“Me?” Roma muttered under his breath. “That’s rich. I wish I did.”
Lourens, meanwhile, made a thoughtful noise, his eye still pressed to the microscope. “I really would recommend finding the source of this rather than counting on our re-creation of the vaccine, Roma.”
Roma didn’t say anything in response. He was good at internalizing; if Benedikt took a listening device to his cousin’s head, he was sure he would hear an utter scramble of panic, but on the exterior, Roma simply folded his arms.
“Just try your best. Even if I can find the blackmailer, who’s to say if I can find the rest of the damn monsters?”
Lourens pushed the microscope away wearily. “I am not paid enough for this.” He reached for the drawers along the worktable, retrieving a scalpel. “Speaking of which, there was someone who came poking around in the evening, seeking you.”
Benedikt pulled a face, though Roma was too busy with his own surprise to notice.
“To the lab?” Roma said. “Here?”
“I do not know how he found his way over either. He was called General Shu.”
Why did that name sound familiar? Benedikt combed through his memory but came up empty. Roma, on the other hand, immediately reared back. “He’s a top Nationalist official. What does he want with me?”
Lourens merely heaved a sigh, like the topic was wearing him out. “I suspect he circulated all the places you are known to frequent. He left as soon as I said you were not present.”
“Are you in trouble?” Benedikt asked.
“With the Kuomintang?” Roma replied, scoffing. “No more than the usual level they want me dead.” He stepped away from the worktable, leaving Lourens to his task. “Shall we go?”
Benedikt nodded. He was still mulling over Lourens’s strange report when Roma opened the doors for him, the smack of cold wind forcing him alert.
“You look better today,” Roma remarked, starting in the direction of headquarters. “Are you getting more sleep?”
“Yes,” Benedikt replied plainly. And mere hours ago, I found out that Marshall is still alive.
He wanted to say it aloud. He wanted to scream it from the rooftops and declare it to the whole world, so that the world could end its mourning with him. But now Benedikt had been roped into Marshall’s promise to Juliette. Benedikt was another piece in a larger chess game, one with Juliette on one side and Roma on the other, and to keep Marshall from falling off the board, it seemed that he had to start playing for Juliette’s strategy.
“Good,” Roma replied. A slight crinkle appeared in his brow. Perhaps confusion, perhaps relief. His cousin heard the lift in his voice and couldn’t quite pinpoint a cause, but he was not direct enough to ask outright.
A streetlamp flickered above them. Benedikt rubbed at his own arms, easing his chill. When they turned a corner, deep enough in White Flower territory that he felt assured they wouldn’t be attacked anytime soon, he said:
“You did not seem concerned by the news I brought you. I expected some exclamation when told that monsters robbed the Scarlets of their vaccine.”
“What’s the point?” Roma replied tiredly. “The Scarlets never would have distributed to us.”
“The concern isn’t the Scarlet loss. It’s the use of monsters for such a trivial task with no attack on the people.”
Roma blew out a breath, fogging the air around him. “I’m almost convinced at this point they’ll never go away,” he muttered. “They will keep coming and coming, and Juliette will keep appearing before me, dropping to her knees to ask for help just one last time, right before she puts a blade in my back.”
Benedikt remained silent, not knowing what to say. The lack of argument must have seemed suspicious to Roma, because he threw a quick glance over, mouth opening again. But Roma didn’t begin his next sentence. Instead, so quickly that it scared the living daylights out of Benedikt, Roma pulled his gun and shot into the night over Benedikt’s shoulder, his bullet already echoing before Benedikt had whirled around and caught sight of movement disappearing from the mouth of the alley.
“Who was that?” Benedikt demanded. He glanced around, taking inventory of their surroundings—the shop signs written in Cyrillic and the Russian bakeries all lined up in a row, though they had retired for the night. This was about as far into White Flower territory as one could go. “A Scarlet?”
Roma frowned, drawing closer to the alley. His target had long disappeared—possibly struck, possibly only grazed, given the distance at which Roma had shot from.
“No,” he replied. “A Nationalist, uniformed. I thought I heard someone behind us, but I chalked it up to my imagination until they came closer. We were followed almost immediately upon leaving the lab.”
Benedikt blinked. First an official appearing at the lab. Now they were picking up a tail on the streets, right in their own territory? It was bold—far too bold.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
Roma didn’t answer. He had sighted something on the alley floor: a wad of loose-leaf paper. It looked like an old advertisement, but Roma picked it up anyway and unfolded it.
His eyebrows shot straight up. “Forget about what I did.” Roma turned the slip of paper around, and a sketch of Benedikt’s face stared right back at him. “What do the Kuomintang want by trailing after you?”
Benedikt took the paper. A cold sweat broke out along his spine. His neutral expression was colored in careful ink, the illustration better than his own self-portraits. The artist had been generous with his crop of curly hair. There was no doubt that this was him.
“I . . . haven’t a clue,” Benedikt muttered.
But his concern wasn’t why the Kuomintang were following him. If they had been on his tail for some time now, the more important question was: How much had they seen from earlier in the day, when he was exiting the safe house and saying goodbye to Marshall, who was supposed to be dead?
Twenty-Seven
Rumor had it that there would be more protests today. The early morning had passed with a flurry in the Scarlet house, its hallways combating collision after collision of whispers. If it wasn’t Tyler’s relatives trying to clarify with one another what exactly Miss Rosalind had done to be hauled home covered in blood, it was their speculation about whether it was safe to enter the central city today when reports said that workers were attempting to strike yet again.
Tyler couldn’t get out fast enough. A bunch of good-for-nothings, they all were, talking instead of doing. With the new hubbub, hardly anyone was paying heed to what had happened to their vaccine supply. The monsters had invaded a secure facility that only Scarlet inner circle knew about. Was no one suspicious? Was Lord Cai not the slightest bit concerned?
“—right?”
With delay, Tyler stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then looked up at Andong and Cansun. They were across from him, pacing the length of the room, while Tyler remained seated upon a chaise lounge, granted a full view out the floor-to-ceiling window before him. Below, the intersection just outside the Bailemen dance hall was at high capacity of activity: the citizens and occupants of Shanghai bustling to and fro like there was hardly a minute to spare. Every so often, someone walking on the street would glance up, tracing their eyes across the block letters reading PARAMOUNT fixed outside the dance hall. They could likely see into the windows of the second floor, into the opulence and the vacant rooms open for Tyler to come and go as he pleased. The rest of Shanghai didn’t have such leisure.