“Madame!” one of her guards is screaming. One of the guards she’d insisted on having at her side at almost all times. One of the guards she’d hoped would keep her safe. Whom she’s now refusing. “Madame! We must go! This is a police operation.”

But Ify is entranced. “The children,” she murmurs to herself. Time has slowed down for her, so she can watch it all unfold like paint splashed onto a canvas: the aerial vehicles spilling over the treeline, the children scattering, some of them being caught by ground forces, the one girl charging, barreling, like a faultline in the earth, straight for her.

The child is close enough for Ify to see her face, then the girl leaps from an impossibly far distance. Arms outstretched, as though there are claws on her fingers. One of Ify’s minders sticks his arm out to bat the child away, but Ify, acting before thinking, pushes the man aside and walks straight into the child’s embrace.

The child wraps her arms and legs around Ify like a restraint, like something made out of metal, and is shaking. The thought occurs to Ify that maybe she is being targeted. Maybe this is some odd assassination attempt and this child is carrying a bomb inside her body.

She tosses away the thought. No, this is peacetime. No one would want to blow up a Colonial official in peacetime.

The girl shivers against Ify even as the tableau of violence plays out before Ify and the children scurry, some of them vanishing into the forest, others unlucky enough to be caught in the electrified netting or shot down by paralyzing bullets. The minders grip the girl by her shoulders and arms and try to pry her loose, then the girl cries out in pain as electrical currents sizzle along her skin and she falls to the ground.

“What did you do?” Ify shouts at one of the men as the girl writhes, then comes up onto her hands and knees. Ify sees a shockstick raised to strike the girl down and grabs the man’s arm to stop him. “What are you doing? Stop it.”

The girl coughs, and a spattering of oil stains the grass. She comes up and stands too close to Ify, and there is beseeching in her eyes, and joy and fear and wonder. “Ify.”

“What?” How does this girl know her name? Suddenly, the girl’s hands grip Ify’s face and pull it down and close so that her head is bowed before the girl’s. A small breeze, like a breath exhaled slowly, whispers against her forehead. Ify’s eyes shoot open. What is this? What is happening? Flashes of Onyii flit through her mind. She breaks free and can’t help but stare in horror at the child.

“Ify, it’s me.”