The group only managed to relax once they'd found the perfect location to hunker down for the night. Mostly intact, a good distance away from the Thames, and most importantly completely abandoned, the old storage warehouse they'd settled on was a godsend for them after the mad scramble they'd made to cross into Walworth.

After a scare like that, everyone agreed that they needed a good night's rest. The day had already dragged on longer than they'd wanted it to, anyways. So, while everyone else settled into the routine of setting up night watches, unfurling bedrolls or barricading unwanted entryways, Henry himself found himself with a new, extremely important task to handle on his own.

Wrangling Future Suit Zarya so that it didn't pull some stupid stunt for the third time in as many days.

"Grh! Either get in the bag already, or find some other container you like better!"

"Never surrender!"

It was a duel for the ages. One of the toughest opponents Henry had ever faced. Not because of sheer life-threatening danger, of course, that bar seemed to only rise higher with each passing day. But in terms of sheer back-and-forth, nailbiting challenge…

Yeah, there was no topping his current struggle against the squirming little bugger. It was remarkable how tricky it was to even just maintain a half-decent grip on it.

"Guess it would be too much to work with me on something for once, huh? Just have to cause problems no matter what? Is that it?"

"I fight so that others may stand!"

"Stop with the canned TV quotes already!!"

Their evenly matched struggle raged on for many minutes and many seconds. It might as well have been an eternity to Henry, as neither side seemed willing to - or even able to - back down. Just outside the garage bay doors of the fenced-off warehouse, the advantage changed hands between the two as frequently as one might check their watch. As it ground on with no signs of stopping, every so often one of the others would check in to see if they were both still at it. Typically to watch in amusement for a while before getting bored and wander off to bed.

Their very last visitor, however, caused the tide to shift significantly. In that it managed to take them both by surprise.

Instead of arriving from somewhere inside the storage facility, this figure came from just outside the gates, like a specter appearing in a graveyard. Both he and the toy stopped to stare at the newcomer, awestruck for a moment until Henry came to his senses first and used the chance to stuff it in the bag while it wasn't paying attention. Ignoring the muffled struggle that came from within right after, he could consider one problem solved, for now at least. Glancing back up, the silhouette approaching put him more and more on edge. His hand twitched discreetly towards the enchanted revolver.

Then the cloud parted and the figure inside became immediately recognizable, after a brief surge of misplaced panic on Henry's part. From out of the mist, the copy who'd left himself for dead in the river tunnel emerged, limping forward with one leg while clutching a bloodied cloth wad to his torso.

It was his deaf copy, seemingly returned from beyond the grave. Battered, bruised… shirtless…? But very much alive.

Now that I think about it… Henry realized as both of them looked up from their stalemate. I never did get a vision about anything like him dying, did I?

The clone ambled forwards, wheezing like a smoker with black lung and bearing signs of serious bruising on his trachea. Seeing the sorry state his counterpart was in, Henry had only one question on his mind in that moment.

"How the hell did you make it out of there alive?!", he mumbled to himself.

It's a… *hhhk-* a long story."

When the duplicate responded flawlessly to his half-whispered rhetorical question, Henry's eyes widened even further in surprise. In contrast, the duplicate continued on like nothing had ever happened.

"But, there's a few things that's come out of this that you all should know about."

Henry returned a befuddled expression. "...Really?", he asked. "How so?"

He immediately dove into retelling the events that went down, not even bothering to sit down despite looking like a dead man walking. Touching briefly on his interactions with the cat, how it had somehow warmed up to him, the subsequent fight with the Constable as well as his miraculous recovery afterwards. All of it came forth, each scenario somehow even less believable than the last. And yet, the proof of the matter stood right before him.

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To make a long story short, he had no idea how he was still alive. His wounds should have been fatal a half hour ago, by his count. Add onto that the fact that they were still there in the first place, and it seemed to Henry that he was looking at a medical miracle at work. Maybe Layla's unfounded worries about zombies hadn't been too far off the mark, after all.

"Well… that's certainly not how I expected things to play out," was all he could decide on the matter.

"Agreed," the duplicate concurred. "But there's one other thing I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh?"

"Mrrrran."

Henry nearly jumped out of his shoes as Comet announced his presence with authority, wandering out from behind a tree planted in the parking lot. When the hell had that happened?!

"Since it decided to follow me home… can we keep it?"

His jaw dropped to the floor at the audacity of the question.

"...Henry," he responded calmly to the clone, pulling out the oft-bypassed first name for this particular occasion.

"Yeah?"

"...Have you gone completely MAD?!"

"What? He's not so bad, once you get to know him…"

"That's besides the point!" Henry gesticulated wildly as his voice raised higher. "Even if he's as friendly as you claim, the fact of the matter still stands that none of us are comfortable risking all of us at once. Sure, Comet might like you now, but if that changes? Death. For you, me, and likely everyone else in the vicinity. Maybe later, we can consider it, but right now-"

His rant came to an abrupt halt. No particular reason, just his train of thought went off the rails and the right words eluded him in the moment. The duplicate nodded along, as if he had expected this answer from the very beginning.

"I figured it might be something like that," he spoke sullenly. "But, it was worth a shot, I thought. There was always an outside chance you might agree, and right now I… I think I kind of need to stick with him just to not die."

Henry gave the cat another appraising glance. Seemingly unaware of the nature of their conversation, it busied itself with sharpening it's claws against the trunk of the tree it had hidden behind.

"If that's how it has to be, so be it," the clone decided. "I only have about a day left anyways, and until then it's probably better if we stay separate from the rest of you. Just… promise me you'll give him a chance, next time?"

Wait… he's deciding to stay with the cat, then?

To him, this seemed like a rather perplexing move. Sure, in terms of pure logic he got to live longer that way, but Henry wasn't a stranger to dropping out of the race early. This felt more like there was some sort of emotional attachment involved. Something like this hadn't happened since… Well, since he'd first realized that value drift was possible.

It wasn't a common phenomenon for him. But, every so often, when a strange set of circumstances occurred to just one of his copies by themselves, that experience made them shift their actions ever so slightly away from the norm. Most of the time, this was just an odd quirk that carried out for a few days while the clone remained active.

In other instances, however, you got… well, situations like this.

"I know what you're thinking," the clone replied to his next unspoken question. "And, you're probably right. But I also think that trying to run away from this after everything would be an even bigger mistake. So, best of luck to you all. I've got my own thing to work on, now."

Without another word, the clone began stumbling away. As he left, Comet meowed one last time before scampering off to follow along at his heels.

Just like that, they were gone.

< -|- -|- >

Some time later, the leadership trio of himself, Martin and Robb gathered for another session. Everything except their next moves had been accounted for. Watch was being carried out on their behalf, and thanks to the timely intervention of a small container filled with bike locks and zip ties, the large front pocket of Henry's satchel was now as firmly secured as it was ever going to be. If this didn't work, he wasn't quite sure what would.

"Right," Martin began. "We've made it across the river. Now what?"

"For now, we're going to have to sit tight," Henry explained. "Walworth works a little different than the other areas, on account of being practically on top of so many thrall-camps. Unless any of you lot fancy a trip straight to hell, we'll need to move slowly and quietly if we want to find the path forward."

Robb's brow creased in confusion. "Find the path forward? You mean that's something we need to figure out?"

"Kind of. Let me explain."

He withdrew the heavily-editorialized travel map they shared, and uncapped the trusty ballpoint pen they left with it for occasions just like this.

"There are three major vampire strongholds in the area. Here, here and here." He drew dotted lines around three specific nearby areas, and scribbled a skull and crossbones inside each. "Last I saw of them, they mostly war with each other to steal sources of fresh blood from one another. But, considering that this basically amounts to a resource war that's stalemated between them all, that doesn't mean they would hesitate to pounce on a juicy target like we'd present. We'll need to be extra careful to lay low from here on out because of this, and we need to learn patrol routes and patterns in the meantime so we can plot a route to sneak through on foot."

"To that end," Henry explained further, "We need to get in contact with the locals. The ones who know exactly how, where and when to move so that they don't get caught by roving covens out for blood. I'll take myself and one of you two out with me out tomorrow to make contact, show the ropes on how things work here, and have more info to leave you with tomorrow. Once they know what we know, they'll be willing to do us this favor, I'm sure."

"These…locals… are nearby, then?", Martin asked. "Do any of them pose a threat to us?"

"Compared to the vampires? No, absolutely not. The only thing that even comes close around here that I know of are a few artifact wielders, and even the most antagonistic of those are more of a nuisance to an organized group than anything."

Martin grunted in acknowledgement, then returned with a pressing question of his own.

"Since you seem to know so much about these friends of yours in the area," he probed calmly. "Perhaps it's about time that you took the time to explain a few more details about them. We are going to be meeting them soon, after all."

Henry nodded along slowly. As much as he wanted to put it off even longer, that option was simply no longer possible.

He took in a deep breath. "Okay."

"First, let me preface this by saying that there's some good news and some news that might take some getting used to. The good news is, so long as I can make it to their camp without attracting any undue attention, we're pretty much guaranteed a quick and easy passage through this area."

Martin weighed the pragmatic opener, and slowly nodded along with the information.

"Go on…"

"Whoever decides to come along with me, however, will need to tread very carefully this first time around. As you can imagine, their vetting process is… extreme, considering how close they operate to vampires."

With that, he dove straight into the minutiae.

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