Xifeng is looking at Grace with disappointment in her eyes, then she is standing to her feet. “You’re all the same. You think the answer to your problems is here, so you come and you take what you want and then you leave. I have seen it with our people over and over and over again. But imperialism without yáng guǐzi is still imperialism.” Xifeng is calming down. “I am here to actually help these people, and that’s what I’m going to do. If you don’t get in my way, you stay alive. It’s as simple as that.” Xifeng is then looking to me and nodding, then she is walking out of the room and it is being just me and Grace.

Then something is happening. Her eye is growing wide. She gasps. “You . . .” she says.

With less face-scrambling cream all over her features, I am seeing it too. I am knowing her. And I am knowing instantly from where I am knowing her. An open field. Leaving the forest. Police and army mech and helicopter and Augment that is chasing me and my family. Holding Ify’s face in my hands. This girl, Grace, looking at me with wide eyes and not saying anything, just like she is doing now.

Without thinking, I am on top of her. I have knocked over her chair and I straddle her and my fingers are over her throat, squeezing, and I am angering and saying through my teeth, “Where is she?” When Grace is not saying a thing, I am slapping Grace hard across the face, and instantly it is beginning to swell and tears spring to her eyes. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Grace is saying in soft soft voice.

But I am not liking what I am hearing, so I am slapping her again and wound on her forehead is reopening.