Juliette paced along the street, smacking lightly at her own face as if physical sensation could draw forth some ideas. Alisa kept chewing on her nails.
“It didn’t just seem like he was running out to get away from the news,” Alisa said slowly. “It seemed like he had something he needed to do.”
Juliette threw her hands in the air. “We had little else to do except—”
Find Dimitri. Stop the madness.
“Did he say anything about going after Dimitri Voronin?”
Alisa shook his head. “I thought you didn’t know where Dimitri was.”
“We don’t.” Juliette gave Alisa a sidelong glance. “How did you know that?”
With a roll of her eyes, Alisa tapped her ear. It was hard to believe this was the same girl who had fallen comatose so many months ago, waking thin and frail on her hospital bed. She seemed to have grown a spine that was twice as thick in the time since then.
“I know everything.”
“All right, Miss I-Know-Everything, where is your brother?”
Alisa only sagged in reply, and Juliette immediately felt terrible for her attitude. How old was Alisa Montagova now? Twelve? Thirteen? Pain at that age was an eternal thing, a feeling that might never fade. It would, of course. Pain always faded, even if it refused to fully disappear. But that was a lesson that could only come with time too.
“I’m sorry,” Juliette said. She slumped against the wall. “I’m scared for him. If we can’t find Roma before the Nationalists release their men onto the streets, they will get to him first.” They would not hesitate. The Kuomintang had held back for so long. Had looked upon this city for years and years as it lived its glory age of jazz clubs and silent films, had broiled in anger to see Shanghai singing while the rest of the country starved. Perhaps their true target of anger were the imperialists hiding behind their chain-link fences in the Concessions. But when one held guns and batons in their hands, did a true target of anger even matter? What else mattered except, at last, an excuse for release?
Alisa suddenly perked up again, her head tilting to the side. “Even if Roma doesn’t know where Dimitri is, what if he is still trying to stop him?”
Juliette pushed off the wall. She started to frown. “In what manner?”
“This.” Alisa grabbed Juliette’s arm, then tapped her inner elbow, indicating to the blue veins running translucent under her skin. “The vaccine.”
The answers struck. With a gasp, Juliette started to push at Alisa, steering them down the street.
“Lourens,” Juliette said. “He’s with Lourens.”
It was the man who believed her first. The same one from that alley, whose head had been bleeding something fierce. He certainly looked healed now, if a little rough, standing behind the faces of the General Labor Union’s leadership—faces that Kathleen was sure she should recognize, though she couldn’t quite put a name to any of them.
The most important Communist powers were scattered about the city, doing whatever it was that revolution depended on. Those who were supposed to keep house below them—the ones who were camped out now at the stronghold that Kathleen rushed into—had only frowned when she tried to explain what was coming, when she insisted that those workers flocking onto the streets with labor union bands on their arms were not workers at all but Scarlets intent on slaughter.
The man had to have been someone’s son, someone’s something-important. It took a whisper from him—a whisper to another whisper to a throat being cleared, and then the man at the center of the room, taking his glasses off, said, “If there is massacre coming and you have arrived to warn us, how can we possibly stop it? The Nationalists hold an army. We are only the poor. We are the ordinary.”
Kathleen folded her arms. She considered the group seated before her, thinking how typical it was that they would say such things. These people here, seated around the table, were not the poor and the ordinary. They were the ones privileged enough to lead a movement. If she could, she would blast her voice up into the heavens and warn the people—the true poor and ordinary people—directly, because that was who she wanted to protect. Not the few thinkers, not the men who thought themselves revolutionaries. At the end of the day, movements survived, but the individual could be replaced.
That was all she was. One girl, doing all she could for peace.
“They thought they had the element of surprise,” Kathleen said evenly. “So tell your leaders to flee before they can be imprisoned—regroup, wait for another day. Tell your people to rise up, become so mighty that the gangsters will struggle to bring their swords down upon innocents on the street.”
When she looked up, the whole room was watching.
“It is very simple,” she finished. “When they come, be ready.”
They started to move. They started to pass messages, write notes, prepare telegrams for different cities in case the attack spread farther. Kathleen merely watched, sitting primly on one of the tables. There was some bubble of emotion stirring in her chest. Some strange feeling in realizing that she was not here because she had to be, because the Scarlets had sent her. In this space, at this time, she was not a Scarlet at all.
Perhaps she would never be a Scarlet again. She had spent all these years watching, mimicking, adapting. Making herself into the loyal inner-circle member, someone willing to die for the family. But she wasn’t willing—had never been willing. It had always been about maintaining whatever approach necessary to ensure order, but now order was gone.
Kathleen peeled her gloves off, scrunching up the rich silk fabric until it was balled in her hands. The Scarlet way of life was dead. The safety net was gone, but so too were the constraints. No more family members watching for the faintest sign of disloyalty. No more hierarchy and Lord Cai dictating their every move. All these years, Kathleen Lang breathed when the Scarlet Gang breathed. Kathleen Lang walked when the Scarlet Gang told her to walk. Kathleen Lang didn’t exist except to be someone in line with the Scarlet Gang, except to be the perfect image of someone who was worthy of protection and safety.
And when the Scarlet Gang faded away, so too would Kathleen. When the Scarlet Gang removed itself, Kathleen Lang halted like a music box ballerina—a dead girl’s name who spun for their eyes.
The gloves fluttered to the floor.
The Scarlet way of life was dead. Kathleen Lang was dead, had always been dead. But Celia Lang was not. Celia had always been here, biding her time, waiting for the moment she could feel safe.
“So how did you come across this information?”
The man suddenly came to sit down, his shoes stepping over the fallen gloves without noticing, eyes too focused on the frantic scene before them.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” she replied. “You can see it is true. You only have to send people out to poke around the corners of the city, and you will see the gangsters dressed pretending to be workers.”
“Hmmm.” The man’s gaze flickered to her now. “Your face looks familiar. Aren’t you Scarlet-affiliated?”
Celia stood up, fetching her dirty gloves and dropping them into the trash can.
“No,” she said. “I am not.”
Benedikt slammed up against the doors of the lab, blocking the exit with his body. Some paces away, a tired Lourens who had been awoken from his sleep was blinking in trepidation, not knowing why Roma was acting this way.