Thoughts of Céline and their impending reunion always come with thoughts of what Ify had wanted to say to her best friend after so long apart. But is there any way to tell her of the transformation she has undergone since arriving here? Is there any way to tell her, over the course of a single conversation, the multiple reckonings she’s had to face—for her role in the breaking of the ceasefire, for her feelings of abandonment brought about by the sister who saved her life, for her coming to terms with the people she’d thought of before as nothing but killing machines? How to tell Céline that she still feels guilt for what she did, trying to seek revenge against that sister and prolonging a war that killed and maimed and devastated so many people? Even now, were Céline to magically appear before her, she doesn’t know how she would say all those things. The words and their formulation into sentences escape her.

So she climbs down from the mech and alights onto the patch of grass with a whoosh. The breeze quickens. She hugs herself as she walks toward the jet aircraft, her ratty braids whipping about her face. If she were to catch a cold after everything she’s been through . . . She’ll just tell the others she’s come for a blanket and not because she’s lonely and insomniac on the mech.

The cockpit opens at her touch, and she sneaks through. It hisses shut behind her. She switches from her boots to a pair of slippers by the copilot’s seat, then moves to the divider that separates the cockpit from what Grace and Ngozi have turned into a makeshift operating theater.

She is about to press the sequence on the keypad to get the doors to swish open, but she stops when she hears singing.

The words, sung at a high tenor but with the rolling softness of a sea at rest, rise to just above a murmur. But somehow, even with the poor acoustics of the cabin, Ify can make them out.

Yuet gwōng gwōng ziu dei tòng

Hāa zái néi gwāai gwāai fan lok còng

Tēng cìu ah māa yiu gón caap yēong lō

Ah yè tái ngàu hoei séong sāan gōng

Āh . . . āh . . . āh āh āh āh

Hāa zái néi faai gōu zéong daai lō

Bōng sáu ah yè hoei tái ngàu yèong

Āh . . . āh . . . āh āh āh āh

Grace. Singing in Cantonese. Out of instinct, Ify almost gets her Accent to auto-translate the lyrics, but she stops herself just in time. Instead, she leans against the partition and listens.