Morning rose, breaking past the storm clouds. Once Rosalind tapped Orion awake, gentle in her disturbance, she took it upon herself to go around shaking everybody else awake too, which was a rather difficult task. The hour was early. Though everyone rolled upright without complaint, she and Alisa were the only people in the safe house who weren’t yawning every two seconds.
“How are you so alert?” Rosalind asked.
“I’m a morning person,” Alisa said happily. Of course she was.
Alisa slipped out to 1nd food; Silas left to make copies of facility blueprints that would be relevant to their planning. Now the sun was 1rmly hanging in the crisp blue sky, and there were bags of yóutiáo on the table in front of them alongside blueprints of the Nationalist military station. Rosalind thumbed along the largest one, trying to make sense of the symbols. She supposed she didn’t need to understand their route in—she only needed to engage in combat once someone else navigated. Fortune was an assassin, not an intelligence operative.
“… so that leaves us here, entering the inner facility through this tunnel,” Silas 1nished, explaining the layout of the station.
With a few phone calls, he had con1rmed where Oliver was being kept, just outside the western peripheries of the International Settlement and surprisingly close to the Hong household. The good news was that the facility was very large, which meant lower chances of getting caught if they were to sneak in. The bad news was that it was a major station and therefore also very well guarded, which meant higher chances of getting caught if they were to sneak in.
Orion leaned in. Frowned.
“I’m confused,” he said. “Aren’t we Nationalist agents?”
Celia took a small step back, putting physical space between herself and the claim. “Don’t drag me into this.”
Alisa mimicked her. “The last time I showed my face here, the Nationalists arrested me, so…”
That left Rosalind, Silas, and Phoebe around the table, exchanging looks among the three of them with more complicated answers.
“I am de1nitely not an agent,” Phoebe said 1rst.
“I suppose I’m a decommissioned agent, now that I abandoned the tour,” Rosalind added. She rubbed her eye carefully, trying not to smudge her cosmetics more than the rough night already had. “I think Silas might be the only active Nationalist operative among us.”
Silas made a little salute.
“All right, so why this planning?” Orion picked up one of the blueprints, placing it aside for an even more complicated one underneath. “What’s wrong with Silas marching in and asking for Oliver to be released because he thinks my mother is coming?”
“Because then I would need to explain where the information came from,” Silas answered. “Which—given my current active assignment—means generating evidence and pretending that Priest told me, rather than that I heard it through Celia Lang, who I shouldn’t be in contact with.”
Silas suddenly sounded very bitter. Rosalind winced, looking away so Silas wouldn’t see her pity. These last months, he had spent so much time and energy chasing Priest with the assumption that she could help get Orion back, only for Priest to remain entirely uninvolved with Orion’s rescue.
“To release Oliver, he would also need to get approval all the way up,” Rosalind added, clearing her throat as she peered at the blueprint Orion was holding. “Even if it’s easy enough to fake a letter from a source, it took the Nationalists months just to decide they wanted to decommission me. Lady Hong would have come and gone before they even started the process.”
“Do we know where she is right now?”
That question came quietly from Phoebe. While the rest of the table debated back and forth, she had wandered oP, breaking the circle and going to the window. Its glass was frosty, misted over by the cold and years of inattention.
Nothing much of the street outside could be seen except for blobs of color, but Phoebe was still staring intently.
Silas hesitated. “She hasn’t been sighted, but possible units under her control have been. My guess is that she’s already here.”
“We were tailed right until the city,” Celia said. She looked to Alisa, who grimaced and tugged her sleeves over the scratches that still remained after their scuAe outside Zhouzhuang. “Probably means that she’s in the vicinity too.”
Phoebe made a thoughtful noise. She didn’t add anything: she only continued gazing out the glass.
“I know there are… concerns about how this might work,” Silas said. His gaze Aickered to Phoebe. She didn’t react. “But there’s already going to be a distraction at these cells. Priest will be trying to free Oliver at the same time.”
Alisa made a horri1ed noise. As did Celia. Only Rosalind and Orion remained quiet—and that was because Rosalind didn’t like her assassin rival by concept, while Orion was entirely confused. Now it made sense why Silas had sounded like that earlier. He was still after her. At this point, he probably wanted her merely for a job well done.
“How did you manage that?” Rosalind asked dryly.
“It didn’t take much,” Silas replied. He pushed his glasses up. “Oliver has already been captured. It would be a shame to waste the opportunity.”
Celia made a noise of disgust. “He’s not bait.”
“No, he’s not.”
Silas’s attention returned to the table, to the blueprints scattered on its rickety surface. Something Aickered in his expression: something determined and steady, almost cold in the way it settled. Rosalind always seemed to forget that each of them here was quali1ed among the highest branches of operative work. Then she watched someone like Silas narrow his eyes, and suddenly she remembered this was not a room 1lled with people connected by blood relations and proxy family—this was a room that might determine the country’s fate.
Her gaze wandered over to the window. Everyone here except Phoebe, in technicality, but even then Rosalind wasn’t sure if the girl ought to be disquali1ed. Phoebe was tracing her 1nger over the mist of the glass, the
movement in perfect mimicry to Silas as he picked up a pen at the table and drew a very large circle over a blueprint in the middle.
“He’s the reason the Nationalists will be distracted,” Silas went on. “Priest won’t let her handler rot in prison. The Nationalists won’t let Priest slip through their 1ngers if she delivers herself to their very doorstep. The moment they hear that a Communist assassin is breaking in, every ePort will be focused on her.” He put the cap back on the pen and set it down. “Win-win. The Kuomintang 1nally catches the assassin that has evaded them for years, while we are cleared to get Oliver.”
The room went quiet. Silas was right. It was a good plan.
Rosalind, though, didn’t voice her agreement outwardly. While her sister sighed and nodded, while Alisa and Orion hemmed and hawed before getting on board, Rosalind pinned her scrutiny across the room, waiting patiently for Phoebe’s reaction. This was her own brother trapped in the cells. This was one of her closest con1dants coming up with a plan that valued an ulterior motive— that let Silas catch a girl who had evaded him for months—instead of staying a sole focus rescue mission. Surely Phoebe had something to say about this.
Yet Rosalind observed nothing.
Interesting.
“Fine, it will work,” Celia 1nally allowed. “Once we’re within the inner facility, there’s an electric door on the north end of the cells and a manual door on the south end.” She pointed along the blueprint, tracking the straight path with her 1nger. “Tell Priest that you will lift the north door for her from the control tower and let her take the attention when the guards go to combat her. Then we enter through the south door for Oliver.”
“What if there are guards at the south door?” Alisa asked.
Rosalind 1nally pulled her eyes away from Phoebe, returning to the debate around the table. “You can leave that to me.”
“And me,” Orion added. Silas nodded.
“Then we are settled on this plan,” he decided. “Upper command is already aware of Priest’s incoming presence. I will get in touch with her today on speci1cs.” He looked to the calendar dangling on the wall, which displayed one
day per page on the lunar schedule. Clearly no one had been around to this safe house in a while because it was still stuck in the year 1927. “Friday, we make the swap.”
“No,” Celia said immediately. “Sooner. Each day we leave Oliver in there is a day his mother could swoop in 1rst.”
Her sister spoke aloud the part that would convince everyone else present in this room, but Rosalind heard what accompanied the panic. Each day they left him in there was also another day of getting tortured, or worse.
“Tonight, then,” Silas said. He grimaced, looking wary over how fast they needed to be moving. “Nine o’clock.”
Alisa nodded 1rst around the table. Everyone else followed suit, except Phoebe. As far as plans went, its gears were sturdy: Nationalist operative Shepherd tells the Kuomintang that Priest is arriving like a mouse into a trap, having used all these months to win her trust and trick her into revealing herself. He lifts the north door with official approval, and as soon as she enters the Nationalist compound, the soldiers are ready to descend on her, pulling their attention onto this invader. At the south door, hardly anyone would expect there to be an actual breakout happening.
Rosalind hesitated.
“What if there are consequences for Oliver’s escape?” she asked. “You will be attached to it. They could easily suspect you of having a hand in it.”
Silas didn’t look bothered. “I play the fool and claim I couldn’t have known. There are Communist spies up and down Nationalist ranks. No one would be surprised if this plan leaked somehow and a second rescue ePort is sent in tandem. I would have already given them Priest. It’s not my fault that someone actually came to rescue Oliver outside my trap.”
“You don’t think a Communist rescue ePort would also think to warn Priest if they received word about a trap?”
A low, long creak ran through the safe house. Some neighboring apartment was opening its doors, its hinges groaning along the Aoorboards and dust-lined walls.
“I think,” Silas said slowly, “people are always willing to sacri1ce certain game pieces if they want another more badly. And say, if the Kuomintang think Celia
Lang put a spy in the Nationalists and heard about a trap for Priest, then of course she would throw us a faceless assassin to get Oliver Hong back. Don’t worry. This checks out.”
Rosalind glanced at her sister. Hearing her name being used for this hypothetical, Celia looked a little green, but she didn’t protest. If push came to shove, then Silas was probably correct.
They were operatives, but they were also people. Just people—capable of sel1shness and love, with the same instincts for preservation and group protection as the 1rst wanderers who walked this earth.
“All right, well, to pull this oP, we’re going to need disguises.” Rosalind made a show out of brushing her sleeve, as if there were dust upon the cuP. Then she said, “Hong Feiyi, do you want to come shopping with me?”
Phoebe’s gaze whipped over. Surprise Aashed through her eyes for a moment before she blinked it away and brightened. At once, Phoebe pranced across the room.
“Absolutely. Let’s go, sǎozi.”
Rosalind tutted. There was a pistol on the shelf, left behind as a feature of the safe house, and she was quick to pick it up and put it into her coat. Alisa and Celia were muttering to each other about diPerent paths into the larger compound. Silas and Orion were picking through the diPerent blueprints, talking quietly about contingency paths.
“I thought I told you to stop calling me sǎozi.”
“Yes, at least not until I propose properly,” Orion added from the table, his gaze still scanning the blueprints.
Did he just say—
Rosalind’s jaw dropped. A beat passed. With no smart retort anywhere to be found, Rosalind could only pivot wordlessly and push out the door, ducking her head into her shoulders to hide her Aaming cheeks.
Phoebe’s steps clattered after her into the hallway. “Sǎozi, slow down!”
