MANHATTAN – JULY 1899

Alexei ducked as another glass bottle was thrown in his direction, just missing him by half a second. It shattered against the peeling wallpaper.

This fight had been going on for a good twenty minutes.

"Have you lost your goddamn mind?" Muggs was shouting, sweat dripping from his forehead. "Or has all the opium started leaking into your brain? I can't even believe what I'm hearing. You did what?"

Alexei gathered himself, running a hand through his greasy blonde hair. "I'm not going to talk to you until you're calm."

"I am fucking calm!" Muggs shouted. "Do you want to see me angry? Because I can show you angry!"

With that, Muggs kicked a chair over, sending it clean across the room, breaking two of the legs.

Alexei observed the damage with a frown. "And you wonder why we have no furniture."

"You sent them to a goddamn orphanage?" Muggs yelled, as if the words were foreign to him. "Without consulting me? Without thinking about how much that'll cost us?"

He was referring to Alexei's recent act of mutiny. Earlier that day, while Muggs was out, Alexei had pulled the seven newly recruited girls away from the pipes long enough to herd them down the street to an orphanage.

Seeing that man in Sing Sing and learning what he'd done had traumatized Alexei to the point of surrendering their exports.

The girls had begged for opium the whole walk to the asylum – crying and dragging their feet. He supposed it was the matron's problem now, though he felt a little sympathy for the girls. He knew how bad that withdrawal would be.

Muggs was fuming.

"You're crazy, Alexei! Crazier than that batshit gypsy rotting away on Ward's Island—"

"His name is Demetrio!" Alexei shouted, as if that were the pressing issue now. "Learn his name, dammit! I'm so sick of you calling him that! He's our friend!"

"He doesn't even know his name! Or have we not been calling him No Name for years?"

Alexei rolled his eyes with a wave of his hand, looking elsewhere.

Muggs stared at Alexei in quiet shock. He chuckled slowly. "Oh, okay. What's next? We smash our pipes and put on those white collars for good?" He shook his head. "You're losing it, pal. You really are."

"I ain't doing this anymore, Muggs," Alexei said, his voice steadier. "I can't. I won't."

Muggs folded his arms. "Look me in the eye," he said from across the room, "and say that again."

Alexei fixed his gaze on Muggs. With a deep breath, he repeated, "I ain't doing this anymore."

After a beat, Muggs crossed the room. "I don't understand how one accident turned you self-righteous. It makes no sense."

"One accident?" Alexei echoed in disbelief. "How can you call it an accident? He slit two girls' throats after he had his way with them. Maybe more."

"Wake up, you stupid hophead," Muggs growled. "As long as we get dough for 'em, I don't give a damn where they end up. Could be Brooklyn, could be California, Louisiana, Canada, or on a fucking steamboat. That ain't our business. All we worry about is getting 'em here. That's it."

"Yeah, and what happens when the cops get wise? They get the rest of Weasel's guys, they get Weasel, and then who else? Weasel will talk, you know he will. We'll be back in Sing Sing, behind bars this time. Sharing a jail cell with that bastard."

Muggs snickered. "Well, if that's the only thing you're worried about, don't that make you just as bad as me?"

"That ain't the only thing, and you know it," Alexei muttered, taking a step back. "What if it was Jack's little sister? Or yours? Would you want her to end up like that?"

"Don't you dare try to make this personal." Muggs' voice was low and threatening.

"Everything about this is personal! Offing bastard guards on Randall's Island is one thing, but I ain't no child killer!" Alexei yelled, grabbing Muggs' shoulders, and shoving him away. "We've gone too far this time, Muggs!"

Muggs didn't say anything.

"I don't know if we can fix this!" Alexei continued, stopping to catch his breath. He ran another hand through his wild hair, feeling his stomach drop. "Honestly, I don't know if you want to fix it. But if you decide you want to stay mixed up in this, then I don't want no part of it."

"What are you saying? That you'll leave?" Muggs asked incredulously. "And go where? Back to Chinatown to live in some dark cellar for the rest of your life? Now that you've suddenly got a conscience?"

"Muggs—"

"So good of you to finally speak your mind," he went on, tilting his head. "All these years, I thought you were just a damn parrot. Turns out you actually have opinions."

Alexei shook his head – his bloodshot eyes becoming watery. "Why the hell are you doing this, Muggs?" His voice came out in a strangled whisper, like it pained him to get the words out.

"Because I'm the worst of us, my friend," Muggs replied coolly, as if it were a well-known fact. As if he knew what everyone said about him. "You clearly think of yourself as morally superior. Someone's gotta be good, and someone's gotta be smart. And if you're the former, I'm the latter."

"You're not smart," Alexei said quietly. His expression had curled into a look of disgust, as if he'd tasted something sour.

An electric flare of danger flashed in Muggs' eyes. His muted demeanor dropped to something completely menacing. In one quick step, Muggs was in Alexei's face again.

Muggs began following Alexei as the Russian boy inched backwards, eventually hitting his back against the wall. Trapped.

"I got you out of that hellhole den on Mott! I got Duane Street out of the Refuge! I got Krause and McGurk out of Sing Sing while you were God knows where half the time! I'm fucking reliable! I'm honest with people! I don't have to get high to face reality!"

Muggs slammed his hand against the wall beside Alexei's head, making the young man flinch. A tear slipped down Alexei's cheek as he cringed, not knowing whether he should feel insulted or enraged or scared.

"I've always been there for you!" Muggs shouted, almost sounding hurt. He quickly brushed away that emotional slip and remolded his expression to something resembling smug. "Just like I've always been there for Colleen. Even after we got out of the Refuge. It ain't my fault she chose to become a whore. But everyone sure likes to think it is. Including you."

Again, Alexei shook his head in confusion, with more tears escaping. "I don't think that," he replied in a strained voice.

Having eased off a bit, Muggs' glare softened, and he smirked a little. "Sure, you do. If it ain't my fault, then whose is it? Not yours. You ain't the one who's supposed to be looking out for her. And you get to go around, wasting away, not giving a shit if you live or die, with no little sister objecting or begging you for bread because she's fucking starving to death!"

Alexei winced, continuing to silently wipe away his tears.

"Because while you were whining for opium in that dormitory day in and day out, I was blowing Whalen every other night so he wouldn't lay a fucking hand on Colleen! That was my trade! It wasn't for damn cocaine!"

Alexei had heard enough. He side-stepped past Muggs and stormed out the door. Muggs turned around, watching Alexei go without so much as an explanation.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Muggs called after him. "This ain't over! Dammit, what are you doing?"

Alexei panted, racing down the stairs. Frantically, he searched for the exit once he reached the dive on the first floor. He could hear Muggs shouting behind him, knowing he was following.

Alexei pushed the door open into the alleyway, trying to fill his lungs with fresh air as moonlight spilled out onto the grimy streets.

"Alexei!" Muggs yelled, shoving his way through the patrons toward the door. He swung it open, seeing Alexei's silhouette against the wall. "What's the matter? We ain't friends no more?"

Alexei backed up. His eyes were wide. For the first time, Alexei feared Muggs. Maybe if he were sober, he wouldn't have been so panicked. "No, we ain't!" He shouted for practically the whole damn city to hear.

This outburst didn't seem to faze Muggs. Instead, he only looked amused. "Why not? You've changed or something? You want out of this business, but you're tough now?" He asked evenly.

"Just stop talking!" Alexei bellowed desperately.

"That it? You think you're tough?" Muggs laughed, shaking his head. "Snyder was right, you're just a little baby! All you do is cry! It's pathetic!" He was screaming now, just as loudly as Alexei had, with his voice breaking on the word 'cry.' "I'm tougher than you'll ever be!" He pointed to himself indignantly. "You're just some dope-addicted puppet! If I'd known better at the time, I would've encouraged you to jump off the roof before Calico beat you to it!"

Alexei stumbled into a high stack of crates behind him in the darkness, banging his head against the splintered edge of one such box. He cried out in pain, rubbing the injured spot at the back of his head.

Muggs didn't stop though. He pressed on as if nothing happened, not giving Alexei time to recover. "And you know, it's your own damn fault," Muggs said, having changed his tone dramatically from the previous eruption. "It's because you're weak. You pretend you're tough, but I know that ain't true. You still have hope that one day your life will become all sunshine and roses. But that ain't real. The world is an uncaring place. There ain't no fairness. There ain't no beauty. There ain't no choices. No reason, just consequences."

Alexei pulled his hand back, inspecting for blood, but finding nothing to his relief. The spot where he'd hit the crate still ached, however. "Stop it," Alexei begged, unable to listen to Muggs' rant for another second.

"At the end of the day, it's us or them," Muggs continued, following him as Alexei hurried out of the alley and onto the gloomy street. "Sometimes, to survive, someone else has to suffer. And I learned that the hard way."

Alexei tried to block out the voice, turning down corners to lose Muggs, but he was moving considerably slower due to his disorientation from both the injury and the opium he'd consumed earlier.

"But I have to say," Muggs said in mock-remorse, catching up to Alexei. "Despite the bullshit hand I got dealt, I never complained! I never groveled! I never cried, not even once!" His voice was wavering now, sounding to Alexei like he was fading in and out.

Maybe it was because Alexei himself was fading in and out. He could see sparks of flying colorful shapes before his eyes. His brain felt like it was swimming. He was shaking like a leaf.

"Not when my old man left! Not when my ma brought men back to our tenement and fucked 'em in front of me! Or when they hanged my brother!" Muggs' voice was going hoarse from overuse, scraping his throat from sheer force of volume. "I had nothing, but I didn't break! I stayed tough, unlike you! People respect tough!"

Alexei pulled himself out of his retreated state for a moment of clarity. His face went from fear to renewed vengeance at that last line. "Then why am I the only one you have left, Muggs?" He shouted in Muggs' face, releasing all the energy he could muster.

As Alexei struggled to put air in his lungs, Muggs froze, eyeing him carefully. He looked like he'd been slapped.

Narrowing his eyes, Alexei shook his head. "People don't respect you, Muggs," Alexei confessed in just above a whisper. "They've given up on you." He spat those words out with more conviction, more spite. "But what do you care? You've given up on them, too."

Muggs chewed on the inside of his cheek, balling his hands into fists at his sides.

The Russian took a shaky breath – a disdainful frown on his face. "That's why you stay in the game," Alexei said, sniffling. "You're not tough at all."

Muggs opened his mouth to say something but stopped, closing it again. It was as though he hadn't expected Alexei to say anything.

"You're still in that tenement. You're still that wounded child," Alexei furthered, his voice hitching a bit. "But now you're wounding those girls, and that's what's pathetic."

Each syllable dripped with bitterness. And by the cold look in Alexei's eyes, he meant every word of it.

Muggs averted his gaze, ducking his head, and glaring at the dirty ground. "Okay," he mumbled, sounding indifferent as he sat down in a state of exhaustion. Devoid of refusal. No attempt to clear his name. He just sat down and shut off.

Alexei settled down, blinking away stray tears. He slumped against a wall, settling on the ground opposite Muggs, being sure to keep his distance. After a long silence, Alexei finally broke it.

"The world is an uncaring place," Alexei echoed Muggs' words, staring into space as he said them. "I've spent the past seven years believing that," he continued, sounding as defeated and wearied as a battlefield veteran. "No matter what we do, it makes no difference."

With no response or eye contact from Muggs, Alexei drew another ragged breath, gathering the strength to say more. He didn't know why Muggs had come to this conclusion about life, but at the end of the day he had a conclusion. It was more than Alexei had.

Maybe Muggs felt he needed to believe it for his own sake. Alexei could empathize with that. He knew what it meant to lie to oneself to get by. To keep the world at bay. And it was obvious to Alexei that nothing could change Muggs' view.

"So maybe you're right, and nothing's fair," Alexei said with a shrug, trying a different route. "There's no explanation for our childhoods, for the horrors of this city, for the Refuge, for the fire, for Calico's death. It all happened because we broke a mirror or walked under a ladder or got cursed by the gods," he said with a choked laugh despite his grave expression. "The reason is no reason, so you say. And we'll both die as a consequence of life."

Muggs remained quiet with his trademark look of fatalistic hostility. As though he'd lash out and bite if the next words out of Alexei's mouth provoked him.

"People like Grim and Tide and Jack say you can't let it beat you, but that ain't fair," Alexei continued, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. "They don't know the kind of beating we've taken. The kind you've taken."

Muggs didn't offer so much as a nod to indicate he was listening.

It made Alexei wonder how he saw the world. How he could make excuses for the things he said and did. How he'd evolved from a frightened kid from Brooklyn to a much worse depiction of darkness.

In that moment, Alexei's face appeared resigned, as if he'd made up his mind. "But that doesn't mean we can't try…" He trailed off, struggling for a cohesive thought, and inhaling sharply for it. "We can fucking try to leave life better than we found it."

For a beat, Muggs glanced up at him, meeting Alexei's melancholic eyes with a haunted look of his own. They seemed to be in a mutual state of shock.

No words came out. Just his usual sniffle, the kind he made when he was craving cocaine. Alexei realized that's all he was thinking about now. Getting another fix. Muggs was so far gone, that Alexei realized he couldn't control him. Even more disturbing, it seemed, now even Alexei couldn't understand him.

And with a chill down his spine, Alexei realized the young man staring back at him was just a husk of a person. Matthew Tracey had stopped existing years ago. Now there was only Muggs.

After a deep sigh, the Brooklyn boy unclenched his fists and rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. He was frozen. Trembling, even. Looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. Unfeeling. Unsatisfied. Not knowing the right or the wrong thing to say in response.

But if Muggs was being honest with himself, he didn't really care.

"And if we get heat because you decided to have this change of heart," Muggs finally said, his voice unmistakably terrifying. "I'll make sure you leave it before I do. I promise you that, Morozov."

"I disagree, Tracey," Alexei rasped with a hard swallow. "You'll go before I go. You're half-dead already."