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—”
A shadow passes by her door, then it slides open.
Ify frowns at the nurse who walks in. The uniform doesn’t fit. The pantlegs are too long. The sleeves cling to muscled arms. Loose braids are poorly stuffed into the cap that sits on her head. And she moves too fast. The look she gives Grace is almost a glare.
“You have to leave.”
Ify raises a hand to the nurse. “No, she stays. She’s my—”
“I don’t care if she is your shadow. She must leave. Now.”
Ify rises on her elbows to protest further, but Grace stands to her full height and nods reassurance at Ify, a nod that tells her she’ll be back.
“It’s okay,” Grace says before leaving. The door whispers shut behind her.
Without a word, the nurse is behind Ify, out of her line of sight, and Ify can hear fingers fast at work, disconnecting the wires from her helmet.
“Wait, what are you do—” The helmet comes loose. She tries to sit up, but dizziness pins her back into the mattress. “What’s going on?”
The nurse has her head bowed as she works, first settling the helmet in place behind Ify, then pulling something out from under Ify’s bed that folds out into a hovering stretcher. “We don’t have much time. I need you to do exactly as I say.”
“No. Tell me what’s happening.”
The nurse looks Ify in the face, and that’s when Ify notices the scars. Tribal marks but also other brandings. There’s no order to them; those came at a later date. The doctor in Ify notes the way the tissue has reformed, the jagged edges. Their shapes speak to her. They tell her that these scars didn’t come from marking ceremonies. They came from bullets and knives and shrapnel. Ify realizes with a start that this is the very first face she’s seen since arriving that feels like it belongs to a previous time, a period in Nigeria when there was war, a period in time that holds the secrets she’s been looking for. This nurse is a veteran.
“Who are you?”
The nurse raises the stretcher. “My name is Ngozi. I don’t have time to tell you more. The secret police will be back, and when they return, there will be nothing I can do to save you.”
“Save me? Save me from what?”
“From having your memories erased.”
Ify shakes her head and instantly regrets it. “What? Why? What are you talking about?”
“Your name is Ifeoma Diallo. You served as an aide to mobile pilot Shehu Daren Suleiman Sékou Diallo of the Nigerian Armed Forces Mobile Defense Unit. Before that, you lived with the Biafrans in the secessionist republic. And after the ceasefire was broken, you were sent to the Space Colonies, where you were successfully granted asylum.”
Shock paralyzes Ify. “How do you . . .”
“I served in the war with your sister, Onyii. That is all I can say for now. And if you don’t get on this stretcher right this instant and let me get you out of here, the men who came here earlier will return and remove every single memory of Onyii that you possess.”
CHAPTER
28
We are all of us sitting in semicircle while Xifeng is in front of us with large cave wall behind her. There are some of the girls who attacked the police station with us and they are sprinkling themself throughout us so that red-blood and Augment and child of war is all sitting together. And some of the red-blood is drinking palm wine to be staying warm but also because they are thinking it is tasting good. But we are all looking to Xifeng like she is leader of us all. Something inside me is wanting to be calling her Commandant, then I remember that Commandant is making me to be killing and maiming and shooting gun, and Xifeng is making me to be doing none of these thing. I am wanting to be calling her Father, but person I am calling Father is also making me to be killing and maiming and shooting gun. Xifeng is making me to be doing none of these thing. So I am searching in my rememberings and looking for someone who is doing what Xifeng is doing now, which is tell story in soft voice almost like she is singing. It is story of her family, and she is saying it with thing in her voice that I am knowing is love. And I am looking in my remembering for other person who is doing this thing, and people are calling her Mother, so when I am looking to Xifeng, I am calling her Mother too.
“It started with an application on her phone,” Xifeng is saying. “Long ago, in ancient times, before mass net connectivity, people used their mobile phones to communicate. They were devices the size of my palm.” She holds up her left hand and points to her lined palm. “And everything that you can do”—she points to the children of war—“these phones could do. This woman’s name was Meryem. On her phone were a number of applications, and what they allowed her to do was share. She loved to take pictures of her children”—Xifeng mimes using an old digital camera—“to send to her friends and family. She would send a picture, and next to the picture—or beneath it, depending on the phone—she would attach an emoji.” Xifeng pushes a button on the Augment wrapped around her wrist and connected to the Bonder at her temples, and a blue hologram of a crude yellow face rises from her palm. First, it is smiling, then it is frowning, then it is winking, then it is winking and sticking its tongue out, then it is opening its mouth like it is scared, then it is sadding, and the face is changing and changing and Xifeng is showing us this thing, and some of the girl that is with us is laughing while other is having face like stone. Xifeng presses the button, and the hologram disappears. “She would send these pictures of her children most of all to her husband, who often traveled for work. They lived in Xinjiang, an oasis in the northwest of Earthland China, and theirs was a lovely and simple life.
“Then Meryem downloaded WeChat. It allowed her to send these pictures to even more people using her phone. Now she could show pictures of her children to all those relatives scattered across the globe.
“What people like Meryem all over the world did not realize was that these applications—these things on your phone— were watching you. So when Meryem downloaded WeChat, rumors began to circulate that the Earthland Chinese government was using the application to watch its citizens, specifically Uyghur Muslims like Meryem.
“Then the police began to visit the office of Meryem’s husband. Then they began to visit the schools of her children and her friends’ children. Then they came to visit Meryem’s house. Her husband shaved his beard. Meryem stopped wearing her hijab when outside.”