Ify falls over in her chair, and her body begins to shake. She spasms, then all the data in my retinal scan is telling me that her heart has stopped beating.

Grace is screaming, but I am not hearing it. It is like her mouth is being covered by gauze or like cotton is being stuffed into my ears. I am hearing no thing, but people are running past me to see what is happening to Ify, and I am not being able to move, and I am wondering why I am not moving because I am often seeing dead body, but none of them are being Ify.

CHAPTER

37

Even though they are underground, Ify swears she can hear it. The crash of glass breaking, the whoosh of fires climbing up through the floors of office buildings, the shouting, the people falling from windows, the crying, homes collapsing into rubble, the fighting, the dying. She closes her eyes, bound to her chair, and can hear it all even louder, feel the heat of the fire on her face, smell the soot in the air, feel it choking her lungs. No. She’s remembering Enugu. The devastation that took that city hasn’t happened here yet. If Ify understands Xifeng’s plans properly, then the conflicts are in isolated pockets. Maybe specific neighborhoods, maybe in more than one city. But they should be small enough for the police to put down. But if Xifeng reaches the central nervous system running Nigeria’s net, the entire country will go up in flames.

Her bodysuit. Linked to her neural network.

She commands it to increase in temperature, and immediately, she begins to sweat. Her handcuffs, twisting her arms behind her chairback, grow slick over her wrists. An idea occurs to her. It could kill her, but she needs to get out of here, and she needs to disarm as many of these guards as possible. They may be hardened war veterans, trained to kill and maim and survive deprivation, but they won’t kill her. They can’t. She contains some of the last remaining memories of the Biafran War, and she’s not cyberized. If she dies, her memories die with her.

Her bodysuit’s temperature drops, and her body temperature follows suit. The plummet is precipitous, sudden, and sharp. Her heartbeat slows, slows even more, grows sluggish and soft. Her eyes roll back into her head, she pitches forward in her seat and grows limp.

The timing is everything. If they take too long to notice that her heart has stopped, it could damage her beyond repair. If she stops breathing completely for too long, the damage to her brain may be permanent. She drifts in and out of consciousness and makes a choking noise to draw their attention. Then her body lists sideways, and she and her chair topple loudly onto the ground. Puddle water splashes onto her face.