“I . . . I didn’t know about the bombers. I . . .” She sags in the arms of her captors, her legs going limp beneath her. “I just wanted to kill Onyii.” She has her head bowed and tears blur her vision, but she can feel the disdain Xifeng is staring at her. “I just wanted revenge.” She lets herself go, and the sobs come rushing over her in waves. Her body convulses with each one. It feels as though she is being choked. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” She says this over and over and over again, and she realizes this is the first time she’s admitted this to herself. For so long, she has carried those two events—shooting Onyii and the bombing of Enugu—together in her mind, one single tragic episode, and it has been so much easier to believe she was responsible for both, that her thirst for vengeance had cost so many lives. She had even been prepared to die, to be executed by Biafran authorities after her capture. But Onyii had rescued her. Even as war was starting back up around them, Onyii had rescued her.

“Look at you now.”

Ify looks up from her hands.

“Look at you now.” There’s no scorn in Xifeng’s voice. In fact, there’s wonder. And admiration. “You’ve grown and become successful and built an extraordinary life for yourself. All the while, you have been carrying these horrible memories inside you.” She comes down to one knee before Ify. “Ify. Listen to me,” she says as she undoes Ify’s restraints and unhooks her ankle clasps from the chair legs. Her voice has grown soft. Recognizably soft. This is how she used to talk to that child soldier who played the touchboard when she was teaching that synth how to be a boy. “We have to keep these memories inside us. Or else there is nothing to push us forward. There’s nothing to learn from. You grow nothing in a barren field.”

Ify holds Xifeng’s gaze and sniffles.

“Intentionally wiping away memories of our most important experiences is no way to live.”

“It’s so hard,” Ify whimpers softly through her tears.

Xifeng brings her into an embrace that Ify is too weak to resist. “But we must, child,” Xifeng whispers into her hair. “We must.”

■  ■  ■  ■  ■

Ify watches several of the girls lay Grace on a stretcher and bring her to a medical tent.

“No harm will come to her.”

Ify frowns at Xifeng.

“No more harm.”