Kingdom of Without

When Zhong Ning'er takes the job, she expects a smash-and-grab burglary she's doing to make rent and help out a friend.

What she doesn't expect: a sad-eyes army boy who dreams of insurrection, a former rebel leader trapped inside a secret lab, a group of aspiring revolutionaries who are first collaborators, then compatriots, and then, perhaps, friends.

But this is Beijing, nearly a hundred and fifty years after General Yuan Shikai successfully declared himself emperor in 1915.