Still, Xifeng refuses to move.
Ify marches to her, grabs her by the scruff of her collar, then hauls her to her feet. Xifeng’s face is twisted in determination. Ify knows where she’s seen that expression before. Walking through the detention center, looking into the cells at the captured enemy combatants. The thought flits through Ify that any number of them could have been innocent children caught in a sweep or the object of some feud an officer or soldier had with someone. She’s also seen that look on dying soldiers who clung to their weapons even as their life bled out of them. At one point, she had worn that same expression on her face: when she had been so absorbed in her mission of vengeance that she had helped bring about a terrorist attack that had killed over a hundred people and restarted a civil war. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what, Ify?” Xifeng asks in a steely, knowing voice.
“The virus. Where is it?” She presses the pistol to Xifeng’s forehead.
“You mean the antivirus.”
“Xifeng, this stops. Now. You’re beaten. Give up.” She presses the pistol harder. “I stopped you.” When Xifeng doesn’t move, Ify grits her teeth. “Are you happy? Have you seen what you’ve done? There have got to be at least a hundred people dead above us right now. And counting. Tearing each other to pieces over nothing! Over things nobody cared about until you forced them to. You did this, Xifeng. You’re oyinbo, and I will not let you destroy this country.”
“I’m not destroying this country, child. I’m saving it.” Her face softens. “Look at you. Look at what you’ve become.” She says it without malice. Ify hears admiration in her voice. Wonder. “The look on your face, the straightness of your limbs, the strength in your bearing. Walking through the fires of Abuja to get here, that was your transformation. You are beautiful. Hardened, strong, healed.”
Tears spring without warning to Ify’s eyes. “I am not healed, Xifeng!” Her bottom lip quivers. “I’m not.” Her gun hand shakes. “It . . . it still hurts.” It comes out as a squeak. A pitiful, mournful squeak, and Ify hates it—hates it with all her heart—but she can’t fight it. “It hurts so much.” Her world blurs behind a film of tears. “Why did you make me do this?” Even as she asks it, she knows the answer. Xifeng has told her a number of times what her mission was. But maybe if Xifeng sees right in front of her the evidence of what her plan has wrought, if she has to feel in her fingers and see with her eyes the blood and smoke that has happened because of her, if, somehow, all of the death and destruction is made real for her, then maybe she’ll give up. Maybe she’ll relent.
Maybe she will admit she was wrong.
Nothing in Xifeng’s expression changes. Her posture remains the same. Chin held defiantly high, eyes locked onto Ify’s, arms loose yet secure at her sides.
“Xifeng, what happened? How did you . . . how did you become this? You used to help bring refugees to safety. You were about peace. And bringing resources to help those in need. You were helping!”
“Things were different during the ceasefire. When war returned, everything changed.”
“This isn’t my fault,” Ify hisses, suddenly angry again. “All of this, everything going on above us, this is not my fault.”
“If those suicide bombers hadn’t followed you to Enugu five years ago, there’d still be peace.”
“How dare you,” Ify hisses through her teeth. Before she knows what she’s doing, she has her gun hand raised. Just as she’s about to hit Xifeng, she sees out of the corner of her eye a numbers display. The numbers blaze as though counting down to something. That’s it. There it is. The virus is being uploaded.
Xifeng follows Ify’s eyes. Then Ify aims her gun at the display. Xifeng grabs her and tries to wrestle her away, kicks her legs out from under her. Ify falls onto Xifeng. They twist and roll over. Xifeng knocks Ify’s gun out of Ify’s hands. It clatters against the metal hemisphere. Ify kicks Xifeng away and dives for the gun. Xifeng grabs her by the ankle and pulls her back. Ify twists and kicks at Xifeng, but Xifeng grabs her leg and twists as though to snap it. Ify rolls out of her grip and traps Xifeng with her legs, ankles crossed at her neck. And squeezes. Ify can feel Xifeng’s body tightening, spasming, from the lack of air. Before Ify can react, Xifeng pulls a knife from her belt and stabs Ify’s leg. Ify lets out a cry and lets go. Xifeng pulls out the small knife then leaps at Ify and falls on top of her. Ify blocks the strike with her forearms. Pain blossoms anew in her left shoulder. The knife’s edge inches closer and closer to Ify’s chest. Spittle drops onto Ify’s face. She’s losing strength.
Closer.
Closer.
Ify shifts, dodges the knife as it clangs against the metal of the walkway. In the next instant, she rams her elbow into Xifeng’s temple. Xifeng staggers across the platform, shaking the dizziness out of her head. Ify charges her, crashing into her middle and driving her away from hemisphere until they smash into the railing and Xifeng screams in pain. Xifeng leans back, holding Ify tight, pulling them both over the edge. Ify’s heart leaps into her throat. The air turns dangerously around her as she feels herself go over. At the last moment, she catches the edge of the walkway. Already, her sweat-slick fingers are slipping. Xifeng hangs on to Ify’s boot. Below them is a chasm. A part of the facility where not even the light can reach.
Xifeng tries to climb up Ify’s leg with a grim expression on her face. And that’s what does it for Ify. There isn’t a hint of remorse. There is nothing she can do to change this woman’s mind. She’s lost.
“Remember the war, Ify. Remember the war. She lives—”
Tears leak down her face when she kicks at Xifeng once, twice, three times, then watches her fall away, growing smaller and smaller until there is no trace of her left.
With the last of her strength, Ify pulls herself up onto the walkway and rolls onto her back, heaving several mountainous breaths.
She crawls to her feet, then staggers over to the display she saw earlier, picking up her pistol on the way. When she arrives, she sees the progress bar nearly filled. Close by lies a hard drive, connected to a router broadcasting directly into the hemisphere. Ify takes aim and shoots the hard drive. Then, for good measure, she shoots the router. When she gets closer to the hard drive, she sees a small protrusion. It looks like a miniature version of the hemisphere attached to the drive. Something like the Bonder Ify would sometimes slip over her ears to connect to her devices. The answer to so many of her questions lies before her now with smoke issuing from its bullet hole. So much chaos over so small a piece of technology. Within that drive is the coding that would have destroyed an entire country.
Ify nudges it with her feet over the side of the walkway and watches the thing plummet deeper and deeper and deeper into the abyss. Where no one will ever see it again.