In sync, they swerved around a fallen rickshaw, Juliette circling left and Benedikt circling right, before meeting again and continuing onward on the street. There was a glow of light up ahead. The intersection of a street with a crowd gathered in thick.
“Only one,” Juliette replied, her hand patting her pocket to confirm. “I suspect he couldn’t produce more fast enough.”
“Damn Lourens for giving us something but not giving us enough,” Benedikt muttered begrudgingly. He sighted the scene up ahead too. “It does beg the question of us. We make use of the monsters for chaos . . . but what if they release their insects? In such proximity, it will be immediate death.”
That was the question Juliette had been mulling on since leaving the safe house, but slowly, something was beginning to formulate into shape. She looked up at the clouds once more and found them hazed with purple, dark and bruised. The deeper they walked into Zhabei, the more the storefronts around them changed, looking shabbier, less well kept. The foreign influence faded, the glamour receded.
“I have an idea,” Juliette said. “But can we hurry first? The fire station is some few streets away.”
They moved fast. When the station came into sight—its red tiled roof muted under the setting darkness and its smooth entrance lined with four gate-like arches—it was almost a surprise that the building was abandoned, given the supplies that sat awaiting inside. Perhaps the soldiers who had been asked to stand guard around the public facilities had all been redirected elsewhere, tending to the chaos around the city like a dozen little fires. They were in civil war. Communists popping up like moles from their hiding places and Nationalists desperately trying to thwack them back down so they could hold on to governance.
Juliette skidded into the station, immediately searching for what they needed. Her footsteps echoed loudly on the linoleum floor. Benedikt was making slower work, eyeing the labeled shelves while Juliette climbed atop one of the smaller firefighting cars to peruse the second floor. It didn’t seem like there was much up there, gauging by what she could see past the banisters.
“I can’t find a single damn weapon,” Juliette spat. “Not even an axe. In a fire station.”
“If this goes well, pray you don’t need a weapon.” Benedikt came around, showing her what he had found. A hose, looped around his arm, and two jugs of what Juliette had to guess was gasoline. “How are we supposed to carry this back there?”
Juliette jumped off the hood of the car. Then she looked at it again. “Can you drive?”
“No,” Benedikt answered immediately. “I’m not—”
Juliette was already opening the door into the passenger seat, reaching over and pressing the start button on the dashboard. The ignition came to life. As the night grew darker outside, the headlights flared a high beam, cutting a path ahead of them.
“Put the gasoline in the back,” Juliette said. “And drive.”
“Your idea is risky.”
“It’s a good idea. You cannot protest it merely because you have to stay behind.”
Benedikt shot her a glare from the driver’s seat, his foot on the pedal as the car inched down the road. They were almost at the intersection where the crowd had gathered. Now it was proper nightfall, the sky dark and the streets lit by gas lamps and torches, hot orange embers dotted among the people.
“It will guarantee their safety,” Juliette maintained. “You said it yourself—this whole execution business is symbolic. Dimitri is after Roma. He gains no extra points with Alisa. No extra points with Marshall. Second to Roma, there’s—stop here, stop here. We cannot go any closer.”
Benedikt pressed down on the brake, halting the car. A few steps forward, and they would be within view of the crowd.
“Second to Roma,” Juliette resumed quietly, “there’s only me.”
Gangster royalty, dead by his hands. The two empires of Shanghai’s underground—the heirs of families that had kept this city rumbling on capital and foreign trade, on hierarchy and nepotism—both fallen and executed under his bullet. It was too good to pass up. Too good for Dimitri to decline. Juliette was counting on it.
“He will sense a trick.”
“He will,” Juliette said. “But by then it will be too late.”
She would offer to trade herself for Marshall and Alisa. Once Marshall and Alisa were away from the scene, Benedikt would activate the monsters, Juliette would give Roma the vaccine from Lourens, and even if all the insects came out, they would be safe, and they would leave, and that was that.
Easy as pie.
Juliette pulled off her coat, tossing it to the floor of the vehicle. When she reached for the door, Benedikt’s arm shot out suddenly, closing around her wrist.
“He’ll be safe,” Juliette promised before Benedikt could say anything. “Marshall and Alisa are the first order of priority.”
Benedikt shook his head. “I was only going to say be careful.” He let go, casting a look into the back of the car, where the hose sat awaiting.
Juliette took a deep breath and got out. The street was on a decline. When she started forward, the angle immediately gave Juliette a perfect view of the small crowd and a perfect view of what they were clustered around: Roma, being tied to a wooden pole, his hands behind his back, rope secured around his waist.
All she could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep walking, eyes pinned to the scene, to the armed workers under Dimitri’s command who were moving to finish up their final knot on Alisa next. Juliette wondered where the wooden poles had come from. It was that which her mind wandered to, of all places—whether the poles were nailed into the ground or wedged into the tram lines running down the middle of the road.
Her eyes scanned the waiting crowd. There weren’t many here—there couldn’t be, or the noise would stir trouble with the soldiers nearby. Twenty, maybe more, but twenty was all you needed for word to spread about Dimitri’s good deed. They appeared curious, unbothered as the armed workers walked their outer edges, rifles at the ready in case soldiers approached.
At the periphery of the crowd, Juliette sighted the man who had followed them onto the train. The French White Flower. Her blood started to run hot, pumping adrenaline into her body, keeping her warm even as the cold breeze blew on her sleeveless dress.
Juliette had shed her coat intentionally. She wanted immediate recognition in her bright and beaded getup the moment she approached the crowd.
And she got it.
Benedikt needed to work fast, but it was hard when his palms were slick with sweat. He pulled the end of the hose taut, then adjusted it on the roof edge, aimed at the scene beneath him. They had stolen dozens of gallons of gasoline. They could afford to be liberal. But it had to work. It had to flow properly through a very, very long tube, and he couldn’t screw this up.
Too much was riding on it.
“Okay,” Benedikt muttered. It looked set. On the street below, Juliette had reached the crowd, her arms held up, ignoring the whispers as her name echoed through like a chant.
“I come unarmed,” she called.
Benedikt stepped away from the rooftop, hurrying through the building and back to the gasoline in the car. He hadn’t prayed to God in years, but today he was going to start.