Lying in a rattling truckbed, part of a caravan passing through dark and heavy jungle, refugees either sleeping in one of the trailers or walking alongside, children playing bulubu by moonlight. She has a tablet in her lap and a pistol in her messenger bag, and she’s on her way to kill the woman who murdered her family. And sitting across from her is a boy with a touchboard clutched close to his chest, patchy skin on his arms, voice hoarse with disuse, rifle in his lap. A boy she has seen kill an entire group of marauders and show no remorse because he claimed he was doing it to protect the caravan as it wound its way to the refugee intake center near Enugu. The boy’s vitiligo, the way he only spoke in the present tense, as though everything that had happened or would happen to him were always happening to him, as though the war was simultaneously a memory and a thing still raging in his mind, as though he saw the ceasefire as a thing that could never last, as though he knew war was returning. His name had been Agu, and he had saved the woman whom Ify had tried to kill, the same woman who had then abandoned Ify to a lonely future in the Colonies. Agu, who had loved to make music with his touchboard. Agu, who had been forged out of other people’s parts and made a killer.

Ify sees it now.

Peter is a synth.

■  ■  ■  ■  ■

“He’s not human.” Ify has to keep herself from shouting. Still, the projection of Céline hovering by the window overlooking the refugee ward winces.

In her office, Ify has a number of documents glowing at her in the form of holographic projections: Colonial human rights statutes defining enemy combatants and refugees, medical files for several of the most recent cases of patient coma, and the information page for immigration authorities.

“I could call the number right now, Céline. I could tell them where to find Peter, that that’s the name he gave his sponsors, even though it may not be his real name. I could tell them that everything he’s said to them is a lie. Céline, he’s an enemy combatant.”

Céline’s face has none of its usual sly frolic. There’s no joke at the edge of her lips, no mischief twinkling in her eye. She has her arms folded and frowns, an expression somewhere between disapproval and concern. “Ify.”

“He’s a synth.”

“Ify. Mais t’es pas sûre.” Céline swings her arm wide as though to indicate the vast number of questions awaiting Ify if she were to go through with this. “That’s what the deportation authorities will ask. They’ll ask, ‘How do you know this?’”