Ling tapped into their data, watched humans drowning in subway tunnels, watched a recording of security forces around a store, firing their automatic weapons into a desperate mob, watched as the sopping wet mass of humans clawed their way forward in a human wave, the front of it dying, until they crested over the soldiers, crashed down on them, and the recording ceased.

Shanghai was in pain. Good. These humans had trapped her mommy. They deserved worse.

Already the city was trying to knit itself back together. She saw reports on replacing key transformers, on redirecting the rain water that was flooding the streets, on getting a handful of spy-eyes back into the air. Ten thousand little human ants were out working to repair the damage she’d done. The city was a hive, a colony-organism.

What would happen if she hit it again, harder? Could she kill this city? Could she send the little humans scurrying away in fear? It was so tempting to try, to rip a wing off of this insect pinned down and splayed out in front of her, and see what happened.

But she didn’t. Patience, her mother had told her, is a posthuman virtue. And the humans were looking for her. They had their hackers out, their counter-intrusion packages, their tame security AIs with their boring rigid minds, hunting for the source of the attack. Striking the city once was one thing. Striking a second time, while they were looking… that would be foolish, impatient, something an angry little girl would do.

And Ling couldn’t afford to be a little girl any more.

She waited for the policemen. And when they came, sweating and panting from the stairs, she was polite and sweet and told them she’d offer them tea but that the stove wasn’t working.

They laughed and told her she was the nicest little girl ever and that they were here to protect her.

She smiled and thanked the soft pathetic creatures. Daddy’s driver Bai was worth a hundred of them. Feng was worth three hundred. Stupid humans.

Who will protect you, she wondered, when my mother returns?

Later, as she lay in her bed with the sheets pulled up to her chin, she wondered what had happened to her father? Had she trapped him there with her mommy? Was there any food? Any water? Enough air?

Ling frowned. Her father was nothing like her mommy. He was just a human. Even so, she hoped she hadn’t killed him. She loved her father, after all. As much as one could love a human.