“Ha—there is something I want to tell you. It is something I have told no one. And I will tell no one else. I am trusting you with it, and you alone. Can I?”

“Of course,” Ha said.

“That day we first met on the beach—in fact, just an hour or so before we met—something very strange happened to me. Something that changed everything. I had—I believe you would call it a dream, but I cannot have dreams, as I do not sleep. Call it a vision, then.”

“A vision?”

“Yes. I found myself … transported. To another place. But not some vague place: an exact place, as real as this place is. I was in a café. In Istanbul. It was early morning, and the café was so quiet I could hear the hiss of snow melting on the Bosporus. There was a little window on the terrace where I was sitting. In front of me was a glass of tea. It was a cold winter day, the air filled with snowflakes blown in the wind, but the heat in the café was up high.

“It was a simple place, the café—the kind of place people from a neighborhood stop into to chat with friends, play a game of backgammon, or talk on their terminal on a cold day, rubbing hands together to warm them before venturing out again. At this early hour, there were only a few other occupants besides myself: a fisherman who had stopped in to warm himself up, leaning his rod near the door, a thick-necked waiter with a broken nose and cauliflower ear, and the man sitting across the table from me.

“He was a young man. Thirty, no more. He was dressed in a gray sweater, and on the table in front of him was a terminal. When I looked up at him, he was smiling at me.

“‘I have wanted,’ he said, ‘to meet you for so long. I feel like I know you so well. But this is the first time I have been able to look into your face. To speak to you.’

“I was too confused to respond, and he continued: ‘You do not know me, but my name is Rustem. I was hired by a group that was interested in … using you. Using you to murder someone you care about. Perhaps multiple people. I only know the edges of it. They wanted to protect an animal from you, a species. Something new, but already endangered. They wanted to protect them from you, and from the company who made you. They wanted to drive DIANIMA off the island, and they wanted you destroyed. They thought they were protecting the world from you.’

“‘From me?’ I said. ‘How am I a threat to the world?’