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Lucky had been ready to leave for thirty minutes.

There was something about living so many alternate lives, briefly but vividly, that it was slowly destroying the essence of who he was and replacing it with something unrecognizable. He was only the sum of his memories, and the ones that belonged to him were easily crowded out without much of a fight in favor of more worthwhile alternatives. In every other universe, every instance of himself had a strength and a confidence he envied. What he was now, battered, broken, useless, was not worth preserving.

He didn't know who he was any more.

Everything continued to feel dreamlike, even after he had woken up some minutes after midnight in a haze of new memories of being another person leading another life. Time moved out of sync; his body moved while his mind remained transfixed. Before he knew it he had returned to his makeshift bed in full uniform and sat staring at a wall. Even with Shiloh calling to him from the other side of the door, he remained paralyzed in thought, more statue than hunter.

And then the door was in front of him. There was no running away from this, though. He had only begun to pay with whatever dignity and hope he had left. The key to the safehouse was in his pocket, useless as long as Shiloh knew it existed. Maybe they would get answers. Maybe they wouldn't. They were at the mercy of a murderer now. A week had only partially healed his hand, but the pain of moving it too quickly was still debilitating. Holding his weapon was still out of the question. With his good hand, he turned the handle.

"Oh. Uh, you didn't have to-" His eyes met Shiloh's for only a moment, but it felt like an electric shock. He turned away almost immediately, reaching up to readjust his glasses. Even he was chiding himself at his defensiveness. Every instinct told him to withdraw before there was even a chance for it to be used against him. He felt exposed, as if something deep inside of him had been carved out and examined by a hundred prying eyes - and he was at a loss for how to even explain why he still felt so strongly about it.

"Ve should get going..."

"Vhatever makes you feel better, I guess," Lucky commented dryly, juggling the cup in one hand. He gave it quite a few more seconds before he added, a little less abrasively: "Thanks."

In answer, he hooked a few fingers of his injured hand into his pocked and delicately fished it out with as little movement as possible. Worthless as it was now, it still represented good intentions on Sam's part. They understood each others' motives, which had been more than he could say about most of the people on this rock. She was every bit as enigmatic as she had ever been, though, even in death. It didn't help that it had happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly - there was a void of disbelief that never went away. She was only a text away, it felt like; and so vividly alive and close only hours ago in dream.

"Yes," he added, before secreting it away again. His fingers drummed against the side of the cup but he never lifted it to his mouth. Even the idea of putting anything into his stomach right now made him a little ill. His expression was set in a troubled mask, gazing toward the far edges of the hallways they navigated and never ever toward Shiloh. He was filled with a particular sense of dread as they approached, which twisted everything inside him into a cold knot. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to go. He didn't want to be like Shiloh, falling into line just to save himself.

But he was.

He finally dared a sidelong glance. "Did you finish the proposal? I have been having some... difficulties..."

Lucky held up the injured hand and wiggled the ends of his fingers for emphasis as best he could without causing the whole hand to seize up from the attempt. He gave the display a wry grimace.

Someone that looked very much like the Death lead was right behind them, holding a cup of his own, far more superior, coffee. He hadn't even actually said anything yet as he just stood there most likely wondering why two entirely insignificant trainees were blocking the entrance to his own office.

A begrudging nod in his direction maybe, or maybe an undiscerning grunt, both were things that Shiloh was expecting. Even a simple ‘good’ would have sufficed, but instead the look he received from Lucky was one of… Well, Shiloh couldn’t quite figure it out. Lucky looked surprised, terrified even. Shiloh frowned, shifting the report protectively beneath his arm. He had never been what anyone would have considered a genius, in fact his intelligence was painfully average in a lot of areas and he'd never even gone to college, but he had worked really hard on the report, like his life depended on it.

“Geeze, man, it’s a good report! Give me a break here, I’m not going to half-a** something for your highness.”

Shiloh was getting extremely good at thirty-second explanations. He was also getting extremely good at being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It took him a second to shake himself out of the stiff terror his body had locked into at the sound of the Death lead’s unimpressed voice, followed of course, as Shiloh dared to turn around, by his very unimpressed glare.

He decided to use his remaining twenty-nine seconds wisely.

“Sir, we have a lead on where Sam might have left off topside, and would like to explore it.”

He carefully shifted around the now extra cup of coffee, freeing up his arm so he could hand the folder over to Caelius, inside a report detailing the location of Sam’s apartment, the approximate contents, their proposal and reasoning for the mission, and a host of other things. It was very thorough, Shiloh had made sure of it, not wanting to give Caelius any excuse to revoke the life he’d given back.

"I am aware of her safehouse," he answered, really not wanting the dynamic duo to fill his time with information that he already knew. It was sort of like waiting for Allan to discover that breaking things equaled consequences, as both caused equal amounts of high blood pressure. "What I want to know is why this concerns you. If Sam carelessly left any further information at her safehouse, I want it burnt, I want all files destroyed. I want you to remove all evidence, and then, when you have finished such a ******** menial task, you may come talk to me about actual missions."

He looked down at his cell phone and when he looked up, the two were still this. This did not bode well for him. "Now get the ******** out of my sight or I will do it for you."

Exactly none of that outburst was reassuring, but the fact that Caelius had known all along about the safehouse made it a lot less reassuring after all, and made Sam's actions a lot more questionable. Maybe Shiloh had been right to bring it up after all, no matter how much Lucky had been resistant to the idea. It was still hard to reconcile the Sam he thought he had known with the one Caelius and his pink-haired accomplice tended to rant about. There was nowhere else to look for information, though - her room and office had doubtlessly been cleared out weeks before, devoid of evidence that Sam had been anything but a simple death hunter. They were going in circles, then; finding information on Sam wasn't a task at all, it was a punishment.

Lucky certainly didn't need to be told twice to leave. He allowed himself to be dragged by Shiloh, but continued to throw glances over his shoulder several times on the way out, as if at any moment the death lead might reappear behind them for an extra round of verbal abuse and possibly the unwanted separation of heads from necks with a glowing scythe.

It was only when they had vacated the facility entirely and half-walked, half-sprinted most of the way to the lighthouse that Lucky finally dared to speak again.

"That.. could have gone vorse," he observed, flexing a few fingers of his injured hand nervously. He didn't seem to be bleeding profusely from the encounter. Or dead. It was a good day. He continued to stare pointedly at the ground as he spoke, trying to find a path of reason through the anxiety still churning in the pit of his stomach. "Is better than a mission to fight something. Let's just get in and get out -"

- And not be reminded of everything the place stood for.

A newfound benefit of their status as Caelius's lackeys was how fast the portal techs scrambled to send them on their way at the mere whisper of their glorious leader's name.