The van stops. No one removes the sound blockers or the glasses or the bag from Ify. Instead, they pull her out of the vehicle. She stumbles over roots and giant leaves and nearly runs into the person leading her when they stop.

Through the bag, a breeze brushes Ify’s cheeks. Then, her wrists are freed. Bit by bit, her makeshift cage is dismantled. The sound blockers, the glasses, the bag.

When Ify’s eyes adjust, she finds herself near a cliff’s edge. Scrub dots the outcropping, which looks like a giant beak. Ngozi puts the retractable restraints in her knapsack, then turns to head toward the outcropping. Even from this distance, Ify can see a sniper rifle positioned near the cliff’s edge, along with padding to provide comfort for someone who expects to occupy that post for a very long time. If Ify squints, she thinks she even spots the leftover wrappers of used steroid packets. She’s about to ask where Grace is when her assistant emerges from the forest behind her.

“Bathroom,” Grace says before gingerly touching the sealed forehead wound. It looks like someone applied defective MeTro sealant, because a trace of the wound still remains, and it’s clear to Ify that the pain lingers too. “Where are we?”

Ify looks around, squinting. She feels her temple, but her Whistle isn’t there. And she has no way of connecting to her bodysuit to activate any of its functionality. It’s as though everything that allowed her contact with the outside world has been turned off. “I don’t know.”

Ngozi packs up her rifle, hefts the shortened thing against her shoulder, and heads back in their direction. “Follow me,” she says, leading them deep into the forest. Fireflies blink their bodies at them. The sounds here have different texture. The crickets chirping, owls hooting, even the occasional faraway grunt of a shorthorn. Something subterranean in her stirs, and sensations swim back and forth behind her eyes: the smell of rain-turned soil, the lowing of half-mech beasts, the spray of water in a greenhouse. The camp. The camp where Onyii had raised her as a Biafran War Girl, where Onyii and the others had meticulously built the lie that Ify was one of them, that she belonged on their side of the war. Why does this place remind me of that camp?

“Watch out for the wulfu,” Ngozi cautions without lowering her voice. “The babies may not have teeth, but their claws grow early. And they’ll tear their food apart with their paws just to make it chewable.”

Grace blanches, but then Ify realizes why the sounds and smells of this place are so evocative. They’re real. She’d spent so long in Alabast, among false sounds and false light and false smells, that she’d forgotten what real animals sounded like, what real night felt like on your skin.