What will Ify say to the girl when she sees her again? Will she apologize? Will she tell her that, yes, she is the Ify the girl has been looking for? Even though she has never seen the girl before? Will she ask the girl where she learned to blow on Ify’s forehead like that? Or will she say nothing and let the child hold her, cling to her as though she’s the answer to whatever questions might have gripped her?

“Do you have identification?” the man asks loudly, and, Ify realizes, for the second time.

Ify scrambles to call up her information in a holographic projection on her palm.

“No, not your identification. The detainee’s.”

“Oh. Um.” Ify looks about, trying to figure out what to say, what to do. An idea occurs to her. She uses her Whistle to replay the last moments she spent with the girl, rewinding from the girl’s capture to the girl standing in front of her, just before she pulls Ify’s face down to blow on her forehead. The image freezes, and in the girl’s face is that mixture of emotions Ify remembers so clearly: gratitude and sorrow and fear and hope and love. Ify downloads that still and slips the image file into the projector that shoots the image in three dimensions from her palm.

Surprise flickers over the attendant’s face, before that familiar expression of boredom returns. He looks up from time to time as he taps a key sequence into his touchboard. His fingers don’t detach, and Ify wonders if he’s a red-blood or if he’s merely being slow on purpose. It is beginning to irk her that she can no longer tell the difference.

“I am cross-referencing the image you have sent me with every portrait that has been taken here within the past week.”

“Oh, I don’t need the past week. It will have been within the past twelve hours.”

He raises an eyebrow at Ify, perhaps on the verge of asking about matters he has no business asking about. But he thinks better of it and returns to his task. “Okay. The past twelve hours.” He stares at his monitor, then squints. “Hmm.” He inputs the same key sequence as last time, waits a moment, then lets out a quiet “Huh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Are you sure this person was arrested within the past twelve hours?”

Ify resists the temptation to lean over the counter and look at his screen. “Maybe they were brought to a different facility? In a different state? What if you checked with all the holding facilities in the country?”

“That is the problem,” the attendant says, looking up at Ify. “I just did.”

It is the last thing Ify hears before an explosion rips through the walls around her and brings the ceiling right down on top of her and the attendant.

CHAPTER

26