Looking back at the process now, Ify lets herself feel a pinch of pain in her heart. So much of how she has designed her program has been with efficiency as the guiding principle. Get those who have been harmed in the care of the galaxy’s best hospital as quickly and securely as possible. And every quarter, she’s been asked for her numbers: number of admissions, number of discharges. And always, it has been the numbers. With the refugees, always the numbers. Maybe if she’d paid more attention, she could have stopped this. Could have prevented it.
“Are you avoiding a solution because you have to walk through some pain to get there?”
Ify knows Céline doesn’t mean to be flippant about it, but she asks herself how Céline could possibly know what Ify’s been through, what she’s done. What she would have to face if she were to do exactly what Céline is suggesting.
The wind blows softly on her back, and she closes her eyes. And there she is again.
A dark, dank room. Two men walk in from around a corner. Her fingers clench into fists where they’re bound to a chair. The men wear all black and don’t bother hiding their faces. Their hands are gloved.
Static.
The first is stretching his gloves on his hands. “Let’s talk about that higher purpose of yours.”
Static.
The man is holding bees buzzing in his hand, their metal shells gleaming.
Static.
Hissing through her teeth, “Please, please, please no more.”
Static.
A knife comes out of a man’s vest pocket, cuts away her pant legs. And the bees swarm her legs and burrow beneath her skin and—
She gasps when she returns to the lake. It takes her several moments to realize where she is, that she’s not in an underground chamber being tortured, that she’s not Peter, that she’s not being strapped to a chair while another version of herself—another Ify—waltzes through the aboveground facility with a government official at her side. She dashes away tears. No. No, there has to be another way. She can’t go back to that facility.
She can’t.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
The thoroughfares of Abuja glow with neon light. It still startles Ify how much Mandarin there is in the signage, like it is gobbling up the English. The signs of Chinese investment in the recovery of this place are evident, but there’s a further penetration. Foreign smells wafting from roadside restaurants, foreign chatter overheard in the streets and alleyways. A mixture of fashion trends she doesn’t remember: kaftans tailored to look like tangzhuang jackets with straight Mandarin collars, cheongsam in bright multicolored prints.
A shout rises above the music. Ify dismisses it, part of the chaos of urban nightlife, until she hears it again, followed by an unbroken string of Cantonese. Suddenly, she hears English mixed in, then she recognizes that voice: Grace.
She breaks off into a sprint, crashing through people on the side of the road, not bothering to apologize, nearly tripping over a sizzling hot dish outside a restaurant stall. Grace. As she gets closer, she looks for the crowd that will have inevitably gathered, but nothing has broken the steady stream of Abujans. The shouting is getting louder, less insistent, more frightened. Ify hurries until she sees large men on either side of Grace, one holding her arm in a vise grip while the other has his finger pressed against his temple, face angled to the sky. Like he’s talking with a commanding officer. They wear all black, black visors over their eyes, and stand a full head taller than the tallest person for miles. Their boxy, muscled frames tell Ify that they are Augments, if not fully cyberized. They don’t carry guns but have shocksticks and wrist restraints hanging from their hips.
“What’s going on?”
Grace sees Ify, and Ify’s heart drops at the bottomless fear in her assistant’s eyes.
“Let her go! What’s the meaning of this?”
The officers, with the pattern of the Nigerian flag emblazoned on their shoulders, ignore Ify. One of them slips wrist restraints from his hip. All thought leaves Ify as she smacks them away. In one swift motion, she puts herself between Grace and the arresting officer, forcing him to look down at her. For a long second, he’s silent.
“I am an Alabastrine official on diplomatic business, and this is my assistant, and you will unhand her now.” She can feel herself being scanned, both officers instantly pulling up her credentials on their retinal displays. For several moments, no one moves. Not Ify, not Grace, not the police officers made of steel.
Then the officer holding Grace lets her go, and she falls onto the ground. “Grace Leung was found in violation of Article 263, subsection 10, of the penal code, relating to violations of memorial integrity—”
“Memorial integrity? What?”
“According to witness and surveillance reports. Punishment to comprise a fine of 250,000 naira or five years’ imprisonment—”
Grace lets out a whimper, and Ify shouts, “What?!”
“Subject to the ultimate judgment of the state magistrate.”
Outrage overpowers any fear Ify feels, and she raises herself up to the machine. “As Alabastrine officials, we are outside your jurisdiction and therefore not subject to your penal code.” She spits the words out, hating herself even as she does. What does she look like, using her status as an outsider to trample on her own country’s laws? Still, she looks around for anyone to stop and at least pay attention to the commotion. Someone to lend a hand or to record the encounter on a device in case anything were to happen. Someone to leap in and help. But it is as though she and Grace are invisible. As though there is no one but them and the police. Them and these machines.
The second officer, who has so far been quiet, puts a hand on the shoulder of the first, and the two exchange a wordless gaze, no doubt communicating an entire conversation between them. It shocks Ify to see so human a moment happen between the men, snapping the illusion that they are nothing more than chunks of unthinking metal.
When the first officer looks back, he seems to relax. “Enjoy your stay in Nigeria, Ms. Leung.” They turn, almost in unison, to walk away.
“My ID!” Grace shouts.
The first officer turns back around, fishes a card out of his pocket, and holds it out to Ify. By now, Grace is standing, if hunched over and brushing the dust off herself.
Ify snatches it out of the man’s hand and glares at him, unblinking, until the two officers vanish into the crowd.
When Ify is certain they’re out of earshot, she whirls around. “What were you thinking? Are you stupid? Are you trying to get us killed? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?” It’s as though so much of the anger she’s tried to suppress is now spilling out of her. She catches herself when Grace’s composure breaks and her bottom lip begins trembling.