—
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!”
We would be like the American football player who fled police in the white car that my grandfather was always laughing about. Or the Saudi president who was eventually captured in a hole in the ground. What happened to DNA and I would give people something to talk about, cheer on, rant about, hate-watch. Our plight would be distraction and opiate. The global public would hungrily gather and tune in to a public execution.
There was an army before me and I laughed to myself; were these government or were they private soldiers working for Ultimate Corp? Who knew anymore. From where they stood, on the farthest side of the parking lot, I could see that they were all humanoid drones. Whoever was behind this didn’t want to risk any casualties beside me. They were all a dull gray with round heads and white swift moving feet. Their metal bodies were coated with something that made them shine and sparkle in the desert sun. All the better for visual effect. Only two miles or so north loomed the dusty beginning of the Red Eye. The air was dry, clear, and hot, like a machine nearby was working at maximum power. I took several steps away from the warehouse, onto the street.
“Here I am,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “Come and get me!”
Several of them heard or saw me. A soldier held up a white hand and pointed my way. Theatrics for those watching. What did robots need to visually signal each other for? They merely needed to ping each other, if even that. The others started slowly trudging forward. There was a loud beep from above and all the drones started gathering closer together.
“What the heck are you doing?”
I whirled around to see DNA pushing open the glass door. Behind him crowded GPS and Carpe Diem.
“Go back inside,” I snapped. “They don’t have to get both of us!”
Instead, he stepped up and stood beside me. GPS and Carpe Diem trotted out and GPS immediately found some dry weeds growing through a crack in the doorway and started gnawing at them. The drones hovered low before us. I couldn’t tell what kind of weapons they carried—guns, Tasers, tear gas, bombs. All I knew was that they had eyes and most likely all of Nigeria was watching, Nigeria and beyond. The soldiers were almost here.
“What do you want to do?” DNA asked.
I paused. The soldiers were halfway across the parking lot. The drones had stopped thirty feet above. “Nothing,” I said. I was frowning to keep the tears out of my eyes. They would kill us. Were my parents and my brother watching? My few friends in Abuja? My stupid ex? Maybe not. Probably, though. I glared at the drones. Glared hard, imagining they could feel my rage. They had no right. NO RIGHT. I glared at the approaching soldiers. They were two thirds across the parking lot. The three in front of us had raised their left arms and pointed them in our direction. They had no faces, their heads white spheres.
“Anwuli Obioma Okwudili and Dangote Nuhu Adamu, you are both under arrest for murder.”
Thoom. The surge of pain in my head was so horrible that I could have sworn I heard the headache. I knocked on my forehead with my knuckles. “Ugh, my God,” I muttered.
“You still want to do nothing?” DNA asked.
One of the steer mooed.
“If you run,” one of the soldiers said, “you will be shot. Please do not . . .”
I wasn’t listening any more. I was looking. Not with my eyes. The pain in my head made me stop, listen and look. As I did this, I felt something larger than ever rupture in my head. Then a wet warmth with the pain like before. I stumbled forward. DNA was yelling something. I looked up at the approaching soldiers. One of the steer mooed again loudly behind us. But it was all like it was happening from a distance and I had my back to it.
The drones descended. The soldiers were feet away.
I looked at one of the soldier’s sphere heads, the one closest to me. There was a camera eye behind it.
I went in.