“Roma, hold on! Hold on!”
Roma shook his head. He was shouting something, again and again, the sound lost to the rain, and he did not stop until Juliette was out of sight, dragged away from the Bund and onto another main road.
It was only then that Juliette realized what he had been saying, his eyes stricken like he had already lost hope of seeing her again.
I love you.
The rain came down like a tidal wave, but it did not discourage the crowds moving through the city.
Even if Celia had suddenly decided to abandon the procession, she had no route out. She was boxed in on all sides, surrounded by workers and students and ordinary people who looked no more like revolutionaries than she did. Yet nonetheless, they were here and screaming—screaming at the top of their lungs, long banners in their best penmanship unfurled into the air.
“Protect the union!”
They were coming into Baoshan Road, approaching their destination. Celia did not shout with them, but she took it all in. Among so much chaos, she became bigger than herself, bigger than any physical body, any physical form.
“No surrender!”
Not a soul in the procession carried firearms, only signs running with ink. They were here to make a point clear. They could achieve their goals with nothing except might. They were the people. A city was nothing without its people; a city could not thrive without its people.
The government should fear them.
“Down with the military government!”
They turned around a bend in the street, and Celia was flooded with immediate horror, sighting lines and lines of Nationalist troops in their way. On sheer instinct, her steps ground to a halt, but the procession did not appear to be stopping, and so she could not stop either, jostled back into movement.
“No,” Celia murmured.
The soldiers stood to attention. Those on the ground were armed with bayonets; those on higher platforms had their eye glued to the telescopic sights of their machine guns. A barricade of wooden stakes cut the street off abruptly, and a hundred paces behind it, all the soldiers’ barrels were pointed at the crowd, ready to fire. They looked somber. They crouched at attention behind stacks and stacks of sandbags, using them for shields against retaliation. But there wouldn’t be retaliation. The protest was unarmed.
They won’t shoot, Celia thought. The crowd was getting nearer and nearer. Surely they won’t.
The procession collided with the barricade. Workers pushed from their side, gangsters and troops pushed from the other. Celia couldn’t breathe—she felt out of body, only soul, floating above the crowd and overseeing it all. She was already a ghoul floating above the mayhem, swirling in the rain.
“Down with gangster rule!”
The workers finally pushed over the barricade, making for the troops. Chaos on both sides—bodies and sound and noise, clashing at once.
It was then that a flash of light registered in Celia’s peripheral vision, prickling up some sixth sense that told her something was awry. She twisted, her eyes making a sweep of the scene, breath coming fast. She saw two things at once: first, movement in an alley near the fallen barricade, something glistening and then slinking back into the shadows; second, the glint of metal held in the hands of a man some few paces away.
“Stop!” Celia yelled, diving forward, but it was already too late. Mr. Ping—the same Mr. Ping of the Scarlet inner circle—had his pistol pointed to the skies, and when she collided with him, his bullet had already burst into the air, its sound resonating tenfold into the crowd. All around him, the workers stared, unable to comprehend the sound.
“This is a peaceful demonstration!”
“Who is that? Why would he do that?”
“Get down. Get down!”
Celia staggered back, pressing her rain-soaked hands to her mouth. Mr. Ping stood there now, unmoving against the crowd that demanded an explanation. He had no need to explain himself. He had been planted here to do exactly this, forfeiting his life for the sake of the Scarlets. If the Scarlets asked for blood, the inner circle would offer their own.
Within the armed line of Nationalists, a voice screamed, “Return fire!”
“Let me go,” Juliette hissed. “Let go!”
They had been walking for so long in the rain that Juliette was thoroughly soaked. Each time she attempted to shake herself free, her drenched hair flung left and right to disperse water. On any other occasion, the distance between the Bund and the Cai house would have required a car. Today, it was impossible to get any vehicle through the city. Better to walk it on foot, lest they were stalled behind a crowd and a rescue attempt came for Juliette. At least, that was what she had gathered from the two Scarlets holding her hostage, who found no problem with discussing such matters over her head. The one on her left was named Bai Tasa, she recalled. The one on her right remained stubbornly nameless.
“They have blocked off Baoshan Road,” Bai Tasa was saying, making an effort to ignore Juliette’s writhing. The streets here were emptied. They had entered Nationalist-guarded defense lines, needing only a single nod from Bai Tasa before the soldiers were ushering them through, pushing the other protesters back. Of course, even before they came into the guarded parts of the city, no one had offered Juliette a second glance no matter how loudly she yelled. Everyone else was yelling just as loudly.
“Do we care?” the Scarlet on the right snapped. “We are cutting behind the barricade anyway.”
“It is only an extra ten minutes if we go around.”
“Ten minutes that I do not have. These people are driving me up the wall.”
Juliette tried to dig her heels into the pavement. All it did was grate at her shoes, rubbing at the soles.
“Hold on a minute,” she interrupted. “What are we cutting behind? Are we passing the end of the protest?”
Though the Scarlets did not respond to her, it was a valid guess, what with the noise that was coming from the rapidly approaching intersection. The houses around her seemed to shake, their empty terraces and imposing exteriors slick with the gray day. She hadn’t paid attention before, but now she saw Nationalist military vehicles parked all along the road. Only . . . they were empty, as if the men inside had been moved elsewhere.
“What’s happening?” Juliette demanded again, though she knew the Scarlets wouldn’t answer her.
They passed the intersection, and when Juliette turned to look down the other road, she saw the backs of hundreds of Nationalists. The sheer number struck panic into her bones, and that was before she realized they were braced behind sandbags and makeshift barriers with whole machine guns pointed down the street as the noise grew and grew.
Juliette summoned the last of her energy to throw herself to the ground. The Scarlets hadn’t expected it; Bai Tasa stumbled, almost tripping over his own feet when Juliette sprawled before him. The other Scarlet grumbled, pulling at her arms while she struggled to stay down. Her focus was locked on the scene before her, on the strikers coming into view, surging against the wooden barricade. There were so many of them. Far, far more than the Nationalists hiding behind their makeshift shields, but the Nationalists had them surrounded at so many angles, firearms pointed forward. How was this supposed to end? How could this possibly end well?
Juliette scrambled up suddenly, deciding she had seen enough. Before Bai Tasa could grab ahold of her again, she affixed her fingers on to his wrist like an iron vise.