by Chloe Gong
“Top floor,” Juliette reminded.
They climbed the stairs. Floor after floor, they passed customers and servers, activity spilling over the edges as orders were shouted and bills were thrown forward. But when Juliette stomped her way up the last staircase, arriving at the top floor with Roma close on her heels, they found only one tall wooden door blocking them from anything on the other side.
“Is this it?”
“It must be,” Roma replied. Hesitantly, he reached out with the back of his hand and knocked.
“Come in.”
A British accent. Low, rumbly, like they had a bit of a cold or a nasal infection.
Roma and Juliette exchanged a glance. Roma shrugged and mouthed, May as well.
Juliette cracked open the door. Her brow immediately furrowed with what she found: a tiny space—no more than ten paces across. In the center of the room, a desk was laid out, though half of it was covered by an enormous white curtain that stretched to the ceiling. By the light filtering through the window, Juliette could make out a silhouette behind the curtain, his feet placed upon his desk and his arms tucked behind his head.
“Welcome to my office, Miss Cai and Mr. Montagov,” the Larkspur said. He spoke like he had gravel lodged in his throat. Juliette wondered if it was his true voice, or if it was feigned. And if it was feigned… why? “I can’t say I was expecting you, and I usually take meetings by appointment only, but come in, come in.”
Juliette slowly strode toward the desk. On closer examination, as she peered at the wall behind the Larkspur, she realized that it was not a wall—it was merely a temporary divider. This “room” was as large as all the floors below. Behind the divider, the rest was surely the lab Archibald Welch had mentioned.
The Larkspur thinks he’s being so sneaky, Juliette thought, eyeing the line where the divider met the ceiling. He should learn to do a better paint job.
“Come, sit,” the Larkspur bellowed. Through the curtain, the outline of his arm showed him gesturing at the seats before him. However, his arm’s silhouette would split the moment it came close to the curtain.
Juliette narrowed her eyes. She searched for a second source of refracted light behind the curtain that would create such an effect and found her answer upon the wall, where a mirror half faced the ceiling instead of the onlooker. It offered the illusion of decoration, but all it took was a glance up to where the mirror pointed and the discovery of another mirror to reveal the truth.
They couldn’t see the Larkspur, but he could certainly see them.
“We won’t take up much of your time,” Roma assured. He sat down first. Juliette followed his lead, though she only perched on the edge of her seat, ready for a quick getaway.
“It’s about your vaccine,” Juliette said tightly. She did not have time to play around. “How are you making it?”
The Larkspur chuckled. “Miss Cai, you realize how detrimental it is to my business if I tell you. It would be like me asking you to give up your client lists.”
Juliette slammed her hand onto his desk. “This is about people’s lives.”
“Is it?” the Larkspur shot back. “What are you going to do with the formula of my vaccine? Make a preventative cure? I’m trying to run a business based on demand, not a research facility.”
Roma grabbed Juliette’s elbow. He was telling her to ease back, not to upset the Larkspur before they had gotten what they came for. But his touch startled her, and when she jumped in shock, her already fraught nerves rose from tense to catastrophic.
“What is your business with Zhang Gutai?” Roma asked. “Surely you must have heard the rumors about his role as the maker of the madness. You must realize how suspicious it is that you seem to be the healer.”
The Larkspur only laughed.
“Please,” Roma said through clenched teeth. “We’re not accusing you of anything. We are merely putting together names, finding a way to fix this mess—”
“You’ve made it so far into your little investigation and you still can’t put it together?”
Juliette was seconds away from lunging over the curtain and beating the Larkspur until his cryptic answers had some damn clarity.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think, Miss Cai?”
Juliette shot out from her chair so quickly that the chair flew backward and turned over. “All right. That’s it.”
She reached over, and in one quick, deft movement, tore at the curtain, her strength ripping the fabric from the rings that held them onto the ceiling.
The Larkspur leaped up, but Juliette didn’t catch a face. She couldn’t. He was wearing a mask—one of those cheap Chinese opera masks that every vendor in the open markets sold to curious children, decorated with wide, bulging eyes and red and white swirls to emphasize the nose and mouth. It hid every part of his features, but Juliette was quite sure that the Larkspur was looking rather pleased with himself right now.
He was also pointing a gun at her.
“You are not the first person to do that, Miss Cai,” the Larkspur said, almost sympathetically, “and I killed the last one who tried.”
Juliette’s weapon was tucked inside her dress. By the time she reached for it, she would have given the Larkspur plentiful time to shoot.
Still, she put on her bravado.
“Who do you think can shoot faster?” Juliette sneered.
“I think by the time you reach for your pistol, there will already be a hole in your head.”
Juliette looked over at Roma. His jaw was gritted so hard that she feared he would soon have cracks in his molars.
“It is merely one question,” Roma said quietly. He asked again: “What is your business with Zhang Gutai?”
The Larkspur considered them. He cocked his head and made a noise, then gestured with his free hand, meaning for Roma and Juliette to come nearer. They did not move. Instead, the Larkspur sidled closer to the table and leaned in, as if he was to release a great, big secret.
“You wish to know my business with Zhang Gutai?” he whispered gutturally. “Zhang Gutai is turning himself into a monster. I am making the vaccine using information he is giving me.”
* * *
“Why?” Juliette demanded as they hurried down the stairs. “Why would he tell us this? Why would Zhang Gutai give him the formula to a vaccine?”
The world was moving too fast. Juliette’s pulse was thudding at breakneck speed. Her breath was coming too rapidly, even when they reached the ground level and stopped to find their bearings, stopped to gather their thoughts, realizing they now had every puzzle piece they needed to stop the damned madness tearing Shanghai apart.
Didn’t they?
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Juliette spat. “He must know we aim to kill the monster. He must know that we will hunt Zhang Gutai now with this knowledge. Why would he give this up? Without the monster, there is no madness. With no madness, he goes out of business.”
“I don’t know, Juliette,” Roma replied. “I can’t think of any viable answer either. But—”
“Down with the gangsters!”
The shout drew Roma’s attention and Juliette’s horror immediately, startling the two badly enough that they grabbed each other. It had come from the Jiuqu Bridge, from a raving old man who kept yelling until a Scarlet gangster nearby threatened to beat him up. The sight, however, was not met with indifference, as per usual. Instead, at the intrusion of the tough-talking Scarlet, the civilians started to mutter among themselves, throwing rumors and speculations to the wind. Juliette caught snippets of whispers: of striking workers and factory revolts.
She dropped Roma’s hand quickly, taking a step away. Roma did not move.
“Why would he say such a thing?” Juliette muttered, her eyes still on the scene. Why did that old man feel emboldened enough to wish death on the gangsters?
“If the reports I read this morning were any indication, it’s trouble from the Communists,” Roma replied. “Armed strikes
in Nanshi.”
“Nanshi,” Juliette echoed, knowing the area was familiar for a particular reason. “That’s—”
Roma nodded. “Where Alisa is, stuck in a hospital right by the factories,” he finished. “We may be running out of time. The workers will storm the building should an uprising occur.”
If the workers rebelled from their tasks, instructed to cause chaos, they would seek to harm every gangster, every capitalist, every high-ranking foreman and factory owner in sight, child or not, conscious or not—including little Alisa Montagova.
“We kill him,” Juliette decided. “Today.”
Kill the monster, stop the madness. Wake Alisa and save her from the chaos building up around her.
“He will still be in his office,” Roma said. “How do we want to do this?”
Juliette checked her pocket watch. She bit her lip, thinking hard. There was no time for her to consult her parents. She doubted they would approve anyway. They would want to think things through, draw up plans. She could not ask for official Scarlet backup. She would do this by her own terms. “Gather your closest reinforcements, your weapons. We meet by the Labor Daily offices in an hour’s time.”
Roma nodded. His gaze searched her face, sweeping from her forehead to her eyes to her mouth, as if he was waiting for her to say something else. When she did not, puzzled over what he was waiting for, Roma did not explain himself. He merely nodded again and said, “See you then.”
* * *
Tyler pulled back from where he had been lurking, pressing up against the exterior wall of the Long Fa Teahouse. He moved himself out of view just soon enough to avoid being spotted by Roma Montagov, who hurried into the crowds of Chenghuangmiao and disappeared.
Taking one last drag of his cigarette, Tyler pinched the lit end to stub it out, then dropped it to the ground, uncaring of the new burns on his fingers.
Tyler had seen them. He could not hear their conversation, but he had seen them—working together, reaching out for each other.
“Tā mā de, Juliette,” he muttered. “Traitor.”
Thirty-Two
Message for you, Miss Lang.”
Kathleen rolled over, moving from one end of Juliette’s neatly made bed to the other. She was the maids’ worst nightmare. There were plenty of chairs for her to occupy in this house, but whenever Juliette left her room, Kathleen came wandering in to take ownership of her bed.
To be fair, it was an absurdly comfortable bed.
“For me?” Kathleen asked, waving the messenger in. This was unusual. There weren’t many callers for her.
“It says both Lang Selin and Lang Shalin at the front, but I cannot find Miss Rosalind,” the messenger responded, sounding out the syllables of their names awkwardly. When he showed her the front of the note, she realized that her Chinese name—Lang Selin—had been written out in its romanized equivalent instead of its Chinese characters.
It had to be Juliette. No one else would be so cryptic.
Kathleen quirked a brow, extending her hand for the note. “Thank you.”
The messenger left. Kathleen unfolded the slip of paper.
I need your help. The Secretary-General of the Communist Party is the monster. Meet me by his work building. Bring guns. Bring silencers. Tell no one.
“Oh, merde.”
Juliette was trying to kill the Secretary-General of the Communist Party.
Kathleen threw the note down and bolted off the bed, hurrying for the armory next door. They kept their weapons in this small room, with the grandfather clocks and the rotting settees, in a row of cabinets that would have otherwise appeared inconsequential to a casual observer. She moved fast, tearing open the drawers and loading up two pistols, spinning the silencers on tightly. She checked the ammunition, clicked each loose component tightly, then shoved both weapons in her pockets.
Kathleen stopped. Her ears perked suddenly, hearing sound from the other side of the wall, from Juliette’s room.
Footsteps. Who was walking about?
Prickled, Kathleen rose quietly, keeping her footsteps light as she padded out of the armory and back toward Juliette’s bedroom. With her breath held, she poked her head through the doorway and sighted a familiar figure. She relaxed. It was only Rosalind, holding the note.
“What the hell is this?” Rosalind demanded.
Kathleen immediately tensed again. “I… thought the words were rather self-explanatory.”
“You can’t be serious.” Rosalind’s eyes dropped down to Kathleen’s pockets. She traced the shapes of the weapons, gaze sharpening—hollowing. “You’re not actually going to go, are you?”
Kathleen blinked. “Why would I not?”
A moment passed. That moment would be something to mark forever: the first time Kathleen looked at Rosalind—really looked—and realized she had no clue what could possibly be going through her sister’s head. And when Rosalind exploded outward, Kathleen felt the impact like a piece of debris sticking right through her gut.
“This is absurd!” Rosalind shouted suddenly. “We do not have the right to go killing Secretary-Generals as we please! Juliette cannot pull you into this as she pleases!”
“Rosalind, stop,” Kathleen pleaded, hurrying to close the door. “She is not pulling me into anything.”
“Then what is this note? A mere suggestion?”
“This is important. This is a matter of stopping the madness.”
Rosalind’s lips thinned. Her volume dropped, until it was not loud but cold, not angry but accusatory. “Here I was, thinking you were the pacifist of the family.”
Pacifist. Kathleen almost laughed aloud. Of all the words to describe her, pacifist could not be farther from the truth. All because she did not care for bloodshed, and suddenly she was an almighty saint. She would pull a switch to instantly end all life in this city if it meant she herself could have some peace and quiet.
“That is your mistake,” Kathleen said evenly. “That is everyone’s mistake.”
Rosalind folded her arms. If she clutched the note in her fist any harder, she would put a hole right through the words. “I suppose Juliette is the only person exempt from being a fool in your eyes.”
Kathleen’s jaw almost dropped.
“Do you hear yourself right now?” she asked. Perhaps she had stepped into a machine that took them back to being petulant toddlers.
But Rosalind did not care to consider herself. The bitterness had risen to the surface and now it could not cease in overflowing.
“Look at how casually Juliette has approached this whole madness,” she hissed. “Look at how she treats it like it is merely another task to impress her parents with—”
“Stop it.” Kathleen’s hands closed around the hem of her shirt, scrunching her fingers into the thick fabric. “You haven’t been around for most of it.”
“I saw the monster!”
“This isn’t Juliette’s fault. It’s not her fault that she has to treat it like her job because it is—”
“You don’t get it,” Rosalind hissed, rushing forward. She stopped right in front of Kathleen and clutched at her shoulders. “Juliette will never face the consequences to anything she does. We will. We feel every goddamn part of this city when it breaks—”
“Rosalind,” Kathleen pleaded, “you’re really, really stressed right now.” She untangled her hands from her shirt and held them out in front of her. It was both an action to keep Rosalind at a distance and to placate her sister like she would placate a feral animal. “I get it, I do, but we’re all on the same side.”
“Her family name is Cai!” Rosalind exclaimed. “How can we be on the same side when they will never fall? They are invulnerable. We are not!”
Kathleen could not keep listening to this. Time was running out. The weapons in her pocket grew heavier with each passing second. She removed Rosalind’s tight grip from her shoulders, unspeaking, and turned to leave.
Until Rosalind said, “Celia, please.”
; Kathleen froze. She whirled around.
“Don’t,” she hissed. “There are ears everywhere in this house. Don’t put me in danger just to make a point.”
Rosalind looked away. She let out a long breath, seemed to gather herself, and whispered, “I’m only looking out for you.”
Now is not the time to look out for me! Kathleen wanted to snap. What part of this was so hard to understand? She shook her head. She swallowed her words, forced herself to soften her tone.
“It’s a simple matter, Rosalind. Will you help, or will you not?”
When Rosalind met her eyes again, Kathleen only found apathy in her sister’s expression.
“I will not.”
“Very well,” Kathleen said. “But please do not stop me.”
This city was teeming with monsters in every corner. She would be damned before she let her own sister stop her from putting down at least one.
Kathleen walked out of the room.
Thirty-Three
Juliette stood around the corner of the Labor Daily office building, her body tucked in the shadows of the exterior walls and protruding pipes. She had chosen a small swath of grass where the building curved inward a little, near the rusty back door that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. A climbing plant was growing in this nook, flying across the walls and dangling right above Juliette’s head. From a distance, she may have looked like a statue, staring straight ahead with dead-dull eyes. She couldn’t blink too much. If she did, she might collapse then and there, become a twin to the Niobe made of marble that stood in the International Settlement, and then she would never get up again.
“Juliette—oh God.”
Juliette was also standing here because she had found a corpse. A victim of the madness: an older woman with her throat in shreds. She remained here because she did not know what to do, whether it was best to leave the victim be or do something—or if killing Zhang Gutai today would be enough as that something bearing on her shoulders.
Juliette turned, exhaling a breath at the sight of her cousin. Kathleen covered her mouth in horror, ducking under the trail of vines.