At first light, in a frost-silvered camp in the north country, Hannah counts her people and comes up one short — and the oldest thing alive tells her, without waking properly, that Mary went to find her boyfriend and she'll be back. He is never mistaken out loud. Hannah builds the fire up anyway, and stands facing south for a long time.
In the ruins of Sangara, two old men meet across forty years of history: the doctor who remembers a betrayal, and the toolmaker who says the word back to him flat and asks what any Sangarian scientist is doing lecturing anyone in this particular graveyard. Between them stands a tracking monitor with a motionless marker on it, and an argument about a grounded boy that everyone loses — because while they argue about whether Jonah would be insane enough to disconnect from the gear without tools, without help, without anesthetic, Jonah is lying in a crater a day north, looking at the hundreds of hair-fine wires grown into his body, telling himself it's a bandaid. A very, very committed bandaid.
Above all of it, on a station promenade with the whole burning earth in the window, a man in a suit reports to Jairus Solomon that the sky has no paper on his daughter — and turns down a blank check, and promises the turning world he's coming back down.
What the search party finds over the rise is the best weapon in the hemisphere lying open in a field like something hatched, bootprints walking away north — and what happens next is an argument Albert finally loses twice in one morning. A syringe of deep blue, a count of three, a key-pin turning in its collar — and the armor sits up out of its crater with someone new behind the visor, who looks at the sky and understands, at last, why Jonah flew away from everyone.