Lucky awoke to the smell of coffee.
    "Morning," Chandler said, handing her a cup as she entered the kitchen, yawning. "This is good stuff, by the way, not what you guys keep around the office."
    "So are you the reason I had no dreams last night, or was that just fortunate?"
    "Yes. How are you?"
    "About as expected."
    He nodded. "I figured. You went through some real emotional highs and lows last night."
    "I don't think there were any highs," she corrected wryly.
    "Do you want the good news, or the bad news?"
    She hesitated. "Bad."
    He sighed. "They're picketing in the streets, out at the dock and in front of the Senate building, a few other places. Um, the television news is calling for your blood."
    "Naturally."
    "The good news is the newspapers are actually pretty neutral on the whole thing. OK, so it's a bunt, but you take them where you can get 'em."
    "Nobody reads," she pointed out.
    "I read," he responded with an offended look.
    "Fine—intelligent, discriminating people read."
    "Good point. There's got to be somebody else."
    "People like Holly Shapiro read... the Herald."
    "Even the Herald is not that bad, certainly not as bad as the television news," he offered.
    "I'd really like to find out who leaked my file," she growled, half to herself.
    "Can't answer that." Silence. "So what are you going to do now? You're safe as long as you're here. No one knows you're here, no one can find the place. I don't think that you're going to take hiding until all of this has blown over as a real serious option, though."
    "No. Not my style."
    "Didn't think so," he smiled.
    "Any advice?"
    "Keep your head. Don't let them get to you. Stay calm. I told you before, things are leading toward chaos, and there is a central uncertainty concerning authority. All of this has obviously been manufactured somehow. If it's been constructed, then it can be deconstructed," he stated confidently.
     "I keep thinking that this whole thing is somehow related to Needle, but then again there's gonna be ramifications from what happened with Vincent, and while... I'm not positive that the WCL exists, I'm fairly certain that they do."
    "I'm pretty sure they do, too. However, I don't think that attempting to prove to the world that they do exist is a viable way out of this situation. So what you need to do—"
    "Do you think that it's possible to find the people that did this and bring them down?" she asked seriously.
    "Anything is possible. Anything."
    "It's what I want to do. I mean, I'm not saying that I don't deserve what's going on, I just don't think that this is... justice."
    "It's not. And I'm not going to get into the question of what you deserve and what you don't. If you want to see justice done, get together with your teammates and work your way through this. Don't lose your temper," he warned. "Because whoever is doing this is counting on you losing it."
    "I don't feel like it right now. Anger, but..."
    "Not like you want to go and find Holly Shapiro and rip her arms off and beat her to death with them?"
    "Holly Shapiro is a yutz," Lucky stated firmly.
    "Granted. And she has a lousy editor," he noted with a frown. "Typo, line seven."
    "Although it would be amusing to see the look on her face if she had to cross the street in front of me."
    "Keep a low profile," he suggested with a patient sigh.
    "How am I supposed to do the volunteer work that I've been sentenced to do, and..."
    "I don't know how the government is going to decide to handle this."
    "Can I just go in there, should I call Winters?" Unaccustomed uncertainty showed in her voice. Her accelerating internal transformation had left her without any of the usual anchors, without the sense that she knew how to deal with any situation the world could throw at her. The rules were changing, and she didn't understand the new ones yet.
    "No, just—"
    "I mean, she's my liaison, she doesn't want to talk to me."
    "Don't go in. Stay low, keep down," Chandler reiterated. "If you show up there, there's going to be a riot," he warned her quietly.
    "Should I call her?"
    "Judging from the way she reacted last night, I don't think that's a good idea. Why don't you use someone as an intermediary?" he suggested. "Someone who actually knows her and talks to her, which leaves me out."
    "Needle?"
    "Her or Scott."
    "Thanks." She left the room to meditate in the sheltered silence of his meditation chamber.

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