Foul Lady Fortune

“Take this information to Rosalind immediately,” Celia had said when Alisa picked up the phone, having been summoned to her nearest liaison station. “I promised Oliver I wouldn’t get involved, but I can give a warning at least. Her mission is not a terror cell. They’re not killing people for an excuse to invade Shanghai. They’re using people as guinea pigs and killing them to perfect a chemical weapon.”

Across the city and outside of it, Friday arrived to the sound of war drums. Alisa hadn’t gotten the call until late afternoon, and then she needed to return to the corner store to pick up her pictures. She figured she may as well get the pictures before finding Rosalind so she could present everything at once.

“Hello.”

The girl behind the counter tapped an envelope, already waiting by the guide maps and mints. “For you.”

Alisa picked up the envelope, ripping into it immediately. The contents inside weren’t thick: only five photographs, printed from the five negative panels on the film strip. She thumbed along the first two. A bouquet of flowers propped against the wall. Mrs. Guo pointing the lens at her bathroom mirror with a silly expression, which made Alisa laugh.

She was moving the photos from one hand to the other, keeping them in separate piles of viewed and unviewed. When she got to the next photograph, however, she dropped all of them at once, scattering them across the corner store floor.

“Oh dear,” the girl behind the counter said. She didn’t bother coming to help pick them up. Alisa, too, stood unmoving, her jaw hanging agape. Suddenly afraid that the photo might blow away with the wind, she dropped to her knees and scooped it up, wiping at the surface as if she might be able to erase what it was showing her.

“It’s you?”

Orion had received a phone call asking him to go to local Kuomintang headquarters again, so when the workday ended, Rosalind started making her way to Burkill Road alone.

“I’ll meet you there if they finish our meeting sooner than expected,” he had whispered in the break room. “If you see Haidi during the window of time that she might act, do not confront her.”

“I know, I know. I’m only keeping watch,” Rosalind had reassured him.

The function at Cathay was in three hours. There was no time to waste when it came to collecting their last pieces of information. Rosalind wasn’t concerned about acting solo anyway. She couldn’t get gravely injured—as long as she didn’t get a needle stabbed into her arm, and even if she wasn’t the best fighter, it was still hard to overpower her.

The sun started to set at a leisurely pace, turning the sky into an orange watercolor. One by one, the streetlamps on the roads hummed on.

When Rosalind walked, she put each step down with intention. She carried no bag, no purse, making it all the easier to maneuver. There was only poison, coated on the pins in her hair, hidden in the fold of her skirt, attached to the hollows of her shoes.

She waited for a tram to pass, each toll of its bell like a death count across the city, marking those who had fallen, remaining forever nameless.

It didn’t take long to arrive at Burkill Road. It didn’t take long to slink along the pavement, keeping close to the shop fronts and saloon chairs until she was approaching the residence, until she was winding around the back and making a full circle, scouting every exit in sight. There were a few low windows. One back door hidden behind a big pile of trash bags. She was willing to bet that the killer would be using that to enter and exit, so Rosalind hastened to another building farther down the alley and hid herself beside one of its stoops, within view of the door.

She waited. She watched. The sun went down. The skies turned dark. And when one single bulb turned on at 286 Burkill Road, there was movement in the alley, a figure exiting from the back door with whip-quick movement.

Rosalind shot to her feet. She hadn’t caught sight of Haidi’s face—not for a lack of looking, but because whoever had just exited the door had their features covered, swathed with black fabric. From head to toe, it was all black, blending right into the night.

Rosalind was in pursuit immediately: not for combat, only to get a better look. The alleys were relatively empty, and she was already familiar with them after her escape with Orion. Though she stayed on the figure’s tail, she knew she needed to keep at a distance to ensure they wouldn’t hear her in pursuit. A few times they seemed to surge forward, and on the third time Rosalind almost lagged too far behind, barely catching a flash of the figure turning right. With a brief glance at the alley up ahead, she took another route, knowing that it would converge with their path.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered under her breath, pulling one of her hairpins out. Forget only keeping watch: she was too close now. She skidded into the new alley—the killer was already some paces away, turning the next corner. Though they were moving fast, they were not moving in a hurry. It was methodic. It was done in a manner that indicated they still had not noticed Rosalind following.

There was the sound of something crashing. A flowerpot? A laundry line? Rosalind drew around the corner with her heart in her mouth and her weapon raised. Before her stood the killer, holding down a man dressed in threadbare clothes.

“Haidi, stop,” she bellowed, revealing her presence. “Move away.”

But Haidi… if it was Haidi at all, didn’t even register the command. A flood of doubt stilled Rosalind’s hand. She was witnessing them make the kill. Didn’t they care? Weren’t they frightened in the least—wouldn’t they try to combat her or run?

“Hey!”

The killer plunged a syringe into the man on the ground and pushed down.

In a furious motion, Rosalind finally rushed forward, colliding with the killer and pushing them off-balance. She tried to haul the man to his feet as soon as the killer was momentarily shoved aside, but he was already jerking and seizing, making it impossible to get a good grip.

“Don’t worry,” Rosalind gasped. “Don’t worry. Hold on—”

A hand grasped her arm, throwing her back. The hairpin clattered out of her grip. She hit the wall hard, almost putting a dent into the plaster.

Her head spun. Suddenly she regretted every decision that had led her here alone.

The man on the ground stilled. The masked killer turned around, movements slow and deliberate. Rosalind wheezed to gather her breath again, reaching up to yank out another hairpin. Just as the killer was moving toward her, she attacked, kicking the syringe out of their hand and hooking her leg against their ankle when her leg came back down, relying on the force of her momentum. It worked—or at least it half worked, slamming the killer onto their back while Rosalind rolled to the ground, returning to a combative stance. When they recovered, however, they were much faster. Her attack had urged them to pull a knife from somewhere within their clothing, and then their arm was coming down fast. Rosalind blocked once, then another time, rolling to get out of the way. She braced on her knees, right at an angle where she could reach up—

—and snatch the fabric off their face.

Though that would have been the opportune moment to lunge away and avoid the next arc of their knife, Rosalind didn’t move.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, dropping her pin.