Foul Lady Fortune

“Your mother?” Rosalind demanded. She didn’t lower the knife.

The woman who stepped through the door was dressed primly, a long pencil skirt sweeping past her knees and a pair of circular glasses on her nose. Her black hair was clasped in a low bun, a hesitant smile on her lips. Though, on closer inspection, her face was lined with age, she had a youthful look from afar, easily passable as the newest teaching assistant at the nearby university.

Rosalind didn’t know what she had expected for Lady Hong, but it wasn’t this. The newspapers had painted a picture of a shrinking former bookkeeper who had flinched at the first signs of trouble, opting to slip away and abandon her family. Either someone who lacked such a spine that she would have preferred quietude to the public eye or someone who held too much national pride to be associated with traitorous behavior. No matter which avenue they went down, it was always with an air of wild emotion.

This Lady Hong before them looked well kept. At ease.

The only discrepancy was the dirt on her nice shoes. Caked in mud, as if she had plunged into the forest, but…

“Liwen,” his mother said. “I thought it was you. I recognized the car.”

Rosalind’s free hand snapped out, grabbing Orion’s elbow as he started toward his mother. He turned back suddenly, confused about why she was stopping him. In perfect contrast to his amazement, Rosalind was ice cold.

“This really isn’t my ideal way of meeting my in-laws either,” she said, “but what are you doing here, Lady Hong?”

Tension swept into the room. Lady Hong had clearly been set to flee, then had realized Orion was here and come back.

Beautiful as it was to imagine this a deserved mother-son reunion, Orion Hong was valuable—a living weapon. And someone had made him this way.

Lady Hong hesitated at the question. In that pause, Rosalind swiveled her eyes to the shredded paper in Orion’s hands again, looking closer at the scribble. He had probably put it together a second earlier. It was his momentary elation that was pushing the conclusion aside, that was trying to force it down. But he had recognized the handwriting. He knew who was behind this scheme.

“Fine, we’ll try an easier question,” Rosalind said. “What was in it for you? Money? Power?”

“Rosalind,” Orion whispered, but he didn’t put his heart into the admonishment. He knew as well as she did what situation they were in.

Lady Hong threw her shoulders back. “I was an academic at Cambridge before I married. Did you know that?” She walked closer; Rosalind gave Orion a firm tug, pulling the two of them a step away. “Of course you didn’t. The papers never mentioned it. Elite society didn’t like it when I talked about it. The Nationalists were more than happy to ask for my expertise when they wanted to run some experiments, but the moment we approached some potential, the top gave the veto and oh—that was that. Forget what I could find.”

Orion’s breath was coming shallowly. Rosalind tried to take them backward once more, reaching for the crate of vials at the same time. Though she managed to secure a grip on the crate alongside the knife in her hand, she halted before she could take another step. Orion was resisting.

“Rosalind,” he said. “Hold on.”

“For what?” she demanded. “Your mother did this to you.”

Lady Hong tugged at her sleeves. She looked disappointed, like this was an event that had gone awry rather than the very culmination of an investigation into a terror cell. Like she wasn’t at the beating heart of it.

“Miss Lang, don’t jump to conclusions,” she said.

Rosalind pressed the crate closer to her chest. So his mother knew her identity. His mother had had an eye on them for who knew how long.

“I don’t think it’s a jump in the slightest,” Rosalind replied. “I think the Nationalists brought you in to perform experiments when the civil war started. Make a soldier stronger, faster, more lethal. Make soldiers who would win on the battlefield.” She remembered the look on Dao Feng’s face when she screamed at him after that mission, when she raged about the innocent scholar’s death early in her days as Fortune, claiming that she wouldn’t work for their war. Concern flashing in his face, then his hand patting her shoulder and urging her to remain calm, urging her to remember that they were on the same side, that he knew she was her own person, that it was okay if she didn’t want to kill like that.

You are not just our weapon, Lang Shalin. You are an agent.

“They cut you off, didn’t they? Stopped your research. They thought it was immoral. You were turning real people into weapons.”

Lady Hong’s expression turned dark. “It was foolish,” she said. “We were so close to a breakthrough.”

At last the pieces clicked into place. One by one.

“The Nationalists pulled your funding,” Rosalind went on. “But you weren’t ready to give up. So you went to the Japanese and took their funding in exchange for giving them your research. You ran your next experiment on your own son. Did General Hong know? Or did you just let him take the blame for it when the remnants of your paper trail got him accused of being hanjian?”

Underneath her touch, Orion had frozen entirely. It had been a guess on Rosalind’s part, but by Lady Hong’s frosty silence, she knew she was somewhere along the right path. Nationalist soldiers and Japanese soldiers alike ran this warehouse, eyes blank.

“Or,” Rosalind continued, “was this a collaboration? Have you been giving him instructions at every moment, having him make the calls to summon your son for your dirty work?”

Lady Hong remained unspeaking for a very long moment. Then: “I will not explain myself to a child.”

Orion had finally heard enough. Enough to lay part of the full picture ahead of him. Enough to rob him of whatever hope had surged to life when his mother appeared at the door. “Not even your own child?”

On the table to the side, there was a tray, a pipette, and a Bunsen burner. The burner was connected to the gas lever below the ground already. Rosalind made a rough estimate of the distance.

“Your father and I drew out a very careful plan,” Lady Hong said tightly. “Perhaps he is not happy with how slowly it has been moving, but we were clear with our ultimate aims. The Kuomintang cannot provide for us anymore. The Japanese Empire can. This is for you, too, Liwen. Us as a family.”

“How is it for me?” Orion demanded. There was a sneer on his face, but it couldn’t hide the sadness there too. “You both sat back and watched me kill people. Is your research that much more important? Is Father getting a larger army that much more important? You let me investigate myself.”

Rosalind drew an inch to the left. When Lady Hong spoke again, she pretended not to hear Orion’s questions, only his final accusation.

“We should never have gotten to this point. I told your father to shut your operation down. He claimed he didn’t have the power to affect the covert branch. He has always disapproved of your involvement in the covert branch.”

Orion’s jaw tightened. He shook his head, though the gesture looked more defeated than anything else.

“I thought you were dead. You abandoned me—”

“I’ve always been nearby,” Lady Hong cut in firmly. “I keep an eye on you and Phoebe. Heaven knows it’s hard when you and your sister are so good at shaking tails off. Chasing them away for no good reason.”

While no one was paying attention to her, Rosalind shuffled another inch to the left.

“In what world could I have guessed it was you sending blank-eyed men tailing after us?” Orion, meanwhile, demanded. “You left our lives. And now I learn I’ve been seeing you every few weeks to have my memory erased? What is wrong with you?”

“Listen to me,” Lady Hong said. She sounded like she was delivering a lecture at the front of an auditorium. There was no remorse for what she was doing. No remorse for what she was promising to an enemy nation for the sake of being the first to make a scientific discovery. “You have a very early strain. I only gave it to you because it was less dangerous—before we added the research to allow healing. The human body doesn’t like remaking itself. Every casualty we have had stemmed from that side.”

Casualty. As if the guinea pigs she plucked off the streets were soldiers and not murder victims. As if she didn’t focus on choosing people in Chinese territory, knowing there was little governance and that no one would care to investigate.

“But you have to keep taking it,” Lady Hong went on. “Your headaches are a side effect. Without a new dose of that old strain every few weeks, they will get worse and worse before taking your life. It took us some time to figure that out. It took us some time to figure out that the only way to fix those side effects permanently”—she nodded her chin toward the crate in Rosalind’s arm—“is to give you the final version. I told you. Everything I’m doing is for you, too.”

Haidi’s scream echoed in Rosalind’s mind. Her desperation in the banquet lounge. Those aren’t dangerous. They’re for me. I’ll die without them!

Another experiment. A later run.

“This is—” Orion broke off, unable to keep arguing. His sadness had turned bitter; his eyes, which had been large and shocked before, had narrowed with hostility. Rosalind wanted to reach out and reassure him, but she knew he would have to come to terms with it himself. His mother might claim to be doing this all for him, but if she hadn’t experimented on him to begin with, his life wouldn’t even be in danger.

“Let me guess,” he said. “When I take the final version, I’ll turn as mindless as those soldiers back there.”

“Untrue—that is an entirely different strain,” Lady Hong countered. Rosalind almost laughed aloud. She sounded so damn blasé, treating this as no matter at all. Orion clearly had some version of that mindlessness if they were ordering him around the city without him remembering a thing.

Rosalind must have made a noise, despite her best efforts. Lady Hong’s gaze flickered over to her. To the crate.

“Miss Lang,” she said, “for Liwen’s sake, hand it over.”

Rosalind took a step forward obediently.

“Rosalind!” Orion hissed in warning.

She turned back to look at him. Your life is my life.

And she could save it on her own.

Rosalind threw the crate onto the floor. At once, the glass vials smashed into pieces, little shards mixing with bright green liquid that trickled in all directions. Before Lady Hong could react, Rosalind lunged for the Bunsen burner and shoved her foot against the gas pedal beneath the table. A piercing blue flame shot to life.

“I won’t aid national traitors,” she said coldly. She dropped the burner. In a burst, wooden crate and newspapers and green liquid alike erupted with flickers of fire, eating up everything in its vicinity.

The horror was stark on Lady Hong’s face. It was too late to save anything. All she could do was watch it burn.

Her eyes flashed up to meet Rosalind’s. “You don’t know what you have done.”

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” Rosalind replied, and before she could think better, she readjusted the knife in her grip and made a swing.

She missed—narrowly.

Lady Hong surged backward, her lips thinning as the arc of the blade barely whispered past her nose. Now anger was encroaching into the pinch of her mouth, curdling away her previous calm.

“Lady Fortune, you play foul,” she said contemptuously. “But so can I. Oubliez.”

Rosalind tried to stab again, though she couldn’t help frowning at the switch into French. Forget? Forget what?

Suddenly, Orion’s hand closed over her upper arm and threw her backward. The attack was so forceful that Rosalind slammed into the opposite wall, her shoulder making a loud sound. Her knife clattered to the floor. She was given a mere second to gulp air into her winded lungs. In the next, Orion was hauling her up again.

No.

“Orion,” she gasped. There was nothing in his gaze. No recognition or humor, no sense of anything save for a blank, misted-over stare. “Orion, don’t—” Rosalind swerved, avoiding his fist. “Snap out of it!”

He aimed low; she felt her shoulder click back into place and start to heal, giving her the strength to catch his wrist and push it up, slamming a foot behind his knee when his body turned to follow the movement. Though Orion stumbled, he dived forward deliberately, circling a foot around him as soon as he had balance again to throw Rosalind off stance.

She hit the floor. Swore viciously under her breath. She was going to lose this fight. It didn’t matter how fast she could heal. Orion was too strong to be deterred.

His shadow loomed over her. Before she could roll away, he had her pinned, hands around her throat. Rosalind clenched her jaw hard to counter the pressure, pushing as hard as she could to pry away his fingers, but it was like fighting against steel.

“Orion,” she wheezed.

His grip tightened.

“Orion, Orion”—the barest recognition stirred in his eyes—“it’s me. It’s me.”

Orion’s hands loosened a fraction. Though his expression was still blank, there was something there, something trying to fight toward the surface.

Rosalind did the only thing that she could. She reached her arm out, her fingers barely brushing the blade of the knife—reaching, reaching, and just as her vision turned entirely black, she secured a grip on the handle and plunged the blade into Orion’s shoulder.

Orion flinched with a gasp, releasing his hold on her.

Without a moment to spare, Rosalind freed herself and clambered to her feet, heaving for breath as she put distance between them. She expected him to attack again immediately, but the knife in his shoulder had done something to affect his altered state. Small droplets of blood trickled in front of him, oozing from his shoulder to the floor.

“Orion?” she tried cautiously.

“Go,” he snarled. Rosalind lurched back, startled out of her skin. From the other side of the room, Lady Hong had drawn her pistol, seeing that the fight had been put on pause. Rosalind barely paid his mother any mind, despite the threat she posed. Orion held all her attention.

He was letting the blood run. His hands were pushed hard into the floor, braced on the concrete. He looked like a conquered deity barely contained in its human vessel, head bowed and on his knees, palms down in supplication.

“Rosalind,” he managed. “Go. Please.” And he was. He was a deity, begging. “Rosalind, go! Go!”

“Hong Liwen, get up this moment,” Lady Hong instructed, and pointed her pistol at Rosalind. Without a moment of hesitation, she pulled the trigger.

The bullet embedded deep. Rosalind hadn’t even thought to move. Her hands flew up to clasp her stomach, in sheer disbelief that she had just been shot. She was at an utter loss for direction. Orion was shouting—“Go! Please, go!”—and Lady Hong was aiming again, and Rosalind couldn’t even hear herself think because of her lightheadedness after almost being choked to death and now with half her guts about to tumble out.

She couldn’t leave Orion here. The pain in her stomach was agonizing. The decision in front of her was even worse.

Lady Hong fired again. Another bullet pierced higher, into Rosalind’s ribs, blooming with deep, deep red.

“Go! Rosalind, go!”

She needed to. She could heal a gunshot wound. But if Lady Hong aimed any higher, she could not heal her head blown clean off.

It hurt more to move away than it did to take the bullets. But Rosalind stumbled for the back door, pushing out into the night just as a third bullet tore after her, striking the doorframe instead and spraying wooden pellets everywhere.

Though Rosalind ran, she could not resist looking back. The shooting had stopped. Lady Hong was striding for Orion instead, tossing the pistol aside.

Get up, she wanted to cry. She wanted to scream, to brandish every weapon she had ever learned to use and take to battle. But when Orion was being wielded like this, she was no match for him at all—and it wasn’t him she wanted to hurt.

Lady Hong had taken something out of her pocket. Orion was still kneeling, still shaking as he tried to keep himself from going after Rosalind.

A syringe came out. Orion refused to look up. This one wasn’t green. It was filled with a red liquid.

Rosalind stopped running. “Orion, come on, come on—”

His mother drove the syringe into his neck. The plunger went down; Orion’s head snapped up. In Rosalind’s terror she might have shrieked aloud, but she barely noticed. If her greatest fear had come to fruition, then he had just been given whatever had wiped the minds of those other soldiers. Whatever Lady Hong instructed him to do next was lost to Rosalind as she turned fast on her heel and ran into the trees, gasping for air. She felt her body throbbing, blood pumping furiously around the bullets embedded inside her.

She couldn’t stop. Even when she tripped on a rough part of the foliage, tumbling down to her knees, she gathered what remained of her strength and was up in a blink, barreling deeper into the forest.

On and on, she ran.

Because if Orion found her, he would kill her.