Page 103 of Death of the Author

For a long stretch, she ran in the dark, no cars passing by. The only sounds were thetap tapof her exos and her own rapid breathing. If anything was out here, it would hear and see her. She’d glanced into the dark bushes once, and between the trees, she could have sworn she saw the hulking mass of a masquerade. Watching her run by, silent but weighted in its presence. She was alone and fully exposed, with nothing but her body and the technology on her person. She felt a wave of terror so strong that she nearly dropped her phone.

She looked up at the sky. It was so clear that she could see the Milky Way. The only noises around her were the singing of insects and the occasional screech of a barn owl.

“Look at the Milky Way,” she said, holding her phone up. There were thousands of eyes looking through her camera, but she felt like the only one there.

She kept talking to distract herself, saying whatever crossed her mind. “Not my first time seeing it. The first time I saw the Milky Way, I didn’t know what I was looking at. I thought I was seeing clouds in the moonlight... but there was no moon that night! It was in my father’s village. I always saw it there, whenever we went when I was growing up. Then I saw it in Morocco, at a tourist location in the desert. That’s where, coincidentally, they shot a few scenes forRusted Robots.”

Her heart hurt; it was working too hard. She took a deep breath andlet it out, murmuring, “Clarity.” She felt better, a little. “Breathtaking,” she continued to her phone. “What would it be like to be an astronaut out there? In that silence. Relentless, beautiful space. Unconcerned with humanity.” She looked up into the sky again, looked well beyond the Earth. “Out there, I wouldn’t need exos. I’d be more prepared in outer space than all of you who can walk. Ah, I need only look up on this night of hell to be reminded that it’s only on this Earth that I am abnormal.”

A car passed dangerously close to her. “Shit! Watch it!” she screamed after the car. Some of the people passing her now had to have also passed the situation she’d fled. Was the gun battle still going on? Where were Marcy, Hugo, and Uchenna? Were they okay? And where the fuck was she going?

It was strange, but she had the answer to that. It’s just that what she was doing seemed impossible, so it was best not to look directly at it. She was coming down now. Softly. She glanced at her video feed again. There were now fifty thousand people watching her, and that number was quickly rising. She looked hard into her camera and said, “If someone who knows me personally is watching, please contact my family. Tell them what happened, what’s happening. Please! Tell everyone! I need help!”

Now she was fully back to herself. She was doing this, and she could keep doing it. She would not fall. She’d mastered her exos, here, on the Imo State road in Nigeria. Still, she didn’t dare look behind her or in the bushes.

“They... they stopped our car,” she continued to tell her phone. “Men with guns. I don’t know how I got away... I don’t know how I’m even running. These exos. Saved me. I’m scared. Really, really scared. Look how fast...” She panned her camera around her. “I know it looks shaky, but I can’t help it. I feel... feel like if I stop, I’ll fall. And if I fall, I’ll be killed.”

A car zoomed by right beside her, honking its horn.

“See?” she whimpered. Now she was crying. “I can’t stop. I’m here and I can’t stop.” After a few breaths, she said, “Yebo, show me the way to the airport and enable location tracking on Facebook Live.”

Yebo opened a small window at the top of her screen that showed her the way to the airport via GPS. And now, with her location public, if the kidnappers were following her, they weren’t the only ones who knew where she was going.

After running on the side of the road for over an hour, she began to see signs for the airport. Even with the streetlights and more-frequent cars lighting the area, she was still hard to see. And an individual person running on the side of the road was so unexpected that most who even glimpsed her probably assumed she was a figment of their imagination. Zelu was dirty from dust and sweat. The exos were still working, but when she touched them, they were hot. Soon they would begin to burn her flesh. She’d been running at close to forty-five miles per hour, and though her exos had the capability, they weren’t meant to be used in this way.

On top of this, her adrenaline had begun to wear off and she was getting tired. She hadn’t looked at her phone in a while, she’d just been holding it up. Now she looked at it. Fivemillionpeople were watching. She frowned and then checked the chat. There were too many comments for her to see if anyone she knew was responding. She held the phone to her face.

“I’m... I’m okay. Just tired. Uh... it’s late now. I’m near the airport.” She turned and started running up the exit ramp. Up ahead she saw a flashlight pointing at her. “Someone’s up the road, maybe... waiting for me.” She squinted. She couldn’t tell who it was. She was so overwhelmed with relief that the end was in sight.

She looked at her camera. “My fucking exos got me here... and my partner’s personal assistant app called Yebo! Call me robot woman, whatever you want. I’malive!”

More lights started flashing, and suddenly she could see that it was the Nigerian police, a bunch of reporters, and beyond that, a crowd of other people.

“You’re safe!” a random woman shouted.

Zelu stopped as they all rushed to her. She looked at her phone. “If there’s ever a chance for me to leave this fucking planet, sign me up.” She held her phone up so that her many followers could see her point of view as people rushed toward her, and then she forgot about her phone as she finally collapsed into someone’s arms. They were the arms of a woman with a stethoscope wearing scrubs. Zelu’s vision was distorted by tears, her hearing blurred by her sobs. She was being carried into an ambulance, its flashing lights piercing the dark. Someone might have been telling her that her auntie Mary and uncle Ralph were flying in. At some point she was being driven. There were sirens. She was in a bed. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She wept. She slept. And when the sun rose, she awoke.

Her exos were on the floor. Her phone was on the nightstand, plugged into a charger beside her. Her uncle was sitting on the chair across from her, his head back, his mouth hanging open. Zelu quietly pushed herself up and winced at her sore upper abdominal muscles and back.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“Good morning,” Uncle Ralph said, waking.

“Uncle,” she said, her throat hoarse. “It was Ogo, one of Uncle Onyemobi’s workers.”

Uncle Ralph twitched with fury. “I know him,” he growled. “Just rest.”

“Are the others okay?”

“Yes,” he said. “They got away. One of Onyemobi’s guards was shot in the leg.”

She gasped. “Oh my God!”

“He’s in the other room.”

“Will he be all right?”

“I believe so.”

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