“I’m all right,” Ify says quietly, smoothing the wrinkles out of Grace’s sleeves. She notes that her assistant’s face and part of her clothes are still marred with soot. And her eyes are bloodshot. Her hands tremble from adrenaline. She hasn’t slept. “When I get out of here—”

A shadow passes by her door, then it slides open.

Ify frowns at the nurse who walks in. The uniform doesn’t fit. The pantlegs are too long. The sleeves cling to muscled arms. Loose braids are poorly stuffed into the cap that sits on her head. And she moves too fast. The look she gives Grace is almost a glare.

“You have to leave.”

Ify raises a hand to the nurse. “No, she stays. She’s my—”

“I don’t care if she is your shadow. She must leave. Now.”

Ify rises on her elbows to protest further, but Grace stands to her full height and nods reassurance at Ify, a nod that tells her she’ll be back.

“It’s okay,” Grace says before leaving. The door whispers shut behind her.

Without a word, the nurse is behind Ify, out of her line of sight, and Ify can hear fingers fast at work, disconnecting the wires from her helmet.

“Wait, what are you do—” The helmet comes loose. She tries to sit up, but dizziness pins her back into the mattress. “What’s going on?”

The nurse has her head bowed as she works, first settling the helmet in place behind Ify, then pulling something out from under Ify’s bed that folds out into a hovering stretcher. “We don’t have much time. I need you to do exactly as I say.”

“No. Tell me what’s happening.”

The nurse looks Ify in the face, and that’s when Ify notices the scars. Tribal marks but also other brandings. There’s no order to them; those came at a later date. The doctor in Ify notes the way the tissue has reformed, the jagged edges. Their shapes speak to her. They tell her that these scars didn’t come from marking ceremonies. They came from bullets and knives and shrapnel. Ify realizes with a start that this is the very first face she’s seen since arriving that feels like it belongs to a previous time, a period in Nigeria when there was war, a period in time that holds the secrets she’s been looking for. This nurse is a veteran.

“Who are you?”

The nurse raises the stretcher. “My name is Ngozi. I don’t have time to tell you more. The secret police will be back, and when they return, there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

“Save me? Save me from what?”

“From having your memories erased.”

Ify shakes her head and instantly regrets it. “What? Why? What are you talking about?”