Using the Augment embedded in her neck, Ify scans them and notes on her holographic retinal display what districts they represent. This one represents Abia State and this one Bayelsa. Those three there are from Katsina State, and the two standing next to them are from Oyo and Delta. But were she looking at them with an unaided eye, she would see clones. Nothing but clones. Perhaps they are all cyberized and all outfitted with similar facial features and similar body structures. Maybe this is simply what is fashionable. And they are all shaking hands and joking. Some of the legislators who do not look older but talk as though their insides are older than their outsides speak in patronizing whimsy to the younger ones. But there is no military. Not a single bar denoting rank. Not a single soldier stiff at attention. She adjusts her scanner to see if perhaps the vehicles are cloaked. It could be that the air is swarming with drones, clouds of them thick enough to blot out the sun. All it would take is the right calibration for the massive ground mechs she’s sure are there to materialize out of thin air. To have the sky shimmer around them, then to have them revealed in all their violent, militaristic glory. If she squints hard enough, maybe she can even detect the outline of high-powered minimechs hiding in the shadows or strapped to the bottom of the maglev Land Rovers, ready to detach and fire at whatever needs killing.

But nothing. The air is still. The chatter is soft; then, as the parliamentarians walk into the halls of the National Assembly to begin the session, the chatter is gone. And nowhere in this area is there a statue or monument or plaque—anything—to indicate that she had once been here, that Daren had once fought a war for this place, that millions had died. At the very hall of government, no markers of sacrifice. No sign of the vanquishing of villains.

No indication, even, that there had been heroes.

“Were there this many Chinese during the war?” Grace asks.

Ify turns to consider Grace for a moment before leading them back the way they had come. Enough walking for today. “No,” she says quietly, too harshly.

There is no more war, Ify tells herself. Even as she can’t quite bring herself to believe it.

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