My chest tightened as I thought of my father. Sitting on the porch drinking his beer and reading headlines on his phone. Wondering about me. My mother sitting with her cat on her lap, a cat that looked more like a lion cub than a house cat, a cat who would only sit on her lap. Staring into space while she wondered about me. And my brother would be playing his talking drum, maybe hoping I’d hear them. I sniffled, longing for home in Lagos for the first time since I’d gone wild. It was like a burning stone deep in my gut, a pain I couldn’t reach. I sighed loudly, imagining that I exhaled smoke, despite my skin feeling so cold. I looked over at DNA.
They were coming for us, so I went to him. He’d never have come to me. He’d curled himself tightly on the blanket he’d pulled from his bundle and pressed himself to the black wall. Not to enjoy its coolness but to get away from me. From everything. I’d breached one strange border the day before yesterday when I killed those men who’d tried to kill me, breaching another was not hard.
I touched his bare shoulder with my fingers. He didn’t flinch away. I moved closer. He gathered me in his arms and pulled the blanket over us both. I let him touch those parts of me that were still soft, still flesh, still human and I sighed, smiling.
“I can see why you bother those men,” he whispered, running a hand over my torso, again.
I frowned, pulling away. He pulled me back to him. I could have pinned him to the floor with one hand. I didn’t.
“You’re a woman despite so much of you being machine,” he said. “I’m not a fool; I know you’re very strong.” He paused, his hand working its way down my belly. He brought his other hand forward, grasped the metal of my left thigh. He spread my legs. “I’m just not afraid of it.”
I stared at him, surprised by his words. For the first time in my numerous dealings with men, I let a man take me without me saying a word.
* * *
—
The anti-aejej’s surveillance didn’t ping. It detected nothing. I heard nothing. DNA heard nothing. GPS and Carpe Diem heard nothing. We were all asleep. But in my sleep, I had a feeling. That’s what woke me up. I had a feeling. I’d been dreaming about my brother. He was sitting in a courtyard by the sea. Maybe it was New Calabar, maybe Lagos, maybe Accra, maybe Durban, maybe Dakar. What I knew was that it felt familiar, though I couldn’t tell just how familiar. The sun was shining, and my brother was standing on the concrete of a courtyard at the edge of the ocean. He was wearing a white shirt, and he was sweating through it. His white pants were spotless. And he was playing his talking drums, his eyes closed, aware of nothing else. I was watching him.
Then I awoke to the talking drum of my headache. The moment I came to wakefulness, the headache stopped. I sat up. I had a feeling. I looked at DNA beside me, fast asleep. Exhausted. Carpe Diem and GPS were both still asleep, too. I looked up at the ceiling. I gasped. Sunlight was shining through the tears in the steel. We’d slept right through the night. Not three hours, at least six! The drums in my head started again.
I rubbed my temples and then quietly got up and dressed. I barely made a sound as I walked away from the three of them, past the burned aisles, down the charred entryway. To the front door.
CHAPTER 13
Here I Am
. . . And so here I was, leaving the warehouse. This wasn’t the plan. We had no plan. My left shoulder ached a little as I slowly bent down and grasped a handful of sand with my right hand. I felt the grains rub against the metal of my cybernetic fingers, I could hear the grinding. I sifted the sand from my hand, letting it pour on my exposed cybernetic arm, grains entering the joints, wristlets, touching wire and circuit. The discomfort faded and I sighed, looking up. “Fucking Ultimate Corp,” I whispered to myself, pressing fingers to my temple, trying to quiet the drums that would not be silenced.
Above, the sun spread across the sky like a jellyfish, brighter and more alive than it had ever been. And drones danced around its sunbeam tentacles like insects. About fifty of them, a swarm of mechanical giant bees. Their powerful propellers whirred and whipped, blending the air. Gathering all this hardware was probably why they took so many hours to come for us. How many parts of the world were now watching? Waiting to “accidently” see a slaughter, devising ways to monetize the moment as word spread and eyes signed on to watch. I wondered if our stories had been combined yet, “In two minutes, witness the reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist,” “This Is What Too Much Technology Will Do,” “Herdsman Terrorist Trapped in Old Building With Robot Lover,” “Africans Gone Wild!”