Thirty-Nine

Thirty-Nine

Where could he be?”

Juliette kicked a shopfront wall, scuffing her shoes with dust and mud. Patiently, Alisa waited for Juliette to kick three more times, chewing on her nails. There was a loud noise in the distance, and at once, Juliette and Alisa peered down the dark, silent road. No result came of the noise. All around them, the city simply sat waiting.

“Perhaps the Bund,” Alisa suggested. “Along the Huangpu.”

“At two in the morning?”

Before vacating the house, Alisa had warned as many White Flowers as possible to run and hide within the city while there was still the shield of night; word had likely gotten out to the wider circles that something was soon to come. There was something in the air already. A high note, ringing beyond the human ear. An inaudible hum, operating on some different frequency.

“He thinks you’re dead—who knows where he might go?”

“No. He hates vast spaces. He wouldn’t go near the water to mourn.”

Juliette paced along the street, smacking lightly at her own face as if physical sensation could draw forth some ideas. Alisa kept chewing on her nails.

“It didn’t just seem like he was running out to get away from the news,” Alisa said slowly. “It seemed like he had something he needed to do.”

Juliette threw her hands in the air. “We had little else to do except—”

Find Dimitri. Stop the madness.

“Did he say anything about going after Dimitri Voronin?”

Alisa shook his head. “I thought you didn’t know where Dimitri was.”

“We don’t.” Juliette gave Alisa a sidelong glance. “How did you know that?”

With a roll of her eyes, Alisa tapped her ear. It was hard to believe this was the same girl who had fallen comatose so many months ago, waking thin and frail on her hospital bed. She seemed to have grown a spine that was twice as thick in the time since then.

“I know everything.”

“All right, Miss I-Know-Everything, where is your brother?”

Alisa only sagged in reply, and Juliette immediately felt terrible for her attitude. How old was Alisa Montagova now? Twelve? Thirteen? Pain at that age was an eternal thing, a feeling that might never fade. It would, of course. Pain always faded, even if it refused to fully disappear. But that was a lesson that could only come with time too.

“I’m sorry,” Juliette said. She slumped against the wall. “I’m scared for him. If we can’t find Roma before the Nationalists release their men onto the streets, they will get to him first.” They would not hesitate. The Kuomintang had held back for so long. Had looked upon this city for years and years as it lived its glory age of jazz clubs and silent films, had broiled in anger to see Shanghai singing while the rest of the country starved. Perhaps their true target of anger were the imperialists hiding behind their chain-link fences in the Concessions. But when one held guns and batons in their hands, did a true target of anger even matter? What else mattered except, at last, an excuse for release?

Alisa suddenly perked up again, her head tilting to the side. “Even if Roma doesn’t know where Dimitri is, what if he is still trying to stop him?”

Juliette pushed off the wall. She started to frown. “In what manner?”

“This.” Alisa grabbed Juliette’s arm, then tapped her inner elbow, indicating to the blue veins running translucent under her skin. “The vaccine.”

The answers struck. With a gasp, Juliette started to push at Alisa, steering them down the street.

“Lourens,” Juliette said. “He’s with Lourens.”

It was the man who believed her first. The same one from that alley, whose head had been bleeding something fierce. He certainly looked healed now, if a little rough, standing behind the faces of the General Labor Union’s leadership—faces that Kathleen was sure she should recognize, though she couldn’t quite put a name to any of them.

The most important Communist powers were scattered about the city, doing whatever it was that revolution depended on. Those who were supposed to keep house below them—the ones who were camped out now at the stronghold that Kathleen rushed into—had only frowned when she tried to explain what was coming, when she insisted that those workers flocking onto the streets with labor union bands on their arms were not workers at all but Scarlets intent on slaughter.

The man had to have been someone’s son, someone’s something-important. It took a whisper from him—a whisper to another whisper to a throat being cleared, and then the man at the center of the room, taking his glasses off, said, “If there is massacre coming and you have arrived to warn us, how can we possibly stop it? The Nationalists hold an army. We are only the poor. We are the ordinary.”

Kathleen folded her arms. She considered the group seated before her, thinking how typical it was that they would say such things. These people here, seated around the table, were not the poor and the ordinary. They were the ones privileged enough to lead a movement. If she could, she would blast her voice up into the heavens and warn the people—the true poor and ordinary people—directly, because that was who she wanted to protect. Not the few thinkers, not the men who thought themselves revolutionaries. At the end of the day, movements survived, but the individual could be replaced.

That was all she was. One girl, doing all she could for peace.

“They thought they had the element of surprise,” Kathleen said evenly. “So tell your leaders to flee before they can be imprisoned—regroup, wait for another day. Tell your people to rise up, become so mighty that the gangsters will struggle to bring their swords down upon innocents on the street.”

When she looked up, the whole room was watching.

“It is very simple,” she finished. “When they come, be ready.”

They started to move. They started to pass messages, write notes, prepare telegrams for different cities in case the attack spread farther. Kathleen merely watched, sitting primly on one of the tables. There was some bubble of emotion stirring in her chest. Some strange feeling in realizing that she was not here because she had to be, because the Scarlets had sent her. In this space, at this time, she was not a Scarlet at all.

Perhaps she would never be a Scarlet again. She had spent all these years watching, mimicking, adapting. Making herself into the loyal inner-circle member, someone willing to die for the family. But she wasn’t willing—had never been willing. It had always been about maintaining whatever approach necessary to ensure order, but now order was gone.

Kathleen peeled her gloves off, scrunching up the rich silk fabric until it was balled in her hands. The Scarlet way of life was dead. The safety net was gone, but so too were the constraints. No more family members watching for the faintest sign of disloyalty. No more hierarchy and Lord Cai dictating their every move. All these years, Kathleen Lang breathed when the Scarlet Gang breathed. Kathleen Lang walked when the Scarlet Gang told her to walk. Kathleen Lang didn’t exist except to be someone in line with the Scarlet Gang, except to be the perfect image of someone who was worthy of protection and safety.

And when the Scarlet Gang faded away, so too would Kathleen. When the Scarlet Gang removed itself, Kathleen Lang halted like a music box ballerina—a dead girl’s name who spun for their eyes.

The gloves fluttered to the floor.

The Scarlet way of life was dead. Kathleen Lang was dead, had always been dead. But Celia Lang was not. Celia had always been here, biding her time, waiting for the moment she could feel safe.

“So how did you come across this information?”

The man suddenly came to sit down, his shoes stepping over the fallen gloves without noticing, eyes too focused on the frantic scene before them.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” she replied. “You can see it is true. You only have to send people out to poke around the corners of the city, and you will see the gangsters dressed pretending to be workers.”

“Hmmm.” The man’s gaze flickered to her now. “Your face looks familiar. Aren’t you Scarlet-affiliated?”

Celia stood up, fetching her dirty gloves and dropping them into the trash can.

“No,” she said. “I am not.”

Benedikt slammed up against the doors of the lab, blocking the exit with his body. Some paces away, a tired Lourens who had been awoken from his sleep was blinking in trepidation, not knowing why Roma was acting this way.

“Listen to me,” Benedikt said lowly. “You’ll be shot on sight.”

“Move aside.”

Roma’s voice was lifeless. So too were his eyes, a mass of darkness swallowing up his stare. The strangest thing was that Benedikt recognized himself in that expression, recognized that same twisted sense of rage that showed itself in recklessness.

Is that what I looked like?

“You said we were coming here to check on the vaccine!” Benedikt hissed. He made another grab for the jar in Roma’s hands. “Now, instead, you’re running off with some concoction to blow up the Scarlet house a second time. That’s not what Juliette would have wanted!”

“Don’t tell me what Juliette would have wanted!” Roma snapped. “Don’t tell—”

Benedikt took his chance to dive for the jar. Roma saw it coming and darted back two steps, but Benedikt outright lunged, pushing his cousin to the linoleum floor and pinning his arm down. Lourens made another concerned noise but otherwise remained motionless by the tables, his eyes swiveling about the scene.

“At least wait,” Benedikt said, his knees on Roma’s stomach. “Wait to see why. Since when did Juliette have any reason to take a dagger to her own heart—”

“So they killed her,” Roma seethed. “They killed her, and they’re going to get away with it—”

Benedikt pushed on Roma’s attempt to sit up. “This isn’t some murder on the streets, this is the Scarlet Gang! You’ve always known the danger of gangsters. You live it every day!”

Roma stilled. He breathed in, then again, then again, and suddenly Benedikt realized it was because his cousin was struggling to fill his lungs.

“She would never,” he managed. “Never.”

Benedikt swallowed hard. He couldn’t allow this. It was for Roma’s own good.

“There are Scarlets everywhere in the city right now,” he said slowly. “They’re plotting something. You cannot go make it worse.”

His words had the opposite effect. Benedikt had intended to pacify, and instead a vein started to throb at Roma’s neck. Roma shoved Benedikt off, fast, and got to his feet, but Benedikt wouldn’t give up so easily. He lunged for the jar again. When he only managed to catch Roma’s wrist, he switched from trying to wrest away the explosive and simply grabbed ahold of his cousin with both hands, keeping him from opening the lab’s doors, keeping him from running through the building and out into the night.

Roma came to a halt. Slowly, he turned around. The deadness in his eyes had acquired a murderous glint.

“Tell me,” he said. “Were you not the one who sought revenge when you thought Marshall was dead?”

Benedikt scoffed. That was a mistake. The fire in Roma’s eyes only grew stronger.

“I never stormed into the Scarlet house. I never did anything rash!”

“Maybe you should have.”

“No,” Benedikt spat. He hardly wanted to think about Marshall right now, when he was trying to talk Roma out of a death wish. “What good could it have done?”

“What good?” Roma hissed in echo. “It doesn’t matter, does it? He came back to life!”

Roma tried to pull away; Benedikt would not relinquish. In a flash, Roma had his pistol in his free hand, but it was not to point at Benedikt.

He brought it to his own temple.

“Hey.” Benedikt froze, afraid that any sudden movement would nudge at the trigger. All he could hear through his ears was the sound of rushing blood. “Roma, don’t.”

“Roma, do not be a fool,” Lourens urged from where he stood.

“So let go of me,” Roma said. “Let go of me, Benedikt.”

Benedikt let out a low breath. “I will not.”

It was a standstill, then. It was a matter of Benedikt believing that his cousin could not be this lost, and yet he was not certain. He could not know if in the next few seconds Roma would call him on his bluff and splatter his brains across the lab.

Benedikt let go.

And at that very moment, the lab door flew open, illuminating the figures who stood at the threshold.

“Roma! What are you doing?”

Roma whirled around, releasing an audible gasp at the sound of the voice. Benedikt, already facing the doors, could only blink. Once. Twice. It wasn’t a hallucination. Juliette Cai was really standing there, wearing a ridiculous hat, with Alisa behind her, both of them panting for breath as if they had been on a long run.

“Look,” Benedikt said faintly, hardly hearing his own words as they slipped out. “You got your resurrection too.”

Roma didn’t seem to hear him. He was already dropping his pistol like it had burned him, dropping the jar in his other hand. Benedikt dove to catch it, not daring to find out how explosive materials would react when thrown against the hard floor. By the time he had caught the jar, saving it from smashing upon the linoleum at their feet, Roma had already reached Juliette, kissing her hard on the mouth. The embrace was so fierce that Juliette immediately stretched one of her hands back, trying to cover Alisa’s eyes.

Alisa darted under Juliette’s hand and mimed a gag to Benedikt. Benedikt was still in such shock that he couldn’t laugh along.

“Are you okay?” Roma and Juliette asked in unison the moment they broke apart.

Benedikt got to his feet. The jar remained intact. He passed it to Lourens, and Lourens took it quickly, shelving the explosive away. They were hurrying to put it out of Roma’s sight, but with Juliette here now, Benedikt doubted Roma even remembered why he wanted that jar.

“I thought you were dead,” Roma was saying to Juliette. “Don’t ever do that to me.”

“The better question is,” Benedikt cut in, “why are you so fond of faking deaths?”

Juliette shook her head, her arm twining around Roma’s as she hurried him back into the lab. She gestured for Alisa to come along too, letting the doors fall closed.

“Faking my death would have required actually producing a false corpse, as I did for Marshall,” Juliette said evenly. “All I did here was lie. I never meant for it to reach you. It shouldn’t have leaked past the Scarlet circles.” She sighted Lourens, still warily hovering by the worktables. “Hello.”

“May I return to bed now?” Lourens asked wearily.

“No,” Juliette answered before any of the Montagovs could. “You need to hear this too. There’s a purge coming. That’s why I lied. To push it off.”

“A what?” Roma was still in a daze, blinking rapidly to clear the mist over his eyes.

Juliette placed her hands on one of the tables. It looked like she was physically bracing herself, and when she lifted her head to speak . . . it was not Roma she was looking at but Benedikt.

“There’s an execution order for your heads. White Flowers are to be treated as Communists, and just before dawn breaks, Scarlets and Kuomintang soldiers alike are going to start shooting and arresting. The command has been given. Anyone opposing the Nationalists is to be eliminated. We have to go.”

“Wait—what?”

Roma’s voice rose another octave, prompting Alisa to reach out and hug his arm. Benedikt, meanwhile, simply exhaled a breath, letting the information sink in. A full-city purge. At last the Nationalists had pushed themselves into full throttle, intent on taking Shanghai.

“We can’t,” Roma continued. “Dimitri is still out there with his monsters. I will accept stepping out of politics. I will accept hightailing it out of the way if it’s the Nationalists and Communists colliding against each other. But while we can stop Dimitri, we must.”

Was it even possible at this point? How could they stop him? How could they kill men who turned to monsters when the monsters seemed so indestructible?

Juliette grimaced, her eyes flickering again to Benedikt as if to ask for help. Before she could speak, it was Lourens who cleared his throat, interrupting her.

“You may not need to.” Lourens gestured to the back of the lab. One of the machines had been humming away, lit from the inside. “The vaccine stops the madness, no? It won’t solve the physical monster problem, but it will take away a large portion of their power.”

Roma’s eyes grew wide. “The vaccine is ready?”

“Not at this precise moment. But give it a few days, perhaps. I have the formula. I have the supplies. I can dump it in the whole city’s water supply. No one even has to know that they’re being inoculated.”

“Which means,” Juliette said quietly, “we have done all that we can here, Roma. For the sake of your life, we have to leave. All of us. Right now, before dawn breaks.”

Benedikt finally understood why Juliette’s gaze kept drifting back to him.

“Okay,” Roma said, defeated, in collision with Benedikt’s sudden “No.”

The room fell quiet, nothing but the sound of machines humming. Then, when Benedikt was sure he had summoned everyone’s attention: “Not without Marshall.”

Juliette clicked her tongue. “I was afraid you would say that.” She finally glanced away. “If Marshall is with his father, he is safer than he would be anywhere else.”

“He may be safe, but he will be trapped there for however long. If we’re getting out of the city, out of the country, we get out for good. We’re not leaving him behind.”

Roma made a thoughtful noise. He wiped a smear of dust off Alisa’s cheek, who, to her credit, had remained quiet through all this.

“Benedikt’s right,” he said. “If there is indeed a purge coming, it doesn’t stop with one event. Let’s say Lourens distributes the vaccine. Let’s say the madness disappears and the city returns to relative normalcy. But with this violence on the Communists and the White Flowers . . .”

“The city will never return to normal,” Juliette finished heavily, like she didn’t want to say it aloud.

One purge was never one purge. The Nationalists were not only forcing out all opposition. They also had to maintain their control. No Communist could show their face on these streets again. No White Flower could continue living within the city’s borders, at least not without hiding their identity. The purge would never end.

“So,” Benedikt finished, “we need to get Marshall.”

Juliette tossed her hat off, throwing it to the table. Her hair was a tangled mess. “As much as I agree, how do you propose we do that?”

“I go alone.”

All heads in the room snapped to Benedikt. Even Lourens looked flabbergasted.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Juliette asked. “I just said that all White Flowers seen on the streets upon daybreak will be slaughtered.”

“I am not as recognizable as Roma is,” Benedikt replied easily. “Especially not if I dress as your Scarlets will be. I have already seen them. They are in workers’ overalls, with a band over their arm.” He gestured to his biceps. “They seek White Flowers to execute by looking for White Flowers. Who is to say what I am if I look just like them?”

“It’s a good plan,” Roma said.

“It’s a horrible plan,” Juliette said.

Roma picked up Juliette’s hat. “But all the Nationalists will be on the streets. Marshall will probably be unguarded.”

Juliette snatched the hat back. “Why do you think they have allied with the Scarlets? They always send the smaller men to go do their dirty work, their bloody work. You cannot guarantee that General Shu himself won’t have his eye on Marshall.”

“At the very least, he will not have backup.” Benedikt pushed up his sleeves, heaving an exhale. “We waste time by arguing. It is this or nothing. The two of you cannot even consider following me. Especially into a Nationalist stronghold. You will be hauled off in a blink, no matter how many ugly hats you wear.”

Juliette threw the hat at Benedikt. He dodged easily, though even with Juliette’s deathly aim, the soft article would have bounced off him anyway. The lab fell silent again. Alisa’s eyes darted back and forth, trying to follow the situation.

“Under one condition,” Roma finally said. “If you cannot get to him, you must give up. Marshall’s own father will not put a call out for his head. But if caught, they will execute you.”

Benedikt’s mouth opened to argue, but then, just subtly enough that Roma didn’t notice, Juliette raised her hand to her lips and pressed a finger there, shaking her head.

“I have a contact at the Bund who can smuggle us out,” she said, closing her fist and appearing normal the moment Roma turned to look at her. “Martial law cannot restrict him from sailing to catch fish, but the latest we can depart is noon. Any longer, and I suspect I will be found.” Juliette’s stare was harsh upon Benedikt, communicating alongside her words. “You must meet us at the Bund then. No matter what.”

Benedikt knew what Juliette was trying to say even if she didn’t say it aloud. If he was not there, they still needed to leave. She would knock Roma and Alisa out and drag them if she needed, but she would not risk their lives and let them remain behind for him.

Benedikt nodded, a smile—a true smile—coming to his lips. For perhaps the first time, he trusted Juliette wholeheartedly.

“At noon,” he promised.