“Ow!”
Alisa tried to yank her wrist back. Her brother gave her a stern look, his grip tightening.
“Don’t be such a baby,” he said, bringing the swab to her wound again. “Personally, I think I have the disposition of a reasonable toddler,” Alisa
replied dryly.
They were sitting at Roma’s kitchen table, her left arm stretched over the dinner place mat like it was being prepared for surgery. She had gotten badly scratched in the scuAe just outside Zhouzhuang. Her palms were an angry shade of red, and despite her attempts at hiding the damage, some of the deeper wounds on her arms needed cleaning. She had tried her best to insist that she would be 1ne, that she had suPered worse throwing herself out of a window once. After Roma had gone back out to check the township for more pursuers, he had returned to give the all clear alongside a giant bottle of alcohol.
For disinfectant, that was. He hadn’t found it very funny when Alisa opened her mouth and gestured for him to pour. She barely got a chuckle out of him— only a tut and the demand to sit down immediately so he could inspect the wounds.
“How did this even happen? We got there so quickly,” Roma muttered. He scrunched his nose, leaning in close to peer at the mark by her elbow after he 1nished cleaning her forearm. “Goodness, Alisa, there’s a whole chip of gravel in here.”
Alisa leaned in as well. That bit of her arm did hurt a little more than
everywhere else. “Squeeze it out.”
“What? No. I’ll get it with a small knife. Juliette?”
“First drawer!” Juliette called from the living room, already overhearing their conversation. Rosalind, meanwhile, had gone into the room to observe Orion.
“The needlepoint ones?”
“Um…” There was a beat of silence. Then a clatter as Juliette moved around, opening the living room cupboards. “I don’t know if I ever got those back.”
“Did you lend them out?”
Juliette mumbled something under her breath. Alisa only heard “not my fault,” but Roma clearly caught the full sentence, grimacing quickly and not chasing the topic further. He reached for the 1rst drawer. Alisa’s eyes followed his movement, then skated along those drawers and higher, scanning the entire kitchen. Her pocket itched. At some point, she needed to deposit the item she was carrying, and it seemed as good an option as anything to leave it with her brother, who was in hiding from the rest of the world.
The only trouble was that this household was far too pleasant. Everything was neat and tidy. When the morning came, it would be sunshine and well-lit corridors. No hiding places in sight. Bleugh. She thought they were supposed to be former gangsters.
“Here we go,” Roma said, wielding a knife from the drawer. Alisa lurched back. “Are you trying to butcher a cow?”
“Now you’re just being dramatic. A cow would break this knife.” “Roma.”
“Give me your arm, Alisochka.”
Warily, Alisa oPered her arm again. She watched her older brother take the tip of the blade to her scratch, then Aick his wrist just enough to get the gravel out. His hand was astonishingly steady—she barely felt the knife. That shouldn’t have been a surprise to her, but it was and it wasn’t, just as it was and it wasn’t strange that the two of them had fallen into their rhythm so easily despite almost 1ve years apart.
In truth, Alisa had always known he was 1ne. He was paying her bills. He left signs everywhere, from the magazine subscriptions with inanely obscure educational topics that showed up at her apartment to the mysterious, anonymous presents resembling his taste every Lunar New Year. All the same, it would have been nice to con1rm that she wasn’t only imagining him
everywhere, that she was correct to put together those clues and hadn’t overstepped her usual con1dence into outright delusion.
Roma made a noise under his breath, retrieving the swab again and running more disinfectant over her scratches. He used to hum like that anytime he was pondering a trivial matter—such as whether he wanted to eat a meat bun or a vegetable bun. Serious matters were accompanied by utter silence. If she stuck her 1nger into his ribs and managed to draw a noise from him, that always meant the matter wasn’t that bad.
He had changed so much over the years, and yet he hadn’t seemed to have
changed at all.
Alisa couldn’t hold it in anymore. Finally, she had itched for long enough to blurt out, “Why did you never contact me?” at the very same moment that Roma also sighed, demanding, “So, why did you never go to Moscow?”
They blinked at each other. While Alisa held still so that the disinfectant would dry on her cuts, Roma drew back and propped his elbows on his legs, every bit of confusion written starkly into his brow. They had always possessed the same expressions, though painted with diPerent color palettes.
“How could I?” Roma said 1rst. “You’re working for the Communists. There
is no group more heavily watched in the city right now. If I sign my name on a letter to you and a Nationalist spy 1nds it, I sign my own death warrant. If I send a messenger and they’re stopped and interrogated, my location falls into the open.”
“I know that,” Alisa grumbled. Logic still reigned supreme in her mind. But
her sudden surge of grumpiness didn’t adhere to logic, as was the case with most emotions. “Still…”
She trailed oP, not really knowing what alternative she could oPer. Besides, it wasn’t malice curling between her tongue and salting her words. It was only the dim sort of loneliness that came from spending so many years alone, vigilant and independent and putting so much ePort into marching forward without knowing what exactly she was marching toward. After the revolution, she had turned fourteen, 1fteen, sixteen—each year passed in anticipation of something grand that was about to slip over the horizon if she could just wait another year longer, just keep doing her job without Aaw and await the reward at the end. She
had thought that the best course of action was to hold strong. Maintain a place in the city however she could. Because in truth…
“I saw you, that day,” Alisa said quietly. “Celia brought me here in April after the revolution, and I saw you with Juliette on that boat and it had to be you, but I stayed put, Roma. I stayed put.” A lock of hair fell into her eyes. “I couldn’t keep tugging your sleeve my whole life, and I couldn’t bear it if I had lost my mind entirely. So I went back to Shanghai and I imagined you out here. I went back to Shanghai and I never left, because if I left, how the hell would you be able to 1nd me when you returned?”
Her gaze shifted up. In the other seat, Roma was entirely unmoving for a long moment. Then his whole chest quavered, shuddering with his inhale.
“I would have found you anywhere.” He reached forward. Tugged that piece of her hair, then tucked the curl behind her ear. “Across the world and under it. No matter how well you hide. It doesn’t matter where you go. I’ll always 1nd you. Understand?”
Alisa choked back a twist in her throat. Though she smiled, the expression suddenly felt watery, threatening to press past her eyes.
“If I had gone to Moscow, would you have contacted me earlier?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Benedikt and Marshall have known for years. The only reason they were forbidden from saying anything to you was that it was dangerous knowledge inside city borders.” Roma grimaced. “We’re never going back, Alisa. At least not permanently. Wherever home once was, it’s not there anymore. But I didn’t want to inAuence you on where you needed to be.”
Give it two seconds more, and Alisa was going to start crying. She did the
only thing she could to stop herself: she pointed her index 1nger and shoved it hard into her brother’s ribs.
“Ow!” Roma exclaimed, jolting in his seat.
She was 1lled with glee in an instant. “I have to use your washroom,” Alisa declared.
He waved her away. “Down the hall, you terror.”
Alisa scuttled oP. She passed Juliette in the living room, whose eyes Aickered up from the desk to oPer a friendly wink before Alisa disappeared into the hall and through the washroom, closing the door behind her.
She didn’t go to use the toilet. She scanned the small space, opened the cabinet above the sink, sniPed at the various medicines inside. Hmm. It was too empty. Too easily searched.
Alisa closed the cabinet and turned around, perusing the rest of the washroom. There was a medium-size clawfoot tub in the corner, squeaky clean on the inside and ornately decorated along the exterior. Moving quickly, Alisa peered around it, crouching low to examine the space where the bathtub brushed the wall, the ridges of the porcelain enamel chipping away some of the green paint.
Alisa stuck her 1nger into the hollow between the ridges and wiggled it around. There was very little maneuvering room against the wall because the tub was so heavy. Perfect.
With a glance at the door to make sure it remained closed, she brought out Lady Hong’s last vial—the true one, not the fake she had duplicated for the purpose of smashing it—and hid it behind the bathtub.
Midmorning felt strange on Rosalind’s face, bright with the low-hanging sun. As was the stillness of sitting at the canal with nothing to do except wait, listening to the birds cawing with the cement warm under her legs. While she was unconscious, Juliette must have hauled her from one end of Zhouzhuang to the other, because this looked to be the edge of the township, running into a larger lake in the distance.
Rosalind peered up. She shivered a little from the breeze, but otherwise remained seated, kicking her feet. The house stood right beside the canal, where water lapped forward carrying dried leaves and twigs in its current. She had been watching the current for some time now, which wasn’t so bad as far as distractions went while she twiddled her thumbs for Orion to wake up. Her sedative was strong. Most times, it wouldn’t wear oP for a full day, maybe more. There was no use hovering around anxiously.
“There’s something I should warn you about, though,” Rosalind had said when she and Juliette were standing over the threshold into the room. Orion
had been placed on the bed. His face was pale. Military uniform torn and bloodied, one sleeve pushed up unkemptly.
“He’s under control, isn’t he?”
Rosalind blinked. “How did you know?”
Her cousin folded her arms, her hands disappearing into the ruAes at her bodice. “The papers said you two uncovered a scheme to do with the Japanese Empire conducting chemical experiments in Shanghai. I 1gured if Hong Liwen was then suddenly deemed a national traitor, then perhaps it wasn’t voluntary.” Juliette shrugged. “My guess wasn’t entirely uninformed either, though. A similar set of experiments have been happening here, too.”
“Here?” Rosalind repeated. “In Zhouzhuang?”
Juliette hesitated. “I suppose it’s more accurate to say the subjects Aed here.
They were experimented on elsewhere. By Lourens.”
Rosalind’s elbow started to burn at the mere mention of the scientist’s name. Why was Lourens everywhere she went? Why was he everywhere, yet, at the same time, absolutely nowhere to be found?
“The incidents here have all blown over now, don’t worry,” Juliette went on. “But while the matter was ongoing, Roma and I came into possession of a neutralizing agent. It’s supposed to free subjects from their conditioning.”
Rosalind swiveled so quickly she created a breeze in the hallway. “That could 1x Orion.”
“It could,” Juliette con1rmed. “We should wait until he awakens before we give it to him, lest something goes wrong and his body doesn’t respond right. But it’s ready for him. That neutralizing agent is the whole reason why I summoned you here. I can help you get him back. To himself.”
Rosalind allowed herself a sigh in the present, reaching to pluck at a vine
growing through the cement cracks. As soon as Orion woke up, it would all be resolved. They could get him back. Return him to himself.
At that very moment, the sound of smashing glass echoed from inside the house. Rosalind whirled around, eyes Aying to the front door.
“We might have a situation!”
Alisa’s voice. Was Orion awake already?
Rosalind clambered to her feet immediately, running back into the house. She skidded to a stop in the middle of the living room, dread slick down her back. There was already something in motion. Down the hall, the washroom light was on, and Juliette was rummaging in the cabinet above the sink.
“Roma!” she called. “Syringe!”
“I’ve got it!” Roma replied from the kitchen. “Alisa, keep him—”
Alisa tumbled out of the bedroom, hitting the hallway with a groan. She stayed down, looking annoyed. “I will not be Aung around like a rag doll. Rosalind, you get him in order.”
Orion was most de1nitely awake. Rosalind hurried around Alisa and entered the room carefully, hands up. There was a vase at her feet, shattered into three pieces. Orion was standing at the center of the room. His eyes—though they were wide, glancing around the house in confusion over how he had gotten there—were still blank.
He had had all his weapons removed from him. Surely he couldn’t do too much damage.
“Are you still after a vial that doesn’t exist anymore?” Rosalind asked calmly, as if this were a natural conversation. “Or did those instructions have a timed expiration?”
Orion frowned. He didn’t seem to be comprehending her sarcasm. Or maybe he was, and he was 1ghting within himself to 1gure out a response.
“The vial…,” he echoed.
Rosalind’s eyes Aickered to the sheet that had been thrown to the Aoor. And, before Orion could decide to attack again, she lunged for the sheet and threw it over him.
Juliette was at the door suddenly. While Orion snapped into action, yanking at the sheet hard, she hurried in, surging right past him and going to the window, pulling a length of rope in. Juliette threw; the rope whipped toward Orion’s arms, unfurling like a serpent before the end curled itself around his wrist tightly and snapped into place, some magnetic mechanism making a loud click.
“Maybe we should have done this when you were asleep,” Juliette muttered under her breath. She drew her pistol. Orion sprang toward her in defense.
Rosalind started forward. “Wait, wait, don’t hurt him—”
“He’ll be 1ne,” Juliette said. Her eyes Aashed up, the motion barely perceptible. When Rosalind turned around, Roma was in the room too, something small glinting in his hand. In a blink, he had it pressed into Orion’s neck.
Roma removed the syringe. Orion sank to his knees.
“Orion!” Rosalind dove forward, putting herself eye to eye with him.
“Be careful. The ePects might not have wholly faded yet,” Juliette warned.
Rosalind didn’t care. She grasped his arm, searching his expression desperately. When Orion looked up again, she could have cried in relief, because his dark eyes were full of life again, emotion and intensity and bewilderment lurking in their depths.
Only then:
“Who are you?” Orion whispered
