Lian watched him leave. When Bai was out of earshot, she asked, “I’d like to take the two of you out for dinner and drinks. Show you some of the city.”

“What’s the occasion?” Jack asked. He was hoping she was actually becoming human.

“It’s my responsibility to show you my city as well as my company.”

Paul fought another monstrous yawn. “I’m sorry, I need to take a rain check.”

“I understand,” Lian said. She looked at Jack. “You’re probably exhausted as well. Perhaps another time.”

Jack shook his head. “No, I’m good. Let’s go.”

Paul yawned again as he stood.

Jack jerked a thumb at him. “After we drop him off.”

20

They sped along the East Coast Parkway toward the bay front, passing the Singapore Flyer, the world’s second tallest Ferris wheel.

From inside Lian’s Range Rover, the Marina Bay Sands resort dominated the breathtaking skyline. Its three fifty-five-story towers were wide and narrow and slightly curved, and they were topped with what appeared to be a starship. The entire structure was brightly lit and bathed continuously in a shifting wash of accent lights. It was an architectural marvel. No wonder it was one of the most photographed buildings in the world.

But it was the view from the spaceship—technically, the SkyPark—that blew Jack’s mind. The view around the bay and the downtown core was like a scene out of Blade Runner. Skyscrapers ran nearly to the horizon, a cacophony of shifting lights and dramatic shapes that glowed purple and blue and white beneath the low-hanging clouds. The Flyer’s giant spokeless circle of light rotated slowly like a vertical space station, and traffic flowed along the ECP in a wide amber river of light spanning the coast. In the distance, Jack saw the lights of a hundred freighters moored offshore, and as many docked beneath the towering cranes of the bustling port.

Just below them was the ArtScience Museum, which appeared like a giant half-opened concrete lotus flower. In the distance was a small forest of giant “supertrees”—twenty-five- to fifty-meter-tall metal-and-concrete structures with canopies that spread wide to the open sky like upheld hands. Like everything else in view, they were stunningly lit.

The whole effect was ethereal, made even more surreal by the laser light show on display from down below, the thin green beams slicing through the cloudy haze.

The thousand-foot-long SkyPark itself was a stunning piece of architecture, topped with nightclubs, bars, and restaurants but made world-famous by the nearly five-hundred-foot-long infinity pool that disappeared along the edge of the cantilevered platform. Even at this hour it was filled with swimmers snapping selfies, standing waist-deep in water at the edge of the sky.