Grace sits, stylus poised over the tablet she has in her lap, ever the dutiful notetaker.

Ify can’t take her eyes off the children.

On the other side of the glass, adults walk around the room, but they don’t wear any armor. Just robes with green and white stripes at the ends of each sleeve. Here, the kids cluster in groups, some young enough to barely be walking. A few of them rest against the wall; these ones seem older. But through the flexiglass, Ify can see movement. She can see children talking to each other. Some of them are animated, others withdrawn. But they all seem . . . alive.

Once inside the room, she sees the drawings that line the wall. She walks to one of the pictures and sees a compound sketched out, seen at an angle from above with soldiers toward the center of the page around what she realizes is an explosion. The captured moment finds the limbs frozen in mid-flight. A shaheed. A suicide bomber. Someone in a military vest stands at the bottom right corner of the page, looking both at the scene and at Ify.

Then an explosion outside the building, and Ify, held down by the guards protecting her, staring at one of the children, who is giggling and saying “Roses” over and over again, and Ify realizing he means the new blood on the walls outside the compound from the suicide bomber who has just detonated himself.

“Doctor?” Dr. Ezirike’s voice snaps Ify out of her reverie.

Ify closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose, then shakes herself out of her stupor. Her bodysuit tells her where she is, beams into her brain their location, the time of day, the year. We are not at war, she says to herself, turning to smile at Dr. Ezirike, then taking her seat in the hoverchair next to Grace.

“I was just telling your colleague,” the doctor says, “that some of our most important advances have been in the field of child cyberization. It was common wisdom that children should reach a certain age before undergoing any such operations, but with our technology and growing expertise, we are able to push that age further and further back.”

“Machines from the cradle to the grave,” Ify says before she can stop herself.