She woke in the middle of the night. 3.30am. A modicum of power had been restored this wealthy, exclusive block. A small trickle of data flowed through Ling once more. There was an intruder in her home network. She peered at it. A hunter-tracker program. It sniffed around, looking for any trace of the attacker who’d struck Shanghai. She made her net presence small, cloaked herself from the vicious software agent, and it passed her by.

The still fragile net brought her data, carefully stolen from police and emergency services systems. Most of Shanghai was still dark. Security forces surrounded this little island of light, this small enclave where the wealthiest executives and politicians lived. Outside that ring, it was chaos.

And one more thing. Her daddy was alive! And a peek at his calendar showed that he’d be home in just a few hours. Ling smiled, relieved. Even if he was only human, he was still her daddy.

Chen slept for a few hours, then an executive military jet whisked him away to Shanghai.

His car was there, wet on the gray tarmac of the airstrip, and a new driver, who introduced himself as Yingjie. A Marine. Not a clone.

Where do his loyalties lie? Chen wondered. Not with me.

Yingjie drove him home. Two military jeeps came with them, one ahead, the other behind. Soldiers in armor manned heavy machine guns atop the vehicles. Heavy rain sleeted the windshield as they drove.

The streets were horrendous, full of unmoving cars, with filthy sewage-soaked water half a meter deep. Through the armored window of his car Chen saw men and women lurking in doorways, sullen, angry-looking. They gave his vehicle and their military escort a wide berth.

Ahead he could see a handful of lit buildings in Lujiazui, the financial district in the very tip of Pudong, the expensive and exclusive heart of Shanghai. His tower was among them, part of the famous Shanghai skyline now returned to illumination. Naturally. The elites of Shanghai would be the first to see services restored, as was right and proper.

“Trouble ahead,” Yingjie said, one finger to his earpiece. “A mob, trying to get into Lujiazui.”

A mob? Trying to reach his home?

The closer they came, the more signs Chen saw. As they penetrated into the downtown area, as the buildings loomed above them, as the lights grew ever closer, the number of the people on the streets increased. More and more of them each block, wet, hungry, desperate people. Angry people. Fires burning in trash cans. Someone threw a bottle and Chen flinched as it broke against his window.