Then, I am seeing inside of tent where it is being dark. Memory is glowing blue at the edges but also green. I am seeing this color before but only with certain rememberings. And I am seeing shape moving softly in bed, up and down, up and down, under blanket that is having red splotch on it like coin but I am knowing it is from blood and radiation. And I am seeing my hand move and lie on bundle in bed, and I am moving forward and blowing on its forehead, and it is blinking eye at me and it is waking up and its eye is being so beautiful, like I am looking at two mornings.

“Ify, it’s time to wake up. You will be late for school.” And it is sounding like my voice.

CHAPTER

21

It’s been almost a month, and every time Ify walks through the streets of Abuja, she wonders if anyone will recognize her. They are all strangers, but she had once been a high-ranking student at the nation’s most prestigious academy. She had been an aide to Shehu Daren Suleiman Sékou Diallo, the Nigerian army’s most skilled and decorated mech pilot, the man who had given Ify his family name. She had overseen countless council meetings where policy that would affect the hundreds of millions of people in the nation was debated and enacted. She had been a Sentinel, charged with sitting in any number of watchtowers sprinkled throughout the capital city and conducting surveillance via the orb drones that lazily hovered over everyone’s heads. Now she looks around and there are no orbs. No drones. No watchtowers. Only hyperloop rail lines overhead, framed by walls of glimmering flexiglas, and giant advertisements for clothes and streaming football matches reflected on the shining surfaces of skyscrapers, and citizens whose silver-threaded outfits glisten in the sunlight.

Beside her, Grace has her gaze inclined upward, taking in sign after sign after sign in Mandarin.

Ify sees the frown developing on her face and says, “China was instrumental in the rebuilding effort during the ceasefire. Though they did not recognize Biafra as a country, they aided in the resettlement effort.” She knows that, if she were to close her eyes, she would see that refugee convoy again and the trailers around which walked or played little children and the little boy, the synth named Agu, who guarded them, and Xifeng. In so many of her memories, Xifeng is there waiting for her. Even now, with her eyes open, Ify finds herself glancing at the faces of those they walk past, and in so many faces, she sees Xifeng’s.