“He was going to die. He could see the headlines now. Naked Runt Suffocated by a Sleeping Giant.”

“Jesus. He could see the headlines now. Aliens Among Us. Run!”

“China is a sleeping giant; let him sleep, for if he wakes, he will shake the World.”

“There,” she said softly. “Now he could be sleeping.”

“Just to let you know, I talk in my sleep." He shifted on his bed and chucked something on the floor. It could only be one thing. "Also, I sleep naked.”

“He saw the young man’s face in the mirror up on the wall, he saw the thick wind-ruffled hair and the little scar on the cheekbone. The face moved in the mirror and when he looked round he could not see it anywhere in the room, and when he wanted to call out the sickness choked him, and now he tried to fight the icy sickness, but like whales the waves of it fell on him till he was pounded and drowned, and while he froze suffocating and could not move or breathe...”