"Jesus Christ," the portly man said, staring at his phone in abject horror, his face suddenly white as a sheet.

"What?" Olivia demanded sharply, stepping closer to him, titling her head as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the text message that had elicited such a response.

"It's the campus wide alert system," the man answered in an unsteady voice. "There's an active shooter in the Hayes building."

Amanda's stomach lurched, fear turning her blood to ice in her veins. She and Olivia weren't here to deal with a fucking active shooter; she'd come to interview witnesses in another Hudson University he-said-she-said date rape case and Olivia had come along because of her relationship with the university president, her presence meant to remind the university of the weight of the investigation and the headaches SVU could cause if they were met with resistance. They weren't wearing vests, weren't carrying anything other than 9mm handguns at their belts, no radio but the one in Liv's SUV. They didn't have the resources to handle something like this, but surely if the matter had risen to the level of sending out a campus-wide alert other cops were already involved. Maybe ESU was already on its way, maybe they wouldn't have to handle this empty-handed and without backup. They needed to get to the radio, needed to find out -

"Is that an academic building or a dorm?" Olivia barked, suddenly on high alert. The shift in her energy was palpable to Amanda, who knew her so well; Olivia was tense, now, coiled tight, every fiber of her being focused on the emergency in front of them, her hand already drifting to the gun at her waist.

"It's the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis," the man answered.

"Gender Studies, would that be in Hayes?" Olivia pressed him while Amanda watched, quiet and confused. What did it matter, she wondered, what courses were taught there? It would make sense if Olivia was trying to get a sense of the shooter's motive or trying to figure out how many potential victims were inside the building, but why zero in on one particular department? Did Olivia know something Amanda didn't? Adrenaline was flooding through her, and she shifted uneasily on her feet; they needed to get going. Outside the doors of this small, cluttered professor's office there were thousands of students and teachers who would need guidance, and protection, and they needed to do something, and she couldn't see how asking these questions would help.

"Yes," the professor said, and Olivia swore.

"Shit. How do we get there?"

"You can't leave this room," the professor protested. "Protocol says when this text comes out we have to shelter in place-"

"That's your protocol," Olivia fired back. "We're the police. Now. How do we get to that building?"

With trembling hands the professor drew a sketchy map on a stray piece of paper, and passed it off to Olivia, retreating behind his desk the second his task was through. From the look on his face Amanda got the sense the man meant to crawl under that desk the second she and Olivia departed, and she couldn't blame him for that. It was a good plan.

"Liv," she said in a low voice, trying to catch the Captain's attention. "We should call somebody, maybe try to get to the radio-"

"You go to the car," Liv said, her eyes fixed on the map, her feet already carrying her towards the door. "You call it in. I'm going."

At the doorway she paused, drew her gun and then eased the door open, scanned the hallway before stepping out confidently. Beyond the professor's office the building was eerily still, no sound of voices or scurrying feet, no faces to be seen as the building's inhabitants had all gone to ground, with good reason.

"Not without me you're not," Amanda answered, drawing her gun as well, following Olivia out of the office and into uncertainty.

It was stupid. Beyond stupid, really, to just go racing across campus with no idea what they were walking into, but they did it, just the same. Well, Liv did it, for reasons Amanda could not fathom, and Amanda followed, because Olivia was her boss, because Olivia was her friend, because there was no way in hell Amanda was going to let Olivia walk into a shootout or a hostage situation or god only knew what all by herself. It had been a long, long time since William Lewis had taken Olivia, a decade or thereabouts, but Amanda had never forgotten it. Had never forgotten the four days that man held her, and the horror he had visited upon her, and Amanda had never forgotten the guilt that she and the rest of the squad carried, knowing that if only someone had checked in on Olivia sooner she might have been spared much of her pain, if not all of it. If only they had gone after her, instead of trusting that she'd be fine the way she always was, so many things might have been different. No, Amanda wasn't going to leave Olivia to face this alone, whatever the Captain said.

They ran across cobblestone sidewalks, keeping to the shadows of the buildings, following the rudimentary guideline the poor shaken professor had given them, watching students dart through doorways, seeking cover. As they drew near it became obvious which building was Hayes; a police presence had already begun to form, uniformed officers milling about, pole cams going up, cruisers with their lights flashing drawn up on the sidewalk, and the sight of all those people reassured Amanda. This wouldn't be Liv facing a hostage taker on her own, the way she'd done too many times before, this wouldn't be the pair of them risking life and limb to take down some asshole without vests; there was manpower here, enough people to give them a fighting chance against whatever waited inside.

"Captain Benson, SVU!" Liv called as they came running up, holding her shield over her head with practiced ease. "Where's the scene commander?"

"Right here, Captain," a grim-faced man answered, breaking away from the unis he'd been barking orders to and marching towards her instead.

"We've got the situation in hand," he added, already trying to send them away, not that Amanda could blame him. His uniform proclaimed him a Lieutenant, and that meant Liv outranked him, and if he'd been running things so far he wouldn't want to turn the op over to some stranger from Sex Crimes. Too many cooks in the kitchen, Amanda thought.

"One gunman, armed with an AR-15. He's taken some hostages upstairs but we've got heat signatures on the pole cams already, hostage negotiator is on his way. I appreciate your willingness to assist but-"

"How many hostages? You got names?"

Something is wrong here, Amanda thought. She expected Liv to ask questions, knew her boss too well to think for one second that Liv was gonna just walk away when people were in danger, but the questions Olivia asked didn't make any sense. They were too specific, focused on the wrong thing. How many hostages, that was all well and good, but what did their names matter, really?

"Uh, yeah," the Lieutenant answered, reaching into his pocket and producing a scrap of paper, on which Amanda imagined the names were written. He opened his mouth as if he meant to read them all aloud but Olivia took the page from him so she could read it herself, her eyes frantically scanning the page until Amanda figured she'd found what she was looking for. Liv swore, again.

"Shit."

"Something you wanna share with the class, Captain?" the Lieutenant asked, irritated, snatching the paper back.

"I'm going up there," Liv told him, already moving to break away from him, her eyes focused on the huge brick building looming over them.

The Lieutenant reacted as if on instinct, reaching out to catch her by the bicep, but when Liv whirled on him the look she gave him was pure venom and he wrenched his hand away, shamefaced when he realized what he'd done.

"You can't do that, Captain," he said. "I can't have-"

"I don't give a damn what you want, Lieutenant," she answered coolly. "Get me a vest and a radio and tell me what room this guy is in. That's an order."

"Your orders don't mean shit here, Captain-"

"My kid's up there," Liv hissed, and Amanda's head snapped to attention so fast it left her dizzy.

What the fuck? She wondered. What would Noah be doing in a gender studies class at Hudson on a Tuesday afternoon? The kid was precocious, sure, and he did good in school, but he wasn't taking-college-courses-before-he-hit-puberty smart, just…regular smart. And if he had been enrolled in a program like that, surely Liv would've talked about it; she loved that little boy so much, and she was so damn proud of him. She always raved about his dance recitals and once when he'd made a perfect score on a spelling test in kindergarten Liv had put the fucking thing on the fridge in the breakroom. There was no way Liv wouldn't have mentioned him being here, but the fear in her voice when she'd said my kid was palpable. Noah was her whole world, her only family, the only life she had outside the job, her whole heart walking around on two feet, and Amanda thought of her own girls, and trembled at the thought of the terror Liv must have been feeling.

"Jesus," the Lieutenant said, shaking his head. "I really can't send you up there, then, Captain. Come on, you have to know-"

"I've done hostage negotiation before," Liv insisted. "Successfully. I can talk to this guy. How long is it gonna be before the hostage negotiator shows up? An hour?"

"Maybe less," the Lieutenant replied, in a tone of voice that seemed to say but probably more.

"She knows what she's doing, Lieutenant," Amanda said firmly, and both of them turned to stare at her, their eyes wide as if they'd forgotten she was there at all. "And I'm going with her."

On the one hand she agreed with the scene commander; sending the parent of a hostage into the fray was just asking for a lawsuit, went against every possible regulation, was an act of madness. It was fucking stupid, was what it was, but she wasn't looking at just any parent. She was looking at Liv, and Liv, she'd talked down more EDPs and gunmen than Amanda could count. Amanda had seen it, had seen Liv's compassion, her dedication at work, had seen Olivia do what no one else could, and end standoffs that could have been bloodbaths without anybody getting wheeled out in a bag. If anybody could bring this to a peaceful conclusion, it was Liv. There was something almost holy about it, the faith Amanda had in this woman; I respect you more than anybody I've ever met Amanda had told her once, and meant it. A righteous sort of fever burned in Olivia's veins, and Amanda had seen her do the impossible too many times to doubt the woman now.

And besides, Noah was in that building. Amanda would've gone in herself, for that boy. Just like Liv would've done for the girls.

The Lieutenant chewed on it for a moment, and then he turned, and shouted to the unis behind him.

"Get me two vests and a radio!"

The unis snapped into action, and in less than a minute Amanda and Liv were buckling themselves into vests, preparing for battle. There was something like calm settling over Amanda; not calm, exactly, for she knew too well the danger she faced, knew that she was risking life and limb to follow Olivia into darkness, but something like it. There was always a certain sense of control that came over her in moments like this, her steps slow and sure, her heartbeat going steady, her brain clearing as the only thing she focused on was the task in front of her. Go in the building, find the guy, talk him down; she was trained to do these things. She knew what to say, where to go, how to hold herself, and she trusted the woman beside her like she trusted no one else on earth, except for maybe Sonny. She was willingly going to face death, but she had done that before, and she knew the way.

"You're sure about this?" the Lieutenant asked, giving them one final chance to change their minds, but Olivia's face was set, hard as a stone.

"I'm getting my daughter out of there," she said with all the conviction of a tent revival preacher.

Wait, what?

"Which one is she?" the Lieutenant asked.

"Natalie Swanson," Liv answered.

Some of Amanda's certainty wavered. Liv didn't have any fucking daughters, and Amanda had never heard the name Natalie Swanson in her life. Was Liv lying, so convinced that she could avert disaster she'd made up an excuse to send her up the stairs? Somehow Amanda didn't think so; Liv's questions had been too focused for her to be making shit up on the fly. But who the fuck was Natalie Swanson? What the fuck was going on? It scared her, not knowing what Liv was thinking, feeling herself suddenly out of step when moments before she'd been so sure of their purpose.

"We'll pray for her," the Lieutenant said. "God be with you, Captain. We're on channel three."

Liv set the radio to the correct channel, and then marched towards the building with her gun drawn, and Amanda followed after with a heart full of questions and a belly full of dread.