She turned to me, eyes gleaming, and said, “I’ve never seen the sky like this before.”
“You mean without your helmet?”
“And so wide. It’s always a dirty brown over Taipei,” she said.
The skies above us were tinged gray with pollution, but not the opaque brown that’s so often seen directly over the city. I led her into my small garden. Cucumbers dangled from a bamboo trellis I had made, nestled within their giant dark green leaves. We stepped between the tomato plants, their fruits small and marred. I stooped down, and she crouched with me as I selected a tomato, dusting it off, then taking a bite. More tangy than sweet. She stared as if I had plucked a rat off the ground and eaten that instead.
“The sky used to be blue,” I said, after I finished the tomato.
“That’s what my grandfather says.”
Grandfather. I’d never met my grandparents, didn’t even know their names. My paternal grandparents were long dead before I was born. As for my maternal grandparents, they lived in America, and I wanted nothing to do with them.
“He’s seen it, then?” I tried to keep my voice from rising. “With his own eyes?”
“He thinks so. But he was very young.” She ran her fingertips over the ridges and bumps of an orange tomato. “He says it feels like a dream when he remembers it.”
Sweat beaded at her temples, and there was a sheen of perspiration above her upper lip. I swiped my arm across my forehead. “I can’t believe how hot it gets,” she said, licking her mouth.
I mirrored her without thinking, tasting the salt on my tongue. “This is what summers are like in Taiwan when you’re not wearing an air-conditioned suit,” I replied and grabbed the woven basket near my feet.
“I’ll help you,” she said.
We spent the next twenty minutes in silence, filling the basket with imperfect tomatoes and cucumbers. The mountain breeze rustled the leaves around us, and the birds sang deep within the jungle’s thicket. When we were done, the you girl’s lips were leached of color, and wisps of black hair that had escaped from her ponytail clung to her damp neck.
Her breaths still came too fast, like a frightened hare’s. “I think we should go back inside,” I said, lifting the basket.
She rose with me. “I want to try one.”
I angled the basket, and her hand grazed over the tomatoes and cucumbers, touching them as if they were gems instead of meager crops. She finally selected an oblong tomato, redder than the others, and brushed a thumb over its skin before taking a bite. She immediately made a face and shuddered.
I laughed. “No good?”
“It’s more sour than I’ve ever tasted.”
I smirked. No doubt, she’d only ever had perfectly grown specimens. We walked back toward the house, and she appeared thoughtful as she finished the fruit.
“I like that it tastes . . . earthy,” she finally said. I saw her eyes sweep our surroundings as we approached the front of the lab.
The door unlocked with my voice and we stepped back inside the relative coolness of the building. I set the basket on the dining table and nodded at her helmet beside it. “You should put it back on.”
“Later,” she murmured and walked back toward the windows, gazing outward.
I sat on a stool and tapped a few quick commands into my laptop. The funds had transferred in full. I let out a breath, releasing the tension I had held ever since stealing this you girl. Three hundred million had been a gamble, but a gamble worth taking. It was enough for Victor to suit up as a you boy and pretend to be one of them, to infiltrate their closed and elite society. We’d destroy them from within.
We wanted blue skies again.
“What are you going to do with the money?” She turned, her hands clasped in front of her.
I jumped at the sound of her voice and shut the MacPlus. “I don’t know. Redecorate?”
She gave me a leveled look, and I broke away first, taking in the chamber I had called home for the past year. I’d have to leave immediately. I would miss this place.
“I’d suggest a new wardrobe first, Dark Horse.”
I laughed despite myself. “What’s your name, then?”
“Seriously?” She raised her eyebrows in mockery.
I shrugged. “What does it matter now?” I did like her. I wanted to know.
“Daiyu,” she replied.
“From the novel?”
She smiled in surprise, and it made her truly beautiful. “You’ve read it?”
I read voraciously, most often from the undernet, but had found an actual copy of Dream of the Red Chamber stuffed and forgotten in the desk drawer of a junk shop. The owner had given it to me for free, waving me off without a glance. Books weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.
“Flowers in my eyes and birdsong in my ears,” she murmured to herself.
I’d read the book enough times to recognize the line, from a poem that the hero Baoyu used when thinking of the heroine, Daiyu’s namesake.
“Augment my loss and mock my bitter tears,” I replied.
She glanced toward me, eyes gleaming from the pollution—or fear, I didn’t know. “You have read it.”
It was a favorite of mine. But she didn’t need to know that. Instead, I said, “You don’t look the tragic heroine to me.”
“Don’t I?” She had been leaning against the glass and straightened now, squaring her shoulders. But not before I caught a glimpse of wistfulness in her eyes. Of longing. What more could a you girl possibly want when she already had everything?
“We better go,” I said. “I need to return you to your family, and it’ll be dark soon.”
Daiyu lifted her helmet and adjusted her collar before fitting it over her head. And in an instant she was something other to me, something less human. It was hard to believe there was an almost-normal girl beneath the glass. A smart one with a sense of humor.
“I’ll have to give you the sleep spell again,” I said apologetically.
“No. Blindfold me if you have to.”
“I can’t risk it. I’ve added something so you’ll forget.” I could see her eyes widen in panic, even with her helmet on. “Not everything. Just the past twenty-four hours.”
She shook her head. “Please don’t.”
But I took her hand, was already pulling her to the door. “It’s safer for us both if you don’t remember anything. Trust me.” I felt stupid the moment I uttered the last words.
We were out in the muggy humidity of the late afternoon again. It would take a few hours at least to walk to the mountain’s base, and by then, night would have fallen. Even if I were abandoning the lab, I still couldn’t risk her remembering this place, remembering me.
The sunlight glinted off her helmet, and I was glad I couldn’t see her features clearly as I tugged her to me. She resisted, but I was stronger. So she stepped forward instead, bunching the fabric of my shirt in one hand.
“But I want to remember,” she said.
I grabbed her wrist. Stuck the syringe into her open palm. Its hiss seemed too loud to my ears.
“We all do,” I whispered and caught her as she fell.
CHΔPTER TWO
TWO MONTHS EARLIER