“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
Rosalind pressed her wire into her ear quickly, trying to catch that snippet of sound. A guard 1red in her direction, missing her by the barest margin. She already had at least three bullets in her torso. It would probably take another minute before the 1rst one was pushed out. In that minute, hopefully they would have won this 1ght.
“Oh my God,” Rosalind said aloud. She shoved close to the wall, taking a moment to breathe so that she could speak into the earpiece. “Phoebe?! Is that you?”
More indecipherable sound. The walls were thick, impenetrable. The earpieces were already faulty on top of how difficult it was for their signal to stay stable.
“… now!… my mother!”
Rosalind slashed the closest guard when he lunged at her. He went down. Over her shoulder, two remained with Orion, but then Alisa burst back through the door and ran toward him to help, so Rosalind stayed where she was, pushing the wire farther into her ear.
“Phoebe, I can’t hear you!”
“… I said I’m here! I’m here in the facility!”
“What?” Rosalind demanded. “How did you get here?” “… follow him. It’s… can’t!”
Though the wire transmission was terrible, Rosalind could hear Phoebe’s breath coming short, like she was in a dead sprint while talking.
“You need to go somewhere with better signal.” Rosalind dropped the hairpin in her hand, reaching for another. The poison needed replenishing after
about 1ve uses. Nearby, Orion took down his 1nal opponent, then immediately grabbed Rosalind’s elbow for her attention. He gestured silently to the windows, not wanting to interrupt Phoebe. A low hum was droning closer and closer outside. Airplanes.
“… distraction… control tower.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Rosalind commanded. She pressed her microphone button hard, as if that might help Phoebe emit clearer. “You’re still cutting out. Have you found Silas?”
“SILAS IS THE PROBLEM.” Suddenly, Phoebe’s voice boomed loud,
entering a patch of perfect signal. “He’s working with my mother! She’s not coming tonight! Silas has entered some sort of bargain to retrieve Oliver’s blood for her—you can’t just rescue Oliver; you need to destroy everything they took from him!”
The 1ght in the corridor came to an abrupt end when Alisa brought down the last soldier by the door. In utter shock, the three of them exchanged glances, unable to believe what had just blared into their ears.
Celia must have been listening on her end too, because her voice interrupted the line then. First it was only a quiet: “Oh God.” Then: “Okay, move fast. Move now. The Japanese have marched into Zhabei.”
Rosalind’s hand lowered from her earpiece. “What?”
Like the cosmic stage taking its cue for entrance, a colossal boom struck the facility. The ground shook. The ceiling rained with bits of rubble. Rosalind gasped, throwing her hands up, while Orion swore frantically, ducking to snatch a gun from one of the fallen soldiers.
“Christ,” Alisa exclaimed. “This is such bad timing.”
Another boom. There was a red Aash from the night outside, as if 1re had erupted upon landing. They were being shelled. Bombs were dropping on Zhabei.
“Rosalind!” Celia boomed over the earpiece. “Get over here now!”
They needed to move. They needed to get Oliver out and get themselves out, because if the district around the facility turned into a battle1eld while they were performing a prison break, they would get stuck inside Zhabei.
“Go, go, go,” Rosalind hissed.
They pushed through the south door, skidding onto the elevated platform above the cells. At the lower level, there waited Celia and a half-conscious Oliver smeared with blood.
“I’ve got him,” Orion said once they had hurried down, taking him from Celia easily. “Which way?”
“Back the way we came,” Alisa answered.
“Wait,” Celia said. She hesitated. “Phoebe said we need to destroy the entire supply.”
Alisa grimaced. “It’s not in the cell?” “No. The cell is empty.”
The facility shuddered again, more vigorously this time. The shelling was getting closer. What would happen if a bomb landed directly atop them? Would the facility hold?
“I can go search,” Alisa said. “I’m fast—”
“I’ll do it,” Rosalind interrupted. “It’s much safer.” Celia was already turning on her heel. “I’ll come—”
“No, no,” Rosalind snapped. “You make sure Orion gets Oliver out. Wait by
the side door we came in through.” “But—”
“I’m immortal. I’ll go alone,” Rosalind cut in. “End of argument. Get out 1rst.”
“Rosalind—”
When the next boom came down, the entire facility seemed to tilt on its side. Though it righted itself quickly—it had only been the shudder of the impact, not the actual foundation shifting—the sensation scared Rosalind enough to draw a cold sweat down her spine.
“Celia, there’s no use arguing,” Alisa hissed. “You only need one person to smash a few vials.”
“Fine.” Celia turned to Rosalind. Her lips had tightened to a complete line. “If you encounter danger, you turn around and leave, do you understand? It’s not worth risking your life.”
Rosalind nodded. She would have nodded even if she didn’t understand. Perhaps her sister knew that, because she gave her a glare so 1erce it rivaled the
bombing around the facility.
“Here.” Alisa gave Rosalind her small gun. Rosalind accepted it without complaint. When she met Orion’s eyes, he stayed quiet, but he didn’t look happy.
“I won’t be long, I promise,” she said.
Before anyone could argue further, Rosalind bolted in the other direction, deeper into the facility.
Phoebe reloaded her riAe, her hand coming up momentarily to itch her nose beneath the fabric around her face. It was stiAing hot in this part of the facility. Or maybe the stress of the situation was getting to her, drawing all her blood to her cheeks beneath the covering.
She pulled the trigger. Cleared another soldier out of the main hall at the north end.
“Phoebe?” Rosalind’s voice crackled into her ear. “Where are you?”
Phoebe activated her microphone. “Don’t you worry about me. Have you found the supply?”
“Not yet. I’m making my way to the control tower. I’m just not sure whether I can get through the inner facility without trouble.”
“Keep going,” Phoebe said. “You’ve got to pass the north door. It’s open.”
Her voice held a slight echo, even though the rest of the facility was in absolute havoc, alarms blaring at high volume. She was situated on a higher platform, tucked by a door that proceeded eastward. In that short gap when Rosalind and Celia were 1ghting through the south door and left the communication line idle, Phoebe had made it through the north door. She already knew what their tactics were—it wasn’t hard to come prepared with a riAe she had stolen from one of the perimeter guards, to lie in the shadows and pick oP the soldiers who were waiting for her.
Phoebe breathed deep, grimacing when the facility shook again. Usually, she never let herself linger long at the scenes she left behind. She was in and out: aim, shoot, run. The work of an assassin had to be quick. Whatever happened afterward was none of her business. Only the initial shot was.
A twitch was starting in her hands now. Phoebe was no soldier. Her training was ill-suited for war, for situating herself in one place wiping out endless opponents. If she kept seeing men fall dead, the images were going to sear into her mind permanently. Each shot left behind fallible Aesh and corpses.
Phoebe adjusted her position. Scratched her nose again. A part of her felt like a traitor for shooting inside this facility when foreign enemies were bombing the city from the outside. Another part of her knew this had always been her job. She was a Communist assassin: from the very beginning, she had always been adding to internal strife.
Suddenly, Rosalind appeared within view, crossing through the door into the hall. The cells to each side had been cleared. Phoebe adjusted quickly, putting her eye to her scope again. She heard movement at the north door. There were new soldiers streaming in to close the ranks that Phoebe opened, which meant there would be combatants coming to meet Rosalind. The facility’s intruder alarm was still screeching.
Phoebe pressed her earpiece again. “Keep moving.”
Rosalind’s expression Aashed with terror. Her hand shot up to her ear. “There are soldiers.”
“I have you covered.” “What?”
Phoebe breathed out. Aimed. When two soldiers went down, she pressed her earpiece again. “Move!”
Rosalind was clearly mouthing expletives below. Without activating her earpiece, nothing made its way up, so Phoebe could only guess what Rosalind was cursing frantically in French.
Rosalind darted forward. Phoebe adjusted on the platform, turning to the other side and directing her riAe toward the soldiers by the north door. She was giving up her position by shooting like this. She 1red anyway, counting each shot that struck true. The moment Phoebe stepped into the fray, she had known what she was sending herself into. She had agreed with everyone around the table at the safe house, after all.
This was a foolproof plan to secure Priest and get Oliver out at the same time. The soldiers expected her to go after Oliver, and for as long as they were diverted
toward this intrusion and combating her, it kept them away from the exit route that Oliver was actually taking. This was a sacri1ce she was willing to make. If it meant that he would be safe, she would make the sacri1ce a million times over.
A thud came from the other end of the platform. The door blew open. Phoebe scrambled upright at once, exposed on two sides when soldiers crossed the upper platform, closing in from the separate entrance. Though she had put herself in the corner, they sighted her immediately, which meant someone had sent them up there, 1nally pinpointing her location.
Whether or not she made it out of here alive was up to fate now. Phoebe had made her peace with it—Priest was never supposed to be an eternal deity. She had only been created to serve the people she loved.
Phoebe touched her ear. She said, “I’m going dark. I’ll be all right,” then pulled her wire out, dropping it to the Aoor before any of the soldiers could con1scate it. When the soldiers circled her, Phoebe pressed her foot over the earpiece and felt it break in two.
“Hands up, Priest,” one said. “It’s over.”
She didn’t reach for the trigger again. She set the riAe down and put her hands up.
I’m going dark. I’ll be all right.
Rosalind didn’t understand what had just happened. When she spoke into the earpiece again, she didn’t get a response from Phoebe, nor from any of the others. They must have gone out of range.
The control tower was eerily empty. Each section echoed hollowly unto itself, the corridors dark and the windows shuttered. The evacuation ePort had already cleared most of these rooms. Chances were high that the base would be rubble by the night’s end, so there wasn’t much point in guarding most of it anymore. The bombs were dropping so loudly that her eardrums were close to bursting, if the blaring alarm hadn’t already shattered them.
Rosalind came to an abrupt stop around the corner. A group of soldiers hovered directly ahead. She reared back faster than a blink, pressing to the wall with a gasp. The facility shook again. Their surroundings screamed the song of
carnage. When Rosalind was fairly certain that she hadn’t been spotted, she craned her head around the corner again, trying to see who these people were. It was too hard to hear what they were saying, but she did make note of their darker clothes, which were diPerent from what the Nationalists guarding the facility were wearing. Half split in one direction; the other half went left, passing Rosalind at the corner. She held her breath. Released it when they disappeared out of view.
Celia had put that call out, so they had known this would happen. A Communist presence had entered the facility too, hoping to secure Orion or come in contact with a vial that they still believed existed. It was rather annoying in retrospect because their mission hadn’t needed to add this extra hazard for themselves, but at least it posed no threat. The rescue would continue.
“Keep moving,” Rosalind muttered to herself. The Communists appeared to be going wide to search for their assets. She only had to avoid them.
On the 1rst door she tried to open, the lock held 1rm. She timed her gunshot to another rumble from outside, then kicked the door open, caring little for whether it was obvious there had been a break-in. It wouldn’t matter after tonight.
Inside, a cabinet was affixed to the far wall. An equipment cart blocked it, entirely cleared of tools except for a stack of tissues.
The building shuddered again. The bombs were getting louder. Closer.
Rosalind shoved the cart aside. Threw open the cabinet door to 1nd it entirely empty. She was on the move in an instant, stepping back into the corridor and trying the next door.
There weren’t too many rooms within the control tower, so she made fast work of her search. Rosalind had studied the blueprints well enough to determine that the lower level was the most likely place Silas could store something. Their actual control room was upstairs, alongside the wires and lights that controlled the doors around the facility. Nowhere to hide a dozen vials. It had to be here somewhere, unless he was keeping them with him…?
Rosalind barged in through another room, this one piled heavily with
blankets and threadbare prison uniforms. There weren’t any cabinets or shelves
to search through, so she knew in an instant that there was no chance she would 1nd what she wanted.
Her gaze dropped. By the sink, though, there lay three broken glass shards and a crimson stain. As if someone had dropped a vial and smashed it, leaving it be rather than waste time cleaning it up. Was that blood? Had the supply been here previously and then moved?
Rosalind hovered in indecision. What was she to do? Find Silas? Shake an answer out of him, use force to stop him? He might have left the facility already, for all she knew.
The ground shuddered aggressively, almost throwing her oP-balance. That was answer enough: it was time to get out. Everything else could be determined afterward. A terrible noise swept through the facility, cutting over the alarms. The stone walls were coming alive, screeching with a cry drawn from a centuries- old creature’s stomach.
“Shit. Shit—”
Rosalind ran for it. The world was shaking without pause. She traced the same route back, keeping far from the walls in case any of them suddenly collapsed. The Aoor shuddered. Sections of the ceiling started to fall. When Rosalind skidded back into the row of cells where they had retrieved Oliver, she slammed into a wall of smoke.
At 1rst she couldn’t comprehend what had happened. She heard a gunshot. Voices. Then she outright tripped on a body in her path and fell, her hand coming down on a bloodied chest. Nationalist uniform. The soldier was dead.
“Retreat! No sign of asset!”
Rosalind had run directly into a battle between Nationalists and Communists. A paralyzing, noxious feeling of dread held her in place. She scarcely had time to back away or 1nd another path when piercing white light suddenly Aooded the cells—at last, a direct hit from overhead.
The sound was colossal. Metal and stone and brick tangled together before everything started to crash down, boxing her in.
Rosalind cried out, her arm Aying over her eyes. Though the light faded swiftly, her vision was seared with a vivid imprint of the world afterward. Everything was doubled: the part of the cells that had collapsed to the left, the
part of the stairs that had hollowed out in the center… and the man standing only a few paces away from her, pistol aimed at her head.
“Lang Shalin, get down!”
The facility groaned. Debris Aew wide. When the gunshot 1red, it was the end of the world and the beginning. At such close range, it should have landed somewhere high. Somewhere near her throat. Blown her head to bits.
But she felt nothing. There was only the sudden appearance of a 1gure right in front of her, hands clasped on her shoulders, his face obscured by a cloth. He stilled for a second. Then he crumpled.
Instinct kicked in. Before the soldier could aim again—she didn’t even have time to determine which side he was on, couldn’t read his uniform or pick out the details in the smoke—Rosalind retrieved her own gun from her sleeve and shot him, Ainching at the way her arm surged back each time until, on the third, he went down.
What happened? What just happened?
She knew who lay in front of her.
“No, no, no—” Rosalind dropped to her knees. She yanked the cover oP Dao Feng’s face. “What is wrong with you? Why would you do that?”
“I thought I might 1nd you here,” Dao Feng said in reply. Though his breath was labored, he spoke easily, as though he was pleased to see her after a few months away, gone abroad on vacation.
Of course he would have attended this retrieval attempt. Of course he was among the Communists trying to secure Orion—if they were under the impression that Orion was still brainwashed, then it was Dao Feng who knew him, who might be able to get through to him.
“I cannot believe you,” Rosalind gasped. What she had intended as a rebuke came out as a sob. “You taught me Fortune could survive anything!” Even though she knew that hit would have been fatal. Even though she knew he had just saved her life. Still, she demanded, “Why didn’t you let me take it? Of all people, Fortune can take it.”
Dao Feng gave a small shake of his head. Blood bubbled up to his lips.
Dripped one line down the side. “I was not protecting Fortune,” he managed. “I
was protecting Lang Shalin. You… are a person 1rst and an operative… second. How many times have I taught you that?”
The bullet would have hit his back. There was so much blood. Her trouser fabric was soaking up the growing circle of red. Around them, one side was retreating, but Rosalind had no goddamn clue which was which. The smoke was too thick, muddying the scene.
“How dare you deliver me a life lesson now,” she seethed. “You should have found me earlier. You should have explained yourself.”
Rosalind had been here before: kneeling in that alleyway over Dao Feng’s dying body, screaming for help. This time there was no help coming. This time it didn’t matter how much she cried, because there was only her own person for witness.
Dao Feng shuddered. His hand lifted, and she hurried to grab it, squeezing tight.
“I’m glad I have a chance to speak to you,” he managed.
Rosalind pressed her free hand to her mouth, trying to keep her tears back.
They ran freely anyway, even if she made no noise.
“I am sorry,” Dao Feng said, his voice dropping quieter, nearing a rasp. “I would have tried to convince you to come with me if it were easy. But you… were never meant for that sort of work, and I couldn’t take you away from the duty you had issued yourself.”
Rosalind tried to pull his shoulder. “Stop it,” she commanded. “I’m going to get you out of here, and we’re going to get to a hospital—”
“Listen outside, Lang Shalin.” His breath snagged. The sound was terrible: the bullet must have hit his lungs. Too much blood trickled from his mouth. “Every hospital… piling with bodies. It is all right. It is all right.”
“Please—”
Another bullet Aew overhead. Rosalind looked over with a gasp, but it was Alisa who emerged in the smoke, her eyes widening when she 1nally caught sight of her.
“Rosalind,” Alisa said, lowering her gun and hurrying over. Her eyes were vivid with panic. “Rosalind, they’ve got Priest—the alarm has stopped. The
Nationalists are reconvening at any moment to clear the facility of Communists. We cannot be caught here.”
Dao Feng’s eyes closed. He gasped: “Go, Lang Shalin.”
Rosalind wanted to hit him. No—she wanted him to sit up and Aick her forehead, to tell her he was merely joking and these few months had been a well- designed test.
“How could you do this to me?” she demanded. Alisa tugged her elbow. “Rosalind.”
Dao Feng had stilled.
“No! You can’t die! You’re supposed to be my handler! Who am I supposed to listen to now? Who?”
Voices erupted in the smoke. Alisa made a strangled noise, her head swiveling to search for incoming Nationalists. Rosalind shook Dao Feng’s shoulder again, but he was unresponsive.
“Dao Feng! Wake up!”
“Rosalind,” Alisa said. She grabbed her arm properly. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry, but we have to go. We have to go!”
Rosalind barely heard her. She knew it made her sel1sh, but the only thing that played over and over in her head at that moment was: You can’t leave me. You can’t leave me again.
“Come on!” At last Alisa managed to get a good grip on Rosalind and yanked her to her feet. Her hand tore from Dao Feng’s. Alisa pulled her along, away from the body, away from the cells.
The last thing Rosalind saw among the rubble was that stain of red, and then her handler was out of sight, left behind amid the rest of the ruins.
