Mr. Akiyama didn’t collapse immediately.
The bullet made a perfect circle in his forehead. At 1rst it was only a dark ring. Then a single bead of blood dripped down onto his nose, onto his lip, before gliding oP to land on the grass.
In the moments after, when blood started to surge through the hole and trickle in rivulets, he 1nally collapsed where he stood, unmoving. It didn’t end there: as soon as the 1rst bullet 1red onto the scene, more followed in rapid succession, each striking true again and again. The soldiers who were encircling the scene fell where they stood. No bullet was wasted; each bullet made landing to take out an enemy in a single blow.
“What the hell?” Orion whispered, craning his head in search of the shooter.
It was coming from above. From the rooftop of the manor.
A 1nal bullet struck the space beside Lady Hong’s feet. She gasped, darting back, but the bullet had clearly missed on purpose. The garden fell quiet for a scarce few seconds. Then tremendous shouting began around the other side of the manor, signaling the arrival of police. Their sirens pierced through the night. Their vehicles Aashed colors into the dark. Rosalind would give it mere minutes before they came into the garden and found them. Less if the Nationalists were present alongside them, because the Nationalists would know who they were looking for.
“That wasn’t the police, though,” Rosalind muttered, almost to herself. She 1nally spotted the shooter. A small 1gure, hovering by one of the turrets. When they stood, they were quick to slide along the slate tiles, perching on the edge of the gutter before grabbing ahold of the pipes and sliding down.
Even in the dark, Rosalind recognized those ringlets.
“Priest,” she uttered aloud, confounded. She remembered the rescue mission at the Nationalist base. The combatants dropping in a path that cleared only for her. She remembered Warehouse 34, how she and Orion were left alive despite every reason to kill them.
When Phoebe turned around, she lifted her riAe again at her mother, keeping her where she was.
“How is he?” Phoebe asked, walking closer. She was addressing Rosalind. “Bad,” Rosalind answered simply.
“How am I?” Orion struggled to mimic. “Are you Priest, Feiyi? Oh my God,
I’m going to kill you—”
“Save your breath,” Phoebe demanded. “Worry about surviving before you worry about killing me.”
“And then I’m going to kill Oliver,” Orion went on, practically heaving to 1nish speaking. “The fact that he’s been your handler this whole time—”
“I can save him,” Lady Hong interrupted. “I only need to give him this.”
At some point in the chaos, she had put the vial into a syringe. She held the instrument in her hands carefully, its needle pointed to the sky.
When Orion breathed in, it sounded as though there was air escaping through his lungs, as though they had been punctured a thousand times over.
“Let me give this to you,” his mother begged. “Please.”
The sirens stopped abruptly. In its place came shouting as units were instructed to disperse and search. How much time did they have left? Would the Nationalists 1nd them like this—fugitives and enemy operatives alike, a family broken down the middle?
“All right,” Orion 1nally agreed. His eyes Aickered to Rosalind. “Can you come closer?”
Rosalind was already only a few paces away, practically splayed on the grass while Orion hovered more neatly on his knees, his left arm clutched around his wound. She didn’t question the request; she moved nearer, her hand outstretching to touch his shoulder for comfort. On his other side, Lady Hong crouched down, bringing the syringe to his arm.
Rosalind didn’t register what he was doing until she felt the pinprick on her arm. Didn’t register the sudden motion of him grabbing the syringe from his
mother’s hold and plunging it into Rosalind instead.
Lady Hong made a noise of abject distress. Rosalind could only stare at the emptied syringe in disbelief. A second later, she tore it out from her arm and threw it onto the grass, shattering it down the middle. One last drop spilled out into the soil. It sank into the ground.
“Why would you do that?” Rosalind was inside a waking nightmare. Somehow, her hands were covered in Orion’s blood already. It had left a print on the glass of the broken vial. “Orion, what did you just do?”
“No more science,” he decided. “It doesn’t solve anything.”
“It would have solved the fact that you’re bleeding to death right now,” Rosalind snapped.
Merde. He was so stupid. And selAess. Stupid, selAess Orion. God—
She could feel the concoction moving through her body. This one didn’t burn the same way Lourens’s experiment did; this one felt like her blood was rising to the surface, overwhelming every part of her body until she was entirely made of liquid.
A shout came around the manor. Another.
“Get him help,” Lady Hong demanded suddenly. “Go now, or the Nationalists won’t let you leave.”
She was right. The Nationalist presence was arriving. They would want to arrest Orion alongside his mother before they did anything else. By the time they got around to helping him, he would be long dead.
“Which way?” Rosalind asked. Her voice stayed steady. She clutched Orion’s elbow, ready at a moment’s notice to leap up and haul him with her.
“Go through the house and down the corridor on the right. That’ll lead you to a side door. Stick close to the fence, and you should make it to the front gate without a hitch.”
“Over here! Check all the paths!”
Rosalind clenched her teeth, shifting nervously on her feet.
“Feiyi, you need to lower that gun in ten seconds, or you’ll be a target,” Lady Hong warned, her tone surprisingly calm. If not for the slight tremor in her hands when Rosalind took Orion from her, Rosalind might have doubted any love remained for him.
But it was there. Rosalind had witnessed it, and she didn’t like that—it made it harder to accept that they were in this mess because of Lady Hong’s selfish choices.
“Oh, sure,” Phoebe scoffed, though her eyes hinted at tears. “I’ll drop the gun, so you can escape too.”
Rosalind helped Orion to his feet. He grimaced as blood seeped from the wound when he shifted his grip. She was surprised at how easily she pulled him up, nearly losing her balance.
“Phoebe, she’s right,” Rosalind said, feeling the weight of trust—undeserved trust, but their options were running out. “Put it down now, or they’ll know you’re Priest.”
“There!”
With a quick glance over her shoulder and a muttered curse, Phoebe flung her rifle into the grass. She barely moved away from it, yet she suddenly seemed distant from the weapon, as if it were an afterthought. There was no time to linger and see how Lady Hong would act without a gun aimed at her. Rosalind gave Phoebe a brief nod and urged, “Quick!” to Orion as she pulled him back into the manor.
“I don’t mean to alarm you,” Orion wheezed inside the corridor. “But I can’t feel my arms.”
“I am plenty alarmed.”
Rosalind turned the corner. Slammed right into someone. Before she could panic and try to use her newfound strength to 1ght, the other person squeaked, throwing their hands up.
“It’s me!” Alisa exclaimed. “What the hell happened out there? Why are you covered in blood?”
“Good news,” Orion supplied from behind her. “It’s mine.”
If it weren’t in utterly bad taste to throttle someone who was grievously injured, Rosalind might have done it.
“The Nationalists are here,” Rosalind reported in a rush. “Did you get rid of everything?”
Alisa nodded. It likely took one glance at the situation for her to 1gure out what had happened in the time she was purging the manor of its research. Rosalind was tugging Orion without any trouble; Orion had walked free from his mother.
“Final step is pouring gasoline over the papers and books for safe measure,” Alisa reported. “Other chemical materials—liquid or solid alike—I destroyed. Except…” There was movement along the Aoor above, and Alisa’s eyes shot up. Quickly, she leaned forward, pressing cold glass into Rosalind’s hand. When Rosalind looked down, she was holding a vial 1lled with a clear, colorless liquid.
“He did all this to make sure it works on you,” Alisa whispered. “Don’t waste it.”
She darted away.
Rosalind gave herself a second to swallow hard. Then she put the vial in her pocket, hurrying Orion forward again.
“How are your arms?”
“Rosalind,” Orion said, ignoring the question. “Use the cure.”
“Not right now.” They hurtled into an atrium, where Rosalind 1nally spotted the side door. When they stole into the night this time, it felt monumentally colder, the air prickling painfully on Rosalind’s face. She breathed shallowly. At the end of the fence, Nationalist forces were streaming in from the front gates. How were they to get out? There was no chance in hell that they could climb the fence with Orion in this state.
“Jiějiě!”
The summons came faintly, but it reached Rosalind’s ear with pointed quickness. Celia emerged from a cluster of trees, her expression horri1ed. There was a bag dangling from her shoulder and a pistol in her hands.
“Did Phoebe get to you in time—”
“Of course you brought Phoebe,” Rosalind said in return. “I need to get Orion—”
“Go to the car. Hurry, hurry.”
Rosalind barely needed to 1nish any sentence before Celia already knew what she was saying. Likewise, Celia didn’t need to conclude a thought before
Rosalind had caught the gist. Her sister took one look at Orion and pushed at his other shoulder, hurrying them along the edge of the manor grounds.
“I swear I can still walk on my own,” Orion wheezed. “Shush,” Rosalind and Celia said at once.
They moved as quickly as they could. Came to a stop just short of where the Nationalists might see them.
“How are we supposed to get out?” Rosalind whispered.
Celia pointed beyond the gate. A small vehicle hovered on the other side of Arden Road, away from most of the chaos streaming in. “That’s the car I drove here with Phoebe. It’s unlocked. Move fast.”
“And you—”
Celia reached into her bag. “I can’t be spotted helping you, 1rst of all, so I’ll 1nd some way out. I have two more explosives left. On my mark. Go!”
This time Rosalind didn’t let Orion insist that he was holding himself up 1ne. She pulled, skirting along the gate in the dark, timing their movement to the frantic roar of 1re erupting before the manor. Gravel crunched where the concrete pavement was more loosely constructed. When Rosalind glanced back, she could see that Orion was leaving behind a faint trail of blood.
Rosalind shoved him into the passenger seat. “Rosalind, I—”
“No,” she interrupted, slamming the door on him. When she came around the driver’s side, she continued: “Save your breath and your energy. Don’t say a single thing.”
“I’m only trying to—”
“Love confessions and marriage proposals are forbidden,” Rosalind snapped, and her tone could have been a death knell itself. She stomped on the accelerator. The car hurtled forward at once, away from the military trucks driving in the other direction. “Are you trying to die?”
Orion made a noise that almost sounded like a laugh. “I’m getting too
predictable,” he managed.
It was only that she knew him too well. And if she knew him this well, then she also knew that he was strong enough to hold on. “I will 1nd you help.” She swerved fast. “Tell your heart to stop pumping so fast.”
“I can’t,” he replied weakly. “It swoons when you’re around.”
Rosalind tightened her hold on the steering wheel. Her throat twisted, tears threatening at her eyes. She couldn’t lose her composure. Orion was relying on her. She could cry her heart out with all the terror racking up inside her lungs when he was patched back together.
But not a second sooner.
