Who are you?

Rosalind could feel everyone watching her. Concern and confusion spilled into the room, each pair of eyes 1xed wide on the scene. Who are you? He wasn’t under his mother’s control anymore, but he still didn’t remember her. She should have known that Lady Hong wouldn’t make it that easy.

Rosalind grasped for something to say. Anything. Where there had been forceful hostility before, now Orion was looking at her like a kicked puppy, appearing utterly baAed. Maybe there would be some way to jolt his memory back. Maybe she only needed to say the magic words to trigger something in his mind, and he would recollect all that had occurred, 1ghting through everything the chemical conditioning had induced.

But that probably had to start with answering his 1rst question. “I… I’m…”

Your mission partner? Your wife?

“I’m your friend,” Rosalind settled on softly. It was the truest answer she could 1nd. No matter what else existed in the twist of her throat and the swoop of her gut, care and regard and friendship wrapped a steady hold around her hand, and when she held her palm out to help Orion up, it was that which she oPered.

He got to his feet. Hope swelled in the hollows of her chest.

“Do you remember your name?” Alisa asked from the doorway. She was rubbing her temple, grimacing over the hit she had taken.

“My name,” Orion echoed. “My…”

His eyes rolled back without warning. Before Rosalind could scarcely 1nish her gasp, Roma had swooped in to prevent Orion from falling, grabbing him

from his other side.

“He’s 1ne, he’s 1ne,” Roma assured them, cutting in before anyone could yell with alarm. “Let me just—by God, why is he so tall?”

Roma transferred Orion’s unconscious form back onto the bed. In an alarming next move, he put his 1ngers on Orion’s neck to check his pulse, and Rosalind locked up entirely, having failed to consider that the solution they’d injected into him might just kill him instead. After a few seconds, though, Roma removed his hand and nodded, seeming to 1nd Orion’s pulse still beating.

Nevertheless, fear had seeped in, iced over Rosalind’s form and frozen her bones.

“What happened?” she rasped. “Why doesn’t he remember anything? I thought that was supposed to be a cure.”

Juliette came forward slowly. She sidled past Roma, peering at Orion as if she might be able to pick up an answer by sight alone.

“Has his mother given him anything else?”

The room fell silent. When Rosalind tried to clench her 1ngers, she couldn’t summon any strength.

“I don’t know,” she said. “All his experimentation happened away from me

—”

She stopped. No, that wasn’t true, was it? She had seen that 1nal scene in Warehouse 34. After he had broken free from his orders and held himself back, after he had let Rosalind go despite his every instruction otherwise, Lady Hong had injected him with something burning red. Prior to that, he had fallen into a trance only when he was needed. He hadn’t been erased entirely.

“I think the cure you just gave him erased the earliest brainwashing his mother put in him,” Rosalind said quietly. “But the memory loss is new. A diPerent test tube full of chemicals.”

Just as his strength was its own thing too. After all, Lady Hong’s experiments had been going on for a while now—twenty-two years of time to change Orion however she liked.

Juliette looked immensely thoughtful. She was staring at the Aoor, and when Rosalind traced her cousin’s gaze, she spotted the syringe, rolled to a stop beside the bedside table’s left leg.

“If Lourens’s cure worked for the earlier strain of brainwashing,” Juliette said slowly, “what are the chances he can cure this amnesia, too?”

“We can’t just find Lourens.” Rosalind’s tone came out sharply, far more

than she had intended. A thin layer of sweat had broken out on Orion’s forehead. Those few minutes of being conscious had already taken a physical toll on him. Still, she couldn’t summon the nerve to reach for him. “He’s disappeared oP the face of the earth.”

“Actually,” Juliette said, “we have his address.”

You… what?

“I suppose using him as a solution is a fair point,” Roma added, exchanging a glance with Juliette. “He knew how to reverse one concoction; he must know how to reverse others, too. They cannot possibly be that diPerent on a chemical level. We should summon him in.”

This was absurd. The conversation had stepped on the accelerator, steamrolling in a direction Rosalind wasn’t sure she was willing to risk. She had spent months searching for Lourens. So many sleepless nights scanning the national papers and sitting on the rooftops of train stations trying to catch a glimpse of a former White Flower scientist moving about the dark. Wherever he had disappeared, he had done a good job, because she hadn’t come close to catching his trail, and with all that time wasted, being told now that Lourens could merely be summoned…

“I really doubt it’s that easy.”

Maybe they pretended not to hear the slight sneer entering her voice. Maybe Rosalind caught it before it seeped in fully, bit down on her bitterness until it slid back against her tongue. When she swallowed, there was a lump in her throat: 1erce as a shard of glass, lodged tight with no means of removal unless she tore the skin right open and let her blood run free.

She was so tired of herself. Even if she clawed and clawed with the assurance that no amount of damage would kill her, the blood would run and the wound would heal, but still she wouldn’t be rid of this sensation. She had always been like this, since the burlesque clubs swallowed her up, since she oPered her heart to abandon, since she’d betrayed her own cousin—no matter how she attempted

to leave behind the girl from the Scarlet house, the fact of the matter was that she was stuck in this frozen state, so how could she ever go very far?

“It might be exceedingly difficult,” Juliette agreed evenly. “But don’t you want to try?”

The daylight rose higher and higher through the window blinds, drawing gold across Orion’s face. Even unconscious, he looked so tortured, his brow drawn tight.

Of course Rosalind wanted to try. But if it was going to end up crumpled in her hands anyway, it would feel so much worse than if she had never wished otherwise.

“Fine,” she managed. “Fine, summon him in.”

It was almost approaching three in the afternoon. This was growing ridiculous. “Any change?” Celia asked, redoing her hair. She had untangled her small

Rosalind-esque plaits, wincing each time one pulled painfully behind her ear. Her scalp heaved in relief once she gathered everything at the base of her neck again, wrapping a ribbon into place.

Oliver was observing the scene outside the window. Arms folded across his chest, his expression as mean as it could go.

“I swear they’re standing guard there,” he muttered. “Don’t they have anything better to do?”

“Better than catching Communists?” Celia said, coming up to the window as well. “Certainly not. They must know we couldn’t have gone far.”

Even after Celia and Oliver waited out the night, thinking the Nationalists might be summoned away to tend to another important matter, there was no luck. The streets were crawling with soldiers on the search. When morning broke, more had arrived in their rumbling, green military vehicles, and for a sleepy little town, that meant the two of them were barricaded in even worse than before.

After their extensive search, they had concluded there was no telephone in the building. No way of communicating outward. What a terrible design for a safe house.

The soldiers below were pointing around while in conversation with one another. Though sound didn’t travel far enough for them to hear what the soldiers were saying, it wasn’t hard to take a guess. They must have made note of each route exiting the town and put eyes at each point.

Oliver started to pace again. His shoes scuPed up against the rug, which they had pulled back into place.

“We could make a gamble at nightfall and proceed to the car,” Celia suggested. She hesitated. “But we need to get an update back before then, especially if we don’t manage to get out tonight. We cannot leave the operation in silence.”

“We hardly have a way of sending a message out. Unless we want to use a homing pigeon.”

“There’s a telegraphy office just down the road. I saw it on our way here.”

Oliver stopped pacing. He regarded her carefully. “If you are about to suggest going alone…”

“They will pay less attention to me.” Celia pointed to the wardrobe, where a few ordinary qipao were hanging. “Especially if I change. It’s debatable whether I would be identi1ed even if they stop me. You, on the other hand, are wholly recognizable by face.”

Oliver was tight-lipped, looking like he was scrambling for an argument. “It’s dangerous,” he said eventually.

“What other option do we have?” Celia reached into the wardrobe, picking a bland gray qipao. Perfect. “Help me with these buttons.”

The trees are cold.

In the countryside, they shiver at every gust of wind. Daylight 1lters away from the scene early, 1lched up into the clouds as if an almighty suction is sapping all color. When there is only miles upon miles of greenery, it’s easy for ice to curl in and out to its leisure, latching where it wishes, undisturbed until the season changes.

They take temporary lodgings at a base some distance away from the nearest town. The closer they get to cities and urban bases, the more careful they must

be. Mr. Akiyama will be arriving soon to check on her progress: he travels on a safer route, unlike the traitor on a chase southward. She may move as she wishes with the militia given to her, as long as she has results to show for it. She will. She won’t accept any alternate option.

“Get the telegram machine out,” the traitor snaps, hurling her coat oP when she enters the building. Some parts of the ceiling are made of straw. She can hear the rustle of the trees that grow directly overhead, long leaves drooping upon the exterior walls. The sooner they get out of these makeshift facilities, the happier she will be. She wants her warehouses. She wants tall ceilings and endless steel.

They bring her the machine. Her heart hammers in her chest. She has always known that it isn’t possible to produce this enhancement substance en masse. There is a very limited amount of a key ingredient. Even if they do perfect the formula, the core element needs time to replenish.

But really, she needs to create it only once to prove that it is possible. She needs to hand over only one successful test subject, and then she has done her part. She can take the innumerable funds, disappear somewhere with her family, continue studying what she wishes. Once she has invented what they call immortality, no empire can tell her she has not done enough.

She’s quick to compose her message, tapping with efficiency. It’s a simple

correspondence, because this exchange, too, is simple.

It’s your turn. I will be making contact when I enter the city.