Foul Lady Fortune

The next day, Celia calls Liza and wants her to tell Rosalind about the real reason for the chemical killings. Before she can deliver the message, Liza picks up her developed photos and is shocked to see who the chemical poisoner really is.

At the end of the workday on Friday, Orion is called to headquarters while Rosalind does some last-minute spying before the party at the Cathay Hotel begins. She knows that a new shipment of chemicals has been delivered to the house on Burkill Road, so she waits outside to see who shows up to claim it. When someone emerges from the building, Rosalind follows, but the person she’s tailing is swathed in black. After a few blocks, Rosalind turns a corner to find the figure attacking someone with a syringe. She immediately goes after the attacker. The man on the ground is still alive as Rosalind struggles with his assailant. When she rips the attacker’s mask away, she’s shocked to discover that Orion is the chemical terrorist.

As they fight, he doesn’t seem to recognize Rosalind and manages to plunge a knife into her stomach—which snaps him out of his trance. Liza runs up at that moment, intending to warn Rosalind, but the secret is already out. Rosalind tells Liza to get the injured man to a hospital while she takes Orion home. By this time, he’s delirious, so she bribes someone to carry him back to her apartment.

At home, Rosalind gets a call from Silas. Covering for Orion, she reports that Haidi is the killer. Silas is then ordered to deliver this message to their superiors. Rosalind ties the unconscious Orion to a chair while she goes out to get some answers about the toxin in the vial. At a Nationalist lab, she seeks out a scientist who can analyze the compound. He says that the vial doesn’t contain poison at all: “‘I can’t tell you exactly what it is in such a short time, but I can take a guess at its effects: Aiding blood flow. Strength stimulants. Creatine overproduction’” (429). He says that the concoction is probably similar to what created Rosalind’s superhuman abilities.

At the other end of town, Jiemin weighs whether to move in and make arrests at the Cathay Hotel. Something about the facts that Silas has presented concerns him. At the same time, Liza takes the injured man to a hospital. While she waits to see whether he’ll recover, she overhears nurses saying that a man in a coma just walked out the door. It was Dao Feng. A few minutes later, the man Liza brought in walks away too.

Back in her apartment, Rosalind confronts Orion about his crimes. He seems sincerely confused by her questions and says he can’t remember anything after receiving the order to report to headquarters. Orion is alarmed that he might have harmed Rosalind and declares that he loves her. Rosalind is fighting her own suspicions. After her catastrophic romance with Dimitri that left the city in ruins, she’s cautious about trusting anyone.

Orion easily breaks out of his restraints as Rosalind reaches for a gun. He clearly has super strength, but he implores her to shoot him: “I would rather die by your hand than have you believe me a traitor. I would rather take a fast bullet than have us pitted on different sides of an agonizing battle” (441). Eventually, Rosalind lowers her guard and believes him. At that moment, Silas arrives to drive them to the Cathay Hotel. They scramble to get dressed and pretend that nothing’s wrong, though Rosalind says that they’ll pick up their conversation about the chemical poisonings later. In the car, Phoebe hands them communication devices to wear around their ears. She’ll monitor their conversations from outside the hotel. Orion insists that Rosalind carry a weapon, and he straps a knife in a sheath to her thigh as the two prepare to enter the hotel.

The couple enters the hotel with Liza, who is dressed as a waitress, ready to lend a hand. At ten o’ clock, the Nationalist soldiers arrive, led by Jiemin. All the Japanese suspects are arrested, but so are Rosalind, Orion, and Liza. Phoebe overhears everything going on inside the hotel and realizes that her brother and friends have been arrested. She tells Silas that they need to stage another jailbreak. While Rosalind and Orion stew in the same jail cell, Rosalind explains her past as Fortune, and Orion recalls the injection that gave him superpowers but can’t remember anything else.

A few moments later, Liza appears with a set of keys. She has escaped from her own cell and has come to let them out too. Downstairs, they find a room full of dead Nationalist soldiers. While they’re still puzzling over who attacked them, Phoebe arrives to spring them from jail. She says that the Nationalists are raiding the Burkill Road house, but nobody has been sent to the warehouse yet. Rosalind, Orion, and Liza head for the warehouse while Phoebe is ordered home with Silas.

The agents resolve to destroy the remaining chemical supply at the warehouse. They still aren’t sure who’s behind the experiments but don’t want anyone to benefit. When they arrive, Liza goes inside while the other two wait in the car. Rosalind talks about her past mistakes and how she wants to atone by making things better for Shanghai. Orion says that she can’t fix a broken city. He feels guilty for harming Rosalind. She says, “‘If I promise to save myself, can you promise to forgive yourself?’” (473).

Inside the warehouse, Liza continues her search for the remaining cargo. She realizes too late that she’s surrounded by sleeping soldiers. When an alarm sounds in another room, they all wake up. Upon hearing the alarm, Rosalind and Orion rush inside to help Liza. They take out a unit of Japanese soldiers. Just when they’re on the verge of being outnumbered, someone starts shooting from outside the building, killing several more soldiers but leaving the spies unharmed. Liza concludes that the Communist assassin Priest has joined the fight.

With all the soldiers now dead, the spies continue their search of the facility until they find the remaining chemical vials. Rosalind asks Liza to take one to her sister, Celia, to keep it safe in case they need to make an antidote. Rosalind intends to destroy the rest. Once Liza leaves on her new mission, a back door opens, and Orion’s mother appears.

Lady Hong was assumed to have left her traitor husband and retired into obscurity. However, it becomes clear that she’s the scientist behind the experiments. Although she originally worked for the Nationalists, her funding was cut, so she and General Hong approached the Japanese. Rosalind is horrified that a mother would turn her own son into a lab experiment. Lady Hong says that she did everything for the welfare of her family. She has perfected a new serum that will take away Orion’s headaches and render him unstoppable.

Rosalind destroys the crates and sets the contents on fire before Lady Hong can prevent it. In retaliation, the older woman shoots her several times and uses the trigger word “forget” to make Orion attack Rosalind. Rosalind stabs him in the shoulder and frees herself but watches helplessly as Lady Hong gives Orion a dose of the new formula. He is then told to kill Rosalind, but she manages to escape.

Liza arrives at the photo shop, intending to give Celia the vial. While there, she confronts Oliver and asks if he knew that his mother had turned Orion into a killer. He admits that his mother was involved in the chemical plot, but it never occurred to him that she might experiment on her own son. Sickened by the constant power plays of all the factions, Liza leaves without giving Celia the vial. Meanwhile, Lady Hong drives Orion to intercept the oncoming Nationalist soldiers. She sends him out to attack the group, and he mindlessly obeys.

Meanwhile, Rosalind staggers through the woods outside the warehouse until she collapses. The bullets aren’t being pushed out of her skin as they should be, and she isn’t healing properly. She’s nearly unconscious from blood loss when Jiemin and the Nationalists find her. Her handler explains that he arrested her only to get her out of harm’s way, but she charged right back in. Rosalind tells him about the entire chemical plot, and he advises her to forget about Orion because he’s a lost cause and the Nationalists can do nothing to save him. Rosalind is on the verge of objecting when she blacks out.

She wakes up in the hospital where the Nationalists have taken her because Lady Hong’s bullets had to be surgically removed. When she comes to, Celia is at her bedside. By now, Rosalind’s wounds have healed completely. Celia says that Dao Feng defected to the Communists and faked his own chemical attack. While Rosalind feels betrayed yet again by someone she trusted, she learns that more bad news is in store. Celia has brought copies of newspapers announcing that Rosalind Lang is alive, that Orion Hong is a traitor, and that Rosalind may be the infamous Lady Fortune. After Celia leaves, Rosalind receives a mysterious message: “I can help you get him back. Find me in Zhouzhuang. —JM.” (506). Rosalind doesn’t know who JM is, but she’s determined to save Orion if she can.

The next morning, Phoebe enters an orphanage that is a prearranged spot to meet spy contacts. As she sits in the kitchen, she’s joined by Dao Feng. He says that he didn’t know Orion was behind the killings. All of Dao’s activities were a smokescreen to allow him and two fellow double agents to escape from the Nationalists. Phoebe says she witnessed him faking his own chemical attack. Dao Feng realizes who Phoebe is: “[He] reached for a handshake. Phoebe extended her fingers, meeting his enthusiastic grasp. When he spoke next, his voice was filled with warmth. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you properly, Priest’” (511).