Page 17

My mother’s voice, in a stranger’s mouth. I had read it in a library in Gaborone, line after line, and I had never once been able to hear it in her voice. Now I could.

They asked her name, and when she told them, they laughed.

A door. Always a door.

We did not find him for three days.

I ran faster.

My sister’s laughter cut through the noise, bright and sudden, the only thing that had ever been mine. Her heartbeat against my ear. Woodsmoke in her clothes.

She was the last.

Behind me the shouting swelled. Ahead, a woman screamed, thin and high and furious.

For the first time in years, I did not stop to count the cost.

They must have fought. Fought for their dignity. For their lives. For mercy.

And when there was nothing left to fight with, it continued. Hungry rats and ropes. Bodies strung up and bled dry. Bullets lodged in places—

My mind shut down.

Gun out.

The Glock left its holster on instinct, smooth and cold, while the rest of me went somewhere very far away. The grenade knocked against my ribs with every stride, a dead weight in my coat pocket, a second heartbeat I did not want.

I tilted to one side and began to pick off the men one by one. Muzzle flash. A ringing in my ears. Cordite curling into the wet air. The shouting broke apart and the remainder scattered. My lungs burned, but through the haze I saw women crouched against the container doors, small and exposed in the floodlight.

“Get back inside,” I roared. The voice cracked out of me like something dug up after years underground. I raised the gun, ready to fire a warning shot. I did not need to. They retreated.

A flash of green. Small hands hauling at steel.

Doors slammed shut. Metal clanged twice.

I turned to the containers facing me and edged around the corner. A bullet whined past my ear, hot air and a spark off the steel. The aim was off. I crouched lower and looked again. Two men. I aimed and fired.

Groans. Then deadweight hit the ground.

I pushed forward. The Glock was trusty, but I had my backup. The spare in my harness, Zero’s gift. I did not need to think about which hand reached for it.

I counted how many men I had shot and how many I had seen running. Two remained.

I thought of the woman in the green dress. The torn hem. The black splatters. The fist swung with everything she had left. Then the people of my past, one after another, in borrowed rooms. Trade in flesh was as old as time.

Something inside me had changed. A lock turning. A door I had kept shut for years, swinging wide.

Enough.

Enough.

Enough.

My people still could not live freely. Could not breathe freely. Not everyone, everywhere. Not everyone had been carried across a border by a neighbour with a conscience. I had been lucky. Luck was not a virtue. It was a debt.

Not fucking today. Not while I had breath in this body.

Chapter 7