No one else was panicking as much as Orion was, and he couldn’t fathom why.
Everyone had dispersed through the house. They had determined their timing, put into order how they were reentering Shanghai. Benedikt and Marshall were going to drive west to begin their journey home to Moscow, passing a black-market rental shop on the way and sending a hired driver. Along with the driver, the shop knew how to provide falsi1ed government papers, a quick 1x to make sure the car could ferry people back into the city while it was under guard.
Rosalind had excused herself into the washroom to 1x her hair. Predictably, Orion had gotten up and followed her, and though Rosalind cast him a look that said Really? she did not bid him leave. He paced the washroom. Rosalind calmly redid her small plaits in front of the mirror, pinning each of them in place.
Perhaps she was making an ePort to suppress her reaction. Lourens had told her she was going to die soon. That, at best, she had a few years left as the unaging, unsleeping Fortune, and, at worst, she could keel over right this moment. Prior to this piece of information, they had believed her to be immortal, and now suddenly it had never been true. Suddenly it turned out the experiment had been wearing away at her this whole time. How could Orion accept that?
“There has to be a cure,” he had demanded. While Rosalind had remained relatively stoic, Orion had lunged forward. “Isn’t there?”
“To erase something, one must begin with the stable element before making the counteragent,” Lourens had replied. He hadn’t been bothered by Orion’s aggression, nor seemed particularly intimidated. “I can cure your conditioning
of the mind because whatever your mother used was derived from my work, so I have the materials to create a counteragent. Meanwhile, your mother never shared her full work with me after inventing her strength concoction. I have no ability to reverse that. Similarly, I cannot cure Lang Shalin when I was never successful with the initial element.”
“You can’t cure something that doesn’t technically exist,” Rosalind muttered, almost to herself.
“Yes,” Lourens replied, clicking his 1ngers at her like she had contributed something to class. “You are in half existence.”
Orion made a horri1ed noise. “Why would you say that—”
Rosalind grabbed his elbow, shaking her head in warning. It wasn’t worth the debate, she seemed to be saying. She didn’t know that Orion was willing to argue with a literal rock if he suspected it had insulted her in some manner.
“If you’re asking for a cure, the only way forward is obtaining true immortality 1rst,” Lourens continued. He had returned to the couch tiredly. “Stabilize the temporary solution I put there 1ve years ago, then erase it. At this point in time, the only person capable of doing something like that is your mother, Hong Liwen.”
Christ.
Now Orion could do nothing except stomp up and down the washroom. His mother was the only one who could save Rosalind. Acquiring her completed research was the sole hope for Rosalind’s continued survival. This was so twisted.
“Orion, would you quit pacing?” Rosalind said.
“I will combust if I don’t pace,” Orion replied. “How are you so calm?”
Rosalind slid a pin into place. “I already died once,” she answered quietly. “I think I have always accepted that I was on borrowed time.”
Orion marched toward her without warning.
“You listen to me,” he said, grabbing Rosalind’s face with both hands. “You are bound to me in matrimony. If you break it and descend into another plane of existence, I will chase after you and snatch you back.”
For a long moment, Rosalind only stared at him, eyes wide. The pause went
on for so long that he started to wonder if he had taken it too far, if he had
sounded too threatening, but then she gave a loud snort.
“You know that we’re not actually bound in matrimony, right?” “Says who?”
Rosalind smoothed her expression down, feigning nonchalance. She might have fooled him when all his memories were scattered, but she couldn’t fool him anymore. He had their every moment together ready on 1le. Every shared joke when their eyes met across the office space at Seagreen Press; every vulnerable moment in the half-dark of her French Concession apartment, when the sun was setting but they weren’t yet willing to get up and turn on the lights. As infallible and brave as she was, Rosalind still needed him. She needed him as any person needed their burdens borne by another from time to time. Just as he needed her—and now that he had her, he refused to let go.
“Says the government, maybe?” Rosalind retorted.
“Since when did you care about what the government says?”
“The other option is religiously bound matrimony, and I don’t think either of us believes in anything.”
I believe in you, Orion thought. Before I put my faith with anything, I would
put it with you.
“My point stands,” he said 1rmly. “You’re not dying. We’re going to 1x this.” Rosalind only scrunched her nose. “Well, I’m worried about you too. Your mind is free, but your body is not. Your headaches are going to worsen with
time.”
“We can 1gure it out,” Orion said easily. Now that the headaches weren’t going to make him snap and attack her, he was hardly concerned. He had suPered worse spells in the past.
“How?” Rosalind asked. “It is the same, no? Your mother holds the 1x.
Either that or Lourens stabilizes you with what he used on me.”
“We can 1gure it out,” he said again. “Mine is slow-acting. Your situation is our priority.”
Rosalind didn’t refute him, but she didn’t agree, either. Her gaze wandered away, settling elsewhere in the washroom. Orion tightened his grasp upon her face to politely request the return of her attention.
When her gaze Aickered back, Rosalind looked slightly amused by his prompting. He managed to hold on to that glint in her eye for a mere moment before she was looking at the same point over his shoulder again, and he 1nally released her face, turning too.
“What is it?” he asked. “What are you looking at it? The bathtub?”
“No,” Rosalind replied quickly. “Just thinking. Step out a moment, would you?”
Orion was immediately suspicious. Rosalind, seeing his furrowed brow, pointed to the extra clothing she had brought into the washroom, borrowed from Juliette’s closet.
“I need to change, darling.”
“Fine, 1ne.”
He stepped out. Closed the door behind him, then tried not to fret. Orion needed to get ahold of himself. Resolute to keep his breath under control, he strolled along the hallway, coming into the living room again and leaning against the entryway.
“There you are.”
The man who had introduced himself as Marshall was speaking to him, rummaging through a small briefcase on the coPee table. When Orion looked around the hallway, as if there might be someone else instead, Marshall rolled his eyes and gestured for him to come closer.
“Me?” Orion said.
“Yes, you. We are soon to depart, so I thought I would give you this.”
Marshall tossed an item at him. Orion caught it smoothly, then looked into his palms to 1nd a stamp.
“I stole it from my father a while ago, and I don’t think he ever worked out that I still have it,” Marshall said. “He’s a Kuomintang general. It’s yours now. Slap it over the falsi1ed papers, and it should help.”
“Thank you,” Orion said, meaning it. His father had had one just like this. Though they couldn’t exactly go putting that on their papers when General Hong was currently imprisoned.
Orion put the stamp in his pocket. Out of his periphery, he saw Benedikt Montagov exit the kitchen, having organized what he needed.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Marshall blinked in surprise at Orion’s sudden question. Benedikt’s expression turned immensely curious too. He paused beside Marshall, his hands in his pockets.
“Have we?” Marshall asked. “Am I the one with amnesia now?”
Orion dug through his memories. With his entire past restored at once, some parts were jumbled, bringing forward his earlier years and making it hard to determine how the linear sequence had occurred. He needed to think deeply about the details in each scene to place when exactly it happened, but he felt like he remembered Marshall Seo from much earlier, when the White Flowers were still around and he had newly returned to the city….
Orion snapped his 1ngers, landing on the memory. “At the Podsolnukh. You bought me a drink.”
In the kitchen, Roma suddenly snorted, and Juliette slapped her hand over his mouth to prevent him from laughing any louder. Orion didn’t realize what was so funny until Benedikt turned to Marshall and gave him a look, at which point Marshall most certainly remembered what Orion was talking about. He held still for a long moment. His expression froze, as if he were mentally running through the night after the drink.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Marshall breathed a moment later. “We played a game
of cards, didn’t we?”
“Won high earnings,” Orion con1rmed.
“Let’s play again when this is all over. The Trans-Siberian Express is a short journey. You’re invited anytime.” Marshall hauled his bag up then, with that sufficing as his farewell. He grabbed Benedikt’s wrist to drag him along, saying, “Wipe that frown away, nae sarang. It’s tarnishing your beautiful face.”
“Is my face so beautiful?” Benedikt retorted. He collected his bag too, then waved at Roma and Juliette. It seemed neither he nor Marshall were wanting to make a big matter out of their goodbye. “Was it beautiful that night you were oP in the White Flower cabarets instead of at home?”
“You were a full year away from saying anything to me—”
“So now it’s my fault you were oP Airting with other men?” “Jealousy is adorable on you—”
The front door closed after them. Orion felt a little sheepish. “Of course you would be responsible for causing a 1ght.”
Orion jumped. He hadn’t heard Rosalind exit the washroom. She was eerily silent when she wanted to be.
“Don’t worry. They do that all the time.” Juliette got up, hovering around the stove. “Does everything 1t?”
“Like a glove.” Rosalind surveyed the living room. Frowned. “Where’s Lourens?”
“He stepped out to take a quick walk,” Roma said. Though he had answered absently, more focused on perusing the map laid out in front of him at the kitchen table, his head lifted after a moment, as if registering his own response. “Strange. It’s been a while.”
They weren’t taking the scientist with them anyhow, so it didn’t matter if he had gotten lost somewhere around the lakes. All the same, he had left his bag here. He couldn’t have gone far.
“Hope he stays away,” Rosalind grumbled.
No one argued with her. The others were more familiar with Lourens than Orion was, and it appeared it was a discomforting experience for them to 1nd out exactly how much Lourens had contributed to this terrible science.
“What are you going to do about him?” Juliette asked. She was addressing Rosalind, who shook her head.
“What am I to do? Call the authorities? I doubt the Kuomintang cares much about putting him on trial.”
“I was rather referring to the fact that I very narrowly stopped you from killing him outside the township earlier.”
Orion jolted, surprised. After he had thrown himself out of the farmer’s truck, he had little recollection of the events that followed. There was only nothingness in his memory until he jerked back to consciousness in this house with Lourens hovering before him, holding a syringe.
“Don’t worry, I’m not plotting his murder,” Rosalind said darkly. “I should, but I won’t.”
“We won’t blame you if you’re considering it, I suppose,” Roma contributed. He grimaced, and when he continued, he was speaking to Orion: “If it’s any
consolation, he seemed to have realized his wrongdoing while he was in Vladivostok. But it doesn’t change the fact that he invented this chemical conditioning business.”
Perhaps Lourens was only partly guilty for what had happened to Orion. Perhaps Lourens was ultimately responsible for bringing him back and erasing what his mother had put in him. Still, that didn’t endear him to Orion one bit. In his experience, the truly neutral players were the most unpredictably dangerous, and Lourens Van Dijk was exactly that.
Orion said nothing in reply. He let the topic peter out, switching back to their preparations.
“Anyhow, come have some tea,” Juliette said. “We’re leaving soon.”
Orion drifted closer to the kitchen. As did Rosalind, though she walked more purposefully, going to help her cousin fetch teacups.
“Xièxiè, mǔqīn.”
Juliette rolled her eyes. “I’m not that old.”
“Come have some tea, children,” Rosalind mimicked, setting the teacups on the table.
“Hilarious.” “I know.”
Her cousin didn’t seem to pay Rosalind’s tone any particular mind, tapping Roma’s elbow to signal that she was setting a coaster beside him and asking him to shift the map closer into the center. Orion, though, caught that something was oP in an instant, like a single Aat note played during a symphony.
What’s going on? Orion silently asked. Rosalind couldn’t see his expression,
so she couldn’t reply. No matter how hard he stared at her from the kitchen entryway, she didn’t look over at him. She only concentrated on pouring tea, careful not to splatter any droplets.
“So, we have to avoid the area around the North Railway Station or we’re simply asking for trouble,” Roma said, tracing a red pen through the map on the table. “But Arden Road is on the east side of the International Settlement. We may have to circle outside the city and enter from the south.”
“We’re still going to encounter garde municipale,” Juliette mused, sliding into a chair, “but I suppose it’s better than Japanese Marines engaging in active
invasion.”
Orion 1nally got closer to the table too, pulling his attention from Rosalind to look at the map. “Then we move through Xujiahui, I presume?” He frowned, bringing his nose close to the small writing—so close that he almost brushed up against the paper. “Does that say Siccawei? What sort of map is this?”
“It’s old and it’s British. Don’t judge,” Roma said, Aicking him away.
“Xujiahui is tightly French controlled even if it’s under Chinese administration. The moment we enter, we should assume we will be stopped and questioned at any point.”
Rosalind put a cup of tea in front of Roma. Then in front of Juliette. When Orion drew away from the table and oPered to help her, Rosalind skirted him expertly, shooing him oP and pulling her elbow close to her side.
His suspicion shot sky-high.
“Beloved,” he said at once. “What are you up to?”
“What do you mean?” She set the kettle where it had been. Busied herself with putting the tea leaves away in the third cupboard to the right.
Orion’s mouth opened and closed. He was watching her elbow. It was as if she was trying to shake something back into her sleeve.
“You were—”
A quiet thump sounded behind him. Orion whirled around to 1nd Roma to have pitched forward onto the table. Seconds later, Juliette slanted forward too, her arms laid out already and acting as a pillow when her forehead sank down.
Orion understood. His heart ached at the realization, at the sense of care that Rosalind had even when it was something as underhanded as dropping sedatives into the tea just so they wouldn’t accompany the mission back into the city.
The kitchen fell quiet. The stove was still on, boiling the kettle to a low whine, so Orion reached to turn the Aame oP. Suddenly the silence was overwhelming, suctioning smaller and smaller until it was seconds away from implosion.
Rosalind sniAed. Her eyes were wet. She pressed a hand to her mouth, her complexion almost verging on green.
“I couldn’t let them do this,” she whispered. “They got out even when I almost ruined them. I won’t let them risk it again. This is my problem to 1x.”
Orion took a step toward her. “It’s mine too,” he corrected gently.
At 1rst he didn’t know if Rosalind heard him. She was still, deathly so. Then she set her head on his shoulder gently, whispering:
“Am I making a mistake?”
Her voice was a mere rasp. Fear shook her words, shook her whole frame, but she didn’t let the glistening moisture in her eyes well over. It must have started snowing outside, because the kitchen dimmed a few shades, bringing the cover of a sky veiled in gray.
“If you think you did the right thing, then you did. It is as simple as that.” The clock on the wall chimed. Rosalind lifted her head, casting a glance over.
Orion watched her.
“Okay,” Rosalind said. Her spine straightened, and in that one motion, she pulled herself together. In that one motion, she became an operative again— Fortune, who did what her country needed. “We should go.”
Orion nodded. “Let’s go.”
Juliette woke up 1rst. She coughed to clear her throat, unable to swallow past how dry and scratchy it had gotten. There was a hint of orange bleeding through the window. Almost sundown.
“By God,” she wheezed, lifting her head from the table. Blearily, she reached out to give Roma a shake, seeing double. “Did Rosalind poison us?”
Roma stirred. His eyes Auttered, then Aew open at once, taken aback over why he was lying on the table. “What time is it?”
Too late to give chase. Hours had passed, which would have been exactly Rosalind’s intention. Juliette cursed under her breath, then immediately regretted it when she needed to cough again. Her head was as heavy as stone when she stood up. She stumbled.
“Careful, careful,” Roma said, lunging oP his chair to catch her.
Juliette exhaled, trying to clear her thoughts while she had Roma to lean on. Then she found her balance again, shaking herself into coherence. She hurried into the living room. Rooted around the desk looking for their contact booklets. “They must be arriving in Shanghai now.”
“If we drive fast,” Roma suggested, “we could still make it late.”
Juliette shook her head. “It would be no help to get there late. The 1ght would be over, and someone would have won or lost.” She took a deep breath, 1nding the booklet. It was 1lled with old telephone numbers. Gangsters and businessmen. Drivers and former national soldiers.
As soon as Roma saw what she had picked up, he headed for the bedroom, fetching the second booklet on the shelf there.
“I hope no one needs the telephone for a while,” he said, emerging with it in hand. “Where are we sending people? Rosalind’s location or general surveillance?”
Juliette steadied herself, worry swirling in her chest. She was going to have a very stern talking to with Rosalind after this.
“Rosalind’s location,” she said, pushing down the hitch in her voice. “Even if she shakes us oP, we’re not leaving her on her own this time.”
