Grace doesn’t flinch. How often has she heard the slur since coming here? Odoodo. Odo odo. Yellow. Often enough to take it without showing any hurt.
“It wasn’t like this before the war. Being watched all the time. Everywhere. The Chinese did this when they came with their”—she uses air quotes—“‘foreign aid.’”
“I’ve never been to Earthland China,” Grace says in a low, even voice. A voice Ify has never heard her use before.
“It was like this before the ceasefire,” Ify tells Ngozi in an effort to relieve the tension. “Nigeria was already there. In Biafra, you had no clue.”
Ngozi squints at Ify, as though a new piece of the puzzle has presented itself. But whatever it is that has occurred to her, she lets it go. “Because we were so backward in Biafra, of course.” Before Ify can reply, Ngozi says, “You should get some rest.” Without another word, she hefts the rifle, forces the back door open, then climbs out. The door slowly swings shut.
Ify pulls the blankets up to her chin and doesn’t realize that she’s been asleep until the muffled sound of voices reaches her. Reflexively, she reaches for her temple where her Whistle would be, but there’s nothing but hair. She tries to grow as still as possible and listen.
“She would remove her leg,” Ngozi is saying, her words gauzed by the van’s metal walls, “because it was connected and the government could track her through it. But we would drive into the desert, and she would take off her leg and I would remove my own Augment, and we’d leave them behind in the car and I would carry her. I would carry her until we’d reached our spot, and then we would sit in the sand together and watch the sun set.”
Ify strains her ears to hear what follows, then she realizes no one is speaking.
“Tell me what’s happening outside.” Ngozi again. “Do they know about us in the Colonies?”
Ify looks around her and sees that Grace is gone.
Then, Grace’s voice. Low and soft on the other side of the van’s walls. Too quiet for Ify to know what she’s saying, whether she’s lying to Ngozi or not.
After a quarter of an hour, Grace climbs back in and buries herself beneath her own pile of blankets. Ify marvels at how easily her assistant is able to find sleep.
CHAPTER
30
Xifeng is making us all to wear clothing that is dampening our signal. When I am putting on this thing that is tight on my skin, it is like shadow is falling over the world. I am not being able to talk to my siblings. And I am not having so much information buzzing like one million mosquitoes in my brain. But it is giving me relief to be not always hearing and seeing everything that is happening around me. When I am putting on the signal-dampening suit, it is like someone is shutting down the noise in my head so I am hearing with ear like red-blood and seeing with eye like red-blood and even smelling with nose like red-blood.
“I am not liking this costume,” Oluwale is saying next to me. “I don’t like pretending to be a human.”
One of the girls hears this and laughs, and this is the mood that everyone is having as Xifeng splits us into groups and sends us out on our mission. Before we are putting on suit, Xifeng sends us a map of the facility and its grid layout. There are also markings for where there is being crabtank and ground mech and even where aerial mech is patrolling. And we are having to memorize it because we cannot be accessing it in our braincases. But every child of war is being paired with one of the red-bloods who have more practice memorizing things. Girl in combat vest and with braids that is running down her back is moving close to me. My braincase is telling me that this girl is being named Binyelum, and I am knowing that this is Igbo for stay with me. Binyelum is fighting in war but only in later half after ceasefire and she is at first being separated from her family, but after war she is not reconnecting with them because she cannot forgive the people who ruined her family’s life, the same people her family must share a neighborhood with. I am knowing these thing because of Augment that is making her eye to sometime be shining yellow, because Augment is being connected to her nervous system and other part of her body. She is connected, and she is patting me on my head like I am being her little sister.
Before we leave, Xifeng is giving us EMP and telling us where on map to go to place it, then to be moving far far from there.
And I am trying to remember this thing, even as we are going aboveground and going deep into nearby forest and climbing into our mechs and flying low over forest and abandoned countryside to Borno State, which is being far away but which we are getting to just as the sky is nighting. I am trying to remember where I am supposed to go as mech is dropping us so far from facility that it is dark shape like bug in the distance, but I am having gun in my hand, and it is feeling good to be having gun in my hand. I am seeing mech drop off other members of Xifeng’s army far from us, but it is looking like we are all arriving safe, so when Binyelum is giving the signal, we are moving forward down cliff and into valley. And when we are getting closer, Binye is pulling small container from her packet and smearing cream on my face and on hers. We are doing this to be scrambling face-recognition technology. So that if cameras are seeing our faces or Augments or mechs are seeing our faces, they are not recognizing us. Our face is looking like someone else.
We are having to rest some time because Binye is red-blood and is not having legs of metal like mine and synthetic lungs like mine. And I am waiting patiently every time. But as we are getting closer, sun is beginning to rise. We are losing time.
Then I am hearing gunfire, and I am seeing one of our mech flying overhead, too close overhead, and it is taking bullet like PINGPINGPINGPING until it is bursting into flames. I am seeing it like it is moving in slow motion, and dread is building inside me until it crashes into building with curving glass ceiling and explodes, and suddenly everywhere is gunfire and explosion. Instantly, I am feeling more at home.
“Oh no,” Binye murmurs next to me.
Suddenly, she is finding new energy and we are running. She is in front and directing me, and we are both crouching low and moving fast while ground mech is shooting in every direction. I am hearing FWOOMP and knowing from my rememberings that this grenade is coming. I am holding Binye by her belt and then tugging her to the side, and we are both falling against wall of other building just before ground where we are running before is exploding in big big cloud of dirt and fire.
I hold my hand out to her. “Give me the EMP.”
“You know where to go?” she asks me.
I nod.
“Give me your gun,” she tells me, smiling. There is blood coming down her face from wounding in her forehead, but she is smiling. “I’ll cover you.”
She jumps from shadow where we are both hiding and shoots at nearby soldier and is killing him instantly. Then she is moving forward and crabtank is turning toward her and firing big big bullet that is tearing apart the earth, and she is running fast fast until she is finding cover behind stone barrier.