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  They are riding hoverbikes and trucks and are in a staggered line, all jagga-jagga. And they are wearing masks and bandanas over their faces to keep from breathing the red dust. This is how I am knowing that many of them are weak.

  The first one is speeding his bike toward me. He is steering it while another sits behind him with a shotgun balanced on the driver’s shoulder.

  As I am running, I am picking up stone and throwing it with all of my strength. It is hitting boy with shotgun straight in his forehead, and he is falling backward and landing on the ground. Driver is swerving and losing control and turning too fast so that his bike is flipping over and crashing and flipping and crashing, and he is dying when it lands on top of him. I am jumping over the bike and running to boy with shotgun who is not moving, and I am picking up shotgun and shooting through cloud of dust at a man on another motorbike. He is flipping and crashing and dying too.

  The buzzing of their vehicles is now a roar around me as some of them pass me, then turn around. I know I must destroy their vehicles so they cannot move fast fast to Xifeng and Enyemaka.

  I hear RATATATATATA fast fast and duck behind first bike that I am causing to flip and crash. It is man on another bike who is shooting at me. I am peeking my head out to see him and ducking again when he is shooting.

  He drives past me, and I am aiming and shooting, and his partner with gun is falling over and crushing the driver and causing him to swerve back and forth until he is stopping.

  I am running and bullets are chomping at my feet, and at moment when driver is reaching for his partner’s rifle, I am shooting him and his face is exploding. I grab rifle so I am holding shotgun in one hand and rifle in the other.

  And I am turning and shooting and turning and shooting until all around me is explosion and dying. I am jumping and taking cover behind overturned bikes and I am hearing rumbling of truck getting closer. It is the last vehicle left.

  There is dust making clouds everywhere, but I am seeing through the dust, and my brain is locating the target, so I sling shotgun over my back and fall to one knee, and I am aiming the rifle and shooting, and the front tires of the truck are making loud POP and truck is skidding until it too is falling over.

  I am hearing screaming and I am seeing blood splashing on front window, and that is how I am knowing that driver is dead.

  But I am seeing shapes move behind the truck. There are more attackers coming out, and they are wearing dirty bandana over their nose and mouth, and they are shooting and I am shooting, but I am only having two guns and I am quickly running out of bullets.

  Small bikes and larger bikes are lying like dead animals almost in semicircle around truck. So I am moving fast fast from one to the other and dodging bullets until I am getting to behind truck and the attackers are not seeing me.

  I am holding my rifle by its neck, and I am swinging at the back of the first bandit’s head, and he is falling like sack of yams. I am dropping my gun and picking up his and shooting the second bandit, and there are three left and one of them is holding knife and running at me.

  I am shooting at him but he is moving fast fast like me, left right left right, until he is in front of me and knocks gun away from me.

  He is slashing at me and I am raising my arms to keep knife away from my head and my chest. He is raising arm and bringing it down, and I block and twist his wrist, but he is dropping knife and catching it with other hand and stabbing, and I am moving out of the way, but he is cutting my shirt. I turn behind him and twist his arm, and it is making snapping sound. But snapping sound is also CLICK-CLACK of rifle behind me, and I know other bandit is going to shoot. So I spin around again, and bandit with knife is catching bullets with his body, and I am running using his body as shield and taking knife from him. And I am crashing into bandit with gun and raising knife and cutting his neck.

  I am rolling to the side when new bullets are cutting line through ground straight for the bodies. And I am coming up to one knee and throwing knife at another bandit, and he is dropping and everything is being quiet again, not even mosquito or nanobot is buzzing.

  Slowly, I am standing again and I am walking to pick up knife and take rifle and put it over my shoulder so it is hanging with shotgun, and I am picking through pockets for bullets and shells and putting them in my own pocket, and I am taking vests and other clothes and putting them on so I can hold more bullets and shells, and just as I am turning to go, I am seeing him.

  He is boy. Vest is hanging off his bare chest that is all skin and bones. He is so small that gun he is holding is as big as him. And he is standing so still that not even my mind’s eye is detecting him. He is not glowing red like living things. When smoke clears, he is just boy covered in dust.

  Even though he is not shooting at me or throwing knife, I know he is like me. He is child of war.

  “You are not having to be like this,” I am telling him. And I am saying this out loud because Xifeng is saying I should practice talking but also because I am sometimes missing the sound of my own voice. So I am saying, “You are not just child of war.”

  But the boy is silent.

  “You are not needing gun to live.” I am looking for more words, because I know I am supposed to be saying more to this boy. “I am once being child of war, but I am learning of more way of being. Different way of being. Only killing and fighting when I must. To protect people. Some days, no killing and no fighting. I think before I am killing and fighting all the time, but I am not doing these thing all the time anymore.”

  He is looking at me and not saying words, and there is small small hair on his head and I am wanting to shave his head so that his hair is not trapping sun-heat on his scalp, and I am wanting to give him headscarf and protect him from sunburn. And I am wanting these things because I have remembering in me that I am doing this thing before for someone who is making my heart happy. And I am wanting to make this boy happy, but he is saying nothing.

  “Come with us. Come with me.”

  “You’re one of us,” he is saying in quiet quiet voice.

  Blood-covered fist is clenching at my sides. “I am not bad person.”

  But boy is saying no more thing and is just looking at me with nothing in his eye, not even water. Then he is walking away with gun in his arms and machete slapping his leg softly like it is walking with him.

  I am collecting gun and bullet from dead bodies, and I am walking and walking and walking until I see Enyemakas and Xifeng’s trailer. And while I am walking, I am telling myself I am not bad person.

  And I am trying to believe it.

  CHAPTER

  9

  To wash the away the memories of terrorist groups and detention of militants and Peter, like oil from her skin, Ify wanders past the Viewer, that giant glass-encased observation deck where she has spent countless hours staring out at the stars and the Refuse Ring that circles the colony of Alabast. She continues past the school dorms where she and Céline had lived as students, then past the streets where, as a young refugee, she had been stopped by bots and other authorities and asked for her papers. She wanders and wanders and would have no way to gauge the passage of time were it not for the information that her bodysuit, connected to her Augment, beams into her brain. But it disturbs her that it always seems to be daylight here. Meandering without direction, she finds herself back in Amy and Paige’s cul-de-sac. This is how she will spend the end of her dwindling time off from work, worrying about whether or not the foolishness of these well-meaning white women will result in tragedy.

  It always grates on Ify how the synthetic sunlight never properly mimics the days and nights she remembers. When people should be readying for bed, it still looks outside as though it is the middle of the day. Sometimes, she thinks this is a malfunction of this particular neighborhood or this corner of the Colony. But it is really that the people who live here like it this way. They like long days, even i
f it means that children grow up not knowing when they should go to sleep to get proper rest and be ready for school. Or teenagers will play their music too loudly for too long while others are trying to sleep. Remove the rules, and you might as well prepare for chaos. That is what she feels, sitting on the front porch of Paige and Amy’s home. Whenever she is in Alabast, this is what’s waiting for her: messed-up sleep cycles and unseasoned spaghetti.

  “Not enough spices,” says a voice from behind her, as though reading her mind.

  She’s halfway to her feet when Peter shuffles down the steps to sit next to her. They’re close, but he leaves enough space to be respectful.

  “I should say something, shouldn’t I?”

  Ify doesn’t disguise her skepticism.

  “Don’t worry, they’re busy cleaning right now. And saying loving things to each other. I am happy to give them their space.”

  Ify lets him sit in silence long enough for it to become uncomfortable, but Peter seems unfazed, focusing his gaze on the starless simulated sky. “What really happened?” She hopes he hears the low threat in her voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  Ify’s frown deepens.

  “Oh. Well, I was captured by the Popular Front. I wasn’t tortured or anything. There were others in my prison. One of them was a journalist who kept going on and on about what a beautiful country Nigeria was. I thought maybe he was a spy with the Popular Front. They maybe put him in prison to see if any of us was with another group or with the government. Maybe they put him there to trick us. If he was a spy, he wasn’t a good one. They even tortured him a little bit, but perhaps this was just part of their plan to make it convincing. Anyway, after my release, they took me to the local chief for that area, a big oga draped in golden robes and jewels, and he apologized for jailing me and asked for my forgiveness. Then he gave me many naira and sent me on my way.”

  “This is what you told them?” Ify asks.

  Peter shrugs. “It is what I tell everyone who asks.” He shifts closer to Ify. “And when I know I have their attention, I tell them that, while I was in prison, I would ask my guards for photographs of people hugging, and I would say that I asked for this because I’d forgotten what hugging looked and felt like because I had been in prison for so long. Sometimes, in front of the other prisoners, I would take off my clothes and snuggle with them to pretend I was being held in my sleep. That makes them cry every time.”

  “But none of that is true,” Ify says, no trace of a question in her voice. “It’s not true, because no rebel group ever captured you. The Popular Front for Justice in Biafra never existed. And you were not an innocent boy.”

  A tremor runs through Peter’s shoulders, then is gone.

  “You were a militant. A soldier in a secessionist group that used children to blow up crowded buildings.” Ify says this all in a low drone. “You were captured as an enemy of the state and held in detention for your crimes. And, if my guess is correct, you were released as a result of the ceasefire.” She refuses to look at him, not because he very likely did horrible things during the war but because he dared to lie to people Ify loves. “I’m sure you endured trauma during those years, but you have no right to lie to these people. When they discover the truth—”

  Peter jumps to his feet and kneels on the steps before Ify. Suddenly, there are tears in his eyes, and he has his hands clasped together as in prayer. For a panicked moment, Ify looks behind her to see if, through the open door, either Paige or Amy can see this, but they’re gone. Out of sight. “Please,” Peter hisses through his teeth. “Please do not be telling them where I am really coming from.”

  “Your accent.”

  “You are correct. You are correct. I . . . I am not being entirely truthful. But—but I am trying to save my life. I am desperate, and I am needing help, and they—they are helping me. Please.”

  Options war within Ify. Expose him and maybe limit the damage. But how to tell Paige and Amy without breaking their hearts? Maybe try to push him toward other sponsors. Let him deceive other oyinbo with his fanciful stories.

  A mask comes over his face. Like a shadow. “If you tell them, I will hurt them. Deeply.” He clenches his fists and stands like something spring-loaded, like a bullet ready to be fired from a gun. “I have learned ways of making people suffer. I know they are dear to you. All the time, they are talking about you. So if you want nothing bad to be happening to them, you will be keeping my secret.”

  Ify’s heart leaps into her throat. She can’t move. The thought of anything happening to Paige or Amy roots her where she sits, as though each word from Peter is another pour from a barrel of concrete.

  “Now that I am seeing your face, I am wondering another thing. I am wondering how much they know about you. There is only one way you can be knowing that I am lying. That is because you are being soldier as well. For Naija Army. And you are knowing who is rebel and where they are being rebel. And now I am recognizing your face.” A smile splits his lips. “I am wanting to kill you once. I know because I am sitting in cell and you are standing on the other side of it wearing army gown, and you are standing with fancy army pilot, and you are writing things about me in your tablet, but you are not writing that I am being tortured by government and being held in my cell for almost every hour of the day. And you are not even changing your name when you come here.” He shakes his head, smiling wryly.

  “They would never believe you.”

  But Peter’s smile doesn’t fade. He knows. He knows that Ify is not certain. He knows that when the time comes, Ify would be unable to bring herself to lie. “I am thinking that for now, they are looking at you like daughter.”

  Ify grits her teeth.

  “But when they are finding out you are war criminal, maybe this change.” He shrugs, then walks back up the stoop and into the house. The door whisks open and shut behind him.

  And Ify is left to the sunlight and the birdsong and the buzzing of insects, all of it a façade. A flimsy, horrible façade.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

  The refugee ward sprawls before her. Her bodysuit tells her she has arrived just as the night shift is beginning. Even though she is off duty, Ify wears her lab coat with her nameplate on it. Over her bodysuit, it feels like a proper uniform, a thing this new Ify has grown comfortable in. The cavernous space, with its high, rounded ceiling and its silver walls, is filled with synthetic light. But the light here doesn’t bother Ify. Everything—the light, the temperature, the softly antiseptic smell—has been calibrated to allow for maximum comfort of the patients whose beds extend in row after row before her.

  Ify is only here to watch. She’s not on duty, and she’s loath to disrupt the rotation of nurse attendants, red-blood and bot, who make their rounds, checking vitals and having quiet, smiling conversations.

  She sees her assistant at a patient’s bed, which is elevated to a sitting position. Ify’s assistant, brown hair tied back in a messy bun with strands falling over her face, fingers folded to keep her fingers from twitching, probably bubbling from the caffeine streaming into her from the patches on her skin beneath her top and lab coat, is smiling. Grace.

  Ify taps her temple to activate the Augment in her neck and enhances her audio input to better hear what Grace is saying. She tells herself it’s to observe and critique her assistant’s work, but she sees something human in the connection between Grace and the Chinese woman with blanched skin and fading black hair, and a part of her longs for that. So, she enhances and listens and starts when she realizes Grace isn’t speaking English.

  A frown creases her brow. Grace isn’t cyberized, not even partially. She has no language translation software downloaded into her, and Ify spies no Augment on Grace’s body, nothing in her hair, nothing on her temple, no small half-sphere attached to the back of her neck. Ify scrolls through her languages and alights on Cantonese. Then it all come
s through clearly.

  “You’ve never had durian?” the patient asks Grace, shocked.

  Grace chuckles. “No, ma’am, I have not. My grandfather says it is popular on Earthland and is always complaining that he can never find it in the markets here.”

  “Does he not live on Earthland?”

  “No, we brought him to the Colonies several years ago. He’s getting older, and my parents wanted him to be near family.”

  “That is so sweet. Well, when you see him again, tell him I know where he can get good durian. I know where the good Hong Kong market is.”

  Grace laughs. “But where will he eat it?” she exclaims. “The whites will complain about the smell before it even leaves the bag!”

  Which gets both of them laughing loud enough for Ify to hear without her enhanced audio. She wants to chastise Grace for displaying such boisterous mirth in a place where people are suffering, where people will look to her and see joy and be plunged even deeper into their own despair—Ask the patient about her medical condition! Ask her about her sleep patterns or her food intake or her stool!—but she can’t bring herself to stay angry at her assistant.

  “Come close, child,” the woman says, when they’re done laughing.

  Grace leans in, and the woman whispers something Ify can’t catch. Grace slowly breaks away, and the woman puts a hand to Grace’s face, smiling. The urge bubbles in Ify to ask Peter about gari and pepper soup, to tell him where to find the best jollof in Alabast, to connect him to Nigeria here and be reconnected with Nigeria on Earthland. Then she realizes where her thoughts have taken her, and suddenly the lights in the refugee ward are too bright, the scent of antiseptic too strong, the temperature too warm and too cold at the same time. Ify doesn’t see the rest of Grace’s interaction with the patient, because she has rushed out of the ward, shedding her lab coat and badge and thoughts of Peter along the way.