But Ify is still talking like she is never hearing me, and I am wondering if this is all something she has been wanting to say for a long time and is not finding chance to say until now. “The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there are two kinds of memory in our heads. There’s the one kind that debates with itself as to whether the sky had clouds in it or whether it was clear the afternoon of the drone strike. The kind where, by force of will, you’re able to place the detail, to put the puzzle pieces together. Then there’s the other kind. The kind that sneaks up on you. Or the kind that you stumble upon when you open an unfamiliar door in a hallway and find yourself in an open field, crouched before a hibiscus blossom.” She pauses and looks as though she is remembering where she is. Her friend, Grace, is looking at her strangely, with sadness but also pride. “I thought you and Agu were only capable of one type of memory. But I know the other type lives in you as well.” She is stopping, then closing her eyes, and I am feeling gratitude that she is finally shutting up. But then she is swaying back and forth in her seat, and I am squinting at her. Then I am seeing that her vital sign is changing and her body temperature is falling fast fast and her heart rate is slowing and slowing and if it is keeping like this, it will soon be stopping.
Ify falls over in her chair, and her body begins to shake. She spasms, then all the data in my retinal scan is telling me that her heart has stopped beating.
Grace is screaming, but I am not hearing it. It is like her mouth is being covered by gauze or like cotton is being stuffed into my ears. I am hearing no thing, but people are running past me to see what is happening to Ify, and I am not being able to move, and I am wondering why I am not moving because I am often seeing dead body, but none of them are being Ify.
CHAPTER
37
Even though they are underground, Ify swears she can hear it. The crash of glass breaking, the whoosh of fires climbing up through the floors of office buildings, the shouting, the people falling from windows, the crying, homes collapsing into rubble, the fighting, the dying. She closes her eyes, bound to her chair, and can hear it all even louder, feel the heat of the fire on her face, smell the soot in the air, feel it choking her lungs. No. She’s remembering Enugu. The devastation that took that city hasn’t happened here yet. If Ify understands Xifeng’s plans properly, then the conflicts are in isolated pockets. Maybe specific neighborhoods, maybe in more than one city. But they should be small enough for the police to put down. But if Xifeng reaches the central nervous system running Nigeria’s net, the entire country will go up in flames.
Her bodysuit. Linked to her neural network.
She commands it to increase in temperature, and immediately, she begins to sweat. Her handcuffs, twisting her arms behind her chairback, grow slick over her wrists. An idea occurs to her. It could kill her, but she needs to get out of here, and she needs to disarm as many of these guards as possible. They may be hardened war veterans, trained to kill and maim and survive deprivation, but they won’t kill her. They can’t. She contains some of the last remaining memories of the Biafran War, and she’s not cyberized. If she dies, her memories die with her.
Her bodysuit’s temperature drops, and her body temperature follows suit. The plummet is precipitous, sudden, and sharp. Her heartbeat slows, slows even more, grows sluggish and soft. Her eyes roll back into her head, she pitches forward in her seat and grows limp.
The timing is everything. If they take too long to notice that her heart has stopped, it could damage her beyond repair. If she stops breathing completely for too long, the damage to her brain may be permanent. She drifts in and out of consciousness and makes a choking noise to draw their attention. Then her body lists sideways, and she and her chair topple loudly onto the ground. Puddle water splashes onto her face.
Her memory drifts back to Enugu. The taste and sound and smell of the world ending.
Everywhere, collapsed buildings. Food stalls, shopping malls, school halls. Fires rage. Bots fight to extinguish the blazes. People run, and traffic bots try to steer them. The katakata has disrupted the flight paths so that maglev cars and buses crash into each other, their burning shells littering the streets of Enugu.
Gritting her teeth, Ify pushes herself to her feet, and that’s when she notices her right arm hanging limp at her side.
A short distance down the way, flames lick the glass inside a fabrics store. The windows burst open. Ify skips into the front display and tears at a dress on a mannequin until she is able to rip off a long enough piece of cloth. Using her teeth, she ties a sling for her broken arm, then heads to the bus depot.
On the way, Ify sees the telltale marks of destruction. In open stretches of street, craters sit like perfectly formed half-circles in the concrete and metal. Towers stand with nearly entire spheres cut out of them. The bus depot is little more than shattered flexiglas and twisted metal.
Two guards rush over, and shouting fills the cave, but it reaches Ify’s ears as a muffled series of barking argument. The world begins to turn black. Shadows encroach from the corners of her vision. Hurry, hurry, hurry. She feels as though she’s swimming. It’s almost too late. She’ll lose control of her suit, and it will continue lowering her temperature until she’s an immovable block of ice, until the suit itself freezes its own controls. Fires rage in Enugu, but she feel so cold. Please hurry.
Her arms spring loose. Her cuffs are off. That’s it.
She lies on the ground, limp, tended to by the guards. One of them hauls her up by her shoulders, drapes one arm over her back, and begins to carry her forward while the other follows. Ify prays the guard won’t feel Ify’s body warming against her. Or that she’ll think it’s simply proximity to another person’s flesh and not the result of Ify manipulating the temperature of her bodysuit. Her fingers twitch, at first from reflex, then with her actual willpower. Strength is coming back.
When she’s ready, she slips from the grip of one of the guards, falls into a crouch, grabs the pistol at her waist, then shoots at one leg. When the guard screams and collapses, Ify pulls her body close, using it as a shield, then shooting the one behind her twice right in her bulletproof vest. The girl falls back, and Ify twists the girl she’s been using as a shield around and hits her once across the temple with her pistol, knocking her out. She crouches over the body, fishing through the pockets until she finds it: a small device, the size of her palm, like a bulubu ball cut in half. An EMP.
Just as she pulls it from the unconscious girl’s pocket, her eyes catch Uzo’s. Uzo, who has remained still this entire time. If Uzo hasn’t attacked them by now, maybe she’s willing to let them go. Maybe something Ify said made a difference, changed some of the synth’s thinking. Ify can’t take the chance. “I’m sorry,” Ify murmurs, cracking the device’s seal and slamming it onto the ground. The EMP detonates, and the blast hurls her and Grace backward, slams Uzo into the far wall, and sends the sound of frying circuits and breaking light bulbs echoing down each tunnel.