Ify does as ordered, and a moment later, they’re out in the hallway, Grace in a hoverchair behind them, pushed forward by an attendant.
As soon as they leave the room, Ify notices the differences in the atmosphere. She notices which nurses and hospital personnel only try to look the part, those who don’t fit all the way into their disguises. She notices how they position themselves in the hallway, some of them ready to run interference should the need arise, some of them making sure every available entrance and exit is within their sightlines to take on enemies. There’s an operation under way, and she’s at the center of it.
Outside a back entrance, she and Grace are loaded into a MedTransport that only goes a short distance before, suddenly, the van stops and masked people with pistols at their hips snatch Ify from the stretcher. One of them fits cloth tightly around her eyes, then seals it with a tinted visor. Someone else attaches beads to her temple that instantly block out all sound. Another binds her wrists in front of her with zip ties that automatically slam her fists together. Then she’s bundled into what she thinks is the back of another van. Though she can see and hear nothing, she feels every bump in the road, every sharp turn, every time something thwacks against the vehicle’s frame. Unable to perceive her surroundings, she has no idea how much time has passed. A familiar feeling creeps into her, the claustrophobia that suffocated her when she was once a prisoner of war held in a cell she could walk across in three steps. She fights the feeling. These people aren’t going to kill her. They’ve rescued her. There’s the possibility that she’s been lied to, that the men in the black kaftans and with the false faces were there to protect her from exactly the kind of people that have Ify trussed up in the back of a van. But Ify has no choice now. She’s in the hands of this Ngozi. Who invoked Onyii’s name. A name Ify hasn’t heard in nearly five years. Once she’d adjusted and began her new life, Ify had hoped never to hear that name again. She realizes she still hasn’t forgiven Onyii for abandoning her all those years ago. She’s gone through every possible scenario in her head, tried to reason through every possible rationale that Onyii could have had for leaving her like that. And they’ve all failed in the face of Ify’s logic. Back then, she’d wanted nothing more than to see her sister again, to hear her voice, to be held in her arms. When it became clear to Ify that Onyii was never going to come, Ify had done everything in her power to purge Onyii from her mind, to leave her behind, to craft a new self that would never need someone as desperately as she had once needed Onyii.
Is this what Céline had meant? Are you avoiding a solution because you have to walk through some pain to get there? Céline had asked.
That’s when Ify determines that she will follow this path wherever it leads. If it means a cure for the refugee children in Alabast, then she will do this. Enough resisting. The detention center, that girl who had embraced her, Onyii. So far, Ify has been pushing all of these things apart in her mind, only willing to deal with each thing as it arose. But maybe they’re all connected.
The van stops. No one removes the sound blockers or the glasses or the bag from Ify. Instead, they pull her out of the vehicle. She stumbles over roots and giant leaves and nearly runs into the person leading her when they stop.
Through the bag, a breeze brushes Ify’s cheeks. Then, her wrists are freed. Bit by bit, her makeshift cage is dismantled. The sound blockers, the glasses, the bag.
When Ify’s eyes adjust, she finds herself near a cliff’s edge. Scrub dots the outcropping, which looks like a giant beak. Ngozi puts the retractable restraints in her knapsack, then turns to head toward the outcropping. Even from this distance, Ify can see a sniper rifle positioned near the cliff’s edge, along with padding to provide comfort for someone who expects to occupy that post for a very long time. If Ify squints, she thinks she even spots the leftover wrappers of used steroid packets. She’s about to ask where Grace is when her assistant emerges from the forest behind her.
“Bathroom,” Grace says before gingerly touching the sealed forehead wound. It looks like someone applied defective MeTro sealant, because a trace of the wound still remains, and it’s clear to Ify that the pain lingers too. “Where are we?”
Ify looks around, squinting. She feels her temple, but her Whistle isn’t there. And she has no way of connecting to her bodysuit to activate any of its functionality. It’s as though everything that allowed her contact with the outside world has been turned off. “I don’t know.”
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.