Idle work was the strangest part of being between assignments, and each time she sat down to oversee the front desk of a liaison station, Celia Lang wondered why they couldn’t just hire someone on the outside for this.
She supposed it would be rather easy to torture a top-secret location out of a regular civilian, though. Maybe they could lie about what function the building served. This liaison station pretended to be a specialized clinic on the outside; they only needed to keep quiet about covert work in front of an outsourced employee.
Celia sighed. But it wasn’t like she had anything better to do between assignments anyway. Glori1ed secretary, it was.
She reached for a pen. Twiddled it around. The Party higher-ups who worked in the offices here had given her a white coat to wear over her dress, ensuring she looked the part to anyone who wandered up the stairs accidentally. There weren’t many, of course—most who came into the liaison station knew what they were looking for and gave the code word when they checked in.
It had been a slow day. Celia sighed, then stood up.
The liaison station was located in the north of Shanghai, on a street that saw plenty of foot traffic. The kitchen was incredibly loud when she wandered over, and she spent a perplexed few seconds searching for the reason before spotting the window that had been left ajar. She closed the window, muAing the street vendors and screaming children. It was almost 1ve o’clock. Prime time for bedlam while orange light started to burn onto the sidewalks.
Celia put the kettle on. Fetched a tin of tea leaves, hovering over the table while the water boiled.
This had been her daytime routine for a number of weeks now. Their map- making task in Taicang had 1nished. The photography shop had closed down under the guise of going out of business. Millie and Audrey were put into new assignments, ones that required true covert work after they had had their training run. Oliver, meanwhile, was between assignments like Celia, since they came as a matching task pair. Nonetheless, Celia hadn’t seen him since they said goodbye after the debrief, after they turned in their maps and their reports. If the Communists didn’t need him on active work, he went under, and according to the grapevine, at present he was focusing all his attention on being Priest’s handler. He had as much as admitted to the role last October, even though he had refused to oPer Celia any concrete details.
Celia poured the water into her tea. When she set the kettle back onto the stove, she dropped it too hard, making a loud metallic bang. Damn it, Oliver. It was so typical of him to go oP the grid without a single note. As if everyone else in the world was secondary to the mission and he got to decide when they were pulled back into his life.
Celia was so focused on bringing her tea out of the kitchen that she didn’t glance up when she spotted someone in her periphery, standing before the front desk. The 1rst matter at hand was setting the tea down.
“Hello,” she greeted. “Give me one moment—”
The cup made contact with the desk. She turned her attention to the visitor. And immediately spilled her tea.
“Sweetheart,” Oliver said, “you don’t have to get so Austered to see me.”
Celia scrambled to reach for a towelette, tossing it onto the spill before it could creep any larger and stain the papers. Half the cup had splashed before she righted it. Thankfully, most of the official 1les were oP to the side.
Merde. It was as if she had summoned him by thought. Then again, she was
thinking about him constantly with steam blowing out of her ears, so by mere statistics, it made sense that one of the instances would coincide with him actually showing up.
“I was startled,” she insisted. She switched to French, afraid that the higher- ups could hear her inside their offices. “What are you doing here? I don’t hear
from you for weeks, and then you appear out of the blue? Bah, what’s wrong with you?”
Oliver tilted his head. His hair had gotten longer at the ends, curling around his ears in a manner that made him resemble his younger brother to a disturbing degree. It wasn’t only the hair—he was dressed in a Western suit, too. Celia’s 1rst instinct was to suppose that he had just come from trying to blend in somewhere, a costume 1t for a social call in the Concessions. But Oliver Hong had been born the eldest son to an elite family. This was how he had looked growing up. She was only accustomed to what she perceived as his usual manner of dress because they were often undercover somewhere rural.
“You sound angry,” Oliver remarked plainly. His French in return was equally quick, the easy transition typical of someone who had grown up in Paris. When Shanghai’s parents sent their children overseas, this was exactly what they hoped for, every elite circle desperate to endure foreign intrusion by competing against each other on how many languages their oPspring could speak.
“You know, Oliver”—Celia slapped her hand down, leaning forward—“it is
really hard to provoke my temper, but somehow you are incredibly good at it.” The faintest hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “I have missed you quite
1ercely.”
Celia’s heart skipped a beat. Her damn mission partner was impossible. He had declared his love for her, found no good time to talk about it, and then disappeared oP the face of this earth. It wasn’t as if she could have called him. He was the one who went quiet while she was the one located at the same place day in and day out, sitting at this front desk, twiddling her thumbs.
“That’s too bad.” With a harrumph, she dropped into her chair, picking up a random stack of papers and shuAing them. “I haven’t missed you in the slightest.”
Lies. A whole mouthful of lies.
Oliver furrowed his brow. “Celia,” he said.
She plopped the papers down. “Do you think people should simply languish around waiting to be contacted? Is that how you view your colleagues?”
“Celia,” he tried again. “I don’t understand. I always go dark between
assignments. My risk of being tracked in this city is sky-high.”
“Yes—well…” That was before whatever this is between us turned so perplexing.
She could hardly say that aloud. Maybe Oliver knew what she was thinking when she let the silence draw long.
He straightened his sleeves. There was a briefcase dangling from his other hand, which she hadn’t noticed before.
“Don’t be angry, sweetheart,” Oliver said. “Please?”
Celia thinned her lips. Glared up at him. The expression didn’t hold for more than a few seconds before she was relenting, her eyes turning soft.
“Okay. Why are you here?”
“I am very glad you asked.” He lifted his briefcase onto the desk. “We have a new task.”
Celia hadn’t expected this. Usually they were called in together to be posted to their next mission. “And they told you 1rst?”
“They wanted me to bring you the details. They’re probably trying to lessen the likelihood of you declining the assignment.”
This was starting to sound concerning. “And why would I decline?”
“To be frank, I think they’re using you.” Oliver opened the briefcase and slid out a large poster. Though it was a sketch, she recognized the subject immediately. Rosalind. “Here is our assignment.”
“My sister?” Celia blinked. She tugged a corner of the poster, reading the words.
LADY FORTUNE’S NATIONAL TOUR
This was mind-boggling. First the Nationalists sat her in the corner on time- out. Then they used her for their propaganda.
“Your sister,” Oliver con1rmed. She didn’t think she was imagining the waver in his voice. His own brother was oP somewhere outside the city, memory erased and being used as a weapon.
“There’s no way she agreed to a national tour. Rosalind cannot stand politics.”
Oliver peered over the desk. He plucked up a pen, then Aicked oP its lid. “Actually, assuming our information is correct, she volunteered. Did you know
the Kuomintang were about to decommission her? They leaked her identity to the press when Orion’s news went wide and took that excuse to brush her out of the ranks before she caused too much trouble.”
Meet the infamous figure you have only heard stories about, the description on
the poster read.
“Then what is this?” Celia asked, still lagging behind on the information. She hadn’t seen Rosalind in two weeks; it was too hard coming in and out of her apartment during the dead of night when the reporters weren’t watching. The papers were already shouting that Rosalind Lang was alive and had survived the collapse of gangster rule. The last thing Celia needed was the reporters recognizing her, too, and comparing the sighting to old Scarlet photos, when she was still using Kathleen’s name, because if the columns started declaring that Kathleen Lang was alive too, then that was going to start messing with her job.
“It’s a tactic,” Oliver answered. He circled the touring locations. “Your sister
gave them something they couldn’t resist. Now they have a prime narrative. A Chinese assassin who has been wiping out imperialists and traitors. Builds wartime morale.”
Celia crossed her arms. Stared at her sister’s sketched portrait.
“We are not even at war yet,” she muttered. “Foreign war, that is. I don’t think the civil war would get boosted much by this narrative.”
Besides, Rosalind had no pride in her work. She didn’t see it as a glorious duty. These few years, all she had been doing was punishing herself. So by volunteering for a national tour…
It clicked.
“Oh,” Celia said. She looked up. Oliver was already watching her. “She’s using this opportunity to go after Orion.”
He nodded. “And lucky us: while the Nationalists have abandoned Orion, our central command wants him secured. Which means our mission is to follow Rosalind until she gets him, then snatch him away.”
Christ. Celia really did have half a mind to say no.
“Surely there are less risky maneuvers?” Her arms tightened around herself. “Didn’t we already secure the man from the hospital? The one who received the 1rst successful run of your mother’s 1nal invention?”
She had heard about all this secondhand, having been out of the city when the events were occurring. It was Alisa who had taken the man to safety after a brainwashed Orion struck him with the concoction, though she had dropped oP the grid afterward. That 1nal man was the only experiment who lived. Everyone else prior hadn’t survived, left out on the streets and labeled a victim of the chemical killings before the city realized this was no ordinary serial killer but rather a callous scienti1c endeavor. Every vial of the successful enhancement concoction created thereafter had been destroyed under Rosalind’s hand— except for one that Alisa Montagova was hiding, somewhere in the countryside.
“You haven’t heard yet?” Oliver set the pen down. “He was assassinated shortly after we took him. Poisoned. Nationalist hit, obviously.”
Celia winced. “Who’d they send with Fortune out of commission?” “Could be anyone. Plenty of poison assassins in this city.”
The Nationalists would rather wipe out assets than let the Communists land them. The Communists were willing to go after assets to the ends of the earth if it meant an advantage on the battle1eld. And all the while, their foreign enemies crept farther and farther into the country.
“This is so absurd,” Celia muttered, eyeing the poster of Rosalind again. “Do they suppose we have some sort of advantage? That we are likelier to contain our own siblings?”
In the past it was difficult for their side’s spies to keep tabs on Fortune because she was an undercover entity. Even if they knew she was Rosalind Lang, the rest of the city assumed Rosalind dead, which meant information traveled about Fortune, not Rosalind. With her identity exposed, there was no escaping the onslaught of information. There was also no chance for Celia to squirm out of this, because she used to claim that Rosalind had disappeared and would refuse communication, but now… well, her superiors would know when she was lying.
“I’m sure your sister is less likely to hurt you if we end up in conAict,” Oliver answered, ever blunt. “Orion, on the other hand—he was quite happy to throw a punch in my direction before our mother wiped his mind.”
“Stop that.” Celia untangled her arms, setting her hands on her hips instead.
“Oliver… you cannot possibly be okay with this.”
She could stomach merely following after Rosalind. Depending on how their cards fell, it might even be nice to watch out for her and protect her, not that she needed it. The matter became something else entirely when their next step was to capture Oliver’s brother for whatever intentions their central command had.
For a moment, Oliver didn’t answer, his gaze leveled on the poster. When he looked up, his expression was inscrutable.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They want us to leave as soon as possible so that we reach her second tour stop before she does. Are you ready? I have the car waiting downstairs.”
She wished he would talk to her. Oliver had operated for so long understanding secrecy to be the line between life and death that she wondered if he even knew that he was allowed to talk to her.
“I need to pack a bag,” Celia said. “Drive me to the safe house 1rst?”
“Of course.”
Celia put up a BACK IN TEN MINUTES! sign. She would not be back anytime soon, but these liaison stations were used to agents swapping out frequently. Someone else would be by in the next hour.
“What is it that they say about siblings?” she grumbled, waving Oliver along and gesturing that they could hurry now. The sun was going down soon. Night falling in cover for operatives to fetch their battle gear and return to the intelligence 1eld. “We can’t pick the ones we need to chase across province lines.”
