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It had been almost a week since the invasion, but it might as well have been hours, from Lucky's perspective. He'd been mercifully unconscious for the worst of his recovery, and whatever arcane infirmary secrets were used to re-set his shattered bones into an approximation of what they had been before. It still hurt like hell if he moved the wrong way, and he was far from being done with runic bandages, but the worst of his physical injuries seemed to have been taken care of.

Emotional, however, was another story.

It would have been easy to dismiss some of the events as nothing more than a particularly delirious fever dream. Like Sam, and the entire helicopter incident. But he couldn't deny that her intricate runic torch was still there by his infirmary bedside when he woke up, piled atop the rest of his scavenged belongings. She had been here. And he was no closer to understanding her. Or Charlotte. Or any of this grail business and how absolutely vulnerable they had all proven to be in the face of it.

He hated feeling like such an idiot.

But, he realized, there was someone who probably knew a good deal more than he did about - well, all of it. Someone who'd also been at Charlotte's little murder party. He could get answer... or he could get stabbed in the other hand.

Part of him didn't want to push his luck - maybe Caelius had simply forgotten about him. But he couldn't possibly be that fortunate. If not now, Shiloh would probably just drag him there anyhow after what happened. And Shiloh didn't need to know everything he did. If Lucky's life was still on the line for information, maybe this wouldn't go as badly as he secretly feared it would.

He was a lot less confident when he was actually standing outside the death lead's door, carrying the runic torch at his side. The impulse to quietly knock had taken over before he could stop himself - there was no going back now.

Lucky stood awkwardly in the doorway for a couple seconds, glancing around nervously as if Caelius was going to jump out from behind the furniture at any moment. No swords pegged themselves into the wall behind him. In fact, the whole room appeared to be unoccupied. The only weird thing was a cluster of red flowers on the window.

It... wouldn't hurt to take a quick look around, right? No one would even know... He just wanted answers, that was all.

He slipped inside, taking care to shut the door behind him. His body was still tense and on edge; there'd been enough surprises lately to warrant being cautious. And there was no telling when Caelius would be back.

Moving as quietly as possible, Lucky made a beeline for the abandoned desk and began poking around for anything particularly relevant to his interests. He couldn't be terribly thorough, though - he was constantly glancing up and around him at the slightest sound or movement.

Lucky froze in the middle of his rifling, eyes fixed on the curiously labeled folder in the back. Someone was coming. It felt like time slowed down as his options presented themselves - take a look, or get the hell out of there while he still could?

This was a bad idea.

This was a really bad idea.

This was an absolutely, completely, unbelievably terrible idea...

... but at least he would die knowing something about what the hell they were up against. He'd almost died twice in a week, and it was making him a little bolder than he liked. It was too late to back out of the office now anyhow, and the idea of escaping out the window was not nearly as appealing after falling from a helicopter.

Taking a deep breath, Lucky grabbed the legacy file and quickly opened it like it was the lost ark of Indiana Jones.

Lucky nearly had a heart attack.

The ghostly woman was more than enough to get his full and undivided attention, and the Legacy file fumbled from his grasp. He didn't make any effort to try to escape her grip - it felt just as impossible as her presence did. Her smile wasn't enough to put him at ease - he'd been caught in the act, and they both knew it.

"Who-" he tried to ask, voice strained with absolute confusion, before being slammed over the desk and into the far wall in a whirlwind of papers. The real miracle today was the fact that his shield actually crackled to life when he hit things. Didn't stop him from hitting them though.

"Ow, my ribs." Lucky was still lying on the floor holding his sides when Caelius arrived. Of course. He quickly sat bolt upright, eyes wide, shedding some of the papers he'd been covered with. This was still an acceptable distance from Caelius's desk and he could work with it. He could still feel the death lead's gaze boring into him and his mind worked quickly to find a way to fill the heavy silence.

"There's a ghost in your office," he blurted out, then covered his mouth like he'd said something rather idiotic. He glanced around for any sign of her continued spectral presence. Several more papers began shifting around with the suddenness of his movement. There was definitely an internal struggle going on. Cautiously, he removed his hand again. "I mean - um - "

"That's not- that's not why I'm here, though," he tried to explain, articulating as best he could under the crushing pressure of expectation. "I'm here about Sam."

"She has the grail." Lucky continued to state the obvious. "The... grail that almost killed everyone?"

It was like talking to a brick wall.

"And," Lucky began fishing around under the layer of papers plastering the office and pulled out an intricately designed runic torch. It was the only proof he had of her presence on the island during the lockdown. Maybe it was nothing, but maybe it was something. "She was here, on the island, when that infection was spreading. Probably lied to Gale and Rep and brought the thing here herself. She gave me this. I've... got witnesses, if you don't believe me."

The life hunter fidgeted a bit, took a deep breath through his nose, and tried to hide bury how terrified he was for just a little longer

"I just... want to know what we're up against here. That thing that just happened, out there, with the virus? That was a disaster. These legacies are extremely dangerous. If this one can form an alliance with Charl- Sam, that means it's got a whole network of her people helping it do..." He waved his free hand around inarticulate. "Whatever it is it's doing. Infecting people. Manifesting. It doesn't matter what it's called, what's clear is it all ends with a lot of people dead. Including hunters."

Perhaps the only truly surprising thing was the last thing he said - more to the runic torch in his hand than Caelius, as he'd lost the will to maintain eye contact well before now. "I - I want to stop Sam."

The sound of teeth gritting was practically audible as he gradually lowered the weapon back out of sight. He hadn't even thought of that. Did they all know? “Y-yes...”

At the gesture, Lucky obligingly removed a generous handful of lost reports from where they had lodged in his jacket hood and placed them in Caelius’s hand without so much as a second thought. He looked like he was still deep in thought, or frustration, or both, staring mindlessly at the gaudy red flowers around the window and the lovely aerial view of a massive crater in the center of the courtyard.

Addressed once again, Lucky looked insulted and confused, visibly attempting to find an answer that could possibly satisfy Caelius's impossible demands. But that was the trick, wasn't it? It was impossible. Even Caelius had to walk away from Charlotte and her previous grail gambit. Nobody was infallible.

"Well... uh. If there was an easy way to stop her, you would have already done it yourself, sir." Fretting, he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, shifting his gaze from Cael to the desk in fleeting instances back and forth. "You told me I had to figure out how much Sam hid from me before I could do anything else. Well, I have, the hard way. You were right. She's a liar, she's always been a liar, and I let her lie to me for a long time. But not any more. This time I won't give her the opportunity."

Well, he couldn't really deny that.

Lucky visibly flinched. There was plenty of salt to rub into his wounds here. He felt a bit like the boy who cried wolf - who would believe him after everything he had said and done? Nothing could make up for his mistakes. He could spend the rest of his short life trying and never even come close to making up for his disloyalty. If there was nothing he could say, what could he possibly give up to prove he was serious?

"Whatever you want, you can - you can have it. Just name it."

It took nearly a minute before he actually answered, voice weak and resigned. Lucky's nails dug red lines into his scarred hand, one folded over the other. It was a dangerously blank check to be writing. Song raged in a discordant noise only he could hear as he prepared for the possibility of losing her again. He looked pale already, but somehow managed to pin himself to the same spot in front of Caelius's desk. For every price he could imagine - an eye, a hand, a suicide mission to the Sahara, the list went on and on - there were so many more he couldn't. All of them somehow equally mortifying to the part of him that still valued survival above all else. But he'd had so many chances to walk away. It had always been within his power to hide in life division's labs and turn a blind eye, leave the problems to someone else, put his faith in the system - and he couldn't. If he didn't do something, who would?

So here he was. Again. Only today, it was by his own choice.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but thought better of it. There was nothing else he could tell Caelius that wouldn't garner the same reaction. Empty words.

"L-loyalty? Or... information. No, um. Results. Success? Uh -"

Lucky could only call on his latent stubbornness in short bursts, and it was pretty apparent now that he'd run out of it trying not to faint.