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  The energy powering her softens. The nanobots slow down. The heat of the Redlands has been eating away at her battery life. She has not yet learned self-preservation. She does not know hurt. So Enyemaka does not know that the radiation in the air has already started corroding the important parts inside of her. All she knows, as the nanobots slow into hibernation and eventually die, is that there was once a young girl whose head she shaved.

  A word bubbles up into Enyemaka’s consciousness, recovered from the charred and torn wreckage of her memories. A word that binds together the disparate images and sounds in her consciousness—fingers on rose petals, a hand rising in a classroom, someone staring through the scope of a rifle. A word that fills in the gaps. A word that stays with her as the light in her eyes grows dimmer and dimmer.

  Sister.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Four Years Later

  Abuja, 2176

  The elephant grass reaches to Ify’s shoulders.

  Her gown shimmers in the sunlight. And this should make her a target for the beasts that roam before her, but the light bends around her to make her invisible. She can tell because the world—the blue sky and the green grass and the acacia trees that dot the landscape—all shines golden. Data beams back into her, through the kimoyo beads on her wrists and around her neck. Also outlined in gold is the herd of animals munching on grass while the morning mist hangs around them.

  Some of them are armored, mechanized so that their biomass melds with wiring and machinery, but others are simple flesh and blood and muscle. These are what interest Ify. The animals all seem to recognize their shared nature. The metal doesn’t scare them. They aren’t mutated shorthorns or wulfu, made crazy and irrational by radiation poisoning. They are more beautiful than that.

  Her Accent, amplified by her beads, allows her deeper access to the biomech horse. She can see the energy canisters that power the animal’s circuitry. They take what it eats and convert it into fuel. She can see past the pistons and the gears and zero in on the heart that changes red blood to inky black oil. She’s seen tech like this built in labs as a means of Augmenting animals and the food they produce, controlling the populations, monitoring their intake and their health from afar. So much metal. Somewhere, there is an opening. This animal is a self-contained entity, seemingly unconnected from the communications network that blankets the Nigerian Republic, connecting every open device and properly teched person to each other, but there still has to be some way in. There has to be a way to hack it. She’s done it before with less sophisticated equipment. She can do it again.

  Data of the biomech horse’s vital signs appears on the holographic screen that she holds in her hands. Another trick of the light. She taps a few keys, and data from the other animals, including the lynxes that surround the horses, floods her screen. Someday, she’ll be able to hack pure red-bloods. But first, she has to figure out how to get into the core processing unit of this horse. She imagines triumphantly riding it back into the capital, a scarf whipping in the breeze behind her, the horse galloping so fast that other Nigerians in the street jump out of the way. She imagines her horse vaulting over the cars of a speeding rail hyperloop train and coming to a dramatic stop right in front of the presidential palace, rearing once for dramatic effect and neighing loudly before coming to a rest.

  But so far, nothing. Her Accent can’t detect any opening. The animal’s system is entirely self-contained. It seems unhackable. But seems is the operative word here. If Ify has learned anything in the four years since her rescue from the Biafran rebels, it’s that nothing is as it seems.

  For several minutes, she stands and stares at the puzzle of the animals grazing. There has to be some way. Even though her legs start to stiffen, she doesn’t want to sit down and lose sight of them. Like so many proofs, the key, the algorithm, the piece that will allow her to control them, is right in front of her. She just needs to find it.

  She likes coming out to the fields and being away from the noise of the capital, where so much is happening all the time. Data. So much data coming into her system. The speed of maglev cars, the records of citizen encounters with the police, the mineral count of the jewelry the wealthy wear, the last time cyberized citizens went to their mechanic for their regular checkup. So much data swimming around her. Whereas, out here in the fields, the data is instead the wind that kisses her cheeks and the grunts of animals having their meals in peace, blissfully unaware of her presence. Some of her minders chastise her for being such an outdoor girl. She knows, behind her back, some of the boys call her a Bush Girl, because she spent so much of her early life in the woods with the Biafrans. But she doesn’t tell those children that she has records of each of their remarks, stored and ready for playback whenever she wishes. Not just that, but conversations they don’t believe anyone else can overhear, conversations that contain their hopes and fears and who they have crushes on and who cheated on which exam and who hopes to earn a scholarship to get to America and who everyone thinks is too stupid to even get an apprenticeship in one of the hundreds of labs throughout Nigeria’s Middle Belt. The perks of being part of Abuja’s surveillance team. At the ripe age of fourteen, it still sounds odd to her ears to be called a Sentinel, but she now wears the title with pride. Before, some of her age-mates made fun of her for having been raised by Biafrans and for the tribal scars Onyii had given her. Now the majority of them only think those thoughts, but even those aren’t safe from a Sentinel sitting in the watchtowers scattered throughout the capital.

  She lies on her back in the grass, her hands behind her head, and stares up at the clouds. Nano bees emerge from the thick braids that hang to the small of her back and dance before her face. Her own guardians. The ambient noise of their buzzing is enough to put her to sleep.

  When she wakes, the sky is much darker. Then she blinks and realizes it’s a shadow.

  Oh no.

  She scrambles upright. The animals behind her freeze. Without looking, she knows their ears have perked up, their systems have seen through her cloak. Light no longer bends around her to hide her. Now she stands awkward and nervous, and they can tell she doesn’t belong here, so they gallop away. There goes Ify’s vision of riding like a true warrior into the heart of the Nigerian Republic, commanding the respect of every loyal citizen.

  Daren doesn’t look angry. Instead, her adoptive brother has that ever-present smirk on his face. Like he’s more bemused than anything. His silver dreadlocks glow in the midday sun. Biafrans would scold her for skipping class as a child. But Nigerians are kinder. They’re genuinely more curious about the world, more eager to nurture that curiosity in others. And whenever Ify walks through the capital or any of Nigeria’s major cities and sees how intricately the transportation systems have been interwoven or how the public universities are often the tallest buildings in those cities, topped only by the mosques, she is told that it is all the mark of a Nigerian’s curiosity. Brilliant ancestors laid the foundation, “and our curiosity built the towers that stand upon it,” Daren always says, like a mantra.

  “So this is where you go when you skip class.” He has a bundle under each arm.

  “Sometimes,” Ify says, with her head bowed, waiting for her tongue-lashing.

  Daren looks around and inhales deeply. “It is much quieter out here. You don’t mind the smell?”

  “Smell?” And that’s when Ify remembers she’d calibrated her Accent to override her olfactory senses. Another thing she’d learned how to do after she’d had her Accent fused to her inner ear. She can’t smell anything. At least, not when she doesn’t want to.

  Daren laughs. “Most children spend all day looking at screens and not seeing the world around them. Or they are always listening to their jagga-jagga music and not hearing the world around them. You, Ifeoma Diallo.” He laughs and places his metal hand on her shoulder. “You choose not to smell the world around you.”
He shakes his head, that smirk growing even broader. “I must say, that is quite impressive.”

  “I get data overload in the city,” Ify says by way of explanation, kicking at the dirt.

  “Certainly.” Daren cups the back of her head, then brings her close. There is so much metal just beneath his skin, but he feels warm to the touch. His silken robe is one of the softest things her cheek has ever felt. “Would you like to watch a shuttle launch?”

  Ify’s eyes go wide. Her heart races. “A shuttle launch?” She squirms in his embrace and looks into his eyes. “Really?” She wants to ask him what she did to deserve this treat and tries to think back on whether or not she recently scored high marks in her class or received praise from her supervisor in her laboratory sessions. But nothing comes to mind. This is like surprise cake. And, well, not everything is a problem to be solved.

  “Yes, Kadan. But we must hurry. They do not time these things at our convenience.”

  A sound reaches them from the city, muffled by the distance. But the singing tune, almost like a wailing, is clear. Daren hands Ify one of the bundles. Prayer rugs.

  “Before we go,” he says, smiling.

  Together, they unroll the prayer rugs in the grass and as the muezzin launches the call to prayer, they make salat, the prayer proper Muslims must perform five times a day. When they finish, they roll up their rugs, and Ify hands hers back to Daren.

  His maglev car, sleek and shaped like a teardrop, waits for them at the bottom of a hill, and Ify skips in leaps and bounds toward it, her gown flowing wildly, joyfully around her.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Giant metal wings and cockpits and arms and legs and bits of dashboard sail through the air, trailing wires that spark and grow flames. The debris rains down on the enemy encampment below. The pilots inside those mechs are dead. Either that or their dying screams have been caught in their throats and all they can let out are blood-rich coughs. But by the time all the pieces hit the ground, the men and women who pulled those gearshifts and who pressed those console buttons and who tried to fight against Onyii, the Demon of Biafra, are no longer alive.

  Onyii’s engines flare, and she accelerates over a line of trees bordering the Nigerian camp to land with a skid among another group of enemy mechs. The pilots are too paralyzed by fear to begin firing. And with her bladed staff, she swings, cutting the first in half before twirling and slicing a diagonal blow across the second, moving faster than any mobile suit has ever moved before. The other pilots regain their senses and begin firing, but Onyii leaps into the air, a short burst of her thrusters, and those enemy Green-and-Whites accidentally fire at each other. Onyii lands just as they explode before charging into another cluster of mechs. Several of them launch themselves backward into the air and fire their heavy ordnance. Onyii jumps from left to right and left again, raising her shield to block the heavy cannon fire, then charges into the air toward the one with the heavy gun.

  She sees their formation take shape. They make a diamond in the sky. The mechs fire. She raises her shield just in time, then her arm flips back at the elbow to reveal her own guns. Several blasts from her guns hurl her back. The formation breaks apart. One of the mechs charges her, ramming into her shield. She spins herself and hurls the mech attached to her shield to the ground. Her engines flare one at a time to stop her spin. Then she flies straight for the downed mech. The blade of her staff pierces its cockpit.

  A new quiet fills the sky. They’re retreating.

  But something disturbs the air behind Onyii. She whirls around, staff in hand, to slice through the mech that had charged at her. One last victim who had fancied themselves a warrior. Now nothing more than scrap metal to be salvaged by Biafran soldiers. The separated halves of the mech detonate. Onyii’s shield rises to cover her cockpit. The force of the blast pushes her back but leaves only singed armor.

  Now the quiet feels real. Earned.

  She’s not even breathing heavily. The battles are getting easier and easier. She suspects it’s because they’ve heard of her by now. The warrior on the front lines. The inhuman pilot who destroys Nigerian mechs as though they were flies to be swatted out of the sky. And who has no fear of death. With her mechanized eye, the outlet at the base of her neck, and the tech that covers half her face before running down her shoulder and back to her Augmented right arm, she barely looks human. She looks like something much more evil. The Demon of Biafra.

  Her mech stands upright. The moving gears and plates make music for her ears. She can see the destroyed camp before her. Can see the fires rising from their Terminal, can see the bodies of dead soldiers littering the ground outside the mess hall and the ammunition depot. Many smaller mechs lie in pieces, some of them self-detonated to keep the Biafrans from getting their technology. But other soldiers either died before they could activate the self-detonation sequence, or they ran. Maybe they watch the takeover of their camp from what they mistakenly believe to be the safety of the forest. Maybe some of them have run farther out into the desert outside the forest, splashing through river on the way.

  A hissing sound fills her cockpit as the latch above opens. Onyii’s cord unplugs from the outlet at the base of her neck. Slowed by stiffened limbs, she climbs the ladder behind her and stands on a shelf made by her mech’s chestpiece. Even after four years and with all the changes that have been made to her body, the aftermath of battle is still the same. She can see it all now without the data, without the heat signatures that turn bodies into red silhouettes against a green background, without her mech’s Geiger counter tracking the amounts of radiation in the air. Without her coordinates and those of enemy mechs constantly flashing before her eyes. There’s birdsong, strangely enough. Short trills, like the birds are testing the sky, waiting for the next cascade of mech limbs to fall from the clouds or waiting for gunfire to rip apart their trees or for fire to burst from the ground beneath them.

  Onyii wants to tell them it’s okay for them to sing, but in her heart, she knows she would be lying to them. The peace secured here in the capture of this enemy camp is only temporary. There can be no peace, no real peace, until Biafra is a fully recognized nation. Until Nigeria ceases attacking completely. There are days when Onyii feels it is only a matter of time. And there are nights when she knows the fighting will be ceaseless. When she knows, in the deepest recesses of her mind, that the fighting will last as long as there is an enemy.

  So she looks down on the ruins of the camp as Biafran jeeps emerge from the forest like ants beneath her, scurrying over the spoils. The Biafran soldiers, in uniforms the same color as the Nigerians Onyii just beat, spill over the pieces of downed mechs. Technicians plug their devices into the consoles to download what can be salvaged from the mechs’ processing units. Some of it is meaningless: memories or communications between soldiers and their families elsewhere, a father telling his son to continue doing well in school and win a scholarship to America, a young woman telling her younger brother that he is the man of the house now and that, while she is gone, he must protect their ailing mother. But some of the data could be enemy coordinates. At other camps, whole maps have been recovered that have allowed Onyii and the others to ambush convoys or sneak up and perform pincer maneuvers on unsuspecting encampments.

  When the younger troops gather up enough courage to sometimes ask why Onyii moves so fast, she tells them it’s for that reason. To kill the pilots before they have a chance to destroy valuable intel. But this, like the peace she would have told the birds about, is a lie. She moves as fast as she does for the thrill. The faster she moves, the more reckless her movements, the more all-engulfing the high. The truth is that it’s a drug. She got a taste for combat as a child. And like a child given their first sip of palm wine, she had hated the taste. Now, hate or love has nothing to do with it. She needs it.

  * * *

  The Biafrans have erected a structure with translucent poly-urethane walls an
d metal supports, with a plastic tent flap for an entrance.

  In the beginning, Onyii would stand before the brigadier general’s desk. But now she sits without even asking permission. “My body is tired,” she might say by way of explanation. And no one can challenge her, because they have seen what she has done to the enemy forces. They’ve seen the Demon of Biafra up close and lived to tell about it. But only because she is on their side.

  The brigadier general has a holo map of the territory pulled up, connected by a cord to a charred piece of machinery that looks to have been pulled from one of the defeated mechs. A generator has already been plugged into an outlet. Diggers work outside to plumb the depths of the soil for the minerals that will sustain their camp’s operations. “Good work, soldier,” he says to her, smiling, as though the work she does is part of some funny performance. “Without help from the Commonwealth Colonies in space, the Nigerians are no match for us. Or, rather, no match for you.” When he raises his eyebrow and smirks, Onyii feels as though he has coated her in oil. “We are nearing the Middle Belt. Just beyond that is the Nigerian stronghold. But with this latest victory, we have secured enough of a buffer zone between Biafra and the Green-and-Whites that we can at least pretend to function as a proper nation.”

  Onyii raises an eyebrow at him. Someone looking at her would say she is being cocky and disrespectful, her legs spread, one draped over an armrest, her arms slung every which way. But it is comfortable. And she’s earned that, at least. “Proper nation?”

  “You know, with school exams and reliable electricity outages.” He grins. “All the annoying things that exist in proper nations. Maybe we will even one day have trains that run late. And potholes in our streets. Just like they do in the North.”