“Twenty-eight.” Two years older than me. He probably became a cop at eighteen, a rookie recruit around the time I entered San Francisco. “Why?”

I shrug a shoulder as he leaves. “Just curious.”

I drink the coffee slowly, laying out all the recently acquired information in my mind. Between this and my already chaotic anxiety about Tila and about what I’m doing, my brain seems too crowded. I want to scream, to let it all out. I clutch the coffee cup tighter, and then force my fingers to relax. I push the chair away from the table and fold my body into a corner of the room, so that both walls press against my shoulder blades. I breathe in, breathe out, and empty my mind of all extraneous thought.

It’s time to phone my sister’s friends, as my sister, and tell them I’m going away to China.

I can’t do it. It’s a simple thing, and the easiest job I’m likely to have undercover, and I can’t do it. Sweat breaks out along my skin. So much stress and heartache over the last twenty-four hours has been building, and the dam finally breaks. My mechanical heart thumps rhythmically in my chest against my metal sternum—completely immune to the external factors that would speed or slow a biological version.

Tila—why did you do this to me? What were you trying to do? To prove?

My fingertips find the familiar scar as I blink my burning eyes and slow my breathing. I close my eyes, grabbing my emotions and forcing them under control. Even now, I can’t escape Mana-ma, but at the moment, I’m glad of her training.

I imagine the fear and the stress as darkness swarming around me to settle on my skin. Then, deep within myself, I kindle a light that starts from my heart and emanates outward, a pure white to eradicate the darkness. My skin is now clean and glows softly, settling in my mind.

“I’m calm,” I whisper aloud. And I am. I’m almost giddy with it. A last breath, and I’m back to myself.

I meditate for around ten minutes, the tension leaking out from my neck and shoulders. I float in nothingness, in blackness. All anxiety lifts from my skin, in tiny flurries, like soot in the wind. When I open my eyes, I’m almost giddy from the endorphins. I return to the kitchen table, my breath even and steady. The information has ceased overwhelming me. I’m myself again, more or less.

I learned this from Mana-ma, and part of me feels nervous when I do it. As if just by meditating, I’ll somehow fall back into her thrall. But I’ve … we’ve been free of her for years.