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to the unfamiliar stillness around her. Something must have gone wrong with the auto-tinting windows. But why would the entire suite go dark?
    “Wei?” she said, calling out to her husband.
    He was on the second level, in his study, just beyond the balcony. A light illuminated the windowpanes of a double set of French doors above her. She heard them click open.
    “Wei? Something is wrong with the windows,” she said, standing up in the darkness.
    “It’s not the windows!” he barked. “I just lost power to everything. Not even my laptop works!”
    “How is that possible?” she said.
    “It’s not. The building has its own backup power system. The residence has its own backup system. This is bad news, Hu,” he said, using his phone’s built-in light to make his way to a spiral staircase.
    Instead of heading toward her, Wei drifted to the center of the massive window. She stumbled across the marble floor to join him. Small lights flickered across the river, pinprick signs that the darkness wasn’t a mirage caused by the high-tech glass. Huan peered at the horizon, finding it devoid of Shanghai’s endless sea of lights.
    “Nothing,” she said. “How could the power fail for the entire city?”
    He took deep breaths, but didn’t answer her. Wei was acting way too calm, almost like he had expected this to happen.
    “Wei, what’s happening?” she said.
    “We need to pack up and get out of here,” he said, putting both of his hands on the glass.
    “What are you talking about?” she said, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him to face her.
    She held her phone in the other hand, with the screen facing up. The light washed over his face, exposing a frighteningly detached look. He swallowed hard before turning his head and staring blankly past the glass.
    “It won’t be safe for the children in the city,” he muttered.
    “Wei! You’re scaring me! Why won’t it be safe here?” she pleaded, her hands trembling.
    “Twenty-two million people live here, half of them migrant labor from the interior. We don’t stand a chance,” he muttered.
    “In a power outage? You’re not making sense,” she said, shaking him.
    He looked at her with wild eyes.
    “The power isn’t coming back on, Hu,” he said.
    “Of course it is,” she said, cocking her head. “Why wouldn’t it?”
    “The rumors were true,” said Wei.
    “What rumors?” she demanded.
    “Nobody thought they would retaliate,” he said, ignoring her.
    “I’m taking the kids to my parents,” she said, walking away from him.
    Whatever he was saying about the lights sounded like the ramblings of a madman on the verge of a breakdown. It wouldn’t surprise her given his odd behavior over the past few months. The delayed launch of their flagship product had obviously been too much for him to handle. She’d check into the hotel on the seventieth floor of the tower, just to put some distance between them until the city restored the power. She sensed his presence close behind and whirled to defend herself if necessary.
    “Sorry, Hu. This is just…this is like a bad dream,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to cross the river to get to your parents—and we need to be moving away from the populated areas.”
    He sounded normal again, but she still didn’t understand what had him so spooked.
    “I still don’t understand why we can’t stay,” she protested. “The tower has its own security. Its own grocery stores. We have everything we need right here.”
    “Sky View is home to ten thousand residents. The stores will be emptied within minutes once people realize that the lights are out for good. Then they’ll turn their attention to us, at the top of the building. That’s how it works. The building will devour itself from within, and whatever’s left will be devoured by the millions of people living in the slums we created. Our only chance of survival is to get out of this building—immediately,” he said.
    “We should just