Everything.
She swept my hair back from my forehead, damp with sweat, then held my hand. Her glove was cool against my hot skin.
It was morning.
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.”
“My suits are better.” She paused. I glanced at her, but she had drawn back, her features obscured. The effect, her rich voice—so familiar to me already—juxtaposed with her alien suit was disconcerting. “And I’m wearing gloves,” she added.
I was angry with her. Angry that she’d come into my apartment, uninvited, as if she owned the place. Angry that she’d seen me so weak. But most of all, furious that she’d taken such a wild risk. For someone she barely even knew. “You shouldn’t have come,” I said, my words hard and clipped. “Even if you do own the best suits on the market.”
“I’m fine. We have a decon pod at home anyway. It kills everything.”
I let out a half-crazed laugh, despite myself. She was so secure in her wealth. I bet no one she cared about had ever died. Hell, even her grandparents were still alive.
“What?” she asked. Her tone was sharp.
“Like a specimen kept in a jar,” I said. “Is this how we’re supposed to live?”
She didn’t reply. I suddenly realized I was naked beneath the thin sheet, so I couldn’t even get up if I wanted to.
Finally, she said, “Why did you do it? Try to save that man?”
“What. And just do nothing instead?” I felt disgusted that she would even ask. It must have shown on my face, as she rose and walked away from me, standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows. I wanted her fishbowl off. I didn’t want to talk to her like this, faceless. It put me at a disadvantage.
“But everyone does. Turn their eyes away. On a daily basis.” She pivoted back to me. “It’s why I urged my father to create a more affordable suit. So not only the rich can benefit from it.” Daiyu paced the foot of my bed. “But my father . . .” She crossed her arms, shoulders tensing. “My father is always a businessman first. And before I knew it, he had doubled the price of the suit, made a deal with Prosperity Bank . . . and the raffle. That ridiculous raffle!” Daiyu’s frustration was palpable.
I should have placated her, said her intentions were good. Which was the opposite of what her father was doing to the meis. He’d see us all in graves just to make a yuan. But I felt weak, vulnerable, and angry. And I wasn’t certain in my still-hazy mind if Daiyu’s intentions had been good.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t know—that your father would make a profit on the broken backs of meis. Happily. You’re his daughter, after all.”
She spoke so low I barely caught her words. “You would think the worst of me?”
I closed my eyes, head swimming. “I don’t know, Daiyu. I don’t know you.” I winced, my swollen throat aching. “I don’t know how much you see.”
Her silhouette against the windows reminded me of another day, when she stood gazing out on the lush green of Yangmingshan from my now-abandoned home. The 101’s neon blue exterior told me it was Friday. I’d been out cold for three days.
“What have I done that makes you think I’m so horrible?” She whipped around, stalking back to the bed. Her movements were bold, but her voice betrayed her hurt. “You say you don’t know me, but you seem to have made plenty of assumptions already.”
I drew a ragged breath. She was right. I had judged her before I had ever met her, simply because she was you. But no matter how much she cared, did it matter when her perspective was from a place of distance and comfort that her tremendous wealth afforded her?
“I understand you want to help the meis, but—”
“I’m beginning to see more, Jason,” Daiyu said. “And I’m here because I was worried about you. Is that so hard to believe?”
“It’s foolish to risk getting sick.” I swallowed. “We barely met.”
“I know you better than you knew that stranger you tried to save in Liberty Square.”
I blinked, caught off guard. “That’s different.”
“How so?”
In too many ways I didn’t want to explain, all of which would expose my true self and past to her. My Vox beeped, and I answered it, relieved to be interrupted. Lingyi’s small face peered at me from the screen. “Zhou! We’ve been—”