by Chloe Gong
“Juliette?” Benedikt exclaimed.
“Juliette is back?” Marshall echoed.
Roma remained silent, his eyes still tracing the edge of the river. An ache was building in his head, a sharp tension that throbbed each time he probed into his memories. It hurt him just to say her name. Juliette.
This was where he had known her. As workers bustled back and forth with dirty rag cloths tucked in their pockets, grabbed at periodically to wipe away the grime that collected on their fingers, two heirs had hidden here in plain sight almost every day, laughing over a common game of marbles.
Roma forced away the images. His two friends didn’t know what had happened, but they knew something had. They knew that one day Roma had been trusted by his father as closely as one should expect from a son, and the next, regarded suspiciously as if Roma were the enemy. Roma remembered the stares, the glances exchanged between observers when Lord Montagov spoke over him, insulted him, smacked him over the head for the littlest infraction. All the White Flowers could sense the change, yet not a soul dared voice it aloud. It became something quietly accepted, something to wonder about but never discuss. Roma never brought it up, either. He was to accept this new strain, or risk shaking it even further upon confrontation. Four years had passed now on a careful tightrope. So long as he did not run any faster than what was asked of him, he would not lose his balance above the rest of the White Flowers.
“Juliette is back,” Roma confirmed quietly. His fists tightened. His throat constricted. He breathed in, barely able to exhale through the shudder that consumed his chest.
All the abominable stories he had heard, all the stories that blanketed Shanghai like a heavy mist of terror, injected directly into the hearts of those outside Scarlet protection—he had hoped them to be lies, hoped them to be nothing but propaganda that sought to poison the willpower of men who were out to harm Juliette Cai. But he had faced her last night for the first time in four years. He had looked into Juliette’s eyes and, in that instant, felt the truth of those stories as if a higher power had opened his head and nestled the thoughts neatly into his mind.
Killer. Violent. Ruthless. All those and more—that was who she was now.
And he mourned for her. He didn’t wish to, but he did—he ached with the knowledge that the softness of their youth was gone forever, that the Juliette he remembered was long dead. He ached even more to think that though he was the one who had dealt the killing blow, he had still dreamed of her in these four years, of the Juliette whose laughter had rung along the riverside. It was a haunting. He had buried Juliette like a corpse beneath the floorboards, content to live with the ghosts that whispered to him in his sleep. Seeing her again was like finding the corpse beneath the floorboards to not only have resurrected, but to be pointing a gun right at his head.
“Hey, what is this?”
Benedikt nudged aside a piece of the crate he had broken, cupping something from the ground into his hands. He brought his hands up to his nose and took one look before yelping in disgust, shaking a dustlike substance from his palms. Attention captured, Roma dropped to one knee and Marshall hurried over, both squinting at what Benedikt had found with heavy confusion. A minute passed before anyone spoke.
“Are those… dead insects?” Marshall asked. He scratched his chin, unable to explain the presence of such small creatures scattered in the crate. They didn’t resemble any insect that the three boys had seen before. Each creature certainly had three segments to its body and six legs, but they were weirdly misshapen—the size of a child’s fingernail and pitch-black.
“Mars, check the other crates,” Roma demanded. “Benedikt, give me your bag.”
With a grimace, Benedikt handed over his shoulder bag, watching in disgust as Roma scooped up a few of the insects and put them with Benedikt’s notebooks and pencils. There was no alternative: Roma needed to take these away for further inspection.
“Nothing in here,” Marshall reported, having broken the lid off the second crate. They watched him work through the rest. Each crate was shaken thoroughly and smacked a few times, but there were no more insects.
Roma looked skyward.
“That crate at the very top,” he said. “It was open before you touched it, was it not?”
Benedikt frowned. “I suppose so,” he replied. “The insects could have crawled in—”
A sudden burst of Chinese voices came around the corner then, startling Roma badly enough to drop Benedikt’s bag. He swiveled on his heel and met his cousin’s wide gaze, then looked to the combative stance Marshall had immediately shifted into.
“Scarlets?” Marshall asked.
“We don’t need to stick around to check,” Benedikt said immediately. Faster than Marshall could react, he gave the other boy a rough push. It was only Marshall’s surprise that allowed him to stumble to the edge of the boardwalk, teetering and teetering before tipping over, dropping into the water with a quiet plink! Roma had not managed one word of protest before his cousin was also charging at him, throwing them both into the Huangpu River before the merry voices could bend around the corner and come upon the boardwalk.
Murky darkness and blips of liquid sunlight closed around Roma. He had dropped into the water quietly with Benedikt’s guidance, but now he was as loud as his raging heartbeat, his arms thrashing wildly in his haste to find his bearings amid the waves. Was he sinking lower or rising to the surface? Was he right-side up or upside down, swimming closer to the soil until his entire body was buried within the river, never to be seen again?
A hand jabbed his face. Roma’s eyes flew open.
Benedikt was hovering before him, his hair flying in short locks all around his face. He pressed an angry finger to his lips, then dragged Roma by the arm, swimming until they were under the boardwalk. Marshall was already floating there, having poked his head into the few inches of breathable space between the underside of the boardwalk and the rippling river. Roma and Benedikt did the same, inhaling as silently as possible to catch their breaths, then pressing their ears close to the boardwalk panels. They could hear the Scarlet voices above, talking about a White Flower they had just beat to near death, running away only because a group of police officers had come by. The Scarlets did not stop nor notice the shoulder bag that Roma had dropped. They were too caught up in their high, caught up in the aftereffects of the feud’s bloodlust. Their voices merely became terribly loud before fading again, heading onward in obliviousness to the three White Flowers hiding in the very water beneath them.
As soon as they were gone, Marshall reached over and thumped Benedikt over the head.
“You didn’t have to push me,” Marshall grumbled angrily. “Did you hear what they were saying? We could have fought them. Now I’m soggy in places no man should be soggy.”
While Benedikt and Marshall started to argue back and forth, Roma’s eyes wandered, scanning the underside of the boardwalk. With the sun beaming brightly through the slits of the platform, the light revealed all sorts of mold and dirt that collected in clumps under the space. It also immediately directed Roma’s gaze toward… what looked like a shoe, floating in the water and knocking against the inner side of the boardwalk.
Roma recognized it.
“By God,” Roma exclaimed. He swam for the shoe and plucked it out of the water, holding it up like a trophy. “Do you know what this means?”
Marshall stared at the shoe, supplying Roma with a look that was somehow vocal without saying any words. “That the Huangpu River is becoming increasingly polluted?”
At this point, Benedikt was getting fed up with floating in the grime under the boardwalk, and swam out. Marshall was fast to follow, and Roma—remembering with a start that it was indeed safe to surface now—hurriedly did the same, slapping his hands against the dry side of the floating boardwalk and shaking the water out of his trousers when he was back on his feet.
“This,” Roma said, gesturing to the shoe, “belonged to the man who died on Scarlet territory. He was here, too
.” Roma grabbed Benedikt’s shoulder bag and shoved the shoe in. “Let’s go. I know where—”
“Hey,” Marshall cut in. Still dripping wet, he squinted into the water. “Did you…? Did you see that?”
When Roma looked out into the river, all he saw was blistering sunlight.
“Uh…,” he said. “Are you trying to be funny?”
Marshall turned to face him. There was something in his dead-serious expression then that stopped Roma’s teasing remark, stilled it with a sour flavor on his tongue.
“I thought I saw eyes in the water.”
The sourness spread. The whole air around them suddenly grew coppery with apprehension, and Roma tightened his grip on his cousin’s bag until he was practically hugging it to himself.
“Where?” he asked.
“It was only a flash,” Marshall said, scrubbing his hands through his hair in an effort to wring the water out. “Honestly, it might have just been the sunlight in the river.”
“You sounded certain about the eyes.”
“But why would there have been eyes—”
Benedikt cleared his throat, having finished stomping the water out of his trousers. Roma and Marshall both turned to him.
“You’ve heard what the people are saying, no?”
Their responses were immediate.
“Goe-mul,” Marshall whispered, at the same time Roma intoned, “Chudovishche.”
Benedikt made an affirming noise. It was that which finally shook Roma out of his stupor, waving for his friends to hurry up and move away from the water.
“Oh, please, don’t buy into the monster talk running through the city,” he said. “Just come with me.”
Roma hurried off. He whipped through the city streets, winding through the open market stalls and barely sparing the passing vendors a second glance, even when they reached out to catch him by the arm, hoping to advertise a strange new fruit sailed in from some other world. Benedikt and Marshall huffed and puffed to stay at his pace, trading occasional frowns and wondering where Roma was taking them so fervently with a bag full of dead insects clutched in his arms.
“Here,” Roma declared finally, skidding to a stop outside the White Flower labs, panting heavily while he caught his breath. Benedikt and Marshall collided with each other behind him, both almost toppling over in their haste to stop when Roma did. By then, they were practically dried from their dip into the river.
“Ouch,” Marshall complained.
“Sorry,” Benedikt said. “I almost slipped on this.” He lifted his foot and salvaged a thin piece of paper, a poster that had fallen off a signpost. They usually advertised transportation services or apartment vacancies, but this one had giant text at the top heralding AVOID THE MADNESS. GET VACCINATED!
“Give me that,” Roma demanded. Benedikt passed the sheet and Roma folded it, slipping the small square into his pocket for later examination. “Follow me.”
Roma barged into the building and wound through the long hallway, entering the labs without knocking. He was supposed to don a lab coat every time he entered the building, but no one had ever dared tell him off, and the various young scientists that the White Flowers employed at these workstations barely looked up when Roma visited once a month. They were familiar enough with his presence to let him be, and the head scientist, Lourens, was familiar enough with Roma not to say anything about his misconduct. Besides, who would ever bother protesting the behavior of the White Flower heir? As far as these scientists were concerned, Roma was practically the one distributing their wages.
“Lourens?” Roma called, scanning the labs. “Lourens, where are you?”
“Up here,” Lourens’s deep voice boomed in accented Russian, his hand waving from the second landing. Roma took the staircase up two at a time, with Marshall and Benedikt bounding behind him like eager puppies.
Lourens looked up at their arrival, then furrowed his bushy white brows. He wasn’t used to seeing guests. Roma’s lab visits tended to be solo trips, made with his head ducked into his shoulders. Roma always slinked into this lab like the physical act of shrinking could act as a shield against the greasy nature of their underground trade. Perhaps if he didn’t walk with his usual good posture, he could absolve himself of blame when he came asking for the monthly progress reports of the products that came in and out of this lab.
This place was supposed to be a White Flower research facility at the cutting edge of pharmaceutical advancements, perfecting modern medicines for the hospitals operating on their territory. That was, at least, the facade they maintained. In truth, the tables at the back were smeared with opium, smelling like heaviness and tar while the scientists added their own unique toxins into the mixture, until the drugs were modified into the epitome of addiction.
Then the White Flowers would send them back out, take the money in, and life went on. This was not a humanitarian venture. This was a business that made poor lives even poorer and allowed the wealthy to burst at their seams.
“I wasn’t expecting you today,” Lourens said, stroking his straggly beard. He was leaning up against the railing to look onto the first floor, but his hunched back made the gesture appear terribly dangerous. “We haven’t finished with the current batch yet.”
Roma winced. Sooner or later he would get used to the blasé manner the people here treated their work. Work was work, after all. “I’m not here about the drugs. I need your expertise.”
As Roma hurried to Lourens’s worktable and brushed the papers aside to clear the space, Marshall sprang forward, taking the opportunity to make an extravagant introduction. His whole face lit up, as it always did when he could add another name to the eternally long list of people he had rubbed shoulders with.
“Marshall Seo, pleased to make your acquaintance.” Marshall extended his hand, making a small bow.
Lourens, his joints slow and creaky, shook Marshall’s outstretched fingers warily. His eyes turned to Benedikt next out of expectance, and with an imperceptible sigh, Benedikt extended his hand too, his wrist floppy.
“Benedikt Ivanovich Montagov,” he said. If his impatience wasn’t already oozing from his speech, his wandering eyes certainly proved where his attention was: the insects Roma was spreading out on Lourens’s worktable. Roma’s face was stuck in a grimace as he used his sleeve to cover his fingers and separate each little creature from the other.
Lourens made a thoughtful noise. He pointed his finger at Roma. “Isn’t your patronymic Ivanovich?”
Roma turned away from the creatures. He squinted at the scientist. “Lourens, my father’s name is not Ivan. You know this.”
“For the life of me, my memory is worsening with my age if I can’t remember yours,” Lourens muttered. “Nikolaevich? Sergeyevich? Mik—”
“Can we take a look at this instead?” Roma interrupted.
“Ah.” Lourens turned to face his worktable. Without caring about the crucial matter of hygiene, he reached out with his fingers and prodded at the insects, his weary eyes blinking in confusion. “What am I looking at?”
“We found them at a crime scene”—Roma folded his arms, tucking his shaking fingers into the fabric of his suit jacket—“where seven men lost their minds and tore out their own throats.”
Lourens did not react to the aggravation of such a statement. He only pulled at his beard a few more times, knitting his eyebrows together until they became one long furry shape on his forehead.
“Is it that you think these insects caused the men to rip out their own throats?”
Roma exchanged a glance with Benedikt and Marshall. They shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Roma admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me. I confess I can’t imagine why else we would find insects at the crime scene. The only other working theory is that a monster might have risen up from the Huangpu River and induced the madness.”
Lourens sighed. If it had come from anybody else, Roma may have felt a prickling of irritation, an indication that he was not being take
n seriously despite the severity of his request. But Lourens sighed when he was making his tea and he sighed when he was cutting open his letters. Roma had witnessed enough of Lourens Van Dijk’s temper to know this was merely his neutral state.
Lourens prodded an insect again. This time he drew his finger back quickly.
“Ah—oh. That’s interesting.”
“What?” Roma demanded. “What’s interesting?”
Lourens walked away without replying, his feet shuffling on the floor. He scanned his shelf, then muttered something under his breath in Dutch. Only when he had retrieved a lighter, a small thing red in color, did he respond, “I will show you.”
Benedikt pulled a face, silently waving an arm through the air.
Why is he like this? he mouthed.
Let him have his fun, Marshall mouthed in return.
Lourens came hobbling back. He retrieved a petri dish from a drawer underneath the worktable and delicately picked up three of the dead insects, dropping them upon the dish one after the other.
“You should probably wear gloves,” Benedikt said.
“Hush,” Lourens said. “You did not notice, did you?”
Benedikt pulled another face, this one looking like he was chewing on a lemon. Roma stifled the slightest hint of a smile that threatened his lips and quickly placed a hand on his cousin’s elbow in warning.
“Notice what?” he asked, when he was assured that Benedikt would remain quiet.
Lourens stepped away from the worktable, walking until he was at least ten paces away. “Come here.”
Roma, Benedikt, and Marshall followed. They watched Lourens pull a flame free from the lighter, watched as he brought it to the insect in the center of the petri dish, holding the burning yellow light to the insect until it started to shrivel, the exoskeleton reacting to stimuli even past death.
But the strangest thing was happening: the other two insects on either side of the burning insect were burning up too, shriveling and glowing with heat. As the insect in the middle curled further and further inward, burning with the fire, those to either side of it did the exact same.