They’ve sent him to a quarantined facility outside of Taipei, to try and give him the best treatment. I’m scared for him.

I swallowed hard. There was nothing I could say to comfort her, much less share the ugly truth. I’m the reason your friend might die, Daiyu. Please keep yourself safe, I simply said instead.

You too, Jason.

A soft chime; she had disconnected.

I scrubbed a hand through my hair, feeling like an utter ass and a horrible villain.

“Xiao Huang,” I said aloud, paging the doorman through the building’s com sys.

“Yes, Jason?” He peered at me through my front door’s monitor.

“I’d like to send some flowers to Joseph Chen’s family. What floor do they live on?” I didn’t really want to send flowers; it would have been a disingenuous gesture given the truth, but more so because I wanted to monitor the family.

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Xiao Huang mumbled. “That’s, er, classified information.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been instructed by the building supervisor not to divulge any information about the Chens.” Xiao Huang appeared more pale in my monitor.

“Really,” I said. “Because I will come down and get the information from you personally if I have to.” I cast a knife at the wall target, and it hit with a satisfying thunk. Throwing two more in quick succession, I went on, “I don’t think either of us wants that.”

I saw the protrusion in Xiao Huang’s throat working. “The young Mr. Chen got sick, you see, and now they think his mother, Mrs. Chen, might have caught it too.”

“What floor, Huang?”

“The eightieth,” he said in a resigned voice.

“Thanks.”

“Yes, Jason. But I’d steer clear. They think it’s that killer flu strain going around.” He clicked off, the first time he’d ended an exchange between us first.

I collected the knives from the board and threw them again, then put on my suit and took the elevator to the eightieth floor. The Chen’s grand double doors were blocked with bright yellow tape. One panel stood open, and I glanced inside. Four people wearing orange hazmat suits were in the lavish living room. The government, or Jin’s people? Two walked toward the front door, and I quickly slipped back into the elevator, returning to my own apartment on the sixty-eighth floor.

I spent the next hour trawling the undernet for any news of Joseph Chen’s illness. Nothing. Since Daiyu knew about her friend falling sick, it made sense that Jin knew as well, and had intervened, quickly covering up the fact that a rich you who used his suits had caught the airborne avian flu. It was fine for the meis to get infected, but a you suffering the same fate would be poor business.