“You look the part of the pale you boy to me,” Arun said. “Unless you’re the kind to go for the unnatural tanned look.”

Vic snorted, retrieving a monogrammed handkerchief from some hidden pocket to dab at his forehead. Our headquarters’ air was cool enough that there was no way he was sweating. He just wanted to show off his latest Victor accessory.

“I guess we all know where your share of the cut went, Victor?” Lingyi said in a teasing tone.

Victor winked with his usual cockiness, but I didn’t miss the color that rose to his tanned face.

“We’ve decided to go with your English name as your alias,” Arun continued. “And your surname is common enough that you’re keeping it. We’ve changed your birthday to May first from the twenty-third. The best false identity, for our purposes, is one that is most closely tied to your true one.” Arun swiped a fingertip across his Palm. “It’ll make you more believable in your role.”

JASON ZHOU flashed across the wall screen next to my image.

I jerked and bumped Lingyi in the shoulder.

Arun lifted an eyebrow at me. “We’re correct in thinking that no one called you by this name except for your mom, right? None of your records indicated an English name anywhere.”

“Yes.” I swallowed, trying to clear the knot in my throat. “Only my mom ever called me that.”

She had given the name to me after my father had died. And she never spoke English or called me Jason except in private, as if it were a secret language between us, reading me Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary when I was younger. She had enrolled me at the American School in Taipei when I turned six, an expensive private school that she was only able to afford due to the annual allowance she received from my grandparents in California. They had broken all contact with my mother after she became pregnant with me at twenty-three and married my father; their sole acknowledgement that she still existed was the deposit they made into her bank account each year. My mother never talked about her parents with me, but even at a young age, I heard snatches of conversation that made more sense after both my parents were gone.

I’m eating cold rice porridge with bamboo shoots and fermented bean curd, because it is too hot to light the stove. But this is one of my favorite meals anyway. All three of us sit in the cramped kitchen at the round wooden table; my feet dangle above the ground, and I swing my legs.

“Write to them; go see them,” my father says. All I can remember of my father was the solidity of him, how high he’d lift me in his arms, how his hugs enveloped me entirely. To be with my father meant I was safe. “They’ll be glad to meet their grandson.”