Her hands stop shaking enough for her to lift the lid on the box, revealing row after row after row of mini drives. Small, almost obsolete micro SD cards on which are stored evidence. She pulls one out and fits it into an external device she’s pulled from a pocket and which she fits to her Bonder, a visor-shaped device whose edges she slips over her ears. A cord slithers out of an outlet by her temple, and she connects it to the external device.

A vision splashes to life before her, first in the faded blue of a holographic projection, then in the technicolor of a proper memory.

A tablet screen, held in gloved hands Ify recognizes as hers as a maglev jeep spirits her away from what she knows is a detention facility. Across from her sits a man who rescued her from rebels, who took her in and taught her about herself, a man who would then destroy her life. Daren. Ify has angered him—she remembers this much. But the version of her in the memory keeps her gaze focused on the tablet as she scrolls down a list.

Angels of Heaven.

Asawana Avengers.

Niger Delta Water Lions.

The list of terrorist groups—Igbo, Yoruba, Christian, Muslim, even Hausa—goes on and on. Ify scrolls with the regular speed of intense focus. Ify outside the memory knows what Ify inside the memory will find. Or, rather, will not find. She disengages from the memory, thrown back into her body with an intensity so strong it forces her to take several deep breaths. She is right.

The Popular Front for Justice in Biafra, the group Peter claims raided his village and arrested him, never existed.

CHAPTER

8

Xifeng is showing me that I am having hole in the back of my neck.

She is holding mirror to the back of my neck and making me watch in other mirror, and I am seeing hole and I am feeling it, and it is metal like gun or like Enyemaka. It is not shining. It is being covered in dust from the desert, and every night after our working, Xifeng is cleaning it for me, and it is like taking bath. I know what taking bath is like because I am downloading rememberings too, just like Enyemaka.