There’s a chair beside his bed, but Ify refuses to take it. Nor does she sit on the ledge where visitors are supposed to put their gifts for patients. Ify imagines every room on this floor has one, as though it’s expected that patients here will have loving family and friends showering them with presents and well wishes. As though everyone on this floor has someone who cares for them. Ify doesn’t know why the assumption annoys her. Maybe it’s lingering anger at the nurse’s racism, algorithm-powered or not. Maybe it’s how much the problem of the refugee patients is needling the back of her mind. Maybe it’s that whenever she thinks of Peter, she’s assaulted by a basketful of emotions: anger at his attempts at manipulating Amy and Paige, anger at her own hesitation in getting rid of him, guilt at whatever role she’s played in putting him here. Still, she can’t quite get rid of the feeling that this too is part of his plan, that this is what he’s willing to do to stay in their home and on this Colony. That this is checkmate in the game between him and Ify.

Her cramps have started again. She closes her eyes against the pain, then exhales slowly until it shrinks into something she can handle.

She pulls her Bonder from her coat pocket. Maybe if she can see what dreams he is dreaming while sedated, she can get a clue as to his motivations. Unlock more of the mystery of him. Were she cyberized, she’d be able to plug directly into Peter, but this visor-shaped device whose edges she slips over her ears has to do the job of an external link. She presses the button that lifts Peter’s bed into a slight incline, then searches the back of his bed for the opening that circles his outlet. When she finds it, she plugs her loose cord in, Bonding with him, and the world around her pixelates then falls apart block by block until darkness surrounds her.

She hears murmurs. Faraway voices, then static, then they become clearer. Words. She can hear their words.

“He says that when the militants came to his village, they took hostages. He also told us that his little sister was standing next to him and offered them five naira to let their mother go.” A snicker. “Apparently, it was all that she had.”

Another voice: “What is a child from the bush doing with five naira? An Efik family north of the Redlands? Probably stolen.”