Alice leaned into the wall at her back and closed her eyes, while her nerves and her heart settled themselves. She refused to fear Luka Lavrin, because he snapped at her. He wasn't going to hurt her as long as his anger wasn't for her. All the anger belonged to Hadley, who had made the bad calls, who had failed Luka in order to keep him safe.

Hadley, who had yet to emerge from the hospital.

Alice sighed. "Why did I let you talk to him alone?" she muttered under her breath. It had been a bad idea, she had known that. Luka was going to wake up angry, but Hadley had insisted. She looked in the direction Luka had headed, and could still see his retreating form heading towards the gates. She turned back towards the hospital, and went inside. If Luka had hurt him, he only had himself to blame. And there was a part of her, the part that was still angry, who wanted to leave him. She just couldn't quite do that.

She found him in Luka's room, staring blankly into space.

"Hadley?" she said, gently. With the mood Luka was in, she would have understood if he was upset or angry. She even expected it. He looked more like he was searching for some emotion to feel, but came up empty. When she spoke, he looked up, and a frown built slowly on his face.

"He's a bastard," he said. Emotions washed back over his face, and he looked more tired than ever. Luka had cut him, somehow, she suspected. Left him bleeding. He looked like moving was an obstacle he couldn't quite overcome.

"I know," Alice answered. She wasn't sure she could imagine, really. She had seen Luka attack him before, but he had always seemed to absorb it. Like he expected that from Luka, like it wasn't really personal. He had always been able to move past it.

"What did he say to you?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Hadley shrugged. "It doesn't matter. We still have to help him."

He rubbed his fingers against his temples, slowly waking up, but looking all the more pained for it. She knew he had barely slept since Luka was admitted. She knew he had basically moved his office to Luka's room, so he could personally monitor his condition, and had barely left his side. It was hard to keep blaming him, when she saw how much he cared, but it was even harder to agree with his choices.

"We do," Alice agreed. She placed a hand gently on his shoulder. "It doesn't matter that he doesn't want our help, and probably doesn't deserve it. He's going to get it anyway."

He looked up at her, and she offered him a reassuring smile. Hadley nodded.

"He definitely doesn't deserve it," he muttered. Alice suspected the comment wasn't meant for her, but she still couldn't help but wonder what Luka had done to him.

"Whatever he said to you, it wasn't…" She wanted to say something comforting, but she didn't know them well enough. She didn't know their relationship well enough. She had no idea. "He just wanted to be left alone."

"You know," Hadley said. "For a long time, it was just Luka and me. Then these twins transferred in." Alice realized he was talking about their time at the Academy. She sat down on the bed, keeping her hand on him, while he talked.

"He had this thing, this curiosity about anything magical. Know your enemy, he said. Like everyone was a potential threat. He wanted to know if twins were special somehow. He was fascinated. Abel was such a perfect match for him. He was reckless like Luka, careless, but he was softer. Kinder. They made each other better, but they made each other worse, too. His sister, Lena, was to Abel what I was to Luka. We grounded them, made sure they never went too far. When that day came, when the Soul Eater was set free on the Academy, we couldn't talk them down. They were going to do it with or without us, and we weren't going to let them do it without us. So, when Abel dies, whose fault is it? Abel made the choice, but Luka pushed him to it. Lena and I both failed to stop them, and maybe we didn't believe in the plan enough. Maybe we didn't give everything we had to it, not like they did."

"Hadley…" What did you say to something like that? It was a ten-year-old wound that had never healed. Nothing she could say would make it better. "It wasn't anyone's fault."

"When it comes down to it," Hadley said, as if she hadn't spoken, "I will chose the few over the many. I wanted us to run. I wanted us to live. Luka wanted everyone else to live. Maybe I'm too selfish to save people, maybe that's why I can't seem to succeed."

"Hadley, listen to me." He twitched, seemed to return to the present, and she was reasonably sure she had his attention now. "Self-preservation is not a character flaw. Do you really think Luka would have done it, if he thought it would kill him? He's not selfless, he's just arrogant enough to believe he never has to make the choice between the many and the few." She hadn't known Luka for that long, but even infecting himself wasn't about making a sacrifice. It was about playing the game, so he could win.

"No, I know," Hadley said. "But that's not the point. After the incident, I realized we did everything we could. I thought I had come to terms with that, and moved past it, but then Lavrin tells me that maybe I was the weak link, and I've been sitting here thinking back, wondering if I didn't do enough. Maybe he saw something, and that's why he left. Maybe he couldn't forgive me for it, and I… don't know."

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He took a deep breath, and there was an audible shudder on the exhale.

"Hadley," Alice said softly. It was hard seeing him like this, hard not knowing what to do. Hadley was supposed to be the strong authority. The person, whose job it was to solve problems. She relied on him to be confident and reasonable, and that was exactly what they needed right now. If he started to doubt himself, she didn't know how they were going to make it through this. "That doesn't mean it was your fault."

Hadley shook his head. "He's right not to trust me. I wanted to save him, but I don't even know if I can."

"Look at me."

He acted on the command, and Alice looked at him firmly. She was only slightly startled to have the full force of his vivid brown eyes on her, almost amber in the light, and focused on choosing her words carefully. She studied him, trying to see all the facets of their relationship, but it was too complex. She had seen Hadley fear Luka. She had seen him fight to protect him. She had seen him love him. She knew there was betrayal, and anger, and hurt. All of it too vast for her to imagine. How would she feel if Teagan betrayed her? Or Nick? If they turned their backs on her for ten years without a word, without an explanation? It was inconceivable.

"Luka is pushing us away," she said. "You know he's just picking the words he knows will hurt the most, so he'll be left alone."

It wasn't sufficient, but it was the truth she arrived at. A truth she could believe, and hoped Hadley might too.

"I know, but I also know he doesn't lie."

"Prove him wrong, Hadley. We can't do worse than not trying at all."

He startled at the words, and Alice saw the lingering pain in him. She had said the wrong thing.

She didn't like this Hadley, the one not in control. This Hadley was a minefield of pain, and she had no idea how to navigate it.

"Right," Hadley said. His hands clenched into fists in his lap. Alice shifted her hand to his forearm, hoping he wouldn't need anything else from her to find his way back. He breathed slow and deep, and seemed to relax. "Okay," he said. This time he sounded more like himself. Like he knew what to do.

"Give me your phone."

Alice unlocked it and handed it over, no question. "His things are in the bedside table," he said, as he tapped away at the screen.

Alice opened the drawer, which held a phone, a set of keys, a black marker, a pack of cigarettes, a plain black Zippo lighter and a credit card.

"That's it?"

Hadley shrugged. "Everything we found in his pockets."

He didn't even carry ID. Would he even be identified if he died, or would he just disappear? Alice shook the thought from her head, gathered his possessions, and stuffed them into the crossbody bag she had slung over her shoulder. It had taken nearly a day for Luka to burn through the sedation, once they stopped it, which spoke volumes about how weak he had been. She had wanted to stay by his side until he woke up, but Hadley had insisted that he would contact her when he started coming out of it, so she had managed some hours of sleep and a change of clothes. Hadley handed her phone back to her. It was open on a map, with a little red dot moving slowly away from the Academy.

"Find him. Bring him back, but don't bring him to me. Just find out what he needs and tell me. I'll do whatever I can to help, but all communication goes through you now."

Her eyes flickered back to Hadley. "Do you really want him to know about the tracker already?"

"Say you were shadowing him. If he doesn't buy it, we'll take it from there."

Alice nodded, following the path of the dot on her screen. He didn't have enough of a head start for her to see where he was heading. He was still on his way to the station, where he would make his first jump. She considered the marker in her bag, and wondered how he was planning on getting anywhere.

"I'm on it," she said. She paused, watching Hadley one last time before leaving. He still looked damaged, but it wasn't like pointing that out was helpful. She suspected he needed time to put himself back together, and she was going to leave him to it, making a mental note to check up on him later.

She turned away, and left the hospital.

She checked the map, even though there was really no point. He was still maybe five minutes away from the station, at which point he would have to go to North Station. His path became neither relevant, nor interesting, until after that point. She was nearly half-way to the station herself, when she started paying attention. After North Station, he appeared at the Government Center station. At first, Alice assumed he was heading back to Mutiny for some reason, but he was going south. If he was going back to the restaurant, he could have jumped to the China Town station. She followed his progress, as he walked for about five minutes and then stopped. She stopped and frowned at the screen.

He was in a shopping district, surrounded by clothing retailers. Which might have made sense, except he had no money, and the building the dot seemed to settle inside was, as far as she could tell, an apartment building. She knew it wasn't his apartment, unless he had more than one. She hurried the rest of the way to the station — North Station was written on the wall in blood, because of course he would do that — and followed him to the building.

When she arrived, she found herself in front of a massive glass tower, rising far into the city skyline. Doormen and valets were standing at attention outside the building, idly chatting while waiting to be needed.

She was hesitant to walk inside. There were too many people she needed to get past, and no clear idea of how to do it. Instead, she consulted her map and found a nearby cafe, where she settled in to wait. She hoped that whatever errand he had there was quick, and she'd be able to get to him without trying to get inside.

After more than an hour had passed, the coffee and cookie she had bought were long gone, and she couldn't justify staying much longer. The dot stubbornly refused to move. She sighed and left her table. She could do this. She was resourceful. She could be charming, if she had to be. She entered the building, trying to look like she belonged. Of course, that illusion quickly shattered, as she stepped inside the building. The floors were bright and glossy white, the walls paneled in dark wood. To her left was a seating area in delicate creams and dark browns. She stepped further inside, and came across a desk with a concierge standing behind it, but it was okay. She had prepared for this.

"Hi," she said, smiling politely. "I'm looking for Luka Lavrin."

"He's not a resident," the man said. He had a Russian accent, heavier than Luka's.

Alice was slightly thrown off by his answer. He hadn't said he didn't know the name, and now she had to figure out how she could know he was here, if she hadn't followed him.

"Oh, no. I know," she said. "I'm a colleague, and he wasn't at home. So, I hoped I might catch him here instead." It was a gamble. She had no idea why he would be in this place, what he could possibly be doing here. Especially if he wasn't a resident, but he had to know someone who was.

The man looked at her with narrowed eyes. "One moment," he said. He picked up a phone, and Alice waited as the call went through.