Foul Lady Fortune

This is how it happens.

The summons is made across the city. Communication is easy when the streets are populous and tangled with electric wires: send a runner, make a phone call. The technique doesn’t matter, only the trigger word. Oubliez. Forget.

Then the killer moves. Sometimes it is hard to get away. The blankness is conditioned to set in only when they are alone. It took an incredible amount of programming. Of experimenting. Only when they are alone will they make a change of clothes and head toward the same location. They have been instructed very clearly about the routes they should take to avoid detection. They are already skilled to begin with, so this work is easy to drill in. No free thought necessary—only muscle memory.

Instruction number one: take the vial and the syringe. It is new each time. Slightly altered, depending on the results of the last run.

Instruction number two: find the first person who is alone and give them the concoction. In previous months, there were certain streets that were better to hit, certain areas to enter first. It would minimize the likelihood of being sighted by a watchful eye in the window or a curious pedestrian on more well-kept streets. Now it does not matter. Now time is of the essence, and every part of the city is fair game.

The last batch was supposed to have been the final run. When the delivery was handed over, the instructions changed once again: use all six in the batch. Surely one ought to work. Drag the bodies together if it doesn’t. Don’t go too far from home; don’t raise any suspicion.

It didn’t work as they wanted. One more batch. One more run.

The killer finds the man and pushes the needle in.

“Haidi, stop! Move away.”

Who? When the killer looks, there is a girl braced for combat in the alley, eyes blazing. There are instructions for this too. Carry a weapon. Take down anyone who sees, anyone who intervenes. Do a good job of it.

One swing, another.

None of this is real, after all. Only tasks to complete. Only instructions to follow.

It won’t be long before a killing blow can be made. This girl isn’t fully trained; this girl is careless with her swings and abrupt with her movements, pulling her hand forward for no reason and then pausing when she pulls at the fabric that had been hiding the killer’s face.

But doesn’t she look familiar? the killer thinks. Don’t I know her?

There: take the opening.

I know her.

The knife, hurtling toward her with its sharp point forward.

Beloved. Darling beloved.

“Oh my God,” the girl whispers. “Orion?”

And just before he snaps out of his trance, he stabs the knife into her stomach.

Rosalind felt the blade leave her stomach with a tearing sensation, spreading biting agony through her middle. Her hands came to brace around the wound, deep crimson blood seeping through the lines of her fingers. The moment Orion pulled the blade out, something seemed to change in his manner. His eyes turned wide; his lips parted with astonishment. When he looked down at his own hands, he seemed terrified to find them covered in red.

“Janie?” he rasped, dropping the knife. It clattered to the concrete ground. “What—what am I—”

“Stay back,” she warned. “Jesus.” It was always the gut that bled so much for no reason. She kept her arm braced against the wall, blanketed in cold sweat. One would think that being able to heal from anything meant she had no problem taking injuries, but each time was more traumatizing than the next, each one a risk that reminded her what it felt like to be at death’s door. She wasn’t the same girl who had died the first time. She didn’t want to die anymore.

“I didn’t—” Orion took a step forward.

“I mean it,” Rosalind commanded. Her stomach was knitting itself back together, but not fast enough. She wouldn’t be able to get away if he reached her. Blood was still running through her fingers, pouring from the wound. Her head was light, her skin shivery. “Don’t come any closer.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Stop—”

Orion suddenly collapsed where he stood, as if he had taken it on himself to heed her exact instructions. A moment later, Rosalind registered Alisa Montagova standing behind him holding a blow dart in her hand, her eyes wide.

“I sincerely hope that was the right move,” she said. “A small sedative—don’t worry. What happened?”

Rosalind gulped for air. The stab wound was starting to pull itself together, sealing from the inside first. She was so unsettled that she might throw up at any second, but she still managed to keep her voice even when she responded to Alisa.

“I caught him red-handed. He’s the killer.”

Slowly Alisa walked up to Orion, giving him a little prod to make sure he was fully knocked out. “I actually knew that part already. Here.” She passed Rosalind a photograph. If there was any doubt that this was a one-off misunderstanding, all chance of it flew out the window when Rosalind squinted at the image, holding it near the bulb flickering on the wall. It was Orion. It was Orion midmotion, a syringe in his hand and a woman lying on the damp alley ground.

Rosalind muttered a curse under her breath. Her stomach was almost done healing. Seconds later, when she poked her hand through the hole torn in the middle of her qipao, she found smooth skin, albeit sticky with blood.

“I don’t understand.”

“I do,” Alisa said. “Celia called. She wants you to know that this whole thing was never about terror killings—they’re experiments. The chemicals are not meant to be used for murder. They’re creating a prototypical weapon. Each vial is a formula of some sort that has not been perfected, so they’ve been testing and testing until…”

A moan came from the alley. Rosalind tensed and pulled out another one of her hairpins with her bloody fingers, but it wasn’t Orion who had stirred. It was the man he had injected.

“Is he alive?” Rosalind exclaimed, rushing to the man’s side. “Can you hear me?”

“Where am I?” the man wheezed. “Who are you?”

Rosalind’s head jerked up, seeking Alisa again. “Can you take him to the hospital?”

“I suppose,” Alisa answered hesitantly, scurrying over. She helped Rosalind lift him, then took most of his weight when the man swayed, unable to stand entirely on his feet. “What are you going to do about—”

“I’ll figure it out,” Rosalind interrupted, knowing what Alisa was going to ask. “Don’t tell anyone. Don’t say anything. We’re walking in completely unknown territory, and I need to figure out our footing first.”

“You’re playing such a dangerous game,” Alisa muttered, but she did not argue. With as much support as she could offer to the injured man, they hobbled off to the main road.

Rosalind, left alone in the alley, spun on her heel for one of the building doors. She knocked loudly, then stood back and waited. A tall man with a rag in his pocket answered, wiping grease off his fingers.

“Are you all right?” he demanded, seeing the blood on her clothes.

“Oh, I’m great,” Rosalind answered. “Can you lift something for me? I’ll pay you handsomely.”

Rosalind had gotten Orion home in his unconscious state with the stranger’s help, blabbering the whole time about how her husband sleepwalked and it was a huge nuisance when she was in the middle of slaughtering chickens to cook. Once the man had left the apartment, probably puzzled over where the chickens were, Rosalind had tied Orion to a kitchen chair and put the chair in the middle of the bedroom, where there was nothing nearby that he could knock over and use to free himself if he woke up before Rosalind was back.

She had planned to dart out quickly. But then—because the universe was intent on being a nuisance—there was a knock on the door and Lao Lao’s voice yelling that she had a phone call.

Dammit, she thought frantically. Silas. He would want a report on whether they had confirmed a sighting on Haidi.

“What’s the situation, High Tide?” Silas said the moment she brought the receiver to her ear. “Are all ends wrapped up?”

Rosalind couldn’t answer for a long moment. She stood there, her grip tightening on the telephone. Orion needed to be brought in for his crimes. He was the killer. It was even worse than being hanjian; it was the literal blood of innocent civilians on his hands.

“Janie?” Silas prompted. “Are you there?”

“I’m here,” she said. “Yes. We saw Haidi. She’s the killer.”

Rosalind Lang had always been a rather good liar. Maybe she would never learn her lesson. Lie first; figure out the rest later. There was a terrible weight on her chest as she hurriedly told Silas the rest—the killings as experiments, the deaths as side effects—only growing heavier when she put the phone down and hurried out of Lao Lao’s apartment to hail a rickshaw. Time was running out. The night was growing darker.

Now, clambering off the rickshaw, Rosalind held the syringe tightly in her hands—the one that Orion had dropped in the alleyway. There was still a small bit of green liquid inside, swishing as she walked. If her head hadn’t been elsewhere, it should have occurred to her to run some tests as soon as she’d stolen that vial from Burkill Road. Then again, when Silas brought them that other vial from the alley behind Seagreen. Instead, they had handed both off to Jiemin. The Nationalists probably wouldn’t do anything other than dump them in a drawer somewhere.

Why hadn’t it occurred to her that perhaps knowing the precise contents of what exactly these chemicals were could have been important?

Rosalind pushed through the crowds in Chenghuangmiao, making her way closer to the Jiuqu Bridge and finding a familiar restaurant nearby. She had changed her ruined qipao and put on something red instead, for old times’ sake. She used to walk by this area often. Here she had witnessed her share of terrible things, beautiful things, agonizing things. Here she had been given the news of her immortality.

Rosalind went into the restaurant, then descended the stairs to the old Scarlet labs hidden belowground. It looked the same from the last time she saw it: those high windows showing people’s feet as they passed by outside, the floors sticky with spills, the corners piled with equipment.

There was one scientist present, who looked up as she entered the lab. Rosalind’s shoulders tensed; she had been hoping that it wouldn’t be anyone she recognized. But this was Hu Dai, the very scientist who had given her the diagnosis. She remembered his kind, elderly face screwed up in confusion, delivering his conclusion while looking as if he didn’t believe it himself even with the evidence in front of him.

Your cells are entirely different. They revert back to a starter state the moment they are injured. They don’t decay at all. They rebirth instead of dying.

“Hello.” Rosalind passed the syringe. She wondered if Hu Dai would recognize her. It had been four years now. He must have seen hundreds of people in and out of this lab since then. “Please tell me what this is.”

“What—”

“I beg of you,” Rosalind said. “There’s little time to explain. Please tell me if you’ve seen the substance inside before.”

“I was only going to ask your name,” the scientist returned nicely. There was no indication that he remembered who she was. He took the syringe and opened it, transferring the liquid into a beaker. “I am Hu Dai. You are?”

Rosalind wiped her palms on the skirt of her qipao, but it didn’t help with absorbing her cold sweat. The silk only left her skin feeling lacerated.

“Not important,” Rosalind said. Janie Mead didn’t seem like a cover she could slip into anymore. It had always been ill-fitting, but now it felt like putting wet clothing back on after getting caught in the rain, and Rosalind would rather have revealed her true self than take it on again.

She watched as Hu Dai separated the beaker’s contents into three petri dishes, then poured an array of different mixtures into them. Minutes passed as he worked, metal clinking against glass as he stirred the chemicals around.

“What are you seeing?” she asked, impatient.

A lengthy pause. Hu Dai frowned.

“Given how it is reacting, you’ve given me a mix of something,” he finally said. “I can’t tell you exactly what it is in such a short time, but I can take a guess at its effects: Aiding blood flow. Strength stimulants. Creatine overproduction.”

But Alisa had said that this was a weapon. How could any of those results be weaponized? It only sounded like it would make its victims into aspiring athletes.

“It’s being used with lethal intent,” Rosalind said quietly. “Is there poison in there too?”

“Poison?” Hu Dai echoed, surprised. “I don’t see any poison. Let me put it under a microscope.” He picked up a petri dish. “It doesn’t take poison to make something lethal. Any substance in large quantities can kill. Something good in large quantities will kill too.”

Rosalind leaned on one of the worktables. Hu Dai put his eyes to the microscope. He fiddled with a lever. Moments later, he jerked away with a start.

“What happened?” Rosalind demanded.

“I have seen this once before.” He put a droplet of something into the dish. It fizzled, then calmed. Hu Dai leaned into the microscope a second time. He nodded sagely, as if the outcome was expected.

When he looked up, meeting Rosalind’s gaze, something had registered in his expression.

“Lang Shalin,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you back here again.”

Rosalind’s stomach dropped. Perhaps when the knife had carved into her gut, it had detached her organs from each other, and now they were jostling loosely in her torso.

“How did you recognize me suddenly?” she asked. “The thought hadn’t even occurred to you when I walked in.”

“Well—” Hu Dai pointed a thumb to the beaker, to the bright green mixture that was still leaving a tinge behind on the glass. “I think you just brought me what made you immortal.”

Jiemin swirled the whiskey in his cup, distracted by the music wafting in from some corner of the hotel lobby. He ignored the socialites that walked by, the politicians that threw over a nod, even the children who only wanted to wave hello. By nature of this location—a mingling ground for the well-to-dos of Shanghai society—there would be plenty of annoyances trying to make a greeting while he sat at the bar, but there was nowhere else in the city that protected their doors this thoroughly and logged every visitor. It was safer than any place in Shanghai could be.

Final conclusion: the deaths are due to an experiment by the Japanese to create an enhancement substance—possibly to give their soldiers healing abilities alike to Fortune. The killings are unintended side effects, not an outright instigation of terror.

High Tide confirms Zheng Haidi as the field agent responsible. Other guilty accomplices included in the sheet attached to this note. Arrests to happen tonight. Shut down the cell before the final enhancement substance is passed to soldiers. Okay to proceed?

—Shepherd

“Another glass?”

Jiemin glanced up slowly, then shook his head at the bartender. He had burned the note as soon as he had finished reading it, but Silas’s words were still stark in his mind’s eye, easily memorized and reread on command.

Evidence for Haidi? Jiemin had returned.

The reply note had arrived quickly.

Negative. Only a sighting. High Tide advises eyes pinned to each suspect on arrest list to ensure their presence tonight. Okay to proceed?

Jiemin had chewed it over. Had swished the cup of coffee in front of him while he was exchanging those messages, worrying the waitresses behind the café counter with how sad his frown looked. He was not a regular there, so they had no way of knowing this was simply his resting expression.

Eventually, he had written up his response and left the café to drop it off.

Proceed. I will ensure eyes are on suspects.

Despite giving the mission its go-ahead, something still felt off to Jiemin. How had they figured out that these were experiments without getting hard evidence that it was Haidi? Where had they retrieved this information?

Jiemin slid away from the hotel bar, walking the short distance through the lobby and toward the elevators. The bellhop, already eagerly hanging around, asked if he needed anything, but Jiemin did not stop and merely shook his head. A flood was coming for this country, crashing into city after city through fire and artillery, and these two civil factions refused to join hands and board an ark for survival. Perhaps they would make a pair of very strange beasts by walking together, but better that than to remain stranded, drowned fools.

Jiemin walked until he approached the telephone, hooked up to a cord in the wall and displayed on a small bronze table decorated with a white lace cloth. When the operator routed the line where he needed it to go, he wasted no time reporting in.

“I am monitoring the situation that you’re concerned about,” he opened with. “Something isn’t right. Can you get me information from the other side?”

Alisa was sweating with exertion by the time she had the man checked into the hospital. She had directed the rickshaw to go into the French Concession, opting for a facility under foreign money rather than the understaffed and overrun hospitals in Chinese jurisdiction. Despite her efforts, the waiting room at Guangci Hospital was still relatively busy.

Once the nurse put the man onto a gurney, Alisa finally staggered back, dropping into a seat with a big exhale.

“Family emergency?”

Alisa cast a sidelong glance at the old woman next to her. She was knitting, waiting on the plastic chairs.

“Something like that,” Alisa answered. Her frantic pulse was starting to level now. All that gripped her senses was the scent of antiseptic cleaner, overwhelmingly heavy in the air.

“They usually let family go in with the patients,” the old woman said. “You don’t have to wait out here.”

Alisa watched the nurse and the gurney disappear down the corridor. “Yes, you’re right. I do think I’ll go keep an eye on everything.”

She stepped past the woman’s knitting, a prickle darting up her neck. There was no reason to follow the victim further, not when her job had only been to get him help. But some curious part of her wanted to see what the doctors said. She wanted to know why he had survived where the others didn’t, and whether that meant something.

Were the chemical experiments finished?

Had they finally perfected what they wanted?

Alisa’s shoes were completely silent when she proceeded down the corridor, searching for the nurse. They seemed to have disappeared into thin air, because when she got to the end of the corridor, there was no one there. For a few seconds, Alisa only whirled and whirled, thinking that she was simply not seeing something.

Nothing. Where had they gone?

She moved along the rooms, poking her head into the open doors and pressing her face close to the glass of the closed ones. Perhaps the nurse had been superbly fast while pushing the gurney. Perhaps they had made the transfer during the short time Alisa had spent in the waiting room.

But even after Alisa surveyed each of the rooms within the wing, she didn’t see the man she had brought in. In his state, it wasn’t as if he could have walked off.

Alisa hurried back to the waiting room and marched toward the reception desk. She ignored the line and went right to the front, slapping her hands flat on the desk surface.

“I think there is a patient missing,” she said in French.

The receptionist’s attention shot in Alisa’s direction. Beside her, the telephone started to ring.

“Another one?” she blurted. “Mon Dieu—give me a second. Hello?”

With the phone occupying her attention, the receptionist didn’t notice Alisa jerk away in surprise, her eyes widening. What did she mean by “another one”? Who else had gone missing?

Alisa didn’t wait around for an explanation, knowing that it was unlikely the receptionist would say more. She plunged deeper into the hospital, running a scan of the floor plan and familiarizing herself with where the wings expanded. The little hairs on her arms were standing ramrod straight. She didn’t think it was in her head: there were eyes watching her—watching in every direction to see what she would do next. Whose eyes? Which faction? Japanese, waiting to observe the first survivor of the chemical experiments? Communist, hoping to swoop in? Or Nationalist, simply preparing to arrest her?

On the second floor, Alisa trailed along a white stair banister, searching frantically before she sighted a sliding window staffed with two nurses inside. She watched a patient walk up to the window, asking for an invoice slip. This had to be the hospital’s administration office. She didn’t hesitate before lurking around the corner and slipping through the office door, darting within the shelves before the two nurses at the other end of the room could notice her. Alisa shouldn’t have worried. Once the patient departed, the two nurses were too distracted with conversation anyway, closing the window to continue chatting. Alisa started to rifle through the shelves, opening the outgoing patient files that had been left here for processing.

“Come on,” Alisa muttered—to herself, to the papers she was scanning, to the hospital itself. “Answers. Give me answers.”

“Reception says we have another one,” one of the nurses was saying, meanwhile. “The patient was only checked in minutes prior, though, so we could erase it from our records and pretend he was never here.”

Alisa froze, ducking lower into the shelves and turning her ear to the front.

“That doesn’t fix the problem of the first one. He was too important—we’re going to have Nationalists sniffing around soon.”

“I don’t pity whoever has to make the phone call. How do we lose a patient? It’s as if he got up and walked out.”

“He was comatose, filtering poison from his system. We would know if he got up and walked out.”

Who? Alisa demanded silently. Who are you talking about?

“You never know. Nationalists, eh? I heard he might have been a part of their intelligence unit. Dao Feng, age thirty-eight.”

“Oh shit,” Alisa said aloud.

She took a step back and slipped out of the office.