“It’s a 999,” Mahlia said.

“What’s that?”

“Big old gun. Serious artillery. Peacekeepers used to keep them. Dropped shells on all the warlords. Used some kind of spy eye to target it, then they’d drop a big old shell right down on Army of God, UPF, Freedom Militia, whoever. Peacekeepers spiked them all when they rabbited, so the warlords couldn’t use them, but that’s a 999 for sure.”

“You think China’s sending in peacekeepers again?” Mouse asked. “Maybe rolling up the warlords for good?”

The idea made Mahlia’s chest tighten. It was her own fantasy, the secret one she sometimes curled up to when she went to bed, knowing that it was stupid, but still wanting it, wanting it to somehow all make sense.

Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers.

A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better.

“You think they’re coming?” Mouse asked again.

You think?

“Nah.” Mahlia forced a laugh. “Warlords must have fixed one of the guns. Or bought one. Or maybe they pirated something off the Atlantic shipping lanes.” She shrugged. “The Chinese ain’t coming back.”

The 999 went off again. A nostalgic sound. The sound of a war that her father had been winning.

999.

It was a lucky number, her old man used to say. He’d sit in their apartment at night, drinking Kong Fu Jia Jiu shipped all the way from Beijing, gazing out the window at the orange and yellow flares of the fighting, a fireworks display every night. He listened to the guns.

“Jiu jiu jiu,” he’d say. “999.”

Mahlia remembered the 999 particularly, because he’d claimed the peacekeepers would knock the warlords back with their lucky 999s and maybe then they’d finally teach these Drowned Cities savages how to be civilized. The paper tiger warlords would learn that shooting and hatred solved nothing. Eventually, the warlords would sit down at the negotiating table and figure out some way to get along with one another, without bullets.