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 tabletop 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.