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Others flew wide, springing out with no warning whatsoever to latch on to whatever was nearest.
For two insects, the nearest host was Lourens’s beard.
The landing happened in slow motion to Juliette’s eyes, but Roma was already moving. By the time she had registered the horror of what it meant to see two little black specks disappearing into the tufts of white, Roma already had a knife in his hand. By the time she even thought to call out a warning, Roma took the knife and sheared through Lourens’s beard as close as he dared to get to skin, flinging the white hairs to the ground.
They waited.
The machines had gone to sleep. Now the labs were filled only with heavy breathing.
They waited.
Two insects surged out from the clump of hair on the ground. Roma stomped down hard, crushing them without mercy. A hundred more insects had been released into the night when they shot through the crack underneath the lab door before anyone could stop them, but at least killing two out of the thousands was better than killing none.
Lourens touched his bare chin. His wrinkled eyes were pulled uncharacteristically wide.
“Well,” Lourens said. “Thank you, Roma. Let’s move on to the vaccine you brought me, then, shall we?”
Twenty-Five
So,” Roma said, “may I warn you not to report back your findings about this facility?”
They were waiting now on the first floor, seated upon the metal chairs scattered along the far wall. At some point they needed to get rid of the corpse that lay in front of them, but for now it remained—its scrunched, anxious face frozen in death while Lourens poured the vaccine into little test tubes, squeezing various chemicals into some and placing others into the rumbling machines he had on the second floor, humming under his breath while he worked above them.
“As if your feeble warning would work,” Juliette replied. “You should know that by now.”
Roma slumped in his seat, his head lolling against the backrest. “Should I have blindfolded you?”
Juliette scoffed. She tapped her shoes rapidly, twisting the heel left and right like windshield wipers while her eyes did the same, darting from sight to sight. “Even if I wanted to play spy,” she said, “this information would be useless.” She eyed a particularly sharp silver thing coming down overhead like an icicle. It descended from a machine, hanging where the ceiling of the first floor meshed into the railing of the second floor.
“Useless?” Roma echoed in disbelief. His sharp tone drew the attention of his two friends, who had otherwise been staring off into space, seated on chairs along the perpendicular wall.
“Deemed unnecessary,” Juliette corrected. She wasn’t quite sure why she was carrying on this conversation. It wasn’t as if she owed him an explanation, and yet all the same, it didn’t seem like it would hurt to explain. “The Scarlet Gang remains in the age of traditional herbs. Perhaps one or two metal machines. We are nowhere near”—she waved her hands around—“this.”
Her parents would not care about these findings if she ran back with them. If she could even get their attention for a short minute, they would rather ask why she had been in a White Flower facility and hadn’t thought to burn it down.
Roma folded his arms. “Interesting.”
Juliette narrowed her eyes. “Now are you going to report that information back?”
“Why would I?” Roma had a sly sort of smile playing on his lips, one that he wasn’t letting slip out completely. “We already knew that.”
Juliette stamped her foot down in a fit of feigned anger, but Roma was too quick. He moved his toes away, and all Juliette achieved was a shock rocketing up her ankle.
Her ankle throbbed; a genuine snort of amusement slipped out. It was an acknowledgment that she had been bested on this small matter, that she had fallen back on her old petty tricks and forgotten that Roma knew those well.
“Can’t do that—” Roma said.
“—else you have to step on me in return,” Juliette finished.
At once their smiles faded. At once they were remembering the times when Juliette had giggled at Roma’s superstition, the times when he would have her hold still after she had stomped on his foot and gently—ever so gently—stepped on her toes too.
“We will be fated to have an argument if I do not return the gesture,” Roma had chided the first time upon Juliette’s confusion. “Hey—stop laughing!”
He had laughed too. He had laughed because the idea of an argument driving them apart had seemed so absurd when they were fighting the forces of their families to be together.
Look where they were now. Separated by a mile of bloodshed.
Juliette turned away. They lapsed back into silence, allowing the humming of the machines to roar and ebb as it pleased. Occasionally, Juliette heard a rare hoot from outside, and she would angle her head whichever way the noise came from, trying to figure out if it was an owl or a dog or the monster on the streets of Shanghai.
