Early the next morning, they set out again.

They parted with Ke Ke Shu right there — one heading east, the other going south.

Wei Lai didn’t have many friends; Ke Ke Shu was one of the rare ones, yet they almost never got to meet. One hated the cold, the other hated the heat. Before Khartoum, they hadn’t seen each other in over two years.

This time, if he added it all up, they’d only “ridden in the same vehicle,” “shared drinks,” “shared a meal,” and “flown a paper airplane.” It fell far short of the reunion he’d imagined between old friends after a long separation.

Ke Ke Shu clearly felt the same. He pulled Wei Lai aside.

“You probably won’t come back here again in your lifetime…”

He knew him well.

“In a couple of days, once I’m done with my work in the southern province, I’ll be heading back to my hometown — Wuda. High altitude, lots of rain, usually only around twenty degrees — not hot. Or maybe after the negotiations on the open sea are done, you could come stay with me for a while? Let my wife cook for you.”

Wei Lai smiled. “That’s impossible. I have to see Miss Cen home.”

Ke Ke Shu looked surprised. “You don’t actually have to see her home… didn’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“You didn’t read the contract carefully, did you?”

He hadn’t. With Milu around, he basically never read contracts — he just showed up to sign.

“That’s fine, Milu will tell you later. Your duty to protect Miss Cen ends when the negotiations conclude — not when she returns to He’er Xinji. Once you’re past the Red Sea, you’re free.”

Is that right?

Wei Lai’s thoughts were a little muddled. “Why isn’t she going back to He’er Xinji?”

Ke Ke Shu spread his hands. “How would I know? She must have her own plans. Maybe she has somewhere else to go. Bottom line: after the Red Sea, your job is done — why do you care so much? A bodyguard and a client — it’s just a contract relationship!”

Then excitement crept back into his voice. “So — what do you say? Come to my place? My wife makes incredible pasta — enough to make an Italian cry with envy. I can take you to see the real African savanna — we’ll ride in a safari truck, drink beer, sleep alongside lions, ride a giant crocodile…”

“You’re trying to get me killed,” Wei Lai said.

His mood suddenly dimmed. “Let’s talk about it later. Finish what’s on my plate first.”

The van left Khartoum.

There was almost no transition — the landscape became desolate almost instantly. Everywhere, an overwhelmingly parched, dusty yellow.

At first there was a road, then only fragments of it, scattered like shards of asphalt half-buried in the ground. The tires pressed a steady course over the fine, soft yellow earth, pulling a thick plume of yellow dust in their wake.

Wei Lai very much wanted to ask her what she planned to do after the negotiations ended.

Then he caught himself and felt irritated at his own nosiness. Ke Ke Shu was right — a bodyguard and a client, nothing more than a contract. Whatever her plans might be, what did they have to do with him?

He reminded himself: stay focused on the job. But keep your distance from the client.

The cold air unit hummed. It was the only sound in the vehicle, the only sound outside of it.

Cen Jin seemed to sense something. Tactfully, she said nothing, and gazed out the window at the landscape.

In truth this wasn’t wise — looking at monotonous scenery for too long was hypnotic, especially for the driver. Many highway accidents happened exactly this way.

Sure enough, before long, she fell asleep.

Wei Lai exhaled quietly.

She was asleep, and paradoxically, he felt more at ease.

The whole way, they hadn’t passed another vehicle. Along the rippling line of the horizon, the occasional camel shadow the size of a fingernail inched along.

Now and then he spotted a tree — impossible to say how it had taken root there — standing alone in the middle of a dune, leafless, its branches and trunk gaunt and pale as bone, like a hand clawing at the sky.

Monotonous. Dead-silent. Numbing. His upper and lower eyelids began to drift toward each other against his will…

To keep himself alert, Wei Lai switched on the radio.

A second-hand vehicle — the radio’s signal filter was poor. The signal came through with great difficulty, the steady crackling static seemingly without end.

Then it connected, mid-sentence, and a voice broke through: “We must be especially vigilant against those who have infiltrated our ranks…”

The voice was indignant, forceful.

He’d heard that fighting was expected in the south. Was this government… propaganda?

Wei Lai had just leaned in, curious to catch the next sentence, when beside him Cen Jin’s voice erupted in a frantic shriek: “Turn it off! Turn off the radio!”

It came so suddenly that Wei Lai acted without thinking — he swerved to the roadside while simultaneously yanking out the radio’s tangled power cord.

The crackling static vanished. The van was left with only the low hum of the cold air unit.

Cen Jin sat with her head bowed, her face drained of color. The hands resting on her knees trembled with a faint, involuntary shudder.

After a long silence, Wei Lai called her name softly. “Cen Jin?”

She raised her head and smiled — a strained, effortful smile.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just… had a nightmare. I wasn’t fully awake yet.”

The cold air had been blowing in the van; a patch of sweat had soaked through the back of her shirt, pressing it against her skin.

Her nightmare involved a radio?

Cen Jin avoided his eyes. “It’s stuffy in here. I need some air.”

Wei Lai was about to point out how hot it was outside — but when he actually followed her out, it wasn’t so bad. The sky had darkened without him noticing; the sun seemed to have been covered, and a desert without sun lost much of its menace.

He switched off the cold air unit to give the machine a rest, opened all the doors and the roof panel for ventilation. Once the heat began to dissipate, he retrieved the watermelon and asked her, “Want some?”

He asked without much sincerity — she hadn’t even answered before he’d already flipped his straight-edged knife around and driven it in.

The melon was perfectly ripe. A flush of brilliant red showed through the gash. Wei Lai gripped the knife in his teeth, put both hands to the halves, and split it apart.

A faint scraping sound came from the rear of the van. He looked up. The antenna was swaying. Up at the tip, the little honeybee spread its wings, spinning and dazed.

Wei Lai found it funny.

“Wei Lai?”

Cen Jin’s voice had an odd quality to it.

She was staring at the ground. Small pebbles and grains of sand were swirling in tiny circles.

Wei Lai began to feel it too — something was wrong.

The wind picked up. The air carried a smell of earth and the acrid reek of livestock. Looking into the distance, a thick, muddy-yellow wall of sand was rising with brutal force, climbing higher and higher until it nearly met the sky — and at the seam, a bright, thin line, sharp as a knife-stroke cutting across.

What the hell — something big is coming.

Wei Lai took one urgent bite of watermelon.