She crawls to her feet, then staggers over to the display she saw earlier, picking up her pistol on the way. When she arrives, she sees the progress bar nearly filled. Close by lies a hard drive, connected to a router broadcasting directly into the hemisphere. Ify takes aim and shoots the hard drive. Then, for good measure, she shoots the router. When she gets closer to the hard drive, she sees a small protrusion. It looks like a miniature version of the hemisphere attached to the drive. Something like the Bonder Ify would sometimes slip over her ears to connect to her devices. The answer to so many of her questions lies before her now with smoke issuing from its bullet hole. So much chaos over so small a piece of technology. Within that drive is the coding that would have destroyed an entire country.

Ify nudges it with her feet over the side of the walkway and watches the thing plummet deeper and deeper and deeper into the abyss. Where no one will ever see it again.

She closes her eyes, bites back a sob, then exhales and settles herself, Xifeng’s last words ringing in her head.

Remember the war, Ify. Remember the war. She lives.

Bleeding, Ify makes her way back to the surface.

Topside, Ify walks toward the waning destruction. “Grace!” she calls out, her voice hoarse with grief, a cry of desperation. Of rage. Of apology.

CHAPTER

40

It is important to be remembering. That is what the robot is saying who is pulling me from underneath the mountain of bodies where it is so hard to breathe that my chest is paining me fierce. It is like knife in my chest over and over and over, and I am not knowing for how long I am lying like this. But I am remembering that the first thing I am seeing is tiny hole of light coming from sky. Everything is shadow, and this is how I know I am being covered. And I am first thinking that this is what night is. That it is just blackness with tiny hole of light. But it is bodies. Many bodies piled on top of me. And then I am remembering the bodies are falling away. It is sounding like someone is dragging their foots on the dirt road, then it is sounding like a shirt rustling in wind, like someone is wearing a shirt too big for them and running down dirt road, and when I think of this thing, I am thinking that the person wearing this shirt should be giggling. I am liking the sound in my brain.

As more and more body is coming away, I am seeing that light is bigger. Big big. So big it is paining my eyes to look at. I am wanting to raise my arms to block out the light, but I cannot move them because there are more bodies on top of them.