A/N: Keane is a bigot. This characterization is intentional, although not the point of this story. This ties into elements of Integration.

Copley's doorbell rang on a drizzly Sunday afternoon in Surrey. It was only habit that led him to glance over at the screen that showed his doorstep. What he saw there stopped him in his tracks. It was Keane. The man had let his beard grow out a bit in the six weeks or so since the incident at Merrick's Tower, but it was clearly him. He wasn't bristling with weapons or tactical gear, but he could hide a lot under that jacket. Copley looked at the screen with concern.

Keane shifted his weight with his own concern and looked around uneasily at the street. He glanced at the camera, obviously aware of it. Seconds passed. Finally, he reached under his jacket and came out with a knife. Copley's head pulled back, but what was the man going to do on his front step with a knife? The door was reinforced. Keane held his hand up in front of the camera and cut the heel of it with a wince.

It was too close for the camera to focus, but even blurry, Copley could see the blood and then shortly thereafter, the disappearance of the slice it had been flowing from. Keane held the knife awkwardly and rubbed at the spot, smearing the blood and making it clear there was no longer a wound.

Copley breathed out heavily. He chewed his lip in uncertainty even as his feet carried him to the foyer. He opened the door.

"Hey," Keane said abruptly. The knife was still in his hand. They both noticed that at the same time. Keane fumbled, wiping it off on his pant leg hastily and returning it to its sheath at his waist.

"Come inside," Copley said coolly, stepping aside.

Keane pressed past him and kept walking further into the house than was polite. He moved like he was anxious. Copley glanced around outside. He couldn't see the man's car. He seemed alone. He shut the door and followed.

Since Keane was nearly to the kitchen, Copley ushered him the rest of the way into it. "Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink? Tea, perhaps?" He had some leftover from earlier. It might be a little bitter for the reheating, but this was Keane.

"Yeah, sure," Keane said, sounding distracted. He took a seat at the short bar. "So, uh, have you been, ah, keeping up with things? With Kozak? Anyone?"

"A few people. I haven't been involved, though." Implicated, was what he meant. No one had pointed a finger at him in the aftermath. On paper (or in the electronic record), he was just one of Stephen Merrick's many customers, consultants, and professional contacts. There was no more to tie him to the massacre than there was to tie any of a thousand other people to it. He'd made sure of that, but he hadn't been able to do anything about the personal knowledge of Kozak and Keane. "What's happened?"

"Nothing, really." Keane brought his hands together wringing them slowly. "Do you … know where those people are?"

"Which people would that be?" Copley slid over a cup of tea and a pot of sugar.

Keane dumped in several teaspoons worth. Copley blinked at that. It was right on the edge of excessive. "Those people," Keane said. "The ones who heal." Keane held up the hand he'd cut. The blood was still there, drying now.

Copley walked over to wet a washcloth. He brought it over and handed it off. He pointed at his own hand when Keane gave him a puzzled look. Keane got the message and wiped off the blood. Copley said, "They know I set them up."

"Yeah, but have you kept track of them? Do you know where they are? I have … questions." He stirred his tea fretfully.

"They know you were part of Merrick's team. I don't think they'll be willing to answer questions from you."

Keane gave him a put-out look. "Then you know where they are. Will they answer questions from you?" Copley pulled over a kitchen stool to sit on the opposite side of the bar, facing him. He didn't say anything. Keane shook his head. "Okay, you, then. Have you had any issues? Differences?" When Copley still didn't answer, Keane said, "Do you heal?"

"No." It was disappointed and resigned. It hadn't worked out for him. Why had it worked for Keane, he had to wonder? And when, exactly?

Keane made an exasperated sound, then sipped at his tea. He put in another spoon of sugar.

"Are you alright?" Copley asked gently. Had it actually worked for Keane?

Keane shook his head. "I'm fine," he said dully.

Copley tilted his head, putting some things together. "Does Dr. Kozak know about your condition?"

"No." Keane looked at him, eyes intent, and for a moment Copley expected a threat, some kind of 'if you tell her, I'll kill you'. The moment passed. Keane swallowed roughly. He stirred in the new sugar.

"She contacted me," Copley volunteered. "She gave me some extra doses. She said it was the last she had and she'd rather they were in my hands than hers, or impounded in the lab. It seems that whoever destroyed the security footage from that day also wiped her research records."

"Huh," Keane grunted. "Yeah. But she had a backup." He took a drink.

"She did?" Copley said softly. "I didn't know that. Will she be able to make more?"

Keane shook his head. "I don't know. She said it didn't have the recent stuff on it, like the tests from those people, but our stuff isn't recent. I have a few doses, too, if you want them. I don't think I need them anymore." He used his thumb to rub at the heel of his palm where the cut had been.

Copley nodded. "I would appreciate that. Thank you." They sat in silence for a moment. Then Copley asked, "What happened to you? You were the only uninjured survivor." Frustratingly, Merrick had not had security cameras in the penthouse. Whatever had transpired there was a mystery. All he knew was that Keane had walked down the stairs a few minutes later, moving slowly and checking the bodies.

"Kozak was fine, too."

"She was?"

Keane nodded. He pointed at his chin. "Bruise on the jaw, knocked her out for a few seconds, chipped a tooth. I don't count that as an injury. Anyway, that one guy … the Middle Eastern one?" Copley's brows rose in mild disbelief that Keane was that off-base on Joe's ethnicity. The man tried again, "North African?"

"Go on."

"He dropped me on my head. I thought he broke my neck. But when I woke up, nope. I was fine. Didn't even feel like I had a concussion. It's been that way since."

"You didn't tell Kozak?"

Keane gave him apprehensive look. He bared his teeth a little. "She told me – later that evening – that all she needed was one of them, one person with their ability. With the samples she had and the research in her backup files, she didn't need all of them. She just needed one." His mouth twisted into the world's most uncomfortable smile.

Copley's smile was more genuine, yet rueful. "And you didn't want to volunteer?"

Keane laughed bitterly. He saluted Copley with the teacup, then drained it.

"That's why she doesn't know," Copley said.

"I worked for Merrick – Stephen Merrick. Not for her. Not for the company or their shareholders."

"But you were a client of hers."

"And that paid off. It worked, I guess. Not sure why." He pushed around the empty teacup. "Maybe all the adrenaline?"

"Maybe." Copley took the cup and refilled it, emptying the teapot to do it. He passed it over. Keane over-sugared it again. He'd had an exciting time of it himself that day, been hit over the head and knocked out, but nothing. No change. Though he hadn't gone so far as to think his neck was broken. "Too bad you can't ask her."

"I want to ask them. That's why I'm here. You did all that research on them. I need to know things, like … my limits. Am I immune to poison? Do things grow back if I cut them off? What about AIDS or like, diseases?"

Copley tilted his head slightly. "Why AIDS in particular?"

"Gross diseases. Things I wouldn't get … normally."

"You can get AIDS, or HIV more properly, in a variety of normal ways."

"Yeah, but I'm not going to," Keane said dismissively. "My question is, am I immune to that stuff now? All of it? Any of it? Are there certain things I'm not and I don't know about, and wouldn't until it was too late? The gas worked on them. The tasers did. Kozak kept them sedated. So what works and what doesn't? I can't just … experiment on myself."

Keane drank half his tea. "This stuff is delicious. Food tastes so good now. Everything's vivid. It's like I'm living for the first time in my life. I wonder if I'm on drugs. I wonder if this is how it's supposed to be? That stuff we were taking from Kozak – is it different from what those people have? Or is it the same?"

"Would you experiment on them," Copley asked, "if you found one?"

"I dunno." Keane shook his head. "Not if they'd answer my questions." He gestured around himself. "And it's not like I have a lab. I don't have a team. They're all dead, or still in rehab, the ones that survived. They're never going to work for me again. The whole operation was a disaster. As the team lead, I should have known that. I got them all killed. You knew. You told us."

Copley nodded. "My own operation in the Sudan turned out similarly. Most of my contacts are burned. The ones who are left are wary."

Keane nodded. "So we're in the same boat. But you're not healing like I am. You're still on Kozak's meds?"

"Until they run out."

"Yeah, I'll give you mine. What are you going to do afterward?"

Copley shrugged. "Hope there isn't a withdrawal period."

"So, just, let it wear off? Grow old and die?"

Copley shrugged again. "We'll see. I've been keeping in touch with Dr. Kozak. I know she's looking for another sponsor."

Keane chuckled darkly. "Yeah. She told me. She got in touch with me a couple weeks ago asking again if I had any way I could get one of those people for her, any leads at all." She'd asked Copley the same. Keane laughed a little more. "Apparently whatever billionaires she's in contact with want some proof. Like forty or fifty dead isn't proof enough?" He sighed. "But there's no footage. Just a bunch of bodies and a couple witnesses who aren't really sure what they saw. Do you know what the police have made of it?"

Copley shook his head, although he knew. The cops had nothing to go on, but with so many dead and such a high-profile case (death of a CEO, so many skilled security experts dead, right in the middle of London), the investigating department would be ruined if they didn't come up with something. By now, they were trying to fabricate things. The current theory was a schism in the security forces that had led to an internal shoot-out. No one believed 'immortal warriors' or 'human experimentation gone wrong'. Kozak and Keane had kept their mouths shut.

"Yeah," Keane said. "I have this creeping feeling they're trying to frame me. My lawyer's acting weird. I think someone's gotten to him. Like he's not working for me anymore. Either that, or I'm just being paranoid. It's hard to tell." He sighed. "I just need to find these other guys, the ones who know how this works, and get out of the country for a while. Or forever."

Copley grimaced. "Haven't the police blocked that while the investigation is ongoing?"

Keane shrugged, but the answer was yes. "I can bypass that if I need to." Keane pushed away his cup decisively. He looked like was ready to leave. And if he was leaving without getting violent, without an ultimatum, without trying to force Copley to help him, then it might be that he could be worked with.

Copley jumped in as Keane stood. "If I could help you, set you up somewhere for a while, would that help? Someplace safe and off the radar? If your abilities are what you think, like theirs, then you have time. You could take more risks than most. Maybe when Kozak settles somewhere and gets funding, we could funnel her samples from you. Tell her it's from one of the others."

Keane snorted. "She'd just have a team come get me. That's what we did."

"But it didn't work," Copley said. "Why would she do it again?"

Keane rolled his eyes, but he leaned on the bar anyway. He was listening.

"I don't think you're paranoid," Copley said. "What I'm proposing would give you options. If you get framed here and incarcerated, then you have fewer of them."

Keane exhaled sharply. "That's true." A beat. "Where would I go?"

"Without looking into it, I'd advise Central or South America – political hotspots where the local government is more concerned with staying in power or managing their own population than with pursuing an international request for information on a possible fugitive. There would be a lot of work opportunities for someone of your background as well."

"I don't want to do anything too dangerous." Keane shook his head. "I don't know if I'll survive being killed the way they do. It's one thing to heal a little cut on the hand. It's another to come back from a bullet to the brain. If I don't, then I'm dead."

"Right. Of course. Should I look into something for you?"

Keane hesitated. "If you're still in touch with them, you're not willing to tell me." He chewed his lip.

Very carefully, Copley said, "I might be able to tell you, if I can demonstrate that you've separated yourself from Kozak, from your past as one of Stephen Merrick's employees, and that you're no longer a threat to them, not in any way."

Keane looked him over. "That's what you've done?" Copley didn't let his expression change. Keane snorted softly and tipped his head to Copley. "It's kind of hard not to notice you're still alive. With all the dead they left behind them, it's not because they're squeamish. Or anything other than thorough. You cut a deal somehow." A small frown crept onto Copley's face anyway. Keane said, "I'll bring over the doses I have left. How long will you need to look into a place for me? Two or three days?"

"Give me four."

Keane nodded and let himself out.