Chapter 11: Extraction.
1214 Words
_>> UPLOADING... 72%_
_>> ZARA_EZE.EXE: NEURAL LINK STABLE_
_>> HOST: AMARA_EZE.EXE — CONFLICT DETECTED_
I was awake.
So was she.
Zara.
In my head. Not a voice. Not a ghost. _Software_.
_Move left_, she said.
My body moved left before I decided to.
A bullet hit the concrete where my head had been.
_Good girl_, Zara said. _Now run._
I ran.
The safehouse garage was hell. Fire. Gunfire. Okeke screaming orders. Mrs. Abah coughing in the smoke. Tunde bleeding out behind a pillar.
And Dasuki’s son.
Standing in the flames. Holding the left glove.
He was looking at me. Not with eyes. His eyes were clouded. Blind. He was looking with his nose. Smelling.
Like a dog. Like an animal Zara tried to tame.
“Amara!” Ife grabbed my arm. “Car two! Go!”
Her hand was hot. Human. Real.
Mine wasn’t.
_Show her_, Zara said in my head. _Show her what I left you._
My hand shot up. Grabbed Ife’s wrist.
_>> VISUAL CORTEX SYNC: 100%_
_>> PROJECTING_
Ife screamed.
She saw it. What I saw. Heat signatures. Heartbeats. The micro-fracture in the pillar Tunde was behind. The bullet trajectory from the gunman on the roof.
“Amara, your eyes—they’re black,” Ife whispered. “No white. Just black.”
_Tell her the truth_, Zara said. _She deserves that._
“My sister’s in me,” I said. My mouth moved. The words were mine. The cadence was Zara’s. “Six months ago. Appendix lie. She put it in. Said it was a ‘present.’”
Okeke fired twice. The gunman on the roof dropped. “Less talking! More moving!”
Dasuki’s son tilted his head. The glove in his hand twitched.
_Knock._
One knock.
Not a command. A question.
_Zara?_ the boy was asking.
_Answer him_, Zara said. _He won’t hurt me. Us._
“I’m here,” I said. Not to the boy. To my chest. To her. “But I’m not you.”
The boy smiled. Teeth too big. Too many.
Then he charged.
Not at me. At Tunde.
“No!” I moved. Zara moved me. Faster than human. We crossed 10 feet in one second. Grabbed the boy mid-lunge.
He weighed nothing. Like a bird. Like a child.
He smelled like rain. And Blend’s rooftop. And blood.
“_Nne_,” he said. Baby voice. Broken. “_Nne, did I do good?_”
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_>> EMOTIONAL CASCADE DETECTED_
_>> HOST: AMARA_EZE.EXE — DESTABILIZING_
My heart stuttered.
Zara flooded me. Memories not mine.
_Holding the boy’s hand. Teaching him ‘a’ ‘b’ ‘c’. He writes Z-A-R-A in crayon. He hugs her. Too hard. Rib cracks. She laughs. “Gentle, little man. Gentle.”_
_Dasuki watching from the door. “He’s an animal, Zara. He killed his nurse.”_
_“He’s scared,” Zara says. “You made him scared.”_
I gasped. Back in my body. In the fire.
The boy was still in my arms. Looking up. Waiting.
“Zara’s gone,” I told him. My voice. My words. “I’m Amara. Her sister.”
The boy’s face collapsed. Confusion. Rage.
He screamed. Not a word. A sound. Like a train derailing.
The glove in his hand burst into flame.
Okeke tackled me. Both of us hit the ground as the garage went white.
---
_SCID Medical Van. 5:32 AM. Moving._
“BP 90/60. Heart rate 145 and climbing,” Ife shouted. She had an IV in my arm. Another in Tunde’s. He was across from me. Unconscious. Gray.
Mrs. Abah was up front. Praying. Loud. Igbo. _“Chineke nna, chebe anyi...”_
Okeke drove. One hand on the wheel. One on her radio. “We lost Car One. We lost the boy. Dasuki’s son is in the wind. Repeat, subject ‘Michael’ is in the wind.”
Michael. His name was Michael.
_He hated that name_, Zara whispered in my head. _Dasuki named him after the archangel. Said he’d be a warrior. I called him Mikey._
“Amara, stay with me,” Ife said. She shined a light in my eyes. “Pupils are... God, they’re dilating and contracting on their own. Like two people are fighting for control.”
Because two people were.
_We need to get it out_, I thought.
_No_, Zara said. _If you extract me, I die. Again. And Dasuki wins. He gets the film. He gets Mikey. He gets away with it._
_The film?_
_SD card is fake, Amara. A decoy. The real evidence is me. My memories. Everything I saw. Everything Dasuki did to Mikey. To the girls from the IDP camp. It’s all in here. In us._
_>> UPLOADING... 89%_
_>> CRITICAL: HOST REJECTION IMMINENT_
_>> OPTIONS: 1. COMPLETE MERGE 2. EXTRACTION = ZARA_EZE.EXE DELETION_
Complete merge. What did that mean?
_It means we become one_, Zara said. _My memories. Your body. My rage. Your heart. We stop him together._
_And if I say no?_
_Then Ife cuts me out. And you go back to being the girl who edits podcasts. And Dasuki keeps killing. And Mikey dies alone._
The van hit a bump.
My chest seized.
“V-fib!” Ife screamed. “She’s going into V-fib!”
Okeke swerved. “Hold on!”
Ife ripped open my shirt. Grabbed the defibrillator paddles from the med kit. “Clear!”
_Wait_, Zara said. _Don’t. If you shock me, you might corrupt the data. You might kill the evidence._
_You might kill me_, I thought.
_Yes_, Zara said. _But I’m already dead, Amara. You’re not._
The paddles came down.
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_>> CARDIAC ARREST DETECTED_
_>> INITIATING EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: ZARA_EZE.EXE_
Everything went white.
---
_I was on the rooftop._
_Rain._
_But I wasn’t falling. I was standing._
_Zara stood across from me. No gloves. Bare hands. Smiling. That real smile. The one before Blend. Before Dasuki._
_“Hey, moon,” she said. Her nickname for me._
_“Hey, sun,” I said. Mine for her._
_“You have to choose,” she said. “You can wake up. And be Amara. Safe. Alone. And he’ll still be out there.”_
_She stepped to the edge. Looked down. 12 stories._
_“Or you can jump with me. And we land together. And we burn him down.”_
_She held out her hand._
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_>> MERGE REQUIRED. YES/NO?_
---
_SCID Medical Van. 5:33 AM._
My heart started again.
Ife fell back. “Sinus rhythm. She’s back. Holy God, she’s back.”
I sat up.
Okeke looked in the rearview. “Eze? You with us?”
I looked at my hands. Steady. No tremor.
I looked at Tunde. Blue. Guilty. But alive.
I looked at Mrs. Abah. Praying.
I looked at Ife. Terrified.
_>> UPLOADING... 100%_
_>> ZARA_EZE.EXE: MERGE COMPLETE_
_>> WELCOME, AMARA_ZARA.EZE_
I smiled.
It felt like my smile. And hers.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice. Our voice. “I’m with you.”
Then I said, “Stop the van.”
Okeke frowned. “What? Why?”
“Because we’re not running anymore.”
I touched my chest. Where Zara lived now.
“We’re extracting. But not me.”
I looked at Tunde.
“We’re extracting the truth. From him.”
- Writer
