Sam Sisavath - The Isles of Elysium

The odds were against him at the moment.

So what else is new?

He didn’t have time to do anything anyway, because the twin doors slid open as soon as they approached them, revealing two more soldiers in black uniforms standing in front of a bright LED lamp. They stepped aside for Keo and Jack.

The interior of the warehouse was massive, and shelves lined the sides. The high ceiling was reinforced with thick beams, and a dozen or so black birds watched Keo walking underneath them like curious spectators, as if they knew something he didn’t.

It wasn’t the shelves or the lone twenty-eight-foot yacht parked in its own slot to his right that drew Keo’s attention. It was Steve. He was standing in the middle of the room, his back turned, and he was holding a knife in one hand. Blood on the blade dripped to the ground where there was already more than one fresh pool.

Steve looked over his shoulder as Keo and Jack entered the warehouse. “Hey, how’d the reunion go? Or should I take reports of you walking around the neighborhood all by your little lonesome as not a good sign?”

“Sounds about right,” Keo said. “Jacky boy says you wanted to show me something.”

“Come see.” He turned around. “Goes to show you, you never know what you’ll find unless you make the effort to look.”

Steve stepped aside to reveal a figure hanging from the ceiling beams by a blue rope.

It was a woman, though it was hard to tell because her face was covered in blood and one eye was almost entirely shut, the flesh around it black and purple. She had short blonde hair and her lips were cut, her nose possibly broken, and Steve had cut ribbons into her shirt with the knife, leaving the flesh underneath dripping red with blood.

Jordan.

The rope was a double braid nylon, the kind used to tie up boats, and it must have bit into her wrists as they kept her suspended in the air half a foot off the ground. Thick rivulets of blood dripped down the sides of her face and onto the concrete floor, where they were quickly absorbed by the larger pools already gathering under her dangling boots.

Keo willed himself to take slow and steady breaths, pushed aside his accelerated heart rate, and took stock of his situation.

Steve, behind him, was armed, and so was Jack in front of him. The two soldiers at the doors would also be a big problem. He would have to kill Steve first, because he was closest. He could do that by taking the knife and jamming it into his throat, or go for the revolver in his hip holster. There were six bullets in the gun. One to Steve’s head-at this range, Keo couldn’t have missed if he had blindfolds on-then the second shot would take out Jack.

The two at the doors? Depending on how alert they were, he could probably take both out before they could return fire.

Probably.

He was being overly generous of his own skills, of course. But even if Steve or Jack put up a fight that lasted longer than a few seconds, he believed enough in his abilities that he could, reasonably, kill both soldiers with minimal danger to himself and Jordan, who would be hanging helplessly from the rafters throughout all of this.

And then what?

Assuming he could kill everyone in the warehouse who needed killing, that still left…all the soldiers outside. The two on the docks, the four at the front gate, and the ones still making their way out of the marina. They would converge on the warehouse as soon as the first shots rang out. Worse, they would have him cornered inside.

Not good.

No, shooting his way out of here, while dragging a half-conscious Jordan with him, was not going to work. It wouldn’t serve Jordan in any way, except possibly to get her killed minutes after rescuing her.

There had to be another way.

How?

Wait. What was that Steve had said to him when he first arrived? About how he viewed Tobias’s people and those he called stragglers?

“You see, I put people who haven’t gotten with the reality of our situation into two categories: The ones that don’t know any better, and the ones that are determined to make things miserable for everyone else. You belong in the former category.”

There it was. He didn’t have to convince Steve of a lie, he only had to convince the man of something he already believed.

“…the ones that don’t know any better…”

“Found her about a mile from here,” Steve was saying. “She had a nice hiding spot, too, but I figured she had to be nearby after what happened with Eric in the woods.”

Eric was the teenager from earlier, the one Keo had spared in order to give his message to Steve. He should have known the little bastard would mention that Keo wasn’t alone, that Jordan was with him. It had never occurred to him that Steve would have someone out there looking for her after he left the bridge. Steve hadn’t said a word about her, and Keo had assumed…

You ass.

“She wouldn’t tell me her name,” Steve said. He gestured with the knife, flicking (Jordan’s) blood back and forth across the floor. “Wouldn’t say much, really. But who else would be running around out there except your friend?”

“She’s not my friend,” Keo said.

Jordan blinked her one good eye, looking past Steve and at him. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw disappointment on her bloodied face.

“No?” Steve said. “She was with you earlier.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s my friend.”

“Then who is she?”

“Just someone who decided to come along to T18. She’s tired of living hand to mouth out there with Tobias. After I killed him, she asked to come back, too, wanted to rejoin the town.”

“Is that right?” Steve looked back at Jordan. “So why didn’t she come in from the cold the same time as you?”

“I promised her I’d talk to you about it first. Make sure you didn’t hold a grudge against any of Tobias’s people. She’s not the only one, you know. There are others.”

“How many more?”

“A handful.”

Steve smirked. “Can’t say I’m surprised.” Then he narrowed his eyes at Keo. “Not that I believe what you’re saying.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. Why would you agree to kill a man you barely know? Why would you come back here after I used you as bait? I don’t know why you do most of the things you do, Keo.”

“There you go overthinking it again,” Keo said, injecting just enough amusement into his voice to make it convincing. “I already told you, I’m not that complicated.”

He looked past Steve and at Jordan. Her good eye was closed, and she was bleeding and hurt (badly, badly hurt), but he hoped there was nothing wrong with her hearing. If she had been listening, maybe she would understand what he was doing. Or trying to do, anyway.

“He’s not wrong,” Jack was saying. “You saw that girl he was doing all of this for. Preggers or not, I’d probably kill a few guys just to get some of that.”

Steve grinned. “She’s not bad.”

“She was hotter before,” Keo sighed. “But she’s not going to be pregnant forever. Know what I mean?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack said. “My girls are glowing.”

“It’s probably because of all the potatoes you’re feeding them,” Steve said.

Jack shrugged. “Maybe.”

Steve nodded at Keo, as if to say, “Okay, maybe I believe you,” before turning back to Jordan. He cupped her bloodied chin and lifted her head until she could look him in the eyes.

“Look at me,” Steve said. “Hey.”

She opened her eye slowly.

“Is he right?” Steve asked her. “You were waiting for a signal to come in?”