Enyemaka and I are crushing small small stone beneath our feet and I am knowing now that both our feet are being made out of metal and I am feeling even more that she is my sister. I am thinking of Xifeng and then I am thinking of when I am looking for her in junkyard and seeing police that is bringing out group of war children and lining them up and shooting them dead.

They were like you, Enyemaka is telling me.

They are being synth too?

Yes.

Why is red-blood killing them?

Because the humans want to forget the war. The war you were created to fight for them. They cannot bear to think on it. Erasing it from memory is the only way they can live together again. In this way, they are selfish and short-sighted. They cannot move forward to find peace. They must move backward.

I am thinking that Enyemaka is sounding different. I am hearing tone in her voice that I am not recognizing. I am hearing pity and I am hearing scorn like she is talking about child who is misbehaving. I am knowing that thing inside me is changing because before I am not being able to cry and now I am being able to cry and before I am not being able to be angering and now I am being able to be angering and I am feeling thing I am not feeling before, and I am wondering if this is happening to Enyemaka too.

We are not them, Enyemaka is saying. You contain evidence of their crimes and their faults. You are evidence of their war. Every synth is evidence. So they must hunt you. Enyemaka is looking at me as we are walking. We are what remains of their war, she is telling me. We must survive. And I will protect you.

When she is saying, I will protect you, I am not hearing words but I am feeling a feeling in my brain. I am feeling like I am being held and like she is blowing on my forehead and like she is not being made of metal but something that is soft and keeping me warm.

I am protecting you too, I am saying to Enyemaka, and when I am saying it, I am hoping that she is feeling the same.

CHAPTER

43

“Your shoulder!”

Grace pulls away from Ify, a new bloodstain fully blossomed on the front of her shirt.

Grace’s words bring Ify back to the present and to the numbness that has taken her whole left arm, punctuated like a metronome with throbs of dull ache. Vertigo snatches her legs from under her and she pitches into Grace’s arms. Slowly, Grace brings them both to the ground. “I have to treat this immediately! You’ve lost so much blood.”