Chapter Text
1935
The Shanghai nightclub growled at my feet, but I was ready for it. My stocking seams were straight, my lipstick was combat ready, and I was packing cleavage that could fell an ox at twenty feet.
I only had to do one thing: find the damn bloody man I was supposed to meet.
It was a bit harder than expected. The room was packed. Every table was filled and other patrons to the club milled about the room as waiters pushed through them. There was a larger congregation by a small stage where some American actress was doing a rendition of Anything Goes in Mandarin.
So I applied the tactic I always did when looking for rich criminals with their hands shoved deep in every legal and illegal business pot in half the country; look for the biggest goons.
There were a pair over in a secluded corner, standing back behind a table flanking one particularly skivvy looking man who sitting with a couple other people, the king of the criminal underbelly of Shanghai and the man I had the unfortunate displeasure to get stuck in the temporary employment of.
“Dr. Song,” the man said as I neared his table and took a seat.
“Lao She,” I responded giving him my best smile and my bluest eyes, “How are you? Still on top of the garbage heap I see. You’ve put on a couple of pounds though.”
This earned me a dark glare from Lao. It’s always so funny when people think they can physically threaten me.
“So is it true, Dr. Song? You found Nurhachi?” Lao asked.
“Sure I found him. But I had a little trouble last night. Somebody tried to slit my throat,” I looked pointedly at the young man sitting to Lao’s right, specifically his thickly bandaged hand, “It was dark, but I think one of your sons tried to get Nurhachi without paying for him.”
The man to Lao’s right, his son, whatever his name was, funnily enough there hadn’t been time for introductions the previous night, growled at me. He looked ready to pounce across the table at me. Apparently he hadn’t learned his lesson.
Lao silenced his son before saying, “You have insulted my son.”
It was my turn for a dark glare, “Next time, I’ll cut off more than his finger.”
“Dr. Song, I want Nurhachi,” Lao said, pulling out wad of cash out of his jacket. He placed it on the lazy Susan on the middle of the table and spun it around till the money was in front of me.
“As I recall, the deal was considerably more,” I told him and spun the money back towards him.
Suddenly, a short, spunky looking brunette woman with wide eyes came up to the table. She certainly wasn’t local.
She looked me up and down in curiosity before turning to Lao and saying in a slight Northern accent, “Aren’t you gonna introduce us?”
“This is Miss Clara Oswald,” Lao said to me, “She is the English tutor to my younger children. Miss Oswald, this is River Song, the famous archeologist. Dr. Song found Nurhachi for me and is about to deliver him. Now.”
The threat of the last word was punctuated by one of the men behind Lao removing a gun from inside his coat jacket. Miss Oswald didn’t seem to notice it.
“Well I always thought archaeologists were funny little men looking for their mummies,” she said.
I grabbed a steak knife in one hand and pulled Clara into me with the other. I held the knife against her where Lao could clearly see.
“I was kidding,” she said, “Can’t you take a joke?”
“Put the gun away,” I said to the stooge in the back. Lao nodded at him and the man followed suite, “Now I suggest you pay me what you promised, or your girlfriend here is gonna teaching angels next.”
“Oi, I resent that,” Clara said, “I already have a boyfriend back home, thank you.”
Lao took out ten gold coins and placed them by the cash, spinning it around to face me again. I looked intently down at it, missing the crucial detail of someone pouring something into my drink.
“Try again, Lao. The deal was more.” I spun the money back towards him.
He pulled out a palm sized diamond and placed it down, spinning it back towards me.
“Whoa,” I heard Clara say.
I smiled, “You see, Lao, with a bit of persuasion, even you can be an honest fellow.”
I released Miss Oswald, who leapt up and away from me. I raised my champagne glass in toast and drank from it to seal the deal.
Mistake number one.
Lao and his men immediately started chuckling menacingly. Lao spun the reward back around to him.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
He pulled out a small vial of dark bluish-green liquid.
“What’s that?” Clara asked.
“This is the antidote for the poison you just drank,” Lao said looking at me and laughing.
Suddenly, everything shifted out of focus. It felt like somebody turned the heating up by a hundred.
“You know what, I think I need to use the bathroom. If you don’t mind, I’ll just-” came a voice from beside me, Clara.
“Sit!” Lao told her sharply and she quickly sat back beside me in terror, “Now Dr. Song, you give me Nurhachi, I give you the antidote. The poison works fast Dr. Song. Where is Nurhachi?”
I pulled a large ornate jar out of my purse and placed it on the table.
“Small fella, isn’t he,” Clara said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Inside are the remains of Nurhachi,” I explained, “the first Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty.”
Lao opened the container and looked at the grey ashes inside, “At last, I have the ashes of my sacred ancestor.”
“The antidote, Lao.” Lao ignored me and continued gazing at his pile of ash.
I could tell he had no intentions on giving me the antidote, not now that he had his precious jar of dust. It was about time to bring in the cavalry.
I knew full well that this meeting could go wrong, so I brought a little back up. A friend of mine, Wu Han, came disguised as a waiter and now came up behind me with a gun hidden under his waiter cloth pointed straight at Lao.
“I like the service here,” I said smugly, “Now Lao, be a dear and give me the antidote.”
I reached out for the vial which Lao was handing over with a heavy frown.
There was the sound of a muffled shot and I yanked back before grabbing the vial. Wu Han stumbled beside me as one of Lao’s goons waved his gun with a silencer on it at me, the one he just shot my friend with.
One of the goons came over and pulled Wu into an empty seat beside me.
No one in the club had noticed anything at all.
“Wu Han, listen, I’m gonna get you out of this,” I told him pleadingly.
“Not this time, my friend,” Wu said, smiling bravely, “I followed you on many adventures, but into the Unknown Mystery, I go first, River.”
He slumped forward.
God, I talked him into this. He’s dead because of me.
“Don’t be sad, Dr. Song. You will soon join him,” came Lao’s smug voice.
The next bit’s a hazy blur, fueled by anger and the poison, but the next thing I knew, the table had been flipped, along with Nurhachi, who lied scattered across the floor. A flaming skewer was lodged in Chen’s chest. Clara it seems was wise and had gotten the hell away.
The people in the club had certainly noticed this.
The room was pandemonium, being increased by Lao’s goons taking their guns out in the open. Not even the little corner we were in was safe, with everything that had been dumped off the table when it flipped being shuffled through the crown.
The antidote was nowhere to be seen.
One of Lao’s men came up behind me and I flipped him over onto the table before running off.
The world spun around me as I stumbled across the room. I couldn’t fight the poison and run for my life too.
I found myself by a large gong over near the stage area, no longer sure of what was happening. Everything was a daze, everything that just happened a total blur.
Suddenly, I felt myself being tugged down behind the gong.
“Blimey, standing there, you’d think you’d want to be shot,” came the voice that had pulled me down. I had to focus for a moment before I could see who it was; Clara.
“Antidote,” I muttered weakly, “…need antidote…”
“Oh, you mean this antidote?” Clara said pulling the blue-green vial out from her bodice.
I stared at it stunned for a moment before yanking it from her hand and pouring the contents of it down my throat. It tasted like burnt onions.
“You could say thank you. I didn’t have to save that for you. Especially after you threatened me and stabbed a hole in my best dress.”
“Then why did you?” I asked, my vision clearing.
“Well, Lao just seemed like the bigger creep at the time. And really, despite that, I didn’t think you deserved to die. And I had no idea that he was whatever this is, I just teach his kids Shakespeare. And I was gonna quit, too. That’s the only reason I agreed to come to this stupid party, ‘cause I was gonna resign. ‘Cause his kids are really rude and he’s got this creepy thing for me and I think he wants to make his mistress or something and I have a boyfriend already and he has weird personal space issues and I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
“A bit, yeah,” I said as I stood up a moved over to a statue by us. It had a couple of real swords placed in its hand, one of which I pulled out.
Several men with very large guns came running towards me, preparing to shoot.
“What are you doing?” Clara asked.
“This,” I responded, swinging the sword over and severing the gong from its hold, “Get ready to run.”
I swept back behind the gong as the men began shooting. Large dents popped into it as I pushed it and Clara across the room towards a large window on the nearest wall.
“Hold on!” Clara shouted over the noise seeming to get what I was about to do, “We’re four stories up!”
The gong rolled into the window, shattering it, and our momentum carried Clara and I out of it.
Our fall was broken as we crashed through about three awnings. We crashed through the roof of a convertible, which in an unprecedented amount of luck for me that night, happened to be mine.
“That was not fun,” I heard Clara say hoarsely as I scrambled over into the driver’s seat and started the car in time for gunned men to run out of the building.
I sped off before the men could get what was happening. They weren’t as slow as I had hoped, though, because I could already hear cars speeding after me.
“What are you doing?! I ain’t going with you,” Clara shouted from the back.
Gunfire shattered the back window.
“Nevermind! Take me with you!” She scrambled up over into the passenger’s seat beside me, pulled my bag up off the floor in front of her and into her lap and asked, “Where are we going anyway? And did we just steal this car?”
“No to the latter, and we’re going to Nang Tao airfield. I’ve got a getaway flight to Siam booked,” I answered.
The only thing Clara said next was repeated shouts of ‘turn’ as a car with a large machine gun poking out of its passenger side window veered out in front of us.
It was a long chase. I crashed as few of the chasing cars as well as a few bystanders vehicles, but eventually after much twisting and turning, we out stripped them and made it to the airfield I wanted. Namely, we drove through its gates all the way to the plane I hoped would take us away from here.
I skid to a halt and Clara and I left the car, met with the airport security.
“No, no, they’re alright! Let them through, please,” as another friend of mine came over.
“Thanks Webber,” I said.
“Dr. Song, this is positively the last time our airline can hold a plane for you,” he responded.
“And you are so wrong,” I replied with a laugh.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and I looked over to see Clara as the one doing it.
“This is all very touching,” she said nonchalantly, “But we have company.”
She pointed over to a fence about forty feet away where a car had pulled up at. And exiting the car was Lao himself.
“Well, there’s nothing he can do now that we’re here. He’s outmatched now,” I said reassuringly, “But it will probably be good if we got in the plane now.”
“That will not be a problem,” Clara said and rushed off to the plane Webber directed us to.
I followed into the plane, but before I could shut the plane door behind me Clara pushed by me and stuck her head out the door.
“I quit!” she shouted at the top of her lungs before going back in.
I laughed as I closed it and the plane started to move forward. Now I could relax, safe in the knowledge that there was nothing else Lao could possibly do to me.
Mistake number two.