We are sitting in cave and laughing at hologram projection Oluwale is making of when he is kneeling on crabtank and steering it with poles he is jamming into its head and screaming war cry. I am telling to the others how I am feeling fear in my chest like THU-THUMP of my heart over and over and some of them are having expression of marvel in their eyes because they are never knowing what fear is until I am telling them. Uzodinma is not with us. He is in other room, but I am wanting him to be hearing this—hearing my story and hearing Oluwale’s story—because if he is seeing that we are feeling these thing and that we are telling story not like machine but like red-blood, then we are not being machine. We are being thing that is making family. I am wanting him to be seeing me and telling himself that we are being family. But he is in another room, and he is not seeing or hearing us.

While there is laughing and chat-chatting in the caves, I hear scuffling and someone trying to scream but hand is covering their mouth. I am telling from the sound that this person is being prisoner, then the sound is drifting away and Xifeng is coming to us. Some of the synths are standing at attention like little war child. Other is sitting down and smiling at her like she is big sister and not commander of army they are belonging to. And some of them are looking at her with love in their eyes and I am recognizing this as look that child is giving their mother when they are loving each other.

“Uzo, come with me?” Xifeng is asking me in English.

“Yes, Mother,” I am saying in Taishanese, because, for some reason, I am wanting the others to know that I am special to Xifeng, that I am different. Favored.