The driver and the other minder both look at each other before nodding. The driver takes the jeep into gear, and it hovers off the ground. Ify consults her tablet to give her hands something to do, though her fingers tremble too much to be of much use. The passenger mutters a joke beneath his breath.

Without looking up from her tablet, Ify says, “I think I prefer you both silent.” After a beat to confirm their obedience, she says, “Thank you.”

She stares sternly at Grace, sending in her direction as steely an expression as possible, so that when Grace does finally look up from her lap, she sees in Ify’s face the silent command to pull herself together.

They have work to do.

■  ■  ■  ■  ■

“Grace, stay here,” Ify says as they pull up before the police compound.

The officers who stand in the parking lot by their maglev jeeps and their hoverbikes, watching Ify walk straight for the front entrance with purpose and the confidence of an oyinbo, don’t have to know who she is to see that she has the bearing of someone with authority. One or two of them might snicker at the sight of that woman striding so far ahead of her minders, but others see her minders and the bulge of weapons beneath their jackets and the way every single door opens for Ify and their quiet laughter dies down. Whatever badge she wears or title she holds or uniform she has on, it has imbued her with power. She has spent nearly half a decade in the Space Colonies perfecting the use of that power, getting accustomed to wearing it, to wielding it, especially as someone who does not look like how many think the powerful should look. She has grown used to the tenor of her voice when she’s addressing authorities she needs something from, the way she must braid together compassion and command when speaking with her subordinates, the fact that she must treat every encounter as though she is talking to an equal or an inferior. She moves with the walk of someone who owns the land she sets foot on. She has to.

There is something she wants ahead of her. Possible answers to questions she’s been asking herself ever since she landed in this country over a month ago. In the form of a girl whom she never recognized but who seemed to know who Ify was. With a certainty that unnerves her.

So it is with the demeanor of an entitled Colonial oyinbo that she passes through the gated entrance, immediately traveling through the massive gray walls that surround the compound, then walking up the broad stone staircase to the front doors, on each side of which stand gendarmes with submachine guns in their hands, the metal of their wrists showing clearly that they are Augments.