Having this new version of an Accent with her reminds Ify of how much lesser her life had been without it. The instant access to all the information she could ever need makes her feel like a guardian spirit walks alongside her through the streets of Abuja, showing her which streets are safe and which are not well before she arrives at them, indicating to her who has been where and accessed which Terminals, showing her the world beneath the world, behind it, beyond it.

Still, when she finds the house where she had seen that figure take Grace in the drone footage, it feels too easy. Like a cheat code has been unlocked. How much less difficult this thing has already made her life.

It reveals to her no heat signatures on the first floor or the collapsed upper floors. And it reveals to her the opening that leads down to the passageway at the end of which is a featureless metal door with a broken keypad.

The broken flexiglas and dull screen might have deterred someone else. But it is nothing for Ify to hack. The display glows to life, then the door jiggers once, twice, before sliding open.

On the other side stands Grace, trembling legs spread wide, pistol raised, eyes closed. Were it not for their dire circumstances, Ify would laugh. Grace’s legs are too wide. She’s already turned her head away, and her eyes are shut.

“Grace,” Ify says in a hushed voice.

Grace opens her eyes one at a time.

“It’s me.”

Then Grace looks up, drops her gun, and wraps her arms around Ify so tightly that Ify has trouble breathing.

But Ify doesn’t mind. The wound on the back of her neck has already healed.

CHAPTER

42

Where the land is changing from green to red, from forest and jungle to desert, from wet and warm to hot and dry, it is like walking through wall. The path we are taking is moving us far away from people so that we are walking around cities and keeping far from humans in small villages. Sometime we are making criss-cross just to avoid man who is tilling farmland with servant droid. Sometime I am watching red-bloods with the droids that is serving them and sometime the droid is bringing the human water that is cooling their throat and sometime the droid is part of driving vehicle and sometime the droid is bodyguard or like attack dog to protect human, and I am not seeing machine and human but servant and master, and I am wanting to tell the droid that it is not having to be like this. We are being our own person and they can be their own person too, but Enyemaka is telling me to move with the group. We cannot afford to be leaving behind mess. Red-bloods cannot be knowing we are being here. If red-bloods are knowing we exist, they will be continuing to hunt us.