Foul Lady Fortune
: Chapter 38

After hours, Seagreen Press grew gloomy from the inside out, like some manor over the hills instead of a stout office building in the French Concession.

Rosalind should have clocked out already, but she remained at her desk, scribbling away on invoice sheets. She hadn’t spoken much to Orion all day, intent on giving off the guise of busyness for anyone watching her. She had waved him away when he approached her around five, telling him they couldn’t leave yet because she was mighty busy. In truth, she had a plan up her sleeve. Once she had waited out the rest of their colleagues, Rosalind could make her move.

Jiemin left his desk at five-thirty. He gave her a suspicious glance, trying to ask with his eyes what she was up to, but Rosalind merely offered him a mock salute and returned to her work. Soon, not only had the hallway lights turned off, but the department itself went dim, making it much harder to see the print in front of her. No matter. Twenty minutes later, the last woman at her desk walked out, emptying the department. Rosalind didn’t need to look like she was working hard anymore.

She reached for her bag.

Much to her surprise, when she walked over to Orion’s cubicle, he didn’t look up. She had expected him to be impatient and readying to leave, but he didn’t even hear her approach until she put a hand on his shoulder. He started.

Rosalind frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Orion rushed to say. “Ready to go?”

She nodded. The building had fallen entirely quiet.

“I’ve been waiting for everyone to leave so I could fetch the shipment logs in the mail room,” Rosalind said as they descended the stairwell. “Can you have a poke around Haidi’s desk too? I don’t think she would store anything incriminating there, but we may as well cover all our bases.”

Orion didn’t respond.

“Orion,” she prompted.

He took the last three stairs at once. For a moment, he seemed confused, like he was waking from a dream and replaceing himself already in motion. Then he said, “Yes, I can do that,” and walked stiffly to the front desk.

What’s wrong with him?

Rosalind shook her confusion off and hurried into the mail room, the door opening smoothly under her hand. There was no reason to protect the miscellaneous packages stored in here overnight, so there was no lock on the door, which made Rosalind’s job a lot easier. She crept along the shelves in darkness, only the glow from the streetlights outside illuminating her search.

She thought she had seen Tejas rummaging down this aisle. Where was it?

Rosalind’s eyes snagged on a box sticking out from underneath one of the farthest shelves. Its flaps were still open. When she tugged the box out and peered inside, she found a black clipboard lying right at the top.

“Aha, success,” she muttered, opening the clipboard to its most recent page. There were some new entries—and one from earlier that very day, logging an outgoing crate for Burkill Road.

Rosalind ran the numbers in her head. It might arrive at the address tomorrow. Which meant there might be another hit tomorrow.

She unclipped the whole log. Rolled it up and shoved it into her bag before rising on her tiptoes and hiding the empty clipboard above one of the cabinets.

Rosalind slipped out of the mail room. Orion was still searching the front desk when she padded over quietly.

“See anything?”

“Only a lot of candy wrappers,” Orion reported. “I don’t think—”

A flare of headlights swept across the first-floor windows, interrupting Orion mid-sentence. The screech of a car’s brake followed immediately, then a door slamming closed. Someone was coming back to the office.

“Hide!” Rosalind hissed.

“Here.” Orion grabbed her wrist and pulled them both behind the desk, ducking under the heavy structure. The outer side of the desk extended all the way to the floor—anyone passing by would not see Rosalind and Orion unless they came around and looked from Haidi’s chair.

A single set of footsteps entered the building. Rosalind didn’t dare breathe, her hand fisted into Orion’s shirt. His arm was wrapped around her waist, holding her unmoving in their tight quarters. She didn’t know if it was her own heart hammering against her rib cage or if it was Orion’s panic she felt passing to her. The space under the desk was cramped enough that she was half-sprawled on top of him, though the two of them entwined was nothing new at this point.

If they were found here after hours, there was little excuse for why they were acting so suspect, why the lights were off as if the office were closed. They needed to stay very, very quiet.

The late-night visitor went up the stairwell slowly. Their heavy tread was patient. It had to be a higher-up—Deoka or someone of his stature—or else they wouldn’t have had access to drive through the front gates after the guards went home.

“Should we go?” Rosalind whispered when the visitor disappeared onto one of the higher floors.

“What if there’s someone in the car too?” Orion whispered back.

“We’re going to have to lie our way out.” Rosalind perked her ears, trying to gauge if there was movement in the gravel lot outside. “It’s more dangerous to wait it out. Leaving now is passably suspicious. Leaving in an hour is utterly guilty.”

“Suspicious is still suspicious.”

“We don’t have any other choice!”

Orion searched her gaze. They were having a whispered argument about the matter as if they were debating different sides, but they both knew it was imperative that they slip out without getting caught. They were so close to finishing this assignment.

“Okay,” Orion said. “If there’s someone waiting in the car, I have an excuse we can have prepared.”

Rosalind looked to the darkness outside the desk. She thought she heard pacing from the floor above. She tried to loosen her grip on Orion’s shirt, laying her hand flat on his chest instead. His heart was beating so viciously that she could feel the thrumming against her palm.

“What is it?” she asked, turning back to face him. A snap of something dangerous passed between their eyes. Perhaps at that moment Rosalind should have known exactly what Orion’s grand plan was.

He leaned forward and kissed her.

It wasn’t a chaste kiss for a watching audience. It was one of his hands locked tight on her waist and the other one pushed into her hair, loosening the pins and undoing her braid. It was her body pressing closer, a magnetic draw demanding her to move, to wrap her arms around his neck.

Her mouth parted with a gasp, and Orion took the invitation. His lips moved against hers like an enchantment, like the world was ending and this was his final grace. She couldn’t form a single coherent thought amid the franticness, but she didn’t care. In the burning fire there was damnation, and she wanted to throw herself right into it.

Orion pulled away abruptly, heaving for breath. Rosalind was so dazed that she could only stare at him, struggling just as much to make a full inhale that would fill her lungs. There was a smear of her lipstick across the top of his lip. Without thinking, she reached to wipe it off, but he caught her wrist, burning-hot fingers wrapped around her burning-hot skin.

“It’s what we need,” he breathed.

Right. Because this was a part of the plan. An act.

“Let’s go,” she managed.

They clambered out from beneath the desk, not fixing a single rumpled collar. Rosalind drew her bag close to herself, and Orion took her hand. When they hurried down the front steps, the car that was parked by the building flashed its headlights at them.

The two of them halted. The chauffeur opened his door, his expression set in a frown.

“What—”

“So sorry,” Orion interrupted before the man could say anything. Even without seeing his expression, she could hear the grin in his voice. “We didn’t realize it had gotten so late. Not disturbing any security, are we?”

The chauffeur’s frown faded, replaced by annoyance in his brow. He waved a hand and started to clamber back into the car. “Please leave the premises when you are ready.”

“We’ll get out of your hair!” Rosalind called lightly.

They spun around. Hurried across the grounds. Rosalind didn’t think either of them exhaled until they had passed through the front gates, out of sight from the building and far from the watching chauffeur.

“You okay?” Orion asked. His voice was soft.

Rosalind stopped him, making a proper effort at removing her lipstick from his mouth. He watched her swipe a finger across his upper lip. She didn’t know if he noticed the slight tremor in her hand.

“Of course,” she said. “We’re excellent spies, after all.”

The air was cool on their walk back to the apartment, which was good for the flush in Rosalind’s cheeks. She kept stealing glances at Orion, he kept stealing glances at her, and the two of them kept looking at each other wordlessly before turning back to the road, opting to continue walking in silence.

When Rosalind pushed open the door into her building courtyard, she stopped short.

“Silas?”

Silas turned around. He was standing with Lao Lao outside her apartment, in the middle of conversation.

“Wait, what?” Silas blurted suddenly as Rosalind and Orion walked closer. “I thought you were upstairs already.”

“Upstairs… in our apartment?” Orion asked. “Why would you think that?”

Silas looked to Lao Lao. The old woman was visibly perplexed too.

“Because Lao Lao said you were,” he replied. “Lao Lao told Phoebe that her brother was inside waiting to talk to her alone. Called us over and everything.”

The courtyard went deathly silent. Phoebe was inside, talking to her brother?

“Oliver,” Orion spat, charging up the stairs.

“Oh God,” Rosalind muttered. “Lao Lao, did you know?”

“I thought it was Liwen,” she exclaimed. “He said he lost his keys, so I let him in. Then he wanted to call his sister over, so I made the summons.”

Oliver Hong had taken advantage of how similar they looked and sounded. Rosalind lifted her qipao skirt and hurried up the stairs after Orion, taking two at a time.

“I’ll be here!” Silas called. Lao Lao ushered him into her apartment, offering him food to keep him out of the family drama upstairs—and so he wasn’t putting his triple agent cover at risk among actual Communists. When Rosalind skidded into her own apartment, she was right in time to see Orion charge at his older brother, going for his throat.

“Hey, hey!” Rosalind yelled.

Phoebe stood up, installing herself between them. On Oliver’s side, a woman grabbed his arm in a blur of motion, speaking furiously into his ear.

Celia.

For a second, Rosalind was so relieved to see her sister that she only stood staring. Celia looked healthy. Her hair was tucked in a small bun at the nape of her neck, her skin a warm glow and her eyes bright. Then Orion was lunging forward again, trying to circle around Phoebe, and Rosalind forced herself to move, looping her arms around him and physically dragging him back.

“If you get hauled in for fratricide, I am not bailing you out,” she hissed.

“Sometimes a little fratricide is okay,” Orion returned.

Over by the couch, Oliver tilted his head. He really did look like a carbon copy of Orion, if only with more shadows under his eyes and a deeper sense of rage brimming in the frame of his shoulders. He also looked more like a persistently smug scoundrel, because where Orion shook off his air with a sense of flippancy, Oliver wore it proudly.

“You don’t mean that,” Oliver said. “I’ve missed Phoebe dearly. I only wanted to catch up with her.”

Phoebe shot him a look, aggrieved to be dragged into this.

Rosalind stepped forward. She released her hold on Orion with a silent prayer that she wouldn’t regret it.

“Sit down,” she instructed Oliver. “You’re in our household as a guest, so at least be polite about it.” She nodded to Celia, pretending not to know her. “You too.”

Celia sat without argument. Oliver, however, strode forward in challenge. “It was never my intention to be rude.” He extended his hand. “I’m—”

“—not touching my wife,” Orion finished for him, smacking his hand away. “Go sit down.”

Celia met Rosalind’s eyes, her brows shooting right up. Wife? she mouthed.

Rosalind shook her head. Don’t ask.

“Fine, I’m sitting.” Oliver moved away, dropping down next to Celia. Phoebe, watching him, sidled closer on the armrest, her eyes darting back and forth. “And you caught us—as lovely as it is to speak to Phoebe, we’re here with a warning for you. Concerning your task.”

“As if we would take your warning,” Orion scoffed.

“No, it really is quite grave,” Celia said. It was the first time she had spoken, and Orion’s attention shot to her, his eyes narrowing the slightest fraction before moving to Rosalind. It took every ounce of effort not to fret. Could he see the resemblance?

“What is it?” Rosalind asked steadily.

“Do you have a map?”

The request was sudden, but Rosalind stood anyway, padding into the bedroom and searching her shelves. She was delighted to see her sister, but it was still very much out of the ordinary, and that could only spell trouble. Rosalind returned with an older map, showing the city and its outer periphery, colored and outlined where the French Concession and the International Settlement started and ended. When she set it on the coffee table, Phoebe leaned forward and helped her hold two of the corners down. Celia, a pen in hand, hovered over the map, drawing a circle on the uppermost left side.

“There’s a warehouse out here moving around Seagreen Press’s issues.”

“Warehouse 34,” Rosalind supplied immediately. “I’ve been following it too. That’s where the vials are coming from.”

Now Oliver was frowning too, easing away from the couch seat so he could get closer to the map. “The vials?”

“The chemical injections that have been killing people across Shanghai,” Orion clarified. Even without turning around, Rosalind knew he had rolled his eyes at his brother. “You know, the terror scheme that the Japanese Empire orchestrated. Which the government can’t focus on because we’re also busy fighting a civil war—”

“Orion, qīn’ài de, please shut up,” Rosalind interrupted.

Orion clamped his lips together. Phoebe gave his arm a reassuring pat.

Celia traced another line of her pen along the map. “For the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend why the warehouse would take newspaper printings from the factories, then pack them right up again. Rather, I couldn’t figure out what a foreign newspaper from Shanghai was doing so far up from the city to begin with.”

“We had also gone rummaging through Warehouse 34 sometime before,” Oliver added. “It looked like a mix between a lab and a storage facility. Crates littered everywhere. Beakers and test tubes on the tables. After some heated discussion on the car ride down, we came to one conclusion.”

“Those newspapers are a guise to get the shipments through the postal system,” Celia finished. “Seagreen Press only writes its issues so that it can funnel whatever Warehouse 34 is making into Shanghai.”

With a sigh, Orion finally approached the coffee table too, slotting himself next to Rosalind and sitting on the floor.

“We already knew most of that,” he said tiredly. “We were working on the other half of the supply line. It comes in from the warehouse, reaches Seagreen, and then Seagreen sends it to a house in the International Settlement, where someone else takes it and uses it to murder people. The Nationalists have the evidence already. We’re set to make our arrests tomorrow.”

The room fell quiet. Celia and Oliver exchanged a look.

“What?” Rosalind demanded.

“The warehouse,” Celia said slowly, “is run by Nationalist soldiers.”

“What?” Orion demanded. “That’s ridiculous. This is a foreign imperialist scheme.”

Oliver splayed his hands. “A foreign imperialist scheme working with Kuomintang defectors, it seems.”

“You—”

“Stay down,” Rosalind commanded before Orion could rise. She turned to Oliver. “You must know how unbelievable that sounds. A whole warehouse operation would not be run by just one hanjian. It would require a militia. How would something that large escape the Kuomintang’s notice?”

But doubt was starting to creep into Rosalind’s mind, turning her cold. She thought about everything she did not yet have an answer for. The file being taken. Dao Feng being attacked. Every bit of chaos on their own side. Had someone been working against them all along?

Rosalind stopped. “Actually, hang on.” She turned to Celia. “Do you know why the Communists tried to kidnap us?”

Celia reared back. “I beg your pardon?”

“I made a copy of their file. There were three code names—Lion, Gray, and Archer—claimed as double agents from your party who are pretending to be Nationalists.”

Rosalind was not watching her sister now. She was watching Oliver, waiting for the slightest slip to indicate that he knew something about this.

“Shortly afterward,” she continued, “it was stolen from me, my handler was almost killed, and a car full of your agents came after us, trying to haul us in with rope. I sent Alisa to sniff around, but she has yet to report back.”

A beat passed.

“Alisa?” Orion and Phoebe echoed at once. Rosalind froze. Merde.

“Liza,” Rosalind corrected. “That was a slip of the tongue.”

“No, you said Alisa.” A thought pulled Orion’s eyes wide. “Alisa Montagova?”

This was a disaster. She thought she had been careful in winding and unwinding the threads of her past, placing them where they needed to be, but instead they were coming alive like a python, intent on choking her with her own lies.

“They’re very similar names,” Rosalind maintained.

Orion folded his arms. He evidently did not believe her, but he chose to stop pressing the matter, looking at the map in front of them again.

“There is some connection among all of this,” Orion said. “Or else Dao Feng wouldn’t be in the hospital comatose right now.”

“I’m really failing to see the connecting points,” Oliver countered.

Orion’s fists curled. “I didn’t ask you—”

“I offered my opinion, nonetheless.” Oliver got to his feet. “Celia, we need to go. We’ve dawdled long enough.”

“Wait. You just got here,” Phoebe insisted, letting go of the map. The paper rolled up, collapsing into its cylindrical shape and dropping off the table. Rosalind almost stepped on it when she lunged upright too.

“Sorry, xiǎomèi.” Oliver tugged on a ringlet of Phoebe’s hair as he beelined for the door. “Ask your èrgē not to threaten my life and I might visit more often. Celia, sweetheart?”

Celia nodded, indicating that she was coming. As Rosalind instinctively took a step after her sister, Celia closed a hand around Rosalind’s elbow, leaning in to make a frantic whisper. She switched to Russian so Orion and Phoebe wouldn’t understand.

“You have to be careful. There is something terrible at work here. I know the Nationalists put you on this task, but they’re involved in some manner, even if I haven’t figured out how yet.” Celia pulled away. She looked at Rosalind as if she wanted to say more, but they were being watched, so Celia only squeezed her elbow, communicating her concern in that one gesture. “Take care.”

With that, her sister hurried off, disappearing out the door with Oliver. Rosalind felt the night air sweep in with the open entranceway.

“Why do you keep sending him off?”

Phoebe’s voice took Rosalind by surprise. Rosalind shifted away from the door, replaceing the girl to be hovering in the middle of the living room, her arms wrapped around herself.

“I’m not sending him off,” Orion replied. He sounded exhausted. “The city is. I can’t stop him from working for the other side of a war.”

Phoebe drew her shoulders high, seeming to prepare for a whole spiel. But then, like a balloon deflating, she only exhaled and walked to the door.

“I’ll have Silas take me home. Good night.”

The door closed. It left Rosalind and Orion standing in their living room, the space suddenly feeling empty. Rosalind extended her hand to Orion in a gesture of amity, and Orion responded by taking her wrist, pulling her to him in an embrace instead.

“It’s okay,” she said immediately. She tucked her head beneath his chin, breathing in deep. She was tired of these battle lines too. Barriers drawn in every which direction, keeping her from her own sister. They had chosen their sides. She wished there didn’t have to be sides to begin with, but that was the naive and careless part of her speaking.

She knew why sides formed. Change. Revolution. Disruption.

“I’m tired of this,” Orion whispered.

Rosalind tightened her grasp on him. “It’ll be over tomorrow.”

She felt him shake his head. It was a shake to say, No, it won’t be. The arrests could be made tomorrow, a terror cell and an imperialist plot could be unrooted tomorrow, but the war would not be over. The sides would remain.

Orion drew away. “Do you believe them? About the Nationalists?”

“I don’t know.” Rosalind tipped her head up, frowning. She knew Celia would never lie to her, regardless of the circumstances. The only matter was whether Celia had received the right information. These schemes were masterminded by people who swapped costumes whenever convenient—this much they already knew. “All we can do is be careful. It’ll have to come to a head one way or another.”

Orion nodded. She wondered if he might ask about Celia. If he might be curious why Celia had seemed familiar with her. But he did not. All that was unspoken between them would remain unspoken for another night. He only tugged her back and wrapped his arms around her again.

Oliver drove into the night with his foot pressing harder and harder on the accelerator.

“Slow down,” Celia chided. He was worked up. His destructive tendencies came out in full force when he was deep in thought about something else.

“There’s no one out here,” Oliver replied, pushing them even faster.

“Great logic. When we hit a bump in the road and go flying, at least it’s only us who dies.”

Though he would never admit it, the rebuke in Celia’s tone did prompt Oliver to slow down the slightest fraction. Celia drummed her fingers on her leg, watching the trees whiz by outside.

“Oliver,” she said. “What do you know about Priest?”

“Priest?” he repeated in surprise. He took his eyes away from the road for a brief moment to meet her gaze. “Priest has nothing to do with this.”

“Answer my question.”

“I’m serious. Literally not a single connecting point—”

“But what do you know?” Celia asked again. “I’ve had enough! This lock on information isn’t helping anyone! If we’re caught, we’re dead anyway, so you may as well tell me.”

The car slowed further. Though it was certainly still going at a dangerous speed, Celia could feel Oliver easing and easing on the accelerator, taken aback by her outburst.

“It does help,” Oliver said. “It helps me sleep better at night knowing the Kuomintang can’t torture you for information that I gave you. That I didn’t put you in more danger despite knowing better.” His jaw tightened. He was trying not to look away from the road. “Fine. Audrey was right. I control Priest. Each trip I make into Shanghai is to make contact and move intelligence around. That’s all I can say. That’s all I will say.”

Celia blew air through her nose furiously. “I’m getting out of the car.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She reached for the door handle. Oliver lunged an arm over and slammed the brakes at the same time, trying to lock her into her seat before she could throw the door open and hurt herself. “Don’t! Don’t, okay?”

The car screeched to an abrupt stop, falling quiet. Slowly, Oliver moved his arm away, seeing that Celia wasn’t going to march off. She only watched him expectantly—waiting, waiting.

“Look, here’s a compromise,” Oliver said very carefully. He pulled the car to the side of the road, parking them properly even though there was no one else using these roads at this hour. “I think I know why our agents went after Rosalind and Orion.”

Celia blinked. “What?” She hadn’t expected the sudden pivot. “Then why didn’t you tell them?”

“Because we’re at war. It might misfire on our own agents. How can I report to our superiors that I’ve given our enemies a heads-up?”

“They’re not our enemies,” Celia hissed. “They’re our family.”

Oliver cast her a sidelong glance. “So are the people in the countryside,” he said. “So is every forgotten worker and factory runner. I can’t push for revolution and hold it back at the same time.”

God. He was going to be loyal to the cause until the very end. She knew this. Of course she did. She both loved and hated him for it.

“Why,” she gritted through her teeth, maneuvering her body so that she could face him, “are you like this?”

Oliver mimicked her motion. He leaned in. “Like what?”

Celia stayed very still. Her gaze dropped before she could help it, looking at Oliver’s mouth, mere inches away. At once, every thought on her mind and every argument waiting on her tongue fled in a mass exodus. She considered nothing except his proximity, drawing nearer and nearer. She could swap her head with her heart. It would be so easy.

Then she whispered: “Don’t.”

Oliver stopped. He didn’t pull away. He stayed where he was, the two of them separated by a breath.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“No—don’t be sorry—” Celia broke off with a frustrated noise and made the first withdrawal, turning to face the dashboard instead. “We can’t do this. Not with our duties.”

“Our duties?” Oliver echoed. Something was different in the next blink of his dark eyes—it took Celia a prolonged moment to realize his stare had turned wholly unguarded. Where Oliver Hong was normally stoic, he had dropped the facade, letting her in on his confusion and disquietude. “Sweetheart, we work for the nation, but it doesn’t control us.”

Celia shook her head. Sooner or later they were going to get into trouble. Sooner or later they were going to get hauled in by the government, imprisoned, tortured. This was something every operative on their side knew. The war was long. They had signed up to fight it.

“You don’t know what you’re asking from me,” she whispered. “I’ve seen what love does. It’s powerful. It’s selfish. It will draw us away from the battlefield, and we can’t allow that.”

It would build a path away. It would make death something terrible, and then who would want to be a soldier marching into war? Who would want to risk leaving the world if they held something beautiful in their hands?

Oliver was frowning intently, like he was sifting through a multitude of responses in his head first. Almost no light from the night outside entered the car save for the stars overhead, and still in the dark she could sight every wrinkle of his brow and every twitch of his lips.

“There’s a small flaw in your logic.”

Celia blinked, her hands clutching together in her lap. “What?”

Oliver sighed. It sounded like he was saying: Sweetheart. It sounded like he was saying: How are you following along this slowly?

“You can’t ask me not to love you by keeping me at arm’s length. I’ll love you anyway.”

Their car jolted to a start again, the engine resuming its loud hum. Celia stared forward, her mind an utter dead-signal screech. She might have completely forgotten how to breathe if Oliver hadn’t pulled back onto the road and driven over a large rock, throwing her around in her seat and forcing instinct to take over and start inhaling-exhaling again.

“As we were saying,” Oliver said evenly, as if he hadn’t dropped the most unbelievable confession on her, “there are murmurings that the Kuomintang are closing in on a weapon. They don’t have that many active covert missions ongoing, and fewer in Shanghai itself. Whatever it is, our agents want it first. I think this is one and the same with Rosalind and Orion’s mission.”

Celia tried to get back on task. It was near impossible, but she gave it her best shot, opting to meet Oliver’s gaze through the rearview mirror instead of head-on. His expression was a blank and even slate. The guardedness had been reinstated.

“What does that mean?” she asked. Her voice sounded too scratchy, so she cleared her throat. “They went after Rosalind to get a weapon from her? Or are they after her as a weapon?”

Her rapid healing. Her inability to sleep or age. Rosalind’s alternate identity as Fortune was infamous in both parties, even if most people thought she was a myth.

Oliver shook his head. “Our agents know that no one has been able to understand her powers, so they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try something this many years later. They’re not after her for her talents as Fortune.”

“Then what are they looking for?” Celia asked. What else could be a weapon? Short of guns and knives and poison, what else was there?

“I don’t know,” Oliver replied. “Genuinely. It’s not our mission, only one we are intruding on, so very little intelligence is traveling down the line for fear of a leak.”

There was something just out of grasp in Celia’s comprehension of the situation. She could feel it, like a lifeboat floating in the distance.

“But you think our people went after Rosalind and Orion because they are the ones closing in on it? The only thing they’re closing in on are the arrests of imperialists and hanjian.” Celia stopped. “And Warehouse 34, I suppose.”

Now something was starting to move into place. Some scattered parts of a whole picture, brushing closer to where they were supposed to be.

The dirt road up ahead split into a fork. Oliver took the right. In the midst of making the turn, he hesitated.

“What is it?” Celia prompted immediately.

He let the steering wheel straighten itself, waiting for the vehicle to proceed forward before speaking. “There was something about that warehouse. It reminded me of my mother’s old science kits, the ones that she would lay on the table for us to play with if we complained about being bored. It felt like they were out there mixing concoctions for fun. What’s so great about a chemical killing mixture? You can kill people by injecting air into their veins too.”

Celia sat back. A thought occurred to her so quickly that she felt like she had been physically slapped. “What if the point isn’t killing?”

“What?” Oliver made a left turn, taking them onto a narrower dirt road. They were exiting Shanghai’s outer borders. “So it is for fun and games?”

“No,” Celia said. The materials in Warehouse 34. The metal slab that had looked like an operating table, if not for the buckles down the side. And Rosalind: Rosalind being brought back to life when Lourens plunged that needle into her arm. “What if they’re running experiments, and killing their subjects is just a side effect? What if these deaths through Shanghai isn’t them using a chemical weapon—what if it’s their attempt at perfecting one?”