Chapter 282: Keith

Mei stood with her back against the closed door and looked at what Liam had brought her.

Black trousers. White t-shirt. Both clean, both folded.

She turned the shirt over in her hands once, then set the thought aside. She needed to change. That was the only thing that mattered right now. The fact that the clothes had come from Liam’s hands was a detail she was going to file away in the same place she was filing everything else, the dark back corner of her mind where she put things she needed to function around without letting them touch her.

She stripped out of the skirt and top she’d been wearing since before all of this, which had long since passed the point of comfort, and pulled on the trousers. They fit reasonably well. The t-shirt was another matter, too wide in the shoulders, too long in the torso, clearly not selected with her frame in mind. She tucked it in as best she could, adjusted the waist, and stood there for a moment in the quiet of the room, looking at nothing in particular.

Then she reached for the door handle.

She’d barely pulled it open when the corridor outside exploded.

A body hit the metal railing directly across from her, loud and sharp and close enough to make her flinch backward. The door to her left had swung open at the same moment, and the person who’d just been thrown against the railing was Tommy, who was scrabbling for purchase with both hands and a look on his face that had gone well past surprised into genuinely frightened.

The one who’d thrown him was still in the doorway.

Young, maybe Rachel’s age, give or take. Blond hair, disheveled, eyes red at the corners in the way eyes get when someone has been going through something for an extended period and has run out of the ability to contain it. He had Tommy by the front of the jacket with both fists and he was not letting go.

Tommy grabbed at his wrists, fingers digging in. “Let…go of me!!””

“Where is she?!” The blond man’s voice cracked on the words with anger. “Where is my sister?! Tell me where Lucy is!”

“I don’t know!” Tommy shouted back.

It didn’t help. The blond man’s grip only tightened.

So he’d been locked in the room next door. Mei filed that away quickly, assembling the picture, another prisoner, kept separate, someone they were holding with a reason.

He must have seen her in the doorway because he turned his head, and the desperation in his eyes immediately redirected itself onto her with a new, desperate intensity.

“You!” He let Tommy go and came toward her. “Tell me, where is Lucy? Where are they keeping her? You must have seen something, heard something—”

“I don’t know anyone named Lucy,” Mei said.

“Like hell I’m going to believe—” He reached out toward her arm.

He didn’t get there.

Two forearms came from behind him and locked around his upper body, hauling him backward. The man who had him didn’t look like someone performing a security function and completely different than Tommy. He looked like someone who enjoyed having a reason to use his hands, and had found one.

Tall. Heavyset in a way that read as dense rather than soft. Tattoos covering both arms from wrist to collarbone, the old kind done in institution ink, uneven and faded in places. He had the eyes of someone who was clearly not entirely sane and had gone through prison definitely much like Williams.

“Alright, Keith.” His voice was low and unbothered more like amused. “Shut up. Now.”

“Romero!” Another man came from further down the corridor. “You’re going to kill him, that’s enough—”

The man didn’t even finished as Romero gave him a back kick right on his solar plexus sending the man on his knees and choking.

Mei was speechless seeing that, why did he just knocked up his comrade?

Romero instead smirked widely and shifted his grip, bringing one forearm up hard against Keith’s throat in a smooth movement, and pressing. Keith’s hands came up immediately, clawing at the arm, his face going red and then a deeper red, mouth working without producing sound.

Mei watched.

The reasonable thing was to step back inside and close the door. The safe thing was to look away and let it resolve itself without her name attached to any part of it.

But the man was clearly dying.

“Stop! Stop it. You’re going to kill him and he is a prisoner, right?! Otherwise you wouldn’t have locked him up inside a room! You want to explain to your boss why you choked him out in the corridor because he was loud?” She held Romero’s gaze when those cold green eyes came up to find hers.

Romero looked at her.

She looked back.

After Williams. After Gaspar. After holding their gazes. She’d found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she was becoming slowly accustomed to their threatening gazes.

Romero made a sound in his chest, something between a laugh and a dismissal and let go.

Keith dropped. His knees hit the floor and he stayed there for a moment, hands braced against the ground, dragging air back. The coughing came in waves, bent him forward, shook through him.

Romero looked down at him smiling.

“Small warning,” he said, to no one in particular, spreading his hands in a lazy shrug. “He keeps pushing. We keep offering him the same arrangement, stay quiet, stay useful, and nothing happens to him.” He glanced at the man behind him. “He doesn’t seem to want to learn.”

“Go to hell,” Keith managed, between coughs. He raised his eyes from the floor, red-rimmed and furious. “Go to fucking hell.”

“Definitely her brother,” Romero said, as if this confirmed something he’d always suspected. He reached into his jacket and produced a cigarette, the lighter following in the same unhurried motion. He lit it, took a slow, considered drag, and then leaned forward slightly and exhaled the smoke directly into Keith’s face, at close range, watching the reaction with a smile that had nothing behind it.

“You know your situation, little Keith,” he said. “You eat when we let you eat, you sleep when we let you sleep, and everything your sister is working her ass off out there to maintain, the arrangements, the civility, the reason you’re breathing right now, that all goes away the moment we decide you’re not worth the trouble.” He straightened up, tucking the cigarette between his lips. “So sit down. Eat. Shit. Repeat. It’s a simple schedule.”

He paused, eyes narrowing to slits.

“As for your sexy sister,” Romero said, blowing another cloud of smoke into Keith’s coughing face, “let me handle that sweet ass, little brother.”

“If you touch her—” Keith snarled, shoving himself upright.

Tommy stepped in fast, locking his arms around Keith from behind. This time Keith had nothing left to fight with.

Romero laughed, low and ugly.

“Touch her? Nah.” He rolled his hips in a crude thrust, hands gripping empty air like he was already holding her. “I’m gonna grab these hips and fuck her raw—day and night. You’ll watch every second. She kicked my balls once. Next time she’s licking them clean while you sit there crying.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Keith hissed, straining uselessly against Tommy’s iron grip. Tommy’s face twisted—disgust, maybe shame—but he didn’t let go.

Romero flicked his cigarette away. “See ya, Keith.” He waved lazily and strolled off into the dark.

Tommy finally released him.

“Fuck off!” Keith roared, shoving Tommy back and nearly collapsing. He caught the rail, gasping, rubbing his bruised throat.

“Just obey,” Tommy muttered awkwardly. Like he’d said it enough times that it had stopped being advice and become something closer to a reflex. He turned away and moved to the next door down the corridor.

Keith watched Tommy’s back coldly and he was pushing himself to his feet, jaw set, ready to follow through on whatever impulse was forming behind those eyes.

However Liam appeared at the end of the corridor like he’d been waiting for exactly this moment, which he probably had. The knife was already out and held.

“Alright,” he said. “That’s enough. Step back. Quietly.” He let his eyes drift sideways to Mei for a moment, the smile adjusting into something more performative. “Take a lesson from this one. Silent and cooperative. That’s the model.”

“Go to hell,” Keith said.

Liam’s smile didn’t move. He looked at Tommy, who had paused at the next door.

“What are you waiting for? Get her out.”

Tommy looked through the doorway with visible reluctance. “She’s not…she doesn’t look great. And last time—”

“Last time she jumped you, yeah, you’ve mentioned it,” Liam said. “You’ve been jumped by Emily how many times now and you’re still standing. Stop being a coward and get her moving. Gaspar will have both our heads if his pet doesn’t eat.”

Tommy said something quiet and sharp under his breath that didn’t quite make it to full volume. Then he stepped inside.

A moment passed. Then another.

Then he came back out, one hand wrapped carefully around a woman’s arm, guiding her forward as gently as possible but it was difficult.

Mei looked at her.

She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, though the state of her made the exact number difficult to land on. Her dark hair was tangled and unwashed, hanging around a face that had gone gaunt.

Bruises mapped her forearms in overlapping patterns, some faded to yellow and green, some newer and still dark. Her hands were the worst of it: the fingernails cracked and bloodied, the tips of her fingers raw and scraped, as though she’d spent significant time dragging them against a hard surface. A wall, maybe.

The woman’s eyes moved across the corridor fearfully.

Keith saw her.

The sound that came out of him wasn’t quite a word.

“W…What are you doing to her?” He asked shocked at first before he rose his tone. “What the hell are you doing to her?!”

“Shut your mouth—” Liam started.

“What are you doing to her I asked?!” Keith’s voice cracked back open, the control lasting about three seconds before it shattered.

Liam moved fast and without warning, the hand holding the knife swinging in a sharp arc, hitting with the pommel.

Keith went down, momentum carrying him backward, landing hard at Mei’s feet with his hand already coming up to cover his nose, blood appearing immediately between his fingers. He sat there for a moment, stunned, blinking through it.

Mei looked down at him wondering how many time he was going to get beaten up today.

Tommy meanwhile had frozen in place, still holding the dark-haired woman’s arm, watching the spot where Keith had been standing with an expression that had stopped being neutral and was currently doing several complicated things at once. When he looked at Liam, something in his face had made a decision.

“I’m done with this,” he said, low and tight. “I’m done with it, Liam. I didn’t sign up for—”

“You didn’t sign up for anything, that’s the point,” Liam said, already straightening up like nothing had happened. “You’re here. This is what here looks like.”

“Emily.” Tommy’s jaw tightened. “I’m getting her out. Once this whole thing with the Boardwalk group wraps up, I’m taking her and we’re leaving.”

Liam looked at him. Then he laughed out loud.

“Emily,” he repeated. “You want to walk out of here with Emily.” He shook his head slowly. “Have you looked at her lately? Actually looked? Gaspar’s the only reason she hasn’t torn this whole building apart. You take her out of here, she’ll have your throat before you hit the next block.”

“We are locking her up like she’s an animal—”

“She is currently behaving worse than animal?” Liam said with a glare. “Get your shit together.”

Tommy just glared at him. “When this is done,” he said, “I’m done.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He nudged the woman gently forward.

Liam turned the knife idly in his hand and redirected his attention to Mei and Keith.

“On your feet,” he said to Keith. “Or I assist.”

Mei looked down at Keith for a moment. Then she stepped past him and fell in behind Tommy without waiting to be directed. She heard Keith get up behind her and following with grinding teeth.

They were taken outside.

The daylight hit differently after the interior of the building, too bright, too open.

Mei kept her eyes moving, cataloguing automatically. The streets around them had been cleared, no infected, no bodies, just Callighan’s people stationed at intervals watching over.

It was nothing like Margaret’s community. The difference wasn’t just in the atmosphere, though the atmosphere was stark, no voices raised in conversation, no sounds of community life carrying from open windows. It was something more structural.

As they moved through the streets, doors opened along the route. More people emerged and joined the loose procession, some moving willingly enough, others with the same quiet coercion Mei recognized from her own situation. Prisoners, she realized, looking at the postures, the eyes. Held here for various reasons, under various arrangements, all of them walking the same direction.

The smell reached her before the destination did.

Smoke, and underneath it something that caught her off guard, something that was almost, against all reasonable expectations, appetizing. Woodsmoke and the particular richness of something hot and substantial.

They came around the back of a large house into a wide backyard garden that had been repurposed into something functional. More people were already gathered, filling the space in clusters, with the low murmur of a group of people who have been told to be somewhere and are waiting.

At the far end, a woman stood behind a large iron stove with a fire burning steadily beneath it, a heavy pot sitting on top. Two others flanked a long table covered in stacked bowls. The woman behind the stove moved without looking up at the crowd arriving around her.

Then finally when the dozen maybe twenty people were gathered the woman raised her gaze with a smile.

“Prisoners eat now.”

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