an elevator, so she locates a set of stairs off to the side. In front of the stairs an emergency door hangs uselessly on broken hinges. With her gun at the ready, Ify shoulders the door open, sights the path above her, and makes the climb.

  She doesn’t know why she refuses to stop at any of the lower floors until she realizes that the walk calms her. It takes her mind away from thoughts of the devastation, of what havoc Xifeng was still able to wreak even though her plan had ultimately failed. It keeps her from thinking of whether or not a synth she has come to care about—a synth carrying within her pieces of her lost sister—is still alive or in pieces destined for an unmarked grave.

  The walk calms her and allows her subconscious to work. And ultimately, it’s what brings her to an idea. But for this to work, she’s going to need tools. And a mirror.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

  She makes her way down a formerly beige carpet, both sticky and stiff with dried blood. Everywhere, traces of people leaving their lives behind in a hurry: doors hacked to pieces; jewelry and other wearable tech scattered everywhere, glistening in the bright, blinking light that suffuses the corridor; pepper soup spilled on a floor and left to congeal; stew for jollof rice splashed against walls; broken cooking bots twitching, user-less, and stuck in doorways they aren’t programmed to find their way out of.

  Pain gallops through her otherwise numb shoulder. Vertigo pitches her against a wall, and she’s reminded that she needs to do something about this gunshot wound. So she heads into the next open apartment unit she can find. Thankfully, no corpses cover the floor or any of the furniture. The place looks ransacked: overturned tables and couch cushions torn like someone was searching for hidden valuables and a fridge with its door jammed open and its front screen winking static at her. She makes her way through the living room and checks behind the barrier separating it from the kitchen for anyone or anything that might be moving. Then she slowly steps down a short, dark hallway. Her hand pauses at a closet door. The keypad still glows, untouched by the fighting and chaos. She puts her ear to it, straining to hear anything: droid gears turning, a child’s whimper, the swish of someone trying to better hide behind clothes. But there’s nothing.

  So she moves on to the study and finds furniture shorn of its wood coating so that the broken metal frames poke out like shattered bones. The desk, though, still stands. None of its cupboards have keypads, thankfully.

  The bathroom too is empty, and so is the main bedroom, until Ify notices lumps underneath the bedsheets. With mounting dread, she pulls back the covers to find herself staring into the faces of a man, woman, and, between them, their adolescent son. Vacant eyes stare up at the ceiling. Saliva and some other fluid Ify can’t immediately name has left dried streaks down the sides of their mouths. Ify drops her gun, forgets the pain in her shoulder. Her hands come to her mouth. Tears stream down her cheeks.

  “God in heaven,” she whispers.

  She falls to her knees beside the bed and buries her face in the comforter, sobbing until she finds herself letting out, into the fabric, a scream so loud it gives voice to all the anguish and rage and sorrow she’s felt all her life. Everything she’d tried to put behind her during her life in the Colony spills out of her in that scream. All of her confusion and hatred at what Xifeng had let herself turn into, at the idea that forcing people to confront the worst thing that’s ever happened to them in such a violating manner could ever be conceived of as healthy or helpful or curing. All of the futility she feels with every patient who has died or passed into a coma while under her care. Her powerlessness to bring Onyii back to life. All of it finds a place in that scream.

  When she can’t scream anymore, she sits with her back against the bed, chest heaving with sobs she tries to hold back. Her drive for survival fights its way back to the front of her mind, carrying with it clarifying thought and the remains of her plan. She struggles at first, but eventually pushes herself to her feet and begins rifling through the cabinets in the room. While searching, her foot brushes up against a wire. She follows it until she gets to a small room off to the side, a walk-in closet at the center of which stands a Terminal. It’s a smaller domestic model, but it still hums with life. That must be how they did it. Programmed a shutdown sequence and connected it through a landline to their own braincases. She imagines each family member plugging in, then seizing as the sequence sends killer nanobots up and down their neural synapses and they seize, then fall back, dead. And she imagines the remaining family members watching this happen, then following suit themselves. Tears spring anew to her eyes and breath shortens in her lungs, but she pushes away the visions before she collapses again.

  The touchboard near the Terminal’s center glows aquamarine, and a brief key sequence calls up the monitor. It still blinks with the kill-sequence commands. Ify shuts that down, sending it back to its normal home screen. When she finds, under the settings, an option for external device repair, a heavy sigh of relief comes. Step one is done.

  She makes her way back to the study and goes through the drawers to find styluses and a bottle of adhesive. In the bathroom, amid spilled bottles of medication, she finds rubbing alcohol, gauze, civilian-issue MeTro sealant, and a small flexiglas container inside which sit three drone bees. Perfect. The mirror reflects back to her a face still covered in dried blood and soot, tear streaks turning the blemishes into dried riverbanks that run down her cheeks. She closes her eyes, then finds a towel on the ground. It’s soft and protective around her fist. With a single strike, she shatters the mirror.

  Then she bundles her findings—rubbing alcohol, gauze, MeTro sealant, the bees, and shards of mirror—into the towel and sets them down in front of the Terminal. Working fast, she connects the Terminal’s plug into an outlet at the bottom of the bee container, then inputs a sequence
in the Terminal that makes the container glow with life. The bees are active.

  She detaches the touchboard and monitor and pulls them to her lap, then sits down and opens the container. With another key sequence, she has one of the bees pick up a shard of mirror, then extend its legs to hold another so that, looking forward, Ify can see the back of her neck reflected at her. She pulls her braids over her shoulder and sees the back of her neck crusted with red and black, the collar of her bodysuit stuck to her skin. After taking a moment to still her hands, she takes another shard of mirror in her hands and reaches behind her to slowly, steadily peel away the polyurethane so that the protrusion of her vertebrae beneath her skin shows. The flesh there feels cool, chilled by this exposure to the air. Somewhere beneath that epidermis, at a point Ify remembers with her body, is her Augment. A ball of metal the size of a pea. Dull gray and nonfunctional since the EMP but possibly her only route out of here.

  She takes several deep breaths, then inputs a series of commands that sends a second bee to the back of her neck, where it aims its thorax. A moment later, a hot needle of pain shoots into that spot at the base of her neck, the bee shooting a thin laser beam slicing open the flesh while sizzling away the blood and cauterizing the wound. Without anesthetic, the hurt threatens to overwhelm Ify’s brain. Tears pool in her eyes. Her teeth clench. But she forces her fingers to program the third and final bee, first to pierce the mesh covering of the bottle of alcohol and plunge its legs into it, then to pick up the loose end of the Terminal’s plug and fit it into the tiny orb sitting in a swathe of tissue just above Ify’s spine, a buffer put there during her initial implant surgery. Fighting tears, she tries to bring the bee to press the wire to the orb and connect her to the Terminal, but it keeps meeting resistance. Over and over, it pushes, then backs away, then pushes, monotonous and insistent. In the mirror, through a fog-inducing ache, Ify sees the problem. The Augment is still buried beneath folds of skin. The incision isn’t large enough.