But I couldn’t see her face.

•  •  •

When I woke again, it was in darkness. How much time had passed since I had spoken with Lingyi? I stared with blurred eyes out my wall of windows, onto the city below. Beautiful as ever. I had never glimpsed a night sky thick with stars, but Taipei’s neon lights were eternal.

My body felt battered, weak. But the constant ache was gone. I struggled to sit up, easing myself against the cold titanium headboard. I was thirsty. And starving.

“You’re awake.”

I almost jumped out of the bed in surprise. Daiyu was sitting at the dining table, a soft glow from the screen she had been reading reflected against her glass helmet. She wore a pale blue suit, its long sleeves illuminated with a silver starburst design.

“Daiyu. What are you doing here? I’m sick.” I didn’t even bother to ask how she got in. Xiao Huang was useless against her.

“That’s why I came.” She stood and crossed over to me, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I called and you answered your Vox, looking flushed and talking gibberish. I knew you had no family in Taipei. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” She reached over to touch my brow with a gloved hand, and I flinched from her. “Your fever’s passed.”

“How did you know . . .” I stared at my loose fists, trying hard to gather my thoughts. Put up my defenses. Did I give anything away in my feverish ravings? “That I didn’t have family here?” I would have sounded defensive if my voice weren’t so weak.

“You said your mom was in California, and that you had no cousins left here,” she said. “I guess I assumed.”

“You need to leave. I think I caught something highly contagious—”

“It’s all over the news,” she said, her expression grim beneath her glass helmet. “At least a dozen people in the city have been infected with this new avian flu.”

The flu that your father released, I wanted to say.

She leaned closer, probably scanning my temperature and pulse with her suit. “You kept saying, ‘I couldn’t save him,’ over and over again.”

Panic in my aching throat. Gods. Did I say more than that?

“You tried to save that man who collapsed in Liberty Square,” she said. “After my father’s big announcement.”

Jin. He had planted that man in Liberty Square the day he announced the sale of more affordable suits. What better way to spur sales—through panic and illness from a virulent flu strain.

“He died,” I replied in a hoarse whisper and shifted away, trying to put distance between us. “And if I somehow passed this on to you—”

“I was in suit the entire time I was here, Jason,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I was in suit too, when I tried to help that man.”