She doesn’t realize how tightly she’s holding on to her hope until after the maglev jeep has veered into new flightlines, taking them a few silent hours through part of Nasarawa State and Kogi State before bringing them to near-empty country roads, flanked occasionally by villages or a single solar-paneled dwelling. Their jeep then soars over the treetops of nearby jungle, and memory of the journey returns to Ify. Riding in the back of a jeep with Agu, Xifeng’s trailer behind them. Refugees either on or beside the caravan, walking with it, dancing with it, clinging to it. Ify presses herself against the window to witness the changing of the landscape, to see the snaking road the caravan had taken five years earlier. They continue, and she angles her face to see if they’ll be coming up on the converted remains of the refugee intake center she had passed through all those years ago.

“Take us down,” Ify says. “Take us down now.” She doesn’t care how urgent she sounds, how unhinged. She doesn’t care that she’s forcing the driver to break several traffic laws in descending as swiftly and as directly as he’s doing. But soon, the jeep is hovering only a foot over a patch of empty grass before lowering onto its absorbers.

Ify struggles against the door, then bursts out and runs into what she sees now is an empty field. Wind turbines spin lazily before her, well in the distance. She runs forward until she’s in the midst of them and whirls around. This has to be some illusion. This was where she and the other refugees had passed through. This was the spot. She is certain. But she looks, and everywhere she looks, she sees a lie. Clean air and soft breeze and verdant plain and clear sky. All of it a lie.

“No,” she whispers, over and over, looking desperately for something to tell her she’s right. “No. No, no, no, no.” Rage fills her. “WHERE IS IT?” she screams to the sky, before collapsing.

She feels Grace at her side, face close to hers, hand on her back, trying to soothe her rage away.

“It was here” is all Ify can say. “It was right here.” The rage collapses. Only numbness is left. “I was a refugee, and there was an intake station right here. All of us, we went through it. They gave us blankets, processed us, put us in the database so that we could be reunited with any living family. They . . . they gave us food. And showers and . . .” A sob catches in her throat. “It was right here.” The fingers of her right hand fumble for the button on the neck of her bodysuit, which she presses, sending chemicals into her bloodstream, slowing her heart rate, dulling the pain constricting her chest. Fog clears from her mind.