Ngozi snorts. “Is that how they talk up there?” She raises a finger lazily, pointing at a place worlds away. And Ify realizes in that moment just how far she is from home. She wants to tell this woman to answer the question, but the memory of her minders dying is still fresh and she can’t bring herself to issue commands. So instead, she lets the emotion play on her face. Please, she asks with her eyes. So Ngozi says, “They deemed you a contagion risk. I’m sure they were tracking your movements as soon as you arrived in Nigeria. We found you only because they were looking. And they would have gotten to you had we not lucked into your location at that police station.”

“You were there?”

Ngozi nods. Then she asks, “What are you doing here?”

Ify considers lying, but at this point she doesn’t know what she should hold back, so she sighs. “I’m a medical professional in Alabast Central. I oversee the refugee ward. Recently, the children under my care have become ill. Each of them has fallen into a coma. Identical symptoms. We tried to figure out what was wrong, but we found no answers.”

“And why does that bring you here?”

“The majority of those who took ill were Nigerian. My superiors thought it appropriate that I be sent to investigate.”

Ngozi lets out another derisive snort. “Like we are bringing them plague.”

No, not like that, Ify wants to tell her, but she knows Ngozi’s not entirely wrong in thinking that this was the reasoning of her supervisors. “I just want to find out what’s happening to them.”

“It makes sense why the government is after you, then. You are breaking the law. Or you will be very soon.”

“Why? What are you talking about?”

“It is against the law to speak openly about the war. It is against the law to document it, to write about it, to reference it, even to think about it.” She pauses to let the notion sink into Ify and Grace.

Grace stares at her hands, then looks up at Ify. “The police attack.”

Ify nods grimly.

“When you arrived, did you see any memorials? Any tombs or gravemarkers?”

Ify shakes her head. “No.” Then she remembers how much it had unnerved her that she had seen no commemoration whatsoever of the war she had lived through. “No, there was . . .”

“There was nothing.” Ngozi uses one bootheel to itch the other calf. “Just some story about a Nine-Year Storm, I bet.”

“Yes,” Ify says, her voice drained of energy.