He is looking at me and not saying words, and there is small small hair on his head and I am wanting to shave his head so that his hair is not trapping sun-heat on his scalp, and I am wanting to give him headscarf and protect him from sunburn. And I am wanting these things because I have remembering in me that I am doing this thing before for someone who is making my heart happy. And I am wanting to make this boy happy, but he is saying nothing.

“Come with us. Come with me.”

“You’re one of us,” he is saying in quiet quiet voice.

Blood-covered fist is clenching at my sides. “I am not bad person.”

But boy is saying no more thing and is just looking at me with nothing in his eye, not even water. Then he is walking away with gun in his arms and machete slapping his leg softly like it is walking with him.

I am collecting gun and bullet from dead bodies, and I am walking and walking and walking until I see Enyemakas and Xifeng’s trailer. And while I am walking, I am telling myself I am not bad person.

And I am trying to believe it.

CHAPTER

9

To wash the away the memories of terrorist groups and detention of militants and Peter, like oil from her skin, Ify wanders past the Viewer, that giant glass-encased observation deck where she has spent countless hours staring out at the stars and the Refuse Ring that circles the colony of Alabast. She continues past the school dorms where she and Céline had lived as students, then past the streets where, as a young refugee, she had been stopped by bots and other authorities and asked for her papers. She wanders and wanders and would have no way to gauge the passage of time were it not for the information that her bodysuit, connected to her Augment, beams into her brain. But it disturbs her that it always seems to be daylight here. Meandering without direction, she finds herself back in Amy and Paige’s cul-de-sac. This is how she will spend the end of her dwindling time off from work, worrying about whether or not the foolishness of these well-meaning white women will result in tragedy.