Céline straightens. “No,” she says, her voice neutral. “I will not report you. And I will destroy what records I did find. But this is goodbye. You are not . . .” She doesn’t finish. She lets whatever word she was about to say hang in the air between them before turning to leave.

Rage wraps its claws around Ify’s lungs. She couldn’t scream even if she wanted to. All she can do is shake with it, every fiber of her body quivering feverishly with fury. She holds her head in her hands and clenches herself against the sobs that threaten. No. She won’t give Céline the satisfaction of hearing her grief, of knowing how deeply she’s wounded Ify.

Ify staggers to a console by the far wall and leans over it, damming the tears clinging to her eyelashes. Then she looks up.

The blinds over the windows of one wall open to reveal the room in which Uzo sits, her legs dangling over the edge of her bed. She demonstrates an otherworldly capacity for stillness. Uzo can spend hours completely unmoving, leaving Ify to wonder at just what is happening behind her eyes and between her ears.

She stares at the girl, lets Uzo fill her entire vision, lets Uzo become all she can focus on. Slowly, purpose clears the fog from Ify’s brain. She has a mission. She has lives to save. She is not a criminal.

When Ify returns to the printout, the letters and numbers and symbols are even more of a jumble. She scans them from left to right, down, left to right, down. But, even with renewed focus, none of it is making sense. Scanning the code, she will catch the beginnings of an image braiding itself together in her mind—a night sky, a hand and arm framed against a jungle backdrop, a city skyline—then it vanishes. She pinches the bridge of her nose, then walks to the window and looks down. Uzo still hasn’t moved.

It takes Ify several moments to head to the elevator. And even as she stands in the contraption, nervousness makes her fingers twitch and she absentmindedly flicks her wrist to clank her thin bangles against each other. She has taken to wearing them since her return from Nigeria. A piece of home she brought back with her.