She walks and walks until she finds the cliffside where she used to spend so much time with Enyemaka. The android, when Onyii and Chinelo had first built it, didn’t speak at all, just did as commanded. Then they programmed it to speak, but it would only respond with yes and no. If Ify wanted to do something she wasn’t supposed to, Enyemaka would block her path, too hard to hit or move. Then the more nanobots Onyii injected into it, the more its voice started to change. And it would respond to Ify, and then it began to joke, and then it started to sound like Onyii. Like a kinder, less wounded version of Onyii. Onyii if she had known anything other than war. Enyemaka had slowly turned from it to she.
And she had spent her very last moments crouched over Onyii like a shield, after she had tossed Ify free of the blast from a synth suicide bomber.
Ify sits on the grass. As soon as she does, a breeze wafts through the camp. After the blood and dust that had covered her in Enugu, after the ever-present chill of her prison cell and the torture from her interrogator, this is the kindest thing that has touched her skin.
She lets her eyes drift closed. The breeze grows fiercer. On the winds, Ify hears a noise: jet propulsion engines. She listens for what will inevitably follow.
CHAPTER
59
The laser speeds toward Onyii.
Just as the laser reaches her, she leaps into the air, adjusts course, then rides just above the laser beam, sword pointed at her target. She strikes, but only hits his arm. He skids away, kicking up a cloud of dust. His laser cannon, pierced through by Onyii’s sword, lies at her feet. Onyii pries her sword loose, then faces Daren, who she can tell is gazing at her in wonder, trying to figure out how she can move so fast.
She dashes toward him. He raises his shield just in time to catch her. She pushes him back, each swing denting his shield. The sound booms over the plain.
He spins himself in a half-circle, taking the hammer attached to his back, and swings with full torque. Onyii absorbs the blow with her shield, but it sends her clear over the plain. She flips herself and lands on her feet, skidding back. Her sword tearing through the ground until she comes to a stop.
She flies forward. Daren rushes to meet her. Their weapons clash, sword against hammer. They hold, then break away, then clash again. Spinning. Onyii braces herself with her other hand as Daren spins them around. He angles up. Onyii sees it too late. Daren spins her into the ground. Dirt erupts around her. Her cockpit shudders. Daren raises his hammer and plunges it down. Onyii powers her thrusters to lift her up, then backward, just out of the way of his strike.
When she’s standing again, her sword is gone. She looks around for it, then sees it a mile off in the direction of the Nigerian mechs. She speeds off toward it, away from Daren. But just as she reaches it, a spearhead attached to a winding cord strikes it out of reach, pinging it behind enemy lines. The cord writhes and wraps around her wrist. It’s attached to Daren.
The cable retracts, pulling her along. She engages her thrusters, trying to pull back. She grips the cable with her free hand, and they’re stuck. But she’s slowly losing, inching closer and closer. Until Daren speeds toward her, the cable slackening, falling off. Onyii skids to the side just as Daren swings his hammer, smashing through several Green-and-Whites, tearing them in half as though they were paper. The pilots’ cries fill the air. Onyii raises her shield to catch another hammer blow, then another, then another. He swings again. She times her spin so that she can grab his arm. Just as she goes to tear through it with her hand, he vaults into the air, using his hammer as a pole, and kicks her away. She stabilizes in the air. He pulls his spiked hammer from the ground and charges again.
What?
She looks behind her. The full weight of Daren’s hammer crashes into her back. Her entire world goes white with pain. She hears her ammo pack crunching behind her as a series of explosions spin her forward and propel her to the ground, then bounce her off into the air. Each one damages her further. She spins without control. Her monitors fritz with static before going dark.
When she finally rolls to a stop, she coughs blood onto her console. Another hammer blow sends her spinning into the air. She hears his jets flare again before yet another hammer blow sends her crashing into the ground. She’s defenseless.
His hand jams onto her mech’s head and squeezes. Glass breaks, gears snap.
She lies limp in her seat.
“You Biafrans,” Daren hisses through Onyii’s comms. She can’t see his face, only hear the venom in his voice. “So easily duped. So easily manipulated. So stupid.” He slowly crushes her head. “Even your precious little Ify. She had no idea we were tracking her.” He chuckles. “No need to worry about me betraying my plan to the others. Only you can hear me. During her captivity, we injected her with a tracking device, knowing that she would lead us to you. You see, all that time she was with us, we were grooming her for her true purpose: bringing down your foolish little nation. Then, when we were done, we could wipe our hands of her. And she led us straight to you. All our bombers rode the caravans with her. So know that nowhere are you safe. You can never escape us. We will crush you.” He pushes harder. Stone grinds against stone as a crater forms around Amadioha’s head. “Attack the Biafrans, draw out their warrior, then cut the head off the snake, and you played into our trap perfectly.” He flips his hammer in his free hand and raises it. Its spiked head blots out the sun.
“More,” Onyii growls, hungry.
Daren pauses.
It stirs inside Onyii. That energy, that fury. It bangs itself against the cage around her heart, but now she opens the gate. She has nothing holding her back. There is only this. This fight. This act. This moment. “More.”
Energy and information gush through the cables attaching Onyii’s neural network to Amadioha. Blood spills from her nose.
“More.”
Cracked, external plates break off from Amadioha, revealing more of its metal rib cage and the inner machinery of its arms. One arm folds at the elbow. The Gatling gun fires, knocking Daren off-balance. Onyii spins to her feet and charges after Daren, who has sped backward. His speartail ejects from the back of his Igwe. As she chases him, the spearhead darts at her, trying to pierce her mech’s frame. She dodges to the left. Dodges to the right. It moves faster and faster, but she beats it every time. It darts for her head, and she grabs the cable just behind it and flies even faster.
Daren twists at the waist, ready to spin and swing, but Onyii dodges, and Daren twirls himself into the trap, wrapped up in his own cable, arms pinned to his sides. Onyii grips the cable with both hands, twisting it around her forearm. She pulls tighter. Bolts of lightning shoot up and down the arms of Daren’s Igwe. Tighter. He drops his hammer to the ground. Tighter. The metal arm plating cracks. Tighter.
The Igwe’s engines burst, and the metal that had folded like wings on its back flare open, snapping the cable. Daren turns around and fires missiles at her. Onyii flies backward, but the missiles are too fast. She fires from her Gatling guns. The explosion engulfs her. Her cockpit screens show her nothing but flames. A panel of glass cracks. But when the smoke clears, she is still standing.
Blood leaks from her nose down to her chin.
She licks her lips. “More.”
Onyii charges forward. Daren grabs the hammer and swings upward. Amadioha digs its fingers into the ground and spins around, then grabs the insides of Daren’s wings and pulls, ripping them off the Igwe’s back. She kicks Daren forward. Daren swings again. But too slow. Onyii catches the blow with one wing and, using the other, pierces Daren’s arm at the elbow. It sparks with electricity until Onyii drops the shield in her free hand and grabs the arm holding the hammer and yanks it free.
“More,” she whispers.
Daren grabs for her with the other hand, but she grabs that and slams Daren to the ground, driving the wing she’s holding straight through his bicep.
Daren’s Igwe squirms and writhes beneath Onyii. She kicks him over so that he’s staring up at her, armless. Her chest shudders with each breath she takes.
It’s done.
“You will never find her, and you will never have peace,” Daren manages to sneer through bloodstained teeth. “Even after I am gone, we shall war until we destroy you.”
Onyii looks down on him. “I have no need for peace.” She raises the shield with both hands and drives it straight through the Igwe’s breastplate.
After a moment, the light in Daren’s Igwe dies.
Calm settles over the plain. Craters pockmark the ground. Smoke billows from them. Onyii bows her head. Her nose has stopped bleeding. When she opens her eyes, her vision blurs. Static fritzes the world around her. Her Augmented eye. It’s busted.
She hears a steady beeping coming from below. Daren’s Igwe. A red light glows on and off, on and off. His comms channel is still open, and she sees on his screen a map. The dot on the map moves slightly, then stops.
Onyii registers no surprise, no shock, no reaction. She knows what this means. With one hand, she grips the head of Daren’s Igwe. Metal grinds against metal, cables snap, then the head comes loose. She holds it in her hand. It will lead her to where she needs to go.
Without sparing another look at the destroyed mech beneath her or the army arrayed behind her, she bursts into the sky, heading south.
* * *
By the time Onyii lands in the forest clearing, it’s night, and Amadioha’s left arm has come loose. Upon contact with the soil, the jolt shakes it further, and it hangs by a few cables before those snap and the arm falls to the ground with a heavy thud.
The cockpit opens up. A breeze kisses Onyii’s cheeks. She closes her eyes against it, then shakes herself awake. The trees of the forest blur together. With her human arm, she fishes around for more steroid packets. Her fingers alight on one. She’s barely able to bring it to her mouth, but she manages to get the thing in her teeth. With a jerk of her head, she rips it open and swallows the juices. They stream down her chin, but the foul-tasting elixir burns her throat and sends fire back into her veins. Her vision clears.
She inputs a sequence on her console, and Amadioha folds in on itself, lowering her to the ground. She disconnects, wires snapping back into place in her headrest, and climbs out of the cockpit. When she sets foot on the grassland, she topples over but catches herself just in time.
She coughs, then spits blood into the elephant grass.
Unconnected, her metal arm hangs useless at her side. But she is able to hold her pistol in her human hand, and that’s all that matters.
Slowly, with halting but determined steps, she makes her way out of forest and into the camp. It lies more disfigured and broken than she remembers. But nearly half a decade has passed, and the jungle hasn’t yet overtaken the place. Vines wrap around the remains of buildings that were once schools and medical clinics, recreation spaces and the armory, the mess hall and the library. And elephant grass tickles the husk that had once been their Terminal. Only a nub of their Obelisk is left.
She walks through it all, but no memories come to her. She half expects them, but there is only silence. No crackling from dying fires. No sparks flying from damaged machinery. No squish of her boots in pools of ash and mud. Even the wind that bends the grass makes no noise. She sees footprints in the sand, but she knows they don’t belong to anyone she would recognize. Those people are either dead or gone. Swallowed up by the war that has just spat her out. She walks and walks and walks.
She knows where the homing beacon is leading her. Can picture the spot perfectly.
And when she arrives, she sees her sitting on the edge of the cliff overlooking the beach.
She flicks the safety off her pistol. The girl at the cliff’s edge doesn’t move.
Doesn’t make a sound, even as Onyii presses the barrel of the gun to the back of Ify’s head.
CHAPTER
60
“Get up.”
It takes Ify a moment to register the voice. She had been so ready for this moment. Yet it still surprises her. She comes to her feet. Her hands shake at her sides, but she clenches them into fists. She can’t waver now. Not when everything that has happened has finally caught up to her. The murder of her family, her life with the Biafran War Girls, her kidnapping, her time with the Nigerians overseeing the detention of children dubbed “enemy combatants,” her time in prison when she had lived as an accused traitor, her attempted assassination of the person who had slaughtered her family. All of it has been leading to this moment. This moment when she is adrift, belonging to no one and nowhere. On her own. Neither Biafran nor Nigerian. Just Ify.
“Turn around.”
Ify does as ordered.
What she sees is a shell of a person. Blood has dried in streams over Onyii’s face. Her plaited hair is a frayed and reddened mess around her cheeks and down past her shoulders. Her shirt is torn in places. Her right arm hangs limp against her side. She is slightly crouched, one leg bent awkwardly beneath her. Her gun arm shakes. The pistol wavers but never loses sight of Ify.
For several seconds, they stand in silence, facing each other.
“Did you know?” Onyii hisses through her teeth. Her right eye flickers on and off.
“Know what?”
“That they were tracking you?”
So that’s how it happened. Ify had led the shaheed straight to Enugu. Straight through the security checkpoint. She feels a twinge of regret but smothers it. She had not meant for all of that death. But it can’t be helped now. She can’t go back in time. What’s done is done. “No,” she says to Onyii. “I didn’t know.” She glares at Onyii. “But it doesn’t matter.”
Onyii looks taken aback for a second before reasserting herself.
“Revenge is revenge.”
“Revenge? For what?”
“So you do not even remember.” Ify trembles with fury. When Onyii is still silent, Ify makes to take a step forward, but stops herself. She takes several deep breaths, calms herself down. “I suppose you were just following orders.” She spits that last part out like venom.
Onyii’s gun hand wavers.
“You did it. You came to a village in Abia State. You murdered my family. Then you kidnapped me. That’s where I came from, isn’t it?”
Onyii’s arm trembles. For nearly a minute, she holds the gun to Ify’s forehead. But she doesn’t pull the trigger. Then her hand falls to her side. The gun dangles from her fingers before landing softly in the grass.
Tears well in Ify’s eyes. “Why couldn’t you just kill me?” Her bottom lip trembles. “Why couldn’t you let me be with my parents?”
“Ify, I—”
“My family!” Ify shrieks. “You took my family from me! And you lied to me. My whole life, a lie!” She lashes out at Onyii, cracks her across the face with her fist.
Onyii doesn’t move, merely takes the blow. She doesn’t even stagger backward.
Ify looks and sees that she didn’t even bruise the young woman she had once called her sister. But then she sees the way her metal arm hangs at her side and the way her legs bend beneath her and the way blood has crusted on her body, and she knows that no blow from her could match the damage she has endured at the hands of others.
Onyii continues to look away, no expression on her face. There’s a terrifying dullness in her eyes, as though she’s not really there.
Ify picks the gun up off the ground and holds it out to Onyii. “So do it. Send me to them. I have nowhere else to go.” When Onyii doesn’t move, Ify grabs Onyii’s human hand and thrusts the gun into it, then raises Onyii’s hand to her forehead, cold gun barrel pressed against her skin. “Do it. Do this one last thing. All you can do is kill.” Ify spits the words out. “Kill me, then. This dirty Nigerian. Send me to heaven. Or to hell, wherever Biafrans think I’m
supposed to go.” She jams the gun harder against her forehead. “Do it,” she hisses. “Do it!” Nothing from Onyii. “DO IT!”
But Onyii’s hand falls away. She turns and begins walking. “No more,” she whispers.
“Wait. What are you doing? Come back here! Onyii! ONYII! Come back here and do it!”
Onyii keeps walking until she vanishes from sight.
Ify chases after her and follows her into the forest, tripping over exposed roots and getting cut by thorned vines. She stops when she sees Onyii at the edge of a clearing, staring up at her beaten and battered Igwe. In its condensed form, it looks more like plates of metal stitched together than anything resembling a mech.
Ify creeps closer.
She gets to within a dozen paces of Onyii when Onyii says, “I’m done.” Onyii turns to face Ify. “I’m done killing.” She uses her human hand to cradle her metal arm. “If you want someone to put a bullet in you, find someone else.” Then she walks away.
Before she’s out of sight, wind buffets them. Tree branches sway. Grass parts. The sound of propellers cuts through the silence.
Spotlights shine down on the two of them, sweeping in small arcs.
“Ifeoma Diallo, surrender your weapons now!” comes the booming voice from a loudspeaker in one of the aircraft above.
Ify squints. The insignia of the Biafran flag is painted on its wings.
“You are under arrest!”
Soldiers clad in black emerge from the forest with their rifles pointed at her. They come from all sides. Onyii stares dead-eyed at Ify the entire time.
Ify growls, feels herself glowing with anger. But she wonders what she’s angry at. That Onyii couldn’t bring herself to admit to her crime? That she could not kill Onyii and truly avenge her family’s murder? Or that she was denied her glorious death?
War Girls Page 32
