Her memory drifts back to Enugu. The taste and sound and smell of the world ending.

Everywhere, collapsed buildings. Food stalls, shopping malls, school halls. Fires rage. Bots fight to extinguish the blazes. People run, and traffic bots try to steer them. The katakata has disrupted the flight paths so that maglev cars and buses crash into each other, their burning shells littering the streets of Enugu.

Gritting her teeth, Ify pushes herself to her feet, and that’s when she notices her right arm hanging limp at her side.

A short distance down the way, flames lick the glass inside a fabrics store. The windows burst open. Ify skips into the front display and tears at a dress on a mannequin until she is able to rip off a long enough piece of cloth. Using her teeth, she ties a sling for her broken arm, then heads to the bus depot.

On the way, Ify sees the telltale marks of destruction. In open stretches of street, craters sit like perfectly formed half-circles in the concrete and metal. Towers stand with nearly entire spheres cut out of them. The bus depot is little more than shattered flexiglas and twisted metal.

Two guards rush over, and shouting fills the cave, but it reaches Ify’s ears as a muffled series of barking argument. The world begins to turn black. Shadows encroach from the corners of her vision. Hurry, hurry, hurry. She feels as though she’s swimming. It’s almost too late. She’ll lose control of her suit, and it will continue lowering her temperature until she’s an immovable block of ice, until the suit itself freezes its own controls. Fires rage in Enugu, but she feel so cold. Please hurry.

Her arms spring loose. Her cuffs are off. That’s it.

She lies on the ground, limp, tended to by the guards. One of them hauls her up by her shoulders, drapes one arm over her back, and begins to carry her forward while the other follows. Ify prays the guard won’t feel Ify’s body warming against her. Or that she’ll think it’s simply proximity to another person’s flesh and not the result of Ify manipulating the temperature of her bodysuit. Her fingers twitch, at first from reflex, then with her actual willpower. Strength is coming back.