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.