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Shiloh had been looking forward to a chat with Jack, even more so that the list of people he could trust had grown thinner and thinner. It would be good to have an ally, or at least to get some clues, like the missing blanks from the Circles latest scheme. He wandered into the labs, and grinned when he spotted Jack, making his way over to him.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Shiloh joked, pulling out a chair next to Jack and settling into it with a thump. “What’s up?”

“Don’t call me mister,” Shiloh said as he sat down, grinning a little. “It’s weird, I’m not that old.”

He observed him for a moment, the smile not dropping from his face even as Jack brought up unpleasant memories. At least he did it with a joke.

“Haw, haw, Hawthorn. You’re just a barrel of laughs today, huh?”

Shiloh’s tone was light, playful, even with the heavy note of sarcasm.

“Feels good though, you know. Warmer, that's for sure. And talking sure as hell beats trying to lift a pen that feels like it weighs a million pounds. So yes, talking, let’s do some of it. What do you want to know? You start with the questions, and I’m going to snag me some of that coffee.”

The machine wasn’t far, and he was still within earshot as he moved from his seat to pour himself some liquid energy.

"Why do you want to know, anyway?"

“Brilliant,” Shiloh echoed, laughing at the word for more reasons than Jack’s smugness. He turned back with coffee in hand, shaking his head. “You and Ian should hang out together more, you can be brilliant together.”

He was ready to sit back down, when he noticed Jack’s empty cup and instead pushed his own towards the Life hunter, and when to fetch another. He took a sip of it as he came back, and gave a grateful sigh as he sat down. Caffeine always worked wonders, it warmed him right through and made him feel ready to take on the world, or at least in today’s case, Jack.

“Understandable, and smart. You can understand, uh, my surprise, I guess, though, there aren’t too many people interested in it, everyone seems more than happy to turn a blind eye. Dead body in a wall, for god sakes, and people act like it’s an everyday thing.”

He still wasn’t over that.

“Afraid to poke their noses around. I mean curiosity killed the cat and all, quite literally, but to just sit idly by… we’re all doomed.”

It was a matter of perspective. Sure, he’d died, but he’d gained a lot of intel, and earned some new privileges as a result.

“So yes, I do want to know why you’re interested, because not many are, and of those that are, you never know who’s playing for which side, of course. The information has to come from somewhere, from someone, and sometimes the other side makes a compelling argument to those easily swayed.”

He was being cryptic he knew, but he didn’t want to incriminate anyone directly. Information was one thing, jeopardizing his mission, another.

“A grave error it was, but you’re right, being invisible has it perks. I egged Rep on, we sparred, and it was just a catalyst of one bad thing after another,” he continued, taking a small swig of coffee, needing its warmth at the memories this part of the story dredged up. The scars still crisscrossed his chest, though the ones on his face were fading, the one on his lip no longer so angry looking. “Everyone’s got something to prove, right? I honestly thought he’d back down, but that was my misjudgment. Anyway, long story short, I lost and died, I think. I’m not really sure how it works, even after being on the other side. Maybe I wasn’t really dead, but then that doesn’t make any sense.”

Scratching his head, he took another drink.

“Trying to reason it out makes my head hurt.”

“Oh my god,” Shiloh’s head was halfway into his hands but instead he switched to drowning his sorrows into his coffee. “Scratch that one, it’s better to keep you two apart.”

Jack got up and Shiloh watched, eyes following him as he wandered to the coffee machine for a refill. He swirled his own cup in his hand thoughtfully before answering.

“There’s casualties and then there are dead bodies mysteriously placed in walls. And of course, there’s worse, there’s whoever put them in the walls and wherever in the first place.”

He was watching Jack again as he sat down, carefully considering his words.

“Maybe sides was the wrong word, but loyalties certainly come into question when dealing with this sort of thing, you know? You want to know that you’re not going to be the next body used to make a point.”

He swirled his cup around some more, and smiled a little at Jack’s comment.

“When I came to on the other side? I freaked out, that’s what happened. You try staring into the face of the guy that killed you, then your own body as you try to get away from him and stumble right out of it. I wandered around for a bit, that first week I was so weak, I couldn’t do anything and the only people that could see me? The division leads, and I had the delightful pleasure of dealing with Caelius and Caelius alone.”

There was more, there had been the interaction with the shadowy figures, with the one wielding a scythe, but as he wasn’t ready to admit that to himself, he was hardly going to share it with Jack.

Jack was certainly being thorough, as Shiloh considered his next question.

“Caelius doesn’t do much of anything, and being a ghost isn’t as exciting or lucrative as it sounds. I explored the island a lot, got my bearings and then there was that… Thing that you guys were in, that Hunter Royale. But you were there, you know what happened.”

He was being vague, but he couldn’t help it. It was venturing into riskier waters now, Shiloh not sure he wanted to publicize meeting beings that had only ever existed in an alternate timeline, not sure if he should share the details of his mission or his brief interaction with Circe. He brought his cup to his lips again, taking a long drink to warm himself from that last memory. He could have been a permanent desk ornament, had Caelius not intervened. It hadn’t been out of any thought or sympathy for Shiloh, but he’d saved him nonetheless and it worked its magic in terms of allegiance, whether or not Shiloh liked or hated Caelius, he was beholding to him, the Death lead capable quite clearly of playing puppeteer with the strings of his existence.

Consequences, right? Shiloh wasn’t particularly interested in making more for himself but Jack at least seemed less inclined to treason, was honest about his intentions. Still…

“You pushed that hunter down, and used her like a bridge.”

He’d watched the recorded film too, and he hadn’t liked what he’d seen.

Shiloh opened his mouth to say something, but promptly closed it; how could he argue against that? Jack had saved not only himself and Finn, whom he considered friends but Ian too… And hadn’t Shiloh been guilty of doing the very thing he accused Jack of? He’d been there, and he’d chosen to help Ian, to save him when there were others that were just in much danger. It left a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he considered Jack’s words.

Jack was right, after all. Right, but Shiloh didn’t particularly want to hear it. He didn’t like that sacrifices had to be made, that one person dying could mean the greater good for many others. Every life was sacred, no matter how awful or damaged it was, it was worth protecting but that line of thinking had only found him misery thus far, had only ever made situations worse. He couldn’t save everyone, and he didn’t know how to come to terms with that. He still wanted to save everyone. He still wanted to believe that he could try but doubt had crept into what was once ironclad stubbornness, eating away at the edges of his resolve.

He’d noticed the look, and the mention of Ian but he wasn’t sure what Jack was getting at, and blew out an exasperated breath before answering Jack, resting his chin on his coffee cup.

“No, I can’t judge you, it’s not my place. But there had to have been some other way… That situation was horrible all around.” He rubbed his temples a little bit. “You and Finn weren’t the only ones trigger-happy, and at least I can believe you’d not done it out of ill-will. If whoever organized it wanted to show us how messed up this place really is, mission certainly accomplished.”

He scratched his head, thinking back. “Yeah, Circle, or Circles rather. That was after that whole thing went down, it had to be them, right?”

Shiloh had no allegiance to the Circle group, he’d made his position known towards them the minute he’d refused their offer and given the medallion to Caelius. Not that Caelius was saint-like by any means, but more often than not Shiloh had seen him let people live, even if it was less a digit or two, they were alive nonetheless. That was a better fate than what the Circles seemed to have in store for people.

He didn’t understand them, or their motives. They seemed to want to bring down Deus or restore it to former glory but none of that made sense when factoring in the seeming nonchalance they possessed about offing a large portion of the hunter population. Of course, they hadn’t actually died but…

“Say, what happened when you ‘died’, in there?”