Xifeng walks on ahead and it’s not until Grace disappears from Ify’s view entirely that Ify follows Xifeng into the maze of caverns. Already, this place feels familiar. She no longer fears she’ll fall into whatever puddle she steps into, not like when Ngozi had first brought her here. The guards have fully reactivated the bodysuit that had been damaged in the attack on the police station, and it feels good and secure to have it on again. Surrounded by so much strangeness, this is one familiar thing. Still, a part of her misses the mental and physical quiet that came with not being connected to anything.

“It wasn’t this way in the beginning,” Xifeng tells her as they walk. “The war ended, but there were still attacks. Militia that refused to give up, paramilitary still addicted to the high of war. I remember seeing it when I was running the caravans. Children with machetes at their waists and deadness in their eyes. There were still people who thought they could make their fortune off the illegal trade in certain goods, but for that to work, there needed to be a certain level of violence. But that?” Xifeng shrugs ahead of Ify. “That’s easy enough to stop. It was when people started getting sick that the government began to think something was truly wrong.”

“Sick?” Ify’s thoughts race to the refugee children held in Alabast.

“The war was an open wound, but no one wanted to treat it. No one wanted to speak of it or deal with it. People went about their lives, living next to the people who had murdered their families. But containing that inside you with no outlet, it destroys a person.” There’s a faraway quality to Xifeng’s voice, as though she’s invoking the experiences of specific people, reliving the hurt they showed her in their faces. “The government tells you that there’s peace and order and insists on rational dealings. But your mind, whether or not it has been fractured by trauma, knows there’s more to life than this. So it protests. But you can’t launch vigils or march in the streets, so these protests disappear into your body. They become kidney stones or trouble breathing. Backaches, migraines, neoplasms. Toothaches, depression, psychosis. They mushroom in your interpersonal relationships. Marriages fail, friendships disintegrate, the families left after the war are shattered.” She looks over her shoulder at Ify without missing a step. “You’re a doctor. Is emotional constipation a clinical enough term for that?”