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“Please don’t snap,” she prayed, pushing one end of the curtain between the pipe and the wall. “Please, please, please—” She pulled the other end out, and with the two ends of the curtain looped around the pipe, she held the fabric as if she were noosing a tie.
Juliette leaped off the balcony. The fall was fast and bumpy; by the time she landed on the streets, the curtain had almost frayed into two pieces from friction, but it didn’t matter—she took off running, her pistol aimed up at the sky.
“Get inside, get inside!” she screamed. She fired, the sound startling those who were not near enough to hear her call. By the time she was racing to catch up with the monster, chaos had already erupted in its wake, leaving insects scrambling upon street stalls and civilians clawing at their throats. Others—those who had not been infected—only stood by, unable to believe the sight that had passed them in broad daylight.
“Go!” Juliette shouted. “Move!”
Those who had frozen snapped out of it and scampered back inside.
Juliette kept yelling, moving without pause, her lungs burning both from exertion and from hollering so loudly. Onward and onward she persisted, and yet no matter how fast Juliette ran, she could not catch up to the lumbering monster.
In absolute horror, she watched it enter the Chinese part of the city. She watched it charge right through the crowds that were congregated here, watched it penetrate the clusters of protesters so swiftly that none of them realized what was happening until those first infected by the insects started to drop. Then the rioters stopped pumping their fists. Then they looked around, noticed Juliette approaching in their periphery with her arms waving frantically, and if it wasn’t too late, finally dispersed, taking shelter.
This city was bigger than a world unto itself. No matter how loudly Juliette yelled, the people one street over would be oblivious to the panic until the insects crawled over, burrowing into their heads. No matter how much she shouted, the crowds that raised their red rags did not care to listen until the monster barreled right by and their hands flew to their throat. They would drop—one by one by one. They were fighting for their right to live, but this city had not even promised their right to survive.
There were so many. So many goddamn crowds on the streets.
“Please!” Juliette cried. She crossed into the next street briefly, almost skidding right upon the tram tracks. “Get inside! This isn’t the time!”
The rioters paid her no heed. Rich gangsters were always going to tell them that it was not the time—why was this instance any different? Why should they ever listen?
Juli
ette could hardly blame them. And yet this meant death. This meant the pavement stacking up with bodies, piled atop one another, staining the whole city red.
The monster was rapidly disappearing up the other street. If they just looked, if they just walked over a few steps and looked, the rioters would see the path of destruction, would see the twitching bodies and the frantic bodies, the bodies hurrying away by stepping on the bodies collapsed.
Juliette tightened her fists, tightened her grip on her gun. She forced back the maddening tears threatening her eyes and cleared her throat, forcing the hoarseness away. Then she fired into the air once more and surged after the monster again.
It felt like a lost cause.
But no matter what, she still had to try.
* * *
Roma had hijacked a car.
To be fair, he really had no choice. And when the heir of the White Flowers marched toward you with a pistol in his hand, demanding you get out your car, it did not matter what important position you held in the Municipal Administrative Council—you got the hell out of the car.
“Faster,” he told the chauffeur. “I really do mean it, as fast as you can possible go—”
“You want us to drive over the people?” the driver asked. “Is that what you want?”
Roma reached over. He pushed on the horn and did not let go. The clumps of rioters that they passed by were forced to scatter, lest they be run over. “Drive!”
They tore through the Concession, taking as direct a path as possible. It was hard to gauge how much time was passing, how fast they were going in comparison to the running monster. He didn’t know if Juliette was managing to keep up.
But the chaos was starting.
Outside the car’s window, if it was not groups of angry laborers with red rags tied around their arms, it was ordinary civilians trying to get a meal in before the whole city was turned over by the Communists. Yet everywhere Roma looked, people were moving fast, running up to loved ones and telling them to hurry, ushering children into corners and peering over their shoulders, tasting the bitter sharpness in the air. The sharpness that warned of disaster coming.
“Up there, up there,” Roma said quickly. “Right to the edge of the Bund. Merge into the lane.”
The car came to a halt outside a foreign bank and Roma tumbled out, searching the scene before him for any sign of the monster. It wasn’t here yet. Nor were the protesters.
Good.
Roma aimed his pistol at the sky. He shot: three bullets in succession.
