Blood pooled around Harold's head. Lysandros gave his fallen friend a prayer to the Diadochi with a small nod, and then moved on.

With the traitor dead, Lysandros bolted across the basement, hugging the wall, most of the bullets continuing to turn his former table shield in the splinters. The smoke and noise and lights covered his retreat, along with gunfire from his man on the stairs. Lysandros himself fired off a few shots from his pistol as he approached the rickety wooden stairs at the other corner of the basement. With sharp breaths, his nose scrunching up at the smell of gunsmoke and explosives, he climbed up the planks, hauling himself onto the stairs halfway up. Shielding him was the big body of Spiridon, who was busy throwing Naval-issued smoke grenades and shooting an automatic Zhanghai rifle that conveniently went missing from a depot formerly belonging to that industrial corporation during the nationalization.

With one final dawn activation and one final smoke grenade, Lysandros and Spiridon scrambled up the stairs, back out into the street. The winter air blasted them in the face, but it beat the chaos below the bar. Pavlos, stationed outside to monitor any approaching threats, gestured that the coast was clear - the trio sprinted away from the streetlights and into dark alleys a few blocks away. As they arrived in the shadows and he caught his breath, Lysandros collected himself. “Thanks, you two. I’m glad you remembered the signal.”

His swollen face red from exertion, Pavlos chuckled. “The ear scratch? Of course. I followed you to the bar and when I saw that second scratch, I ran to get Spiridon. I thought it might be trouble, so he brought the big guns.”

Spiridon nodded in triumph, staying quiet as he reloaded the rifle.

“We need to move,” Lysandros explained. “When Tommy and Sloan get news they failed to capture me, they’ll be sending their men to clear the encampment. A mass arrest by the Army, most likely.”

“The Navy’s raid should take their attention off of us, right?” Spiridon asked.

“That’s why we were waiting to make our own move until the Navy raid began,” Lysandros muttered. “The raid begins in two hours. Everything depends on whether or not the Army gets to us by then. If they do-”

Spiridon cocked his rifle. “Then we fight.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Pavlos interrupted, the smile dropped from his face. “We have terrible news, terrible news. When we got back to the camp…Keti wasn’t there.”

Spiridon confirmed with a grim look on his face. “A couple of camp laborers said they saw Tommy’s goons isolate her in a storage shed. We...we think they kidnapped her right before the factory let out for the day.”

Sparks ran up Lysandros’s arm, his blood boiling. “Damn it. They must have captured her as leverage. She’s likely at Tommy’s hideout. When the Navy arrives, she’ll be caught in the crossfire, used as a hostage, or even killed outright.”

Red flickers struck the brick wall behind him, sending crumbling stone to the ground. “Pavlos, you lead the operation in the camp tonight. Spiridon and I will head to Tommy’s hideout to free Keti.”

“M-me?” Pavlos repeated, looking small in the shadows. “What makes you think I can do that?”

“Both of our men will help you,” Spiridon explained. “All you have to do is rally them.”

Lysandros placed a hand on Pavlos’s shoulder. “We’ve been over the plan countless times. All you have to do is see it through.”

It took a moment, but Pavlos found his courage. “Alright. Just please bring Keti back safely.”

Lysandros stepped forward, leading the trio out of the alleyway. “I won’t stop until I do.”

As Pavlos headed back towards the barracks, Lysandros and Spiridon clung to the shadows and alleyways until they arrived a few blocks away. A small parking lot housed a few trucks, one of them regularly used by that sympathetic delivery driver who always left the door unlocked and spare keys tucked in the sun visor. Under flickering streetlights, Lysandros drove off, Spiridon in the passenger seat, the automatic rifle between his legs. The curfew wasn’t too far off, so traffic was already dying down, but Lysandros drove slowly and carefully, hiding in plain sight.

The plan called for him to be at the camp right now. But he was a man on a mission, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. Pavlos will have to deal with any troublemakers back at the camp.

“Why do we have to get there before the Navy raid?” Spiridon asked. “I’m not opposed to storming the hideout, 'cuz we'd definitely kick some ass, but might be better to do so with a greater force than just a stud of a warrior and his scrawny friend Lysandros.”

“Navy’s gonna make a show of it,” the scrawny friend answered. “They want to let the junta know they can’t be counted out of any power struggle. They’re going in weapons hot and loud, and there’s a good chance Keti gets killed in the crossfire.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Spiridon frowned and ran a hand along the rifle. “So we gotta go in sneakily? That’s not really my style.”

“At least until we free Keti.” Lysandros smiled at his old rival. “Then we do things your way.”

Spiridon let out a grand belly laugh as the truck continued down the avenue. After they turned at a light, he grew more serious, tugging at his bushy beard. “I want to apologize for the other night. We both want what’s best for our people, and sometimes I forget that. I shouldn’t mock you or speak over you. We’re in this together.”

Lysandros found a small industrial lot a few streets away from the hideout to park. He caught both of their dark reflections in the rear view mirror.

“Until the end.”

The two men shook on it.

Tommy Typewriter’s hideout was located on a small stream running through the edge of the capital. In the distance, moonlight illuminated the dark outline of one of the major bridges over the West River that ringed that side of Narragansett. Rows of brick buildings were arrayed in front of it; eventually, the streets led to this little stream and the factories running along it that found it a convenient spot to dump their waste. With factories came workers; with workers came bars and saloons. Tommy’s joint was a three story brick building that overlooked the stream; the first floor was occupied by a tavern, the third floor by Tommy himself. The second floor - that’s where VIPs went, and that’s where they would likely find Keti.

Unfortunately, Spiridon had to leave the rifle in the truck - little chance of sneaking around with a weapon of that firepower. He wielded a snub-nosed pistol and handed over another gift from their friends in the Navy. Lysandros spun the switchblade in his palm; wrapped around its handle was a tiny charm for an ice spell. Once Lysandros put some Rddhi into it, the areas around any place he stabbed would freeze over.

Only a limited amount of uses, Lysandros supposed. Better make the most of it.

The music from the tavern already reached them from a block away. Free-flowing big band jazz echoed into the winter night; muscular bouncers in heavily cloaks guarded the entrance, allowing the prospective patrons of the long line stretching down the street inside one at a time. One drunken man was denied entry; when he tried to push through, red lights strobed up the bouncers’ arms, and that was enough for the drunkard to scurry off and for the entire line to take a step back.

“No use going through the front,” Spiridon whispered from their spot in the shadows down the street.

Lysandros eyed the adjacent brick building. “Let’s go around back.”

The pair wheeled around the dark and shuttered building, arriving in a courtyard on the edge of the stream. In the summer months, Tommy’s bar offered outdoor seating and eating - winter now kept everyone inside, but the back entrance was still there, just on the other side of a brick wall that lined the old courtyard. One of Tommy’s thugs, armed with a nightstick, patrolled along the wall, checking for intruders who had the same idea as Lysandros of going around the back. The pair stuck to the shadows, crouched behind a fountain that no longer spouted water, waiting for the guard to approach.

“Oi, Suzy,” Spiridon whispered. The thug spun around in surprise, raising his nightstick into the darkness, right as Lysandros crept up behind him. One hand around his mouth, one knife into the small of his back, and the guard fell with wide eyes to the ground. Lysandros dumped him in the fountain, blood pooling where water once did. With their path cleared, the duo arrived at the brick wall; Lysandros peeked over the edge.

The outdoor dining area had been cleared of any furniture, revealing just a large patio that eventually turned into grass and then stream. Two thugs shivered in front of a large wooden door; above them were the windows of the second floor. Spiridon unholstered his pistol and took aim at one of the guards.

“Wait for it,” Lysandros whispered. “The music’s picking up.”

This close to the bar, the music whipped all around them, trumpets and saxophones and rolling thunder in the form of drums. Through the windows, Lysandros saw nothing but darkness occasionally broken up by the red lights flickering up and down a naked cultivator dancing around a strip pole in the center of the bar.

He's an innovator, that Tommy.

The smaller of the two guards occasionally kept glancing back through a window to catch a glimpse; Spiridon shifted his aim towards the other guard.

The big band played a series of long notes, the red energy picked up, a piano joined the fray, and all the tension and build-up rolled along, threatening to burst like a dam. Spiridon slid his finger around the trigger. And then, as the moon shone on, the beat dropped inside the bar, the cultivator emitted a web of red lights, the small guard glanced back, and Spiridon fired the silenced pistol. The other guard’s head exploded in a fine red mist; by the time his companion realized, the next bullet was going through his head as well. The two bodies collapsed on the patio; Lysandros and Spiridon slipped over the wall.

“Guess the military training didn’t go to waste,” Lysandros whispered, making Spiridon grin. He had been a veteran of the civil war in Atalanta; being on the losing side sent him into exile in Arcadia. He, along with Lysandros, had been in Arcadia for years by the time the newest wave of migrants fleeing Rusalka’s war against Atalanta arrived.

The door was locked, but they didn’t need it. With his big frame, Spiridon hoisted up Lysandros, who stood on his shoulders. Lysandros, now eye-level with the second-floor window, unveiled his knife. He pushed a tiny bit of Rddhi into it; frost appeared on the edge of the blade. He jammed it into the window; frost-lined cracks spread along the incision. With the ice leading the way, he cut a square through the window, then yanked it out like a piece of cake on a…well, knife. He dropped the window down to Spiridon, then reached inside and unlocked the window. He slid it up slowly, but any noise as the window squeaked open would be covered by the band downstairs.

Spiridon removed the frozen window from the knife and tossed the weapon back up to Lysandros.

“I’ll hide the bodies,” he whispered, already spotting a place in the shadows along the brick wall.

Lysandros nodded. “And I’ll bring back Keti.”

He slipped inside the second floor.