“When you did this, you rearranged your own genetic coding. You figured out a way to hold your data together and make a whole identity out of it. Imagine if a computer were alive.”

I am not liking that she is calling me computer, and she is seeing the changing look in my face.

“Of course, you’re more than a computer. It’s just that . . . you’re the cure. Somehow, you’re the cure.”

I am wanting to be telling her that all of my brother and sister is doing this thing. It is thing we are learning to do from each other, and I am wanting to show her Oluwale teaching me and I am wanting to show her Uzodinma doing it too and finding certain memory that is granting him peace and accessing it on purpose and not accident. I am wanting to tell her we are all doing this thing and she is not needing me. But then I am trying to send out signal to find my family. And I am sending and sending and sending and all that is coming back is silence. All I am hearing is the ringing in my own head.

“You are the only one left,” Ify is telling me like she is reading my mind. Like we are being plugged into each other. “You are the last synth.” She is looking at her hands and playing with them again. Then she is stopping, then she is gathering breath inside her and letting out a soft and slow sigh. When she is looking at me again, tears are shimmering in her eyes like wind brushing on the surface of the sea. “Will you come to space with me? I . . . I can’t guarantee that you will be safe or that you will even like it, but you can help many, many people who desperately need it. I don’t know what is waiting for you there, but I will care for you, and you will be loved. Yes. You will be loved. So will you do it? Will you come with me? To space?”

CHAPTER

49

Ify finds Grace and Ngozi sitting on the hunched shoulders of Ngozi’s mech, eating out of what look like military ready-to-eat packets. Ngozi munches absentmindedly while Grace’s face twists around the tastes. When Ify looks up at them, Grace swallows her mouthful loudly and says, “Burrito bowl.” Her face makes Ify chuckle.

“And?” Ngozi asks, nodding to the aircraft where Ify has left Uzo to rest. “What is the plan?”

“We need to give her a new identity. For her visa application.”

Light blossoms to life in Grace’s face so that, when the light from the setting sun hits, it looks like she’s made of gold.

“We can’t bring her to Alabast directly. We’ll have to go to Centrafrique. I’ve already notified my friend there.”