The story begins in a rural warehouse in China in 1928. A lab experiment is being performed on an unnamed subject, who is given a series of painful injections. Afterward, the scientist in charge of the experiment tells the subject to “forget.”

The narrative then skips forward to September 1931. An attractive young woman named Rosalind Lang is on a train bound for Shanghai. She seeks out the compartment of a Russian member of the White Flower mob and offers him an expensive vase as a peace offering from her own organization, the Scarlet Gang. Mob activity in China has divided itself along political lines. The Scarlet Gang is aligned with the Nationalists. They’re fighting the Communists for control of the country in the face of Japanese incursions into their territory. The Russian says he’ll accept the vase. However, he recognizes the 19-year-old girl as the dreaded assassin who goes by the name of Fortune:

Fortune […] was the code name for a Nationalist agent. Not just any agent: an immortal assassin who could not be killed despite multiple attempts, who didn’t sleep or age, who stalked the night for her targets and appeared in the guise of a mere girl (10).